World religions are on the brain lately. I'm taking an online course about them and as the layers of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, Jainism, Shintoism, Native American religions, Confucianism, and others begin to overlap, one thing has stuck out to me: the myriads of false religions in the world steal from Christianity. There are themes, prophecies, saviours, heavens, hells, scriptures, and salvations that seem to borrow specifically from orthodox Christianity. Let me give some examples:
First, Taoism believes in a god called the Three Purities. This god manifests itself in three ways: 1) as the deified Tao, 2) as a spirit that transmits the essence of Tao, called the Heavenly Worthy of Numinous Treasure, and 3) in the person of Lao Tzu. Sounds an awful lot like a trinity.
Or, did you know that Confucius was said to be born of a virgin?
Furthermore, the branch of Buddhism called Mahayana Buddhism believes that a manifestation of the Buddha (Maitreya) will come back to earth one day to bring in "a golden age" of peace and prosperity.
Do these sound familiar? Echoes of a trinity, a virgin birth, and a second coming all dance through three very different religions. These religions attempt to make cheap counterfeits of both historical and spiritual reality. Of course you'll hear today that it was Christianity that really stole a little bit from each of those "much older" religions, mashing up legends to create a grand story. But the Bible, the final authority for every Christian, says something much different.
The Bible claims that there is one God who existed eternally, and who created one path and wrote one glorious Story - set in place before the foundations of the world, long before Confucius, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, Nanak, and Siddhartha Gautama. The Story tells of one Way, one Truth, and one Life, but of many false saviours who will come claiming to know different ways, truths, and lives. They will adjust, add to, take away from, finagle, fit, slice, borrow, paraphrase, and change the Story to make people feel good.
We have these mangled remnants of the Story left today within each of these false world religions. They all hold broken, bruised pieces of the truth, laced with legends and lies. And in losing part of the Story, they've lost it all. Their path is wide and easy but it leads to destruction. Every religion may have a bit of the truths of Christianity within it, but only orthodox Christianity itself leads to God.
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