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Many people think if they’re not happy with some religious truth, then they can just go somewhere else where God’s rules are more palatable to their liking.

Does that work?

Reality check:  God’s law is the same everywhere.  Truth is some people tell the truth about it and some lie about it for various reasons.  But, if you want to deal with God straight on, you’re going to have to begin by being honest with yourself as to whether you really want to know or not.

As long as we live, there has always been and will always be people who will tell us lies about what God says.  Perhaps they tell the lies for honest reasons because they believe the lies themselves.  Others tell lies to control or manipulate.  Others tell lies that soften blows for fear of offending or losing friendship or suffering loss of reputation or suffering retaliation and such.

But, if we want a relationship with God that is real, we’re going to have to begin trusting God.  Not any cult leader that happens to come around or any religious person who happens to make arrogant and adamant assertions without respecting your right to consider these things honestly and come to honest conclusions as to what you really believe.

If someone tells you you’re going to hell, ask why.  Are they trying to get you to put more money in the offering?  Are they trying to get you to work harder for their cause?  Or are they carrying the message for some leader who is trying to accomplish these things?  Or do they have a real concern for you and your eternal well being?  If so, are they right?

Christianity teaches sin incurs infinite guilt.  We are faced with a choice whether to trust and obey a God who is infinite in wisdom and love and power and we choose something selfish instead.  We lie.  God tells us don’t.  We hate.  We hate someone God created and loves.  We lust by choice, choosing to lust, choosing to indulge some form of greed for sex, pride, money, at whatever cost to the disobedience of an infinitely loving and reasonable God.  And we cannot pay the price for that sin on our own.  And, God, being wise and loving, cannot allow us to carry this heart and soul of sin with us into heaven turn it into hell knowing that sin brings the seeds for hell wherever it goes.

But, if I go to the Atheists, I don’t have to worry because there is no God and there is no hell.

If I go to the New Agers, I can get magical powers and psychic abilities maybe if I’m lucky, or I can become a Druid or a Witch or Wiccan or get into Transcendental Meditation and not have to worry about any of this stuff.  Scientology is another option.  And if I become a Hindu, I can just reincarnate into a better life, say, up to seven times and if I’m lucky and good enough, I can go off to their heaven.

Is it OK to shop around for the religion that suits us best, that panders to our ego and desires and makes us feel holy and good about ourselves?  Surely there is nothing bad about feeling good about ourselves.  Right?

Think about it this way.  If you’re out on a skinny ledge hanging over a 3,000 foot drop where if you fall, you will surely fall to your death on the rocks below, then you may shop around and choose any number of paths to take, and yet there is something about reality that will tell you that whatever philosophies may be offered, every path will take you to death except one, and that is the path where you turn around 180% and walk back the way you came.  Repentance.

In life, you can choose many religious leaders.  Mohammad will tell you that the Bible before him was incorrectly translated or corrupted.  Joseph Smith said all previous religions were wrong.  Yet one must wonder why God would leave this world without truth.  As one goes through the Bible, each prophet or writer of scripture speaks of the truth of those before him.

Hinduism has a caste system that devalues those in lower castes while Jesus speaks of the value of each person.  Buddha left a high place as a Hindu prince isolated from pain to study pain.  But, like Joseph Smith and Mohammad, he denounces those in the past to start something new.

But, Jesus reaffirmed the prophets before Him and the prophets before Him prophesied of Jesus in detail.  There is a continuing notion that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

So, it seems to make sense to give up all the other stuff and follow Jesus Christ.  Even if there were those after Jesus who distorted His teachings and used them to do terrible things, nothing in what Jesus taught justifies the behavior of those individuals unlike Mohammad who taught people to kill infidels in one place while stating that it is impossible to kill a person of the book and go to heaven.  Yet with Jesus, there are no such contradictions.

In Jesus we find a God who loved us enough to become a man and relate to us, and then take all the sins of the world upon Himself and die on the cross to pay for our sins.  Then too many people saw Him rise from the dead for it to be fiction.  Jesus was written about by his adversaries just as much as by his friends. 

So, if God’s offer of salvation seems to conditional or too hard or demands that you be sincere and surrender all that you are and ever will be, then there may be other places to go, but they won’t take you into the heaven that is owned and operated and run by God who loved you enough to suffer and die for you.

So, who are you going to trust and obey?  One of the devil’s servants, or God?  Remember, to fail to choose to follow God is to choose to follow Satan.  There are no other real opportunities.