Aren’t all religions just different ways to the same God?

I was asked for a response to the question,

Aren’t all religions just different ways to the same God?

There is a sense in which I think this is true. Nearly all religions tell people to be good. God delights in goodness. The Bible says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8).

People who commit to true humble goodness make the heart of God rejoice, and he responds favorably to them. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6). When people were uncertain about whether Jesus was teaching the truth, he simply challenged them to be obedient to what they knew to be right and good. He said, “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own” (John 17:7).

C. S. Lewis (British scholar and author of The Chronicles of Narnia) was an atheist who became a reluctant Christian in his 30’s. He had not been looking for God at all. But he was looking for goodness. Later he came to believe that there was a connection between the two. He wrote, "[I]t is significant that this long-evaded encounter [with God] happened at a time when I was making a serious effort to obey my conscience. No doubt it was far less serious than I supposed, but it was the most serious I had made for a long time.”

I think that true goodness leads to God, and so we can applaud any religion’s attempt to urge people to be good, honest, kind, faithful, generous, courteous, selfless, and fair.

That does not mean, however, that every aspect of every religion is good and true and praiseworthy. That is just not the case. For example, I think most tender-hearted people who study the life of Mohamed will find it very disturbing that he married a six-year-old girl and consummated the relationship with her when she was nine.

If you say to a devout Buddhist, “We’re all worshipping the same God,” he or she will disagree with you. Buddhism does not believe in a personal, Creator God. Buddhism maintains that there is a karmic balance in the universe that evens out good and evil, but denies that there is any God or gods behind it.

Hinduism has many thousands of gods rather than just one. As with any polytheistic religion, I think you will find that some of the stories about those gods would indicate that they are not particularly trustworthy, and have no great love for mankind.

But rather than picking apart the flaws and shortcomings of every other religion in the world (I don’t have the knowledge or time!), I would just note this one thing that they all have in common. None of them tells me what to do about my sins and failures as a person. I know and believe the Bible message that no matter how good I may have tried to be (and honestly, I probably have not tried all that hard), I still have sins that separate me from a holy God and hinder his relationship with me.

The Bible says that Jesus took my sins upon him when he died on the cross (1 Peter 2:24). No other religion or religious figure ever did that for me. Nowhere else have I ever learned just how deep is God’s love for me.