However, if we do not keep in mind that we share this planet with many faiths, then we might just become a little sect rather than be witnesses to the Good News.

Here is where the study of theology can help us clarify who we are - and how we relate to others. Theology is a door to a greater level of human understanding.

An ever more complex world

Just a generation ago, many Christians lived in societies where everyone they met was either a Christian or someone who rejected Christianity.

Today most Christians live side-by-side with people from a variety of religions.

Indeed, I can keep track of the variety of religions! Where I live, I can watch the way that the local supermarkets try to cash-in on festivals.

There is Christmas and Easter for Christians; Passover and Hanukkah for Jews; Eid for Moslems, Diwali for Hindus; and - in the last few years - Halloween (originally an Irish Christian festival) for anyone else!

We live in a multi-faith world, and there is little chance that anyone believes there is only one way of thinking about the Big Questions of life, death, love, meaning, and purpose.

But there lies the heart of it; we all are concerned with these questions - and humans have been concerned about them and consequently engaged in ritual and religion since our very earliest evidence for humans on this earth.

What does this fact - that all human societies and cultures ask great religious questions - mean for us as Christians?

A marketplace logic and its pitfalls

It is very easy to take the logic of the marketplace and transfer it to questions of religions (the proof of this is how endemic is the notion among Christians that we can buy our way into heaven), but it can confuse us at a very deep level.

If I need to change a punctured tire, I need either to have a jack or buy one.

If I get a jack and use it, then the wheel gets changed.

The opposite is also true: no jack, the wheel cannot be changed!

This is a good piece of clear, logical thinking.

Alas, I might try to use this same thinking in matters of religion.

The starting point seems clear enough: if I follow Christ, the way, truth and life, I can look forward to new life with him in the presence of God the Father.

This is a true and simple statement of Christian hope.

But what if I tried to expand on it?

I might try to reverse it, and then I would say, "If I do not follow Christ, then I cannot look forward to new life."

This, too, can be true because following Christ as a disciple is a costly business, and I could reject God's love.

But what if I tried to make it more abstract: "Disciples of Jesus can look forward to new life."

Again this is a very blunt, but still true statement.

But can it be reversed?

Then it would become "no new life unless you follow Jesus" or "only followers of Jesus can get to new life".

Both these statements have often been made - and many have tried to present Christianity in terms of "faith" on one side and hell and annihilation on the other.

Mercy limited!

But these statements are false.

In fact, we cannot try to limit God's love and mercy; we cannot be true to a God who is love and then preach this sort of either/or vision of rewards and punishments.

The fundamental problem is that we have transferred what is the efficient thinking of the finite world into the realm of mystery and the Infinite.

That is not only sloppy, but it also leads to falsehoods.

Those various celebrations advertised in the supermarket are all a response to the mystery of God who created the entire universe and who loves each of us.

We may have insights into the nature of the divine that we want to share with all, we may want to build the great family of the People of God in peace, but we do not "bring God" to people.

God is already present in every human heart.

Every word of prayer in every religion is a praise of God, and we must respect each searching after the divine as part of the precious treasure of humanity and as something sacred.

Religion is viewed by many today as the great distraction and the great sower of discord.

Part of the Christian message is that God is present to each and so, by respecting God's presence in every religion, we can build discourse.

We all think about the questions of religion.

But we usually do so in a very confused manner.

Theology can help us do it better.

And the more ably we think about religion, the more we can replace discord with discourse.

Religions can, indeed, learn how to respect one another, speak to one another, and learn from one another - all to the glory of God.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Discipleship and Society in the Early Churches.

Sir Paul is now dying, and as much as he has offered the country over the years, many people are looking at his current attitude and outlook on life as being possibly his enduring legacy. He has been interviewed a few times in the past few weeks in the aftermath of his knighthood, but this interview on the Sunday program is, I think, the most wide-ranging interview he has given.

My Facebook news feed, stacked as it is with pro-life and/or Catholic people, has been abuzz with positive comments about what Sir Paul had to say about facing his impending death as he battles cancer — a fight he had previously won, but now appears set to lose. One comment in particular stood out with people in my Facebook friends list:

"I will give my life now to some contemplation. I will walk round here and I will contemplate, and pray for God's mercy"

My good friend Brendan Malone at The Leading Edge blog, who is far more knowlegeable than I am in most areas, put it in some context:

Hearing him say this reminded me of the final days of Saint Augustine, who had King David's penitential psalms hung on his walls so he could mediate on them and spend his final days on earth in prayer and repentance.

It really is true that God uses the weak and humble things of this world to shame the wise - last night I watched as he used a frail and dying media celebrity, with a past full of all sorts of serious mistakes and sin, to remind this country that every one of us will one day be stripped of our self-importance, ego and pride; that we will all eventually die, and, most importantly of all, we are all sinners in desperate need of the mercy and love of God.

In a NZ that is becoming increasingly captured by aggressive secularism the importance of having these profound truths broadcast on prime time television, for all to hear, simply cannot be calculated.

As Brendan says, Sir Paul has made many mistakes in his life, which he acknowledges, but he seems to have some perspective that he's either never had before or never been willing to reveal because of the risk of tarnishing his public image.

I wonder if someone as famous as Paul Holmes, if they spoke about ideas like God and mercy when they were in good health, would be treated the same as Sir Paul has been under these unfortunate circumstances. And if they were treated differently, what does that say about New Zealand — or probably the West in general?

Sources

• Gavin Abraham, in the Catholic Soapbox
• Image: Zimbio