Do all religions worship the same God? Many who want to be politically correct, who value the approval of man rather than of God, would come to this conclusion. But the inconvenient truth that a closer examination of the various religions easily shows is that their beliefs about God are so incompatible and contradictory to one another that having the same God would be impossible.
A man I talked to recently in a sidewalk outreach conversation – Jeremy – had studied the various religions and concluded that since they are all so contradictory, then they are all inventions of man and therefore God must not exist. He believes that if all of them can’t be right, then none of them are. But is that a logical conclusion? How could Christianity be any different from all the other religions?
I told Jeremy that the Bible teaches that there is one thing that people of all the various religions have in common. We all share the same problem, a broken relationship with God caused by our sin. We learn in the opening chapters of Genesis that all people have a conscience that reminds us of good and evil. All people, religion or not, have the same general sense of right and wrong, and nobody is able to keep from breaking it. The rationalizations and excuse making of religions over particular sins is evidence of this accountability. To whom do we make excuses for our wrongful actions? Who holds us accountable?
The differences between religions then, is not the basic problem of our sin but rather the solution to that problem. And this is where Christianity is unique and different from all other religions. They teach that the solution to our sin problem is in the good or religious actions or behaviors we can do to reach God, but Christianity teaches us what God has done to reach us. We can’t save ourselves, but Jesus can. In whom will you trust? The “good” works of manmade religions, or the good work of God in Jesus?
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