Rate the Religions

Dear Victorious,

You've blogged before on Islam, Catholicism, Judaism and other religions. I know you think these are all false religions because they worship a different God than Christians do. But I wonder, are there some religions that are more false than others?

Andy W. - Mesquite, TX

Dear Andy,

Yes, I think there are. Islam, Catholicism and Judaism all start with the same God that Christians worship. But then they add to Him or take things away from Him to make up an entirely different. Still, an element of the god they worship is shared in the actual one true God.

On the other hand, there are entirely different religions that don't worship a god that has any dimension of the one true God in it. Examples that come to mind are the B'hai and Unitarian Universalist religions. Generally speaking, they think don't define their god very narrowly at all. In fact, their notion of god is very plural and all-encompassing. They think god is in everything. Perhaps the most outrageous religion I know of though is the Hindu religion. They have more than 600,000 different gods. Can you just imagine?

With many other false religions, I see their belief (i.e., their "god) on a sort of a spectrum. You could move them up or down that spectrum to get to the one true God. So it may not be a stretch for them to come to Christ. You'd just have to refine their definition of who God is. On the other hand, the Hindus aren't anywhere on that spectrum. In order to come to Christ, they'd have to completely throw away everything they've ever believed about any god.

So yes, there are some religions that are more false than others. But notice which ones are advancing the most in the world these days? It's not the Hindus. Rather one of Satan's most successful tactics is to take some semblance of the truth, pervert it and then it proliferates. Consider that Christians, for example, have no problem marrying Catholics or Jews. They don't really believe their gods are all that different. The Bible calls this deception. It's considerably more dangerous to the Christian faith than something like the Hindu religion. So said differently, the religions that are the most false are not the ones we should worry the most about.