I have just one thing to say today:
Religion is the best substitute for a real relationship with Jesus. It’s true!
However, you should also know that all religions are equal. It doesn’t really matter if you’re Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or into the religion of Christianity. None of those roads lead anywhere in particular. They are equally human, equally futile, equally misleading and pompous and dead. In fact, the religion of Christianity, dubbed “Churchianity” by Erwin McManus, is perhaps the most dangerous religion on the face of the earth: You are so close to heaven, but so far from God; you are disciplined, but unchanged; inoculated against truth by tiny strains of it; you can hear the singing, but aren’t part of the song; you pray with the church, but play with the world; You’re in the club, but outside the kingdom; you look like a Christian, but desire like a pagan; you feel good about yourself while dying of sin; you go through the right motions with all the wrong motives.
Actually, it’s true that all roads can lead you toWARD God, just like the universalist who claims that we’re climbing a mountain and that all trails going up the slope eventually lead to the peak. It’s just that the peak still falls a heaven short of the prize. All roads may lead toward God, but the only road TO God was created BY God, FROM God to us (and not the other way around). The only path TO God is THROUGH Jesus, and not by swimming upstream, but by taking his hand and letting him perform a miracle.
There are Buddists, New Agers, Hindus, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, and Evangelicals perched piously at the top of the religious mountain, planting their flags in smug victory while failing to perceive that even the highest mountain top is a kind of Babel, earthbound and barred from heaven by a God who shuns our best efforts as filthy rags.
The only thing that plugs us into the source of all life is a living, breathing, indwelling union with Jesus Christ, the King and Rescuer of our souls. There is no other way, no other Truth, no other path, no other destiny that joins us with the living stream of God’s heart in the world and throughout eternity.