Are All Religions Basically the Same?

A few nights ago, I met with a new friend from one of the Meetup.com groups for my first ever fish fry. The fish was good; the conversation was even better. Yet, I had to stop the conversations mid-stream at one point due to a claim that this friend made (one I hear all the time): All religions are basically the same (ARBS, for short).

I find this claim astounding for a number of reasons (and my friend backed off this claim later):

1) No religions teach this. It is neither propounded by their texts or adherents. People have even fought wars (sadly) over the clear differences between religions. So these enlightened observers must know something that the "sacred texts" of these religions don't teach, and know more than devotees of these religions do.

2) This enlightened knowledge must come from somewhere. Religious claims are rightfully rooted in authoritative religious texts. Christians have the Bible; Muslims the Q'uran. Without a source of authority, our ARBS friends become an authority unto themselves. Pretty audacious to invest themselves with such divine authority.

3) What is the essential teaching that apparently unites all religions? Responses vary only by degree: love, the Golden Rule, etc. In other words, the essential teaching is ethical (a code of conduct). Yet, all religions root their ethics in metaphysics (above-physics, things higher than the human realm). Christians, for example, "love because He (Christ) first loved us." Behavior doesn't happen in a vacuum. It arises from more basic beliefs. So the essential element in all religions according to our observers is not essential to any of those religions.

4) Any good religion must offer some form of accountability, right? Something that calls us higher--to people and places beyond ourselves? Yet for those who make love the central teaching of all faiths, they can define love and exhibit it however they wish. The Golden Rule can easily become a cynical quid pro quo--"You better tolerate my behavior as I tolerate yours, or else!" There is no inherent call to submission or obedience to God or of self-denial toward one's fellow man. As with much of the "spiritual, but religious" movement, such a view enables each person to define spirituality around him/herself. Convenient.

5) Each religion is grounded in some form of authoritative source, and that authoritative source is concerned first with metaphysics, then with ethics. If the meat of a religion is found in its metaphysics, it would be fair to ask where religions differ in this regard?

I would find a partial point of commonality with the ARBS crowd here in that most religious systems, whether they deal with the Mosaic Law, Nirvana, reincarnation, etc--do believe that there are means by which men can secure God's favor and have a hand in their own salvation. Most every worldview follows the pattern of Plato's ladder, in which men can ascend to "the One" through reason, experience, ethical behavior, etc.

Yet I would also contend that none of these religious systems deal seriously with the world or the human person in their respective states of brokenness. While many religions account for brokenness in this world, they cannot satisfactorily explain how Humpty Dumpty can put himself back together again. It would seem that this ability to re-create the human person would belong only to man's original Creator--not to any Utopian scheme with no basis in reality.

Christianity is the one religion that replaces Plato's ladder with Jacob's ladder--where God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ comes down to be broken for man's brokenness and to offer man wholeness to a degree in this life and in its entirety in the life to come.

Some call religion an opiate for the masses, and for many, religion is simply a self-justifying system to placate festering consciences. Yet Christianity offers no such opiate. It does not offer you a shoulder massage of platitudes about being a good person. It tells you that you are sick and desperately need a remedy that you can't reach. It tells you that you are a great sinner in need of a great Savior.

No, Christianity is not an opiate. Rather, it is a tough pill to swallow. That's why the human race put Christ on a cross. We could not accept either the diagnosis from God or the divinely-supplied remedy. Yet that act of rebellion was performed in accordance with God's supreme love. Christ endured our insults so that we could endure the insult to our pride, bow the need before our Savior, and find in Him the way, the truth, and the life.

Talk about a satisfactory--even breathtaking--basis for our love. We can only rise up because He first came down.