Which Religion is True?

Introduction

Most of us when growing through our teen years begin to ask ourselves and try to find the answers to some fundamental questions of life such as:
• Does God exist?
• Who and what is God?
• Did God create everything or is evolution correct?
• Who is Satan?
• Is there one supreme God or are there many gods? Does a supreme God have control over everything?
• Why was I born? What is the purpose of human life? Or is all that is required of human beings is to be good. But then, what does it mean to be good?
• Is there a true religion, the way of life that God wants all of humanity to live? If yes, then which is the true religion? Is it Budhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Sikhism or another religion? Or are all religions basically the same? The word religion means ‘way of life.’
• Holy book of which religion is the true infallible word of God? Is it the Koran, Mahabharta, Gita or Ramayana of the Hindus, Guru Granth of the Sikhs, the Bible or the holy book of another religion?
• What is salvation? Are only a few saved, or will all or a vast majority be saved?
• Is there life after death? If yes, then after death do the saved go to heaven, hell or some other place?
• Are we living in the 'time of the end'? Will all of humanity die? For the first time in its history, humanity has the weapons to destroy all life on earth.
• Can we know humanity's future?

Some try to find the answers to these basic questions through their own reasoning. Others seek guidance from gurus or ‘holy men’ of their particular religion. While there are many religions around the world, a growing number of people don’t believe in any religion at all. They think human beings don’t have to follow any religion, because they believe that humanity is basically good and that humans should live a ‘good life’ without harming any one. This ‘religion’ is also known as ‘secular humanism.'

However the idea that all humans can live basically good lives is impractical for several reasons:

1. Humans generally cannot agree on what it means to be good. Some may think some action to be good whereas others may think the same action to be evil. All religions of the world differ from each other in what they believe to be good, though they may have agreement on a few points. It’s said that more wars in the history of mankind have been fought over religion than any other cause. Then religions differ from each other. And the non-religious have even more disagreement among themselves than the religious about the right code of conduct./

2. Peoples’ ideas of what is good may change with circumstances. Under normal living conditions, most may agree that stealing is not good. But that may change under famine conditions in war or natural disasters, especially when a person has a hungry family to feed.

3. A group of persons may agree on a code of what are good actions. But others because of need, greed, lack of work ethic, envy, or hatred of others may choose not to live by that code. They may simply choose to take what others have. For them ‘survival of the fittest’ is the rule to live by. Most evolutionists follow this philosophy of life.

4. Human beings have imperfect knowledge and mostly cannot predict the future outcome of their actions. For example, many argue that there is nothing wrong about sex between consenting adults. They do not need to worry about religion or any laws to make such decisions. So they may choose to give in to temporary pleasure. They realize only later how emotionally hurtful breakup from a sexual partner can be. Then there are more hurtful consequences if children and extended families and friends are involved. Many suffer other devastating consequences such as sexually transmissible diseases.

Humanity has tried to develop codes of conduct for what it means to be good. In fact there are whole religions or ways of living based on human reasoning alone without taking into consideration whether there is a God or not. Examples include atheistic communism, Budhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Confucianism and the like. These religions are not based on the belief that God exists. They do not claim that a God revealed the code of conduct to the founder of the religion. Rather the founder developed this code himself after some enlightenment or reasoning of his own.

Since these religions are the philosophies of men, they do not address the question: What is salvation for human beings? They do not address the question of life after death in any comprehensive way.

On the other hand, major religions of the world claim that God exists and He gave them the laws for human conduct. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism fall into this category. Sikhism claims that a supreme God exists, but does not claim direct revelation from Him to their gurus.

These religions that claim that God exists and gave them the basic tenets of their religion, also address the question of life after death in some detail. In other words, they describe what salvation is. Though the Sikh gurus do not claim direct revelation from the supreme God, they do describe what salvation is. Their ideas are basically the result of learning from Hinduism and Islam, and their own thinking.

Life’s Ultimate Question

Since there is no agreement on the laws humanity should live by between all the non-religious, the religions based on human reasoning alone without a belief or revelation from God or gods, and religions which claim revelation for their beliefs from a supreme Creator God, we are forced to first ask life’s ultimate question: Does God exist?

If the answer to life’s ultimate question is “Yes!”, then that changes everything. Because if a Supreme Creator God exists, and He has created everything, including mankind, then the ideas of the non-religious and those of the religions based on human reasoning alone can be discarded as non-authoritative, unless the Creator created mankind and left it alone to develop its own ideas on how to live.

On the other hand, if a Creator God exists, created mankind, and also revealed the laws mankind should live by, then our task in search for the truth is much simplified. A Creator God ought to know how His product, mankind, can be best maintained. If we can find that correct instruction manual for mankind from the true Creator God, then we can reject all others and use only that correct instruction manual to live our lives.

But it is not as simple as that. There is a related question: Is there one supreme Creator God, or are there many gods? If there is one Supreme Creator God in absolute total control of all creation, then our task of finding the right way to live by is made easy, because He would have only one right way to live, unless He is experimenting, or has left mankind to experiment and decide on its own what is the right way to live. But if there are many gods, as claimed in Hinduism, or two God Beings - God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ – according to some interpretations of the Bible, or three God beings in one or one God-being in three called the Trinity according to other interpretations of the Bible (though Judaism believes there is only one God Being which is based on the Old Testament of the Bible) then we have at least the possibility of different ways of life revealed and supported by the different gods.

We will sort through these issues in the next chapters.

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