Which Religion Is Right?

To decide what is the right religion, consider asking these five questions.

1. Does the religion offer an eternal afterlife to you as a person?
If it doesn't, then why bother with it? I don't know about you, but I want to live happily ever after. This knocks out of the running all major Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Bhuddism. They promise that your "essence" will reunite with something, but that your personality will be annhilated. That is quite pointless to believe if you want to go on living forever. It also gives you no reason to be a moral person since you have no fear of an eternal punishment and no hope of eternal reward. Note that this test also excludes Atheism as a worthwhile belief system, but that topic is covered elsewhere.

2. Do the founder's motives seem suspect?
Another way of putting this is did the founders of the religion gain more money, power, and sex than they would have otherwise? Most religions start as cults led by unscrupulous and/or crazy people who want more pleasure, ego gratification, and women. Islam and Mormonism are perfect examples. Mohammed gained a kingdom (money & power) and a harem of wives (lots more wives than even a typically Arab of his time could have hoped for) because of his so called "revelations." Joseph Smith did the same. He had power over many thousands of followers, all their money at his command, and he used his religion to justify polygamy.

How do the founders of Christianity hold up when their motives are questioned? They worked day jobs to pay for their keep wherever they preached, so they didn't create Christianity for the money. They taught marriage to only one wife, so they didn't create Christianity for the sex. The did gain power over their followers, but I fail to see where they abused it according to the NT accounts. For that power, the apostles were beaten, imprisoned, and executed almost to a man. If the apostles founded Christianity to satisfy their earthly desires, they got poor return for their life investments.

3. Do the founder's teachings harmonize with their own Scripture?
New revelations are generally used to declare previously accepted divine revelations to be obsolete or outright frauds. Both Mohommed and Joseph Smith, for example, claimed that an angel told them all other religions were false because the Bible had been hopelessly corrupted. Ironically, according to them, the God had chosen not to preserve his Word through the ages and the only thing to fix it was a new revelation. Suffice it to say, both religions teach things quite at odds with what is in the Bible. Islam's and Mormonism's approach to founding religions leads to a disturbing problem: how can we trust in a deity who won't preserve his own sacred writings through the ages?

Christianity, unlike Islam, Mormonism, and countless spin-off cults, validates itself by pointing to how Christ fulfilled several Old Testament prophecies and teachings. Furthermore, Christianity accepts the Jewish cannon as wholesome Scripture. So the nature and character of God are interwoven between the Old and New Testaments. The only real differences between Christianity and Judaism are in the NT introduction of the Salvation through Christ and the discarding of obsolete Jewish rituals.

4. Do the founders have divine credentials?
Anyone claiming to have a message from God needs to back that claim up with an unmistakable, broadly witnessed mircale. Without such a sign, there is no way to tell who is a fraud and who is God sent. Anyone can claim to have seen something they didn't. Mohommed didn't offer any miracles. He didn't even have any witnesses to his angelic visitations. Joseph Smith and his founding cohorts had no one outside their leadership circle to back up their claims.

The Christian apostles are an entirely different brand of miracle workers. They wrote the New Testament letters as though miracles were an everyday occurance. They were so obviously genuine that they had to remind their followers not to be overly focused about them. In more than one congregation, there was so much competition for who had the better miraculous gift that the gospel of Christ was of secondary importance.

5. Does the religion teach sound moral values?
I think that more than anything, this is the make or break point for a religion. Does the religion teach what your conscience knows to be right and wrong? As humans, we like to rationalize our behavior. But we generally recognize the truth, if grudgingly, when we see it. If God is a deity worth following, the assumption is that he is Good personified and that he will show us how to live rightly among one another.