Do All Religions Lead To Heaven?

“We should celebrate all things spiritual! Afterall, all religions basically teach the same thing: respect and love for one’s neighbor and doing good to human kind.”

This is a very, very common way of thinking. People of all stripes and occupations hold to it.

Before we throw our lot in with the pluralist crowd, though, we should pause and think. Is it really true that all religions are fundamentally the same?

If you actually study the main tenets of the world’s major faiths, you’ll find out that they are quite different.

Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all hold to a personal God that is separate from His creation. In many forms of Hinduism, God is impersonal and one with the cosmos. In Buddhism, the existence of God is irrelevant. Christians believe Jesus was and is the Messiah, God-in-the-flesh, whereas Jews hold that to be abhorrent. Muslims believe Jesus was just a prophet, but recoil at the notion of Him being God. All these beliefs are central to each religion. If you examine them further, you’ll find they also radically differ on their diagnosis of humanity’s problem (sin vs. lack of knowledge, for example) and the solution to that problem (repent and embrace Jesus as Savior vs. attain nirvana). Even each religion’s concepts of what happens after death are radically different (heaven/hell, reincarnation, nothing).

If you reflect further, you’ll see that these can’t all be true! God is either personal or impersonal. He either exists or He doesn’t. In no case can God be both personal and impersonal, real and fake. Jesus either is the Messiah or He is not. In no case can He be both the Messiah and not the Messiah. When you die, you either are reincarnated, go to heaven, rot in the ground, or hitch a ride on a comet…but you can’t do it all!

Some might object by saying “what’s true for you might not be true for me.” Jesus rose from the dead “for me,” but not for you. What does that even mean? Again, we are not talking about ice cream. With ice cream, preference reigns; personal tastes are subjective. But the resurrection of Christ is a claim not about preference, but about history, and therefore it is either true or false, not true “for me” or false “for you.” Denying this makes about as much sense as saying, “Lincoln was shot for me, but not for you.”

I have heard the rejoinder that “this either/or way of thinking is just a western logical system. In the east, people are perfectly comfortable embracing contradictory views.” In the east, the argument goes, a both/and system of thinking is popular, over against the western either/or way. Therefore, they reject the belief that God can’t be both personal and impersonal.

Don’t fall for this! Even in Tibet, they run when they see a charging bull; they understand that it’s either them or the bull, not both. It might look like the “both/and” system reigns supreme, but at bottom, reality is still fundamentally either/or when it comes to contradictory beliefs. Notice that the easterners who harp on the “both/and” choose that way of thinking *instead of* the either/or.

Be skeptical of the grand claims of pluralism. Sure, Gatorade and anti-freeze might both be green liquids, but it’s the differences that matter when choosing which to drink!