Religions of the World

Why are people prone to accept and live by one religion rather than another?

Richard Hollerman

One who has any sense would think that there is a logical and rational way to determine what is true and to adopt it. In other words, if person X should want to know God’s will, isn’t there a logical way to determine this? If people were to accept God’s Word (the Bible) as being true, why couldn’t person X simply search the Scriptures and thereby determine what is true and what is false? The same would be true of person Y. He also could take the Scriptures and search to discover God’s will regarding truth and error. And he could determine what is right and wrong, what is God’s will and not God’s will, by consulting the Word of God for answers. But people don’t discover this, do we?

Just today, I did some research to discover the “religion” that certain countries accept and follow. Isn’t this the way that we should do this sort of exercise?

This is what I found in my quest:

Of the 90 million Orthodox and professing “Christians,” the Russian Orthodox Church (some 57 million) claims most of them.

In the Ukraine, of the 36 million of professing “Christians,” some 28 million are members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (and 5 million are Catholic).

Of the 39 million professing “Christians” in Italy, some 38 million belong to the Roman Catholic faith.

In Norway, of the 3.1 million who profess to be “Christians,” some 2.9 million are Lutherans.

In Afghanistan, of the 29 million Muslims, nearly all of them belong to this religion.

Further, in Japan, some 88 million people claim to be Buddhists whereas only 2 million are professing “Christians.”

In our citations above, of course, we are referring to “professing” Christians and not true Christians.

Why would there be such discrepancy between these figures? In other words, why would so many people belong to a certain religion while professing Christians are far, far fewer? And, of course, true Christians would be far fewer yet! We can only think of several answers to this:

  1. Fate is what determines this. Of course, since there is no such thing as “fate,” we must immediately reject this answer.
  2. Perhaps some of the answer may come from the fact that at least some of these people belong to “state” churches that are sanctioned and promoted by the government.
  3. Or maybe where a person is born and lives (the land), has something to do with what religion they choose for themselves.
  4. Maybe it has to do with the fact that certain families come from geographical areas and those who are born and raised in those families generally become what the parents and ancestors where, religiously.

Some of this may be plausible and we need to consider this ourselves. We know (from the well-known and accepted “law of non-contradiction”) that no two of these religions can both be right, true, and according to God’s will. Otherwise, it simply would not make sense. In any given instance, if Nation A prefers a certain religion and Nation B prefers a different religion, we know that they both cannot be right. One must be wrong—or they both could be wrong—but they both cannot be right.

In our study above, we know that we have given figures for the various religions and areas. Yet we know that in some countries, very few people actually belong to these religions. This is a mere formality and not genuine. Further, we know that the “heart” is not involved in much of this. It is a matter of religion and not life itself. Further, this matter of religion is a formal and institutional matter and true conversion has not been involved. We must conclude that our study goes as far as it does but true “heart” religion and, better yet, life in Christ is not truly involved.

Let’s remember that God will reject many of these people—maybe all of them—and only those who come to Him through Christ through true faith and actual obedience, have a genuine connection with God Himself in His saving capacity.

But we have found in our little exercise above that one country varies considerably from another. One has a high rate of one religion, while another country has a different rate of a religion. Why? Ponder this yourself.