Won't Any Religion Do? There are a lot of religions around. Quite often you find people who think that there are many ways to get to Heaven and so any one of these religions will do. Here I want to argue that that is simply not a reasonable proposition. I'm going to try and list all the alternatives to Christianity here and show how the deals they offer are just not as good as Christianity and some don't even make any sort of sense. The obvious choice then is Christianity. I know what a lot of you are thinking: you were born into some particular religion and you're going to stick with it forever because 1) that was the way you were raised, 2) all your ancestors had that religion and what was good enough for them is good enough for you, 3) ANY religion will do and 4) you haven't bothered to think about religion at all. But now try and think about selecting a religion on a rational basis. Analyze what you're buying and how much you have to pay to get it. You'd do that for a house, a car, a computer, a cell phone, why not a religion? Christianity Makes Sense Many people today have a very poor understanding of Christianity so to start with I need to do a quick review of Christianity. A lot of you reading this think you already know about Christianity but there is a really good chance that you don't. There are a number of reasons for this. First if you got your ideas from the mass media then you need to know that they simply don't understand it either. And then some of you will have a poor understanding because of the particular church you once attended. For instance Catholic doctrine is not really the same as Christian doctrine even though you might expect it to be. Many Protestant churches have essentially abandoned Christianity and maybe worst of all many individual "fundamentalist" Christian churches can become something resembling a cult. A few are filled with hypocrites. Plus sometimes Christian churches are so loaded with jargon you never quite manage to figure out what is really going on. A long version of basic Christianity can be found on my page: The Logic of the Biblical Doctrine. A short version of Christianity goes like this: your life on Earth is your chance to try out selfishness to see if you like it. If you like it you can keep it for eternity but if you get sick of it and want something better you can ask God to take away your selfish nature and He will. People without this selfish (sinful) nature are fit for Heaven but no one else is. This makes a good deal of sense. Remember that here on Earth people who mis-behave are put in prisons where they can't do any damage to the majority of people who are behaving themselves fairly well. God takes it to the extreme: for Heaven you need to be COMPLETELY perfect. If you're not COMPLETELY perfect and you and people like you end up in Heaven, Heaven will not be heavenly, it will be Earth all over again. This means that anyone with any trace of envy, greed, bitterness, hatred, laziness, pride, arrogance and so on just can't be let in, they'd ruin it for everyone else. The only people who get in are people who want to love their neighbor, love God and do what He wants because they trust in Him. You trust that He has your best interests and the best interests of everyone else in mind. God really ought to be like that, shouldn't He? He should have a wonderful plan for everyone. And if He's like that, shouldn't you be doing what He wants? No one but no one here on Earth is perfect BUT if you merely WANT to be perfect, God will make you perfect in Heaven and you get this perfection by just honestly wanting it. It is not necessary to belong to a particular denomination. It is not necessary to do a certain number of good works. It is not necessary to go to church on Sunday. It is not necessary to give a certain amount of money to the poor or to the church. Baptism, communion and confirmation won't do it. There is literally nothing you can do to become perfect and acceptable to God and fit for Heaven except you have to HONESTLY WANT to be perfect. Thus the goal of Christianity is to love everyone else, love God and do what God wants. Nothing else works. Nothing else even MAKES SENSE. If the people in Heaven are not PERFECT, Heaven will not be heavenly. Run this idea over and over through your mind and then if you think this isn't fair or doesn't make sense let me know. Besides offering a great deal at no cost whatsoever Christianity offers the Bible. This is the definitive source about God and life on Earth. It tells what God is like and why things are so bad here on Earth. It provides comfort for people who are suffering. It tells us how to behave. Plus there is proof that this source is reliable. The proof comes in the prophecies that are found in the Bible, many have already been fulfilled and there are many others that closely describe the world of the present and what will be coming soon. But that's another page: Bible Prophecy. And remember there is no other source that does all this, and all of this should be done if God is out there and He really is a nice guy (and He should be a nice guy, right?). Islam The first religion to consider is Islam. Under Islam there are two ways to get into Heaven. In the first one Allah counts up all your good deeds and all your bad deeds. If the good outweighs the bad you get into Heaven, otherwise you go to Hell. However there is nothing said about being perfect or becoming perfect. The second way into Heaven is to die in a war against infidels. The good must outweigh the bad concept is just not a very good deal. Since Allah adds up good deeds and bad deeds then the person who spends a lifetime doing bad and finally gets sick of it by the end of his life is doomed to Hell because there won't be time to do enough good deeds to outweigh the bad. Thus, someone who honestly wants to be perfect in Heaven is kept out. I'd say that's not fair and reasonable. Why keep out someone who does want to be perfect? They won't be a problem. From the Bible we have this from Luke 23:39-43 where Jesus is being crucified with 2 criminals: One of the criminals hanging beside him scoffed, "So you're the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself - and us too, while you're at it!" But the other criminal protested, "Don't you fear God even when you are dying? We deserve to die for our evil deeds, but this man hasn't done anything wrong." Then he said, "Jesus remember me when you come into your Kingdom." And Jesus replied, "I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise." So Christianity is offering people a really wonderful deal, you only have to honestly want to be perfect. In fact let me really stun you. Adolph Hitler has become the modern world's most evil of evil men. When you want to say how bad someone else is you always compare them to Hitler. But if, at the last moment, Adolph Hitler regretted his life of sin and turned himself over to the God of the Bible, he is happy there in Heaven right now. And God and everyone else there in Heaven is loving him as well. Even the people in Heaven who he killed on Earth will love him. His past is forgotten. It gets even stranger than that: if there are people who would rather hate Hitler than love him, those haters will NOT get into Heaven because they just won't fit in! Now under Islam no one here on Earth is given any kind of progress report on how they're doing, a person might be one or two good deeds short of making it into Heaven and the person is never informed. Lawyers would have a great time arguing the system is unfair and they'd be right, a judge would order Allah to send everyone regular status reports of how they are doing and inform them of how much time left they have in which to do good deeds and how much each good deed is worth, and, well, of course, how much you lose for each bad deed you still might want to do. Should people who still want to do bad deeds get into Heaven? It's crazy. They'd ruin it for everyone. Plus the bureaucracy involved to make this fair would be crazy. Muhammed added in another way to get to Heaven: you can die in a war against infidels. When you consider just how uncertain it is that a Muslim will make it into Heaven on good deeds alone it is not surprising that some Muslims will get desperate and decide to go on a war against infidels. And so Islam produces suicidal terrorists who go out and kill innocent people in order to get into Heaven. This is very hard to understand. How does killing innocent people make you fit for Heaven? People who kill innocent people are the very people you need to KEEP OUT of Heaven. Islam does offer the Koran as a source for knowledge about behavior and about God. Muhammad was illiterate but he says he was given revelation via an angel and others memorized what he said. Later it was all written down by those others. Some of what you find in Islam comes from a pagan religion of Muhammad's time. These days it is commonly said that Allah is simply the the same God as the God of the Bible however Allah is the name of the moon god, one of many gods worshipped by the Arabs at the time. The worship of this god included making a pilgrimage to Mecca, running around his temple, kissing the black stone, throwing stones at the Devil and many other practices. These practices were simply copied over into Islam. Some of what you find in the Koran was copied over from the Bible however many changes were made. Muhammad claimed that parts of the Bible are incorrect, such as the part about Jesus being the Son of God and rising from the dead. Muhammad also added in other features such as hating and killing infidels instead of loving them. Islam changed the means of getting to Heaven from a person simply wanting to be perfect to doing enough good deeds to outweigh the bad. Some of what is given in the Koran is contradictory. At one point it says Muslims with religious questions should ask people of the Book (Christians and Jews) about them but it also says the Christian Bible is full of errors and Christians and Jews should be persecuted. The Koran does not offer any evidence of authenticity, basically all we have is Muhammad's claim that he was hearing from God. In the Bible we have the prophets of God telling us what will happen in the future. Israel had false prophets as well. When the short-term predictions of a prophet did not happen, God left directions for the prophet to be stoned to death. Then only prophets whose short-term predictions turned out to be true had their writings included in the Old Testament. Furthermore Muhammad did not do any miracles. In the Bible we have God endorsing Jesus and the prophets by doing miracles to validate what the person said. When God raised Jesus from the dead God validated all that Jesus said and did. These days the politically correct thing to say about Islam is that it is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by the Islamic terrorists however this is easily refuted by looking at what its founder ACTUALLY DID. Muhammad was simply out to steal, kill and destroy so it is today's Islamic terrorists who are really interpreting the Koran correctly. There is another interesting question comes up about religions. Why are there so many of them? Like why is there an Islam? It is difficult to say exactly why the God of the Bible does what he does but my best guess is that there is an Islam because it brings out the worst in people and God wants us to see how low sinful humans can go. Life on Earth is designed to be educational. It is designed to teach us about God, sin, sinful people and ourselves. Islam simply gives people a license to steal, kill and destroy, things they want to do anyway and they go for it. Many other religions throughout human history have been just as bad and I think the point of all of those religions is to show just how low people will go. Well, think about it and choose, should God be like Allah and demand that you hate the infidels and kill them or should God be a whole lot better? Is Allah LOVING the way God should be? Should God forgive everyone at the last moment if they're sincere? Would you want to spend eternity with Allah or with the God of the Bible? New Age New Age doctrines vary a lot depending on the source you read however a major goal of the New Age religions is to discover the "god within you" and to acquire the power that you want over people and events so you can have things your way. Having power and/or having your own way supposedly makes you happy as well. Power by itself is not a bad idea and eventually Christians will be very powerful. Jesus made food out of thin air, healed the sick and disappeared from one location and appeared at another (all without the mechanical contrivances found on Star Trek!). If you give selfish people such powers life will be much worse. For instance there was one episode of Gilligan's Island where Gilligan found seeds from a plant that would let the castaways read each other's minds. And when they read each other's minds and knew what the other person was REALLY thinking they all got mad at each other. In another case I ran into someone with a new age frame of mind who hoped that one day we will discover our inner psychic powers and use our minds to do psychic healing. It is a noble thought. Except there will always be people who will want to do psychic killing and then whether you live or die becomes a battle of wills, hardly a good situation. In general the power to get your own way will still conflict with the power of the other guy to have his own way. People will still be at each other's throats trying to have their own way. Some people will figure they are more advanced that others and so they will think that they're entitled to rule over the less advanced people. So power doesn't really fix you up and it doesn't fix the world up either, it only makes a bigger mess. Plus there is the fuzzy nature of the New Age beliefs: there is no one definitive source as to what to do and how to do it. I would think that if there was a God out there he ought to produce something definitive that people could go by otherwise people get lost in a maze of possible things to do. Quite often in the New Age religions they will quote the Bible and claim Jesus is some sort of "master" (but not the son of God) however the quotes are taken out of context and then they are interpreted in extreme ways to mean things that were never intended from the context of the whole Bible. Reincarnation Now consider the idea of reincarnation found in Hinduism and elsewhere. This does over-lap with the New Age movement a bit, New Agers often have the goal of becoming perfect but you become perfect by discovering the "god within" and they usually endorse reincarnation. The way reincarnation works is that if you do enough good deeds in your current life then in the next life you will be better off and your life will be easier. If you do a lot of bad deeds then in the next life you will be worse off and your life will be harder. I had an atheist friend comment that it ought to work the other way around. He thought that once you pass a test in this life, then the test in your next life should be harder. Of course it works that way with video games! As you get better at the game the game gets harder and harder. I think that makes more sense. I also thought that the reincarnation plan is what you'd expect from people who like to be proud of how good they are. The better off you are in your current life the better the person you really are and so for your previous efforts you get a reward that you can be proud of and boast about. You also get to look down on all those other people who are not as well off as you are. The goal of reincarnation is to get rid of all your badness and that part makes sense however the down side to this is that you have to work at it essentially all by yourself in lifetime after lifetime. This is not a good deal. If God is out there and He's really a nice guy, (and he really should be a nice guy, right?) shouldn't he help you become perfect? And why should you have to work your way to perfection over many lifetimes? Why should you have to SUFFER through all those lifetimes? That is not kind and loving. One tour of duty on Earth ought to be enough for anyone. EVEN IF reincarnation was true the offer you find from the God of the Bible is still a better deal because you're only stuck on Earth once. Reincarnation is therefore not the best deal you can get. So right now, if you believe in reincarnation, why not just accept the offer from the God of the Bible and skip the suffering in all those future lives? (Mind you, I don't for one second think that people have this sort of choice between reincarnation and Christianity, but IF you did Christianity is the better deal. The God of the Bible already knows who will want Him and who won't so having more lives on Earth is a waste of time.) Catholicism Most people regard Catholicism as a form of Christianity and of course it started out that way however as time went by certain non-Biblical doctrines were added in and it often seems that these new doctrines take precedence over the original Biblical doctrine. The Catholic Church added in the concepts of original sin, Limbo, mortal sins, venial sins, Purgatory and it encourages people to worship Mary and certain people whom the Catholic Church has declared to be "saints". The first addition is the concept of original sin. I never could make sense of this. Everyone is guilty, even babies unless they go through an officially sanctioned ceremony of baptism. Babies who die before going through this ritual are supposed to go to a place called Limbo. Well, just what did the babies do that they have any sin attributed to them? The standard Catholic explanation is that Adam and Eve's sin gave every human a black mark to start with, whether they did anything or not. This makes no sense. In Christianity people who do like to mis-behave ought not to get into Heaven and people who want to behave do get into Heaven. This is on a person by person basis, whatever someone else did or did not do should not affect YOUR status. God OUGHT to be giving you what you want (if he really is a nice guy). Making anyone else, especially babies guilty for what others did does not make sense. (For a nice statement of this see Ezekiel chapter 18). Now supposing you are baptized and rid of original sin you're still going to be mis-behaving and accumulating sins on your soul, sort of like in Islam or as in the reincarnation idea where you accumulate "bad karma". In Catholicism you can go to a priest and confess away your sins and clean up your account at least for the moment. That is, assuming you can think of all your sins. Again, I think if we gave this problem to a fair judge, the judge would rule that you have to get a regular accounting of your sins so you can go confess them all plus you have to be given an adequate warning before your death so you can have time to have them taken away by a priest. Compare this with Christianity where you only have to honestly want to be perfect. Which deal is better? Is the Catholic idea even fair? I also believe this concept has two bad side effects. People think that if they can clear their account by simply confessing their sins to a priest then they can sin all they want and then have it all taken away. This does not make people take their bad behavior seriously. Second, it leads to the concept of counting sins up so a person can get rid of them, as if doing certain things is THE problem. The real problem is that the sinner has this bad attitude that he or she needs to get rid of. The bad attitude leads to sin after sin. The bad attitude needs to be fixed so that the person will not even want to sin. In Catholic doctrine there are "mortal sins". These are quite serious sins such as murder and if you have one of these on your account when you die you go to Hell. Venial sins are smaller and if you have some of these on your account you don't go to Hell, you only go to Purgatory. Purgatory is just like Hell except you won't be there forever, you will get out. When I look at this idea it appears to me that it shows a God who simply wants to get even with you for being bad, like the nasty rulers of this world who delight in torturing their enemies. It's petty. Christianity offers a better deal, it goes like this from Luke chapter 15. A father had a son who ran off and sinned. After a while he got sick of it and came to his senses and then (from The Book) we have: So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long distance away, his father saw him coming, and was filled with loving pity and ran and embraced him and kissed him. Would this father really want to torture his son? Do you actually want a God who delights in torturing you, OR ANYBODY? Should God really be like that? Or should he be better, like the father above? Yet Catholic doctrine says he'll torture you. Not a good deal. Notice, too, that it is what you've done that will keep you out of Heaven in the Catholic formulation. Even if you honestly want to be perfect in the future but you have a mortal sin on your soul you go to Hell and even if you only have venial sins on your soul you will do time in Purgatory. To be fair about it I need to mention that Catholic doctrine is confusing. They do have these extra added on concepts that don't make sense, yet sometimes they will say something truly Biblical. One day I was surprised to hear Pope John Paul II issue a statement that the only way to heaven was "through faith in Jesus Christ". I bet a lot of Catholics were surprised too because the additions that the Catholic Church made are given a lot of prominence. "Faith in Jesus Christ" is actually very Christian, very Biblical and I'm sure many Catholics are doing just that. So it is my opinion that some Catholics are indeed headed to Heaven if they honestly want to get rid of their sinful nature and follow Jesus Christ. Believing in the add-ons does not hurt in that sense. If God only accepted people who believed all the correct and only the correct doctrine no one would ever get to Heaven. I doubt there ever was a Christian who ever got it all right. Yet the add-ons in Catholic doctrine don't make sense in themselves and since they conflict with what the Bible actually says it is hard for Catholics to actually understand what's really going on. Plus if your first exposure to Christianity is by way of Catholicism you start thinking that Catholic doctrine is the same as Christian doctrine and if you figure Catholic doctrine does not make sense you will falsely conclude that Christianity does not make sense. (This happened to me.) At any rate the Catholic who is solely trusting in the nonsensical, non-Biblical add-ons of the Catholic Church is in deep trouble. Judaism and Rules Judaism is quite similar to Christianity of course since Judaism has the Old Testament part of the Bible to work from. A careful reading of the Old Testament and New Testament will not show any conflict between them about how to behave or any differences about what God is like or how to become acceptable to God and get to Heaven. However Judiasm rejects the idea that Jesus (Y'shua or Yeshua in Hebrew) was the Son of God. And while the beliefs of individual Jews vary widely one of the major beliefs has been the idea that you have to obey the rules found in the Old Testament. Rules are of course found in Christianity, Islam and Catholicism as well. Rules are good to a point. One good feature of rules is that if you simply follow the rules you will keep out of trouble however the ultimate goal of Christianity is to love everyone to the point where you would never want to do them any harm anyway. God had a second use for rules. The rules show you just how perfect you have to be to be acceptable to God and after a while it becomes obvious to most people that NO ONE BUT NO ONE ever manages to keep all the rules. Rules show people how imperfect people really are. The danger of rules is that you think that if you JUST FOLLOW them you are OK. And people who THINK they are following them all can become proud of how good they are. Again, it should be obvious that the only way to get to Heaven is to be perfect by loving God and loving your neighbor and obeying what God wants you do to OUT OF LOVE FOR GOD AND PEOPLE and not out of fear or out of the belief that following the rules makes you OK. Informal Beliefs There are a number of informal religious beliefs going around. First there is this widespread belief in modern societies that there is no Hell because God could never be so unkind as to lock people away in Hell. Of course that ignores the reality that when people mis-behave WE, HERE ON EARTH, lock them up in prison so they won't hurt more people. So what can God do with people who want to have things their own way? The answer is easy: put them in a place filled with people who all want to have things their own way! In other words, give them the kind of world they really want, the kind of world that they really believe in. Of course it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a world filled with selfish people will be Hell! Now here are some questions for you to ponder: if everybody is going to Heaven, why are we suffering here on Earth right now? Why couldn't God just start everyone off in Heaven from the very beginning? Of course the answer is that Earth is your chance to try out selfishness to see if you like it. Another viewpoint is that people on Earth are mis-behaving because of all the unfair problems we have here on Earth. This viewpoint says that the problems of Earth are due to physical, economic, educational and political problems and when these problems are solved everyone will behave nicely even now here on Earth. Thus with the perfect environment in Heaven, all people will behave nicely at all times. No, not true, the selfish nature is deep within the human soul and if the problems of Earth are going to be fixed people are going to have to become perfect, without perfection the problems of Earth would simply show up in Heaven all over again. Today in many places in the world, especially in America you find rich, well-educated people who nevertheless are not satisfied with their lives and they turn to drugs and suicide. Also many people think that Heaven is a REWARD for their good behavior here on Earth. Except even a lot of good behavior is still not perfect behavior, if you get to Heaven and you still behave badly once in a while, Heaven will not be heavenly, it will be Earth all over again. So the Heaven is a reward concept does not work either. Another viewpoint says that if you are "basically a good person" you are OK. This variation is a lot like Islam where Allah adds up your good deeds and bad deeds and if you're more good than evil you are OK. (The person who believes in this naturally figures that they are "basically a good person"!) Again, you need to realize that being "basically a good person" is not going to be good enough, if Heaven is going to be heavenly people are going to have to be perfect. Another variation on the above viewpoint is that if you manage to do enough good things "for God" or "for other people" you can make God like you enough to take you into Heaven. This idea comes from looking at how people here on Earth behave. If you're really nice to someone they are likely to be nice to you. If you are really nice to someone in power, like the president or the king or the policeman then that person will like you and then the person will be happy to have you around and that person might even do you a favor once in a while too. Essentially here you are trying to buy your way into Heaven. Except the reality is that the God of the Bible will be EXTREMELY HAPPY to have you with Him in Heaven and if that's what you REALLY WANT, you'll get it! FOR FREE!!! No bribes are required. Your genuine desire to follow the God of the Bible will do the trick. I would also argue against all these informal religious beliefs on the grounds that there is no formal statement of them found in any authoritative source. There is nothing like the Bible where God actually has something to say to us. Plus there ought to be some sort of confirmation that it is really the real God saying these things, not people making things up out of their imagination. The proofs would be miracles done by God and in the name of God as well as a revelation of what happened in the distant past and what will happen in the distant future. People who take their made-up religions seriously really ought to consider that if there is a God He really ought to care about us and part of that caring means giving us an authoritative source about what He is like and what we are doing here in the world. Won't ANY Religion Do? So far I have been going religion by religion but a lot of you are thinking that ANYONE who takes an interest in God, even if they believe in a false religion has their heart in the right place and so exactly what religion they follow does not matter, they are seeking God so they are OK and God will accept them because "their heart is in the right place". So a Muslim might be following Allah and the Koran because he does want to love God and love people, he just doesn't realize that he's been duped. A Hindu might be serious about becoming perfect but he's never really seen and understood Christianity. For another example, a person who might embrace Christianity can simply end up ignoring it because the mass media has presented them with a false vision of Christianity. Shouldn't such people who are seriously interested in loving God and loving their neighbor be acceptable to God? This is actually a very reasonable sounding idea. I think this COULD actually work in some cases. But there are details to consider. Consider a person who claims to be interested in God and they have been exposed to and understand Christianity but still they reject it. We need to look at the reasons a person has for rejecting Christianity. First, if a person really understands what Christianity is about, that it is about becoming perfect so you can love God and feel God's love back and love other people and feel their love. This is really an emotional commitment. You ought to be drawn into a relationship with God because He has what you WANT. If you're not emotionally drawn in by this it means you're not really interested in what God has to offer so, no, you will not qualify for Heaven. Jesus as quoted by John in John 10:14 put it this way: I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, I had a guy write me once saying how he was trying to find the right religion but if he made a mistake by picking the wrong one he should not be punished. I wrote back and said that if you can be satisfied with a false religion then you deserve Hell. That sounds cruel but if you're not thrilled with what God has to offer, well you just won't get what God has to offer! Their heart is just NOT in the right place! Another reason why a person might reject Christianity is that God requires humility and trust. A lot of people are pretty smart (or think they are pretty smart) and they think they have better ideas about how things should be run than God does. These pretty smart people do a really great job of defining sin. Sin is really defined as thinking you know better than God and so you go off and do your own thing. The examples are pretty obvious. Some people think abortion is a good idea while God says it is a bad idea. Some people think executing murderers is wrong while God says executing murderers (who have been properly tried and convicted first) is a good idea. Some people think sex outside of marriage is OK but God does not think so. Some people don't have as much money as some other people so they think they're entitled to steal in order to get what they think they deserve. A really tough command from God is to forgive everyone who sins against you. The list goes on and on. The point is that God has the good ideas and if you're not interested in His good ideas it means you are not really interested in loving God and loving people so you just won't fit into Heaven. Such a person does NOT "have their heart in the right place". Now consider people who have been exposed to Christianity but who don't actually understand Christianity but who would embrace it if they actually did understand it. For instance Jews have often been very badly treated by real but immature Christians and by people who claim to be Christians but who are not Christians by God's standard. As a consequence many Jews will reject Christianity because of this persecution. Yet if these Jews were actually interested in embracing God I think God would end up accepting them. God will give them what they WANT. Now consider people around the world who have never even heard about Christianity or whose exposure to it has been minimal, people such as natives in the jungles, the American Indians who lived before Christianity arrived in America, Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims in the Arab countries. If these people were actually disappointed with the world and they were looking for something better, if they wished they were better people, if they indirectly and implicitly felt a need for the God of the Bible I think God would take them in. Why would he reject anyone who would want Him? The more people who get to Heaven the happier He will be! Remember God suffered and died on the cross in order to save people from Hell. But there are more details to consider. Christians will often tell you that if you don't accept Jesus as Lord and Savior before you die you're toast. Christian evangelists will often tell you that if they don't reach the ends of the Earth all those people who have never heard of Jesus will go to Hell (So send money now! :-)) The whole situation appears to be unfair, some people are reached and others aren't. The thing is you have to remember that God did a careful job in arranging the world by placing souls in various places around the world at just the right times so that those who would actually be interested in Him will find Him. I don't think there is enough emphasis on this. God knows the future. He planned the whole physical world around what we want and hope and pray for. He sees us from a perspective outside of space and time and knows every soul inside out from the beginning of time out to infinity. He planned History itself. Given that, He could go forward and arrange for every soul who would want Him to find Him by placing each one at the right place at the right time. He knew the places missionaries would not reach and put souls who want Him elsewhere, places the missionaries will reach. Did He arrange for absolutely everyone who would embrace Him to become a Christian before they die? I can't say. I think I can say that He will take in anyone who actually has their heart in the right place, yet I think most, if not all people who genuinely "have their heart in the right place" will end up becoming Christians before they die. Thus the "their heart is in the right place" idea may possibly work at times but in most cases it probably does not. Finally, from the cases I've seen I can't help but think that most (but not all) of the people who advocate the "their heart is in the right place" religion are just interested in rejecting Christianity. It seems to me that many of these people are proud of the fact that they are more enlightened, more broad-minded, more tolerant, more caring and compassionate than the narrow-minded Christians. They are really interested in worshipping themselves for being so good. They are also really interested in showing off how good they think they are so that other people will be impressed with them. The Summary So to wind it all up no religion except Christianity actually makes sense. The goal is perfection and that, I submit, is the only sensible goal. The way you get it is that you just have to honestly want it. What a deal! Think about it. Christianity solves the REAL PROBLEM of bad behavior and you can have the solution FOR FREE. There is no better deal around and no better deal is even possible. Other religions offer you different things and the methods of obtaining them are not even fair and reasonable. The idea that all the religions of the world are essentially the same simply is not true.