Should All Religions Be Eradicated?

Hey Andy, I think all religions should be eradicated, and everyone should be an atheist. What’s your opinion?

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Hi, interesting idea. However, I doubt it would even be possible, for all throughout the history of humankind, people have worshiped something. I mean, you have to wonder why people continued to make up gods to worship, even when they wanted nothing to do with God the Creator.

I believe we were all designed to worship something (or someone). Actually, we were all designed to worship God, but when sin entered the picture, people turned their focus from God, onto things they could make with their hands (idols, poles, etc.), things in the sky (sun, moon, stars, planets), things that were created by God (animals, birds, fish, etc.), and hybrids/mutants made up by people (see the Egyptian and Hindu gods, for instance). They made up gods for everything in everyday life (god of cooking, god of financial wealth, god of clothing, god of fire, god of ice, god of good health, god of dirt…)

What About Atheists?

Atheists may not worship or believe in the One and True God, but they do worship something, for when you look at the meaning of worship – to live for that thing/being, to dedicate everything you do for that thing/being, when you set your mind to pleasing that thing or being, etc. – atheists actually live for themselves and their own pleasures. So I suppose you could say that Atheists engage in self-worship.

People even worship things they do, like their work, money they earn, their cars, their homes, their spouse, their kids, their pets…Jesus actually said that whatever your heart is focused on above God is your god – you’re living for it and worshiping it.

The Religion Part

But now, let’s look at the religion part – Christianity isn’t a religion, nor is God. God is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God. Christianity is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and this is accomplishable only because of what Jesus did on the cross and what the Holy Spirit did in raising Christ from the dead 3 days later.

See, religion is all about trying to please God through our actions, hoping to win favor from Him by doing so. But all the years of being under the Mosaic Law, the Jews learned that this was impossible, for nobody was ever able to keep the whole law without breaking it (only Christ was able to do that). And the reason people want to please God is to earn their salvation and be able to go to Heaven when they die – and not only are all these things impossible to do through works, but they’re also all selfish motives. And what makes Christianity stand out from all the world’s religions is that everything that needs to be done to be saved, Christ did on the cross. So in order to receive salvation, all we need to do is acknowledge our sin, repent of it to God, and accept Christ as Lord. The religion part comes after that when we follow Him. See, we follow Jesus as His disciples because He’s now our Lord – our master – to our relationship with God through Christ Jesus – we WANT to be like Him, and so in response, we do things that represent and resemble Him. But doing this without knowing Him first doesn’t work – and that’s what religions try to do.

So get rid of all religions? Fantastic idea! Let me know how that goes. But everybody become an atheist? That’s not even possible, especially when it comes to those of us who know God exists and who already have a relationship with Him.