How World Religions Were Invented

On a cultural level, it’s not obvious, but then again, it is. The numerous world religions are pretty much the same—even if different colors and cultures.

We predictably, in every millennium and culture, construct systems around our underlying human condition.

At least 7 billion humans out of 8 billion of us are…

• Hindu
• Muslim
• Jewish
• Institutional Christian
• Atheist
• Bored (religionless is a belief system too)
• Buddhist

Most of those billions didn’t “find” anything.

We were born into something. A family. A culture. A country code. A postal code. A generation. We were handed somebody else’s words for God, somebody else’s explanations for life and death, somebody else’s rituals—or somebody else’s reasons for believing there is no God at all. Or, perhaps, bitterness or judgment or pleasure-seeking took us towards or away from whatever we had been inundated with.

And most of us, at least for a while, weigh our options and the costs of ignoring or rebelling against what has been served up to us, and generally just go along with it. And, of course, in our guts we know our “God-shaped vacuum” needs to be filled. So we go with it.

Why wouldn’t we? The answer key is pre-printed, and already provided. The people we love are part of it all. Everybody around us seems to know how to dress up, attend, stand, sit, pray, sing, light a candle—or stay home and stream it, or laugh at people who do.

“They’re all hypocrites anyway.” Are they? It turns out in Messiah’s realm, a hypocrite is the one in denial, the accuser, not the one who knows his or her need and admits it. The last shall be first. Only those who admit they are sick get a house call from the Great Physician. Everything is flip-flopped in the Deliverer’s realm.

But when we simply “inherit” a way of dealing with the God-shaped vacuum, before we’re old enough to even know we have one, it can dull our sense of need and delay our recognition of our need for Healing. The music and instruction, or the rituals and symbolism are pretty motivational, after all.

And there is something in fallen human nature that finds that arrangement pretty convenient. If the inherited answers can quiet the ache enough, why look any deeper? Now I can get back to my “real” life (my vapor life). Why risk discovering that Reality might ask something of me?

Religion is what fallen humans repeatedly do with glimpses of Reality—when they want the benefits of God without surrendering the throne of their life. We look for ways to satisfy, satiate and pacify, placate the inner itch that we just can’t scratch otherwise. We hunger for an outlet for this inner craving for Reality… But what if I find Someone on the other side of my longing who actually has a claim on me? A King over me? A God? A Lord? Something and SomeOne SO different that every culture, ancient and now, knows He knows something—and IS something we were meant to Become.

Our fallen mammal nature isn’t so sure about that “king over me” and “lose my life to find it” thing. While that has nothing to do with earning God’s favor, it’s still the admission ticket back into the Garden. The Tree of Life, the DNA-change He offers to “whosoever will” is worth it! It’s worth anything.

Like our great-great-great… granddaddy Adam, we want to reserve the right to agree or disagree about what is good and evil, “all by ourselves.” Seldom is it actually “independent decision-making” as we pride ourselves on, anyway. It’s really popularity, pesos, power, and temporary “happiness” influencing us more than we realize.

And so, some form of locally acceptable religion, we think, gives us 1) control minus “a king over us,” AND 2) the binky pacifier coated with dopamine and morphine, “the opiate of the people.”

For ages and generations, humans have taken little pieces of the truth, of the reality, and twisted it into superstitious ritual: Magic incense, magic water, and magic candles. Vaulted ceilings, stained glass, and statues. Sacraments, holy days, and symbolism. These are all easy pathways that turn into toll roads. Magic presiding holy men, vicars, and reverends—pretending to be intermediaries who are qualified to stand between God and humans. Speeches and performative, rehearsed choreography placate human flesh while seldom transforming lives. Why have we done that? Because if we are pumped with “good” externals our consciences are blurred by “good” emotion. Generally this is enough of a placebo to allow us to continue being our own gods, “knowing good and evil.” The result? God is pushed into our man-made special events, places and days. And we can then add, on our own schedule, “good and evil” lists of things to do, or not do.

While sentient mammals predictably and historically resort to these things, that empty place inside of us leaves a painful appetite until we open our hearts and surrender to God, rather than entertainment, superstition, ritual, vices, or biological or illicit relationships. We “need” to do something with our restless hearts.

And Satan’s been helping people do that all over the world for 6,000 years.

How do you placate a race of mammal humans, so they can be distracted or mistrusting of the need for a Deliverer and Eternity DNA Re-Birth?

You give them power and control, religion and ritual, or pleasures and pastimes. Sometimes all three. Until the cotton candy and drugs have spoiled the appetite for the real.

Our “Ancient Foe” says: Rule something. Worship something. Or keep yourself entertained enough to not think about it.

For those who tried to quiet their own God-shaped vacuum by being “the expert” or by “doing something to change things” or by being important to others... Sometimes those men didn’t merely inherit the religious machinery; they helped build it. “The Stone the builders rejected has become the Chief Cornerstone.”

It is potentially seductive to act like the medicine man. The priest. The clergy. The guru. The spiritual expert. The “Grand High Poobah” who knows the mysteries, performs the rituals, speaks for God, and has everyone calling him, a mere human, by a forbidden religious spiritual title. That recognition can fill their vacuum for a while too.

Satan knows how to play the human race to give each person just exactly what they need to shut up.

Satan is an expert in bullying, blackmailing, enticing, distracting, and terrorizing humanity into either complacency, or into fully joining the ranks of his minions.

And it is time for us to hold hands around the bully and say, “Enough! No more!”