Do all religions worship the same God?

by Eric Odei – 9 January 2017

All religions worship the same God; if that statement is correct, then it would also suggest that all the world religions are the same. So, are all the religions of the world the same? The simple answer is absolutely not… but the real answer is far more complicated. 

We can start by excluding lesser-known religions like many of the indigenous or tribal religions of Africa and South America and societies like Scientology as well as other controversial religions such as Satanism (which needs no further elaboration), Atheism and New Age philosophies, as they all tend to follow a particular trend of mysticism or completely oppose the God ideology altogether.

Many indigenous or tribal religions tend to worship idols and fetishes which we can consider as gods not God. It is fair to say that idolatry and fetishes are far removed from the God of the Bible and, although they are religions in their own right, they do not lean to the concept of God presented by the Bible. At this point, we must clarify that these are not all the religions of the world and by no means is this article represented as an in-depth analysis of any of the mentioned religions. Having said that, we will go on and consider some of the more known world religions.

Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism

Many of the more known world religions focus on a person's spiritual efforts to attain some kind of acknowledgment from a deity or strive for some kind of spiritual perfection to break free from the law of karma and the cycle of reincarnation, as in the case of many Asian religions like Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. 

Contrary to popular belief, Buddhists do not worship the Buddha, because the Buddha is not really a divine being but seen by Buddhists as having attained what they themselves are striving to become, to be at the height of spiritual enlightenment, a point at which the cycle of life and death is finally broken. In many of the world's religions a person of a particular faith, sect, cult or religion has a relationship with and practises the teachings, ideology and rituals of that particular religion; some of these rituals include chanting, flagellation, self-mutilation and meditation. At this point it is worth mentioning that meditation is not the same as praying or focusing on a god, it is merely an act of a self-discipline, a ritual based on a philosophy of posture which is about caring for the mind and surmises that our body and mind are intimately related and interconnected.

Taoism, Shintoism and Confucianism

Taoism places an emphasis on love, moderation and humility. Humanism, relativism, nature and ancestor spirits run at its core. Shintoism is the indigenous faith of the Japanese people. Shinto literally means "the way of the gods" and is similar to Buddhism, which focuses on family, nature and cleanliness, and is characterised by various rituals while Confucianism is a complex system of moral, social and political philosophies. Many of the world religions share similarities in theologies and philosophies, as the case may be for Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism, which appear to share many concepts with the far eastern religions which have a more humanistic approach to the concept of God and although most of them maintain that there is one conceptual God, they focus very much on the actions of man’s spiritual efforts to attain some kind of acknowledgment from a God or gods, striving for some kind of spiritual perfection, which is far removed from the concept of the God of the Christian Bible.

The God of the Bible

Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all linked to the Hebrew Bible through Abraham the patriarch and thus form the three main Abrahamic religions. This is where things get a little more complicated. Here we have three religions all seemingly pointing to the same God, the God of Abraham – certainly they must worship the same God? Once again the answer may seem obvious but the reality is, it is not that simple. All three religions believe that one eternal God created the universe and guides humanity through inspired revelation and that through each religion’s scriptures God reveals teachings and His divine will. While there appears to be shared ancestry and some historic commonality among the three religions, the respective foundational beliefs hold crucial differences and the key to the answer to our question.

The origins of Christianity, Judaism and Islam may point to Abraham and consequently to the God of the Bible but there are many differences in the way each of these religions relates to the God of the Bible.

Judaism

"For you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth" (Deuteronomy 14:2). The Jews are the chosen people of the God of the Hebrew Bible; it is their traditions, beliefs and historical account that form the basis of the Old Testament. The Jewish people’s relationship with God is a covenant evident in the way God has blessed and continues to bless them throughout history, even through the many trials they have faced as a nation; the Jewish people continue to thrive. In the Bible God blesses all mankind through Noah and then makes a covenant with Abraham, and it is at this point that Islam emerges.

Islam

Islam finds its ancestry in Ishmael, the son born to Hagar, the servant of Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Ishmael was not the child of promise, that was Isaac, Sarah’s son, who was the promise. Although God later made a promise to Ishmael that he would father a great nation too, the original promise was to Abraham and Sarah, and it was through the lineage of Isaac that the Messiah was to come.

For the modern Christian, the New Testament is the key to our invitation to the God of the Bible and Jesus Christ the Messiah as the cornerstone to our core beliefs.

The Quran categorically refutes the claim of the Bible that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and, although Muslims accept that Jesus was a great prophet who performed many miracles, for them it is Mohammed who is the greater. Muslims also have a different interpretation of the events surrounding the crucifixion, suggesting that Jesus did not resurrect or indeed die on the cross, a fundamental pillar on which Christianity stands. Without the death and resurrection of Christ our sins are not atoned for with Christ as the sacrificial lamb, nullifying God's power over sin and death. The common Christian beliefs of Incarnation, Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus are not accepted by Judaism or Islam and there are key beliefs in both Islam and Judaism that are not shared by most of Christianity.

Christianity

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Jesus said that he is the only way to His Father, who is the God that Christians serve, so if Muslims do not recognise this then the God that Muslims believe in is not the same God whose Son was born of a virgin, lived, died and rose again on the third day, ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of His Father and will be coming back again some day.

"But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." (Joshua 24:15) These and other Bible texts emphatically show that those who wanted to serve the true God had to make a conscious choice.

The situation is the same today. If we want to worship and serve the true God, we too must make the right choice. But what can help us make that choice in matters of worship? How can we identify the true worshippers?

Worship

Worship is where the peculiarities of each faith are most clearly brought to the fore. The object of our worship dictates our idiosyncrasies, from chanting, flagellation, self-mutilation, meditation and mystical rituals of idol worship to the Muslim discipline of fasting and the Jewish songs of praise and Christians who find deep significance in the New Testament idea of worship, which breaks away from the traditions and rituals of the Old Testament by suggesting that worship must be in spirit and in truth. So the idea of worshipping God in spirit and truth is that worshipping God is not confined to a single geographical location like Mecca or Jerusalem or measured by the rituals of Old Testament laws. The coming of Christ breaks the separation between Jew and Gentile.

The Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he gave us his son”, so that all of mankind have equal access to Him through Jesus Christ. Worship is a matter of the heart, NOT external actions, and directed by truth revealed to us by the Holy Spirit rather than ceremony.

Conclusion

All religions worship the same God is a false statement. The God of Christianity is the God who came to "seek and to save" lost humanity. He is the one who takes the initiative, who lays down His life for the salvation of all who put their trust in Him and who comes to our rescue. Other religions are dependent on what man does to find god by his own efforts rather than trusting in what God has already done.