Are All Religions the Same? Devil in the Details, Idealistic Generalizations, One Truth For All

3/12/2020      Mike  (see HERE)

When it comes to which of the world religions to believe in, can’t we just say they all teach basically the same thing?  Just be loving and kind and don’t be a jerk, and it will all work out just fine in the end, right?

But the devil is in the details.

Let’s be honest, the religions of the world are not the same.  They all teach fundamentally different and often entirely opposite doctrines about major issues: who we are, who God is, where we came from, where we are going, and how we will get there.

Some people, in their attempts to be tolerant and affirming, choose to just gloss over the differences and just proclaim that the religions are generally the same.  Others, like a young man I talked with at the park named Mike, choose to go a step further and say we can create our own truth, that whatever you choose to believe makes it true.  For Mike, his truth is Catholicism, but he takes the view that whatever people choose to believe makes their belief equally true for them.

We don’t have to doubt that people are sincere in their beliefs, but with contradictions like these, many people are sincerely wrong.

This isn’t to say the different religions have nothing in common.  All religions have basic moral values, and the Bible describes this by telling us that after the sin and fall of Adam, God “put His law in our hearts”, so that we all now have a moral conscience we are  accountable to.  As a result, all people, theist, atheist or polytheist, feel the need to justify their existence, having broken the moral law to which they feel accountable.  We try to do this through religious rituals, good deeds, and/or social action, and people of all religions and secular worldviews such as atheism hope that their good deeds will outweigh their bad and that the balance scale of justice will somehow work out in their favor.

Except one.

There is one religion that stands in contrast with the rest, one that says we can’t make up for the bad things we should not have done with the good we ought to do, one that believes God is too holy to accept a meager bribe of good deeds and that mankind is too sinful to ever be able to save himself by his own efforts.  There is one religion that says we can’t save ourselves but that we need a savior, and, thankfully, this same religion gives us that savior.

That might sound exclusive, and I think the charge of exclusivity is what causes people like Mike to try to emphasize the love and good morals that all religions have in common.  But then the devilish details break into that idealism, and we are left wondering what happens when we aren’t so loving and moral.

We may live in a broken world, but we also live in a world that God has broken in to, taking the form of the man Jesus, coming to rescue us from the consequences of our sin, and offering us a right and eternal relationship with our Maker as a result. 

All people share the same sin problem, and all are offered the same solution to that problem.  Romans 5:8 tells us “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Because of the new life and hope Jesus gives us, we can all respond with the love and good morals all religions teach, only not out of obligation but as a loving response.   What could be exclusive about that?

Thanks, Mike, for allowing me to record our conversation.  It can be seen HERE at https://youtu.be/JeWyE5scPnM