Prove Your Religion

"Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool." - Mark Twain

Many people have religion because they want to do good, or they want to be a better person, or they want the world to be good, or they want peace, or because of their race, culture or nation (e.g. Thai, Burmese are Buddhist, Malays, Arabs are Muslims, Americans, Europeans are Christians).

Many think that all religions are the same. They teach people to be good. They help you to live better and cope with crises in life, give you the strength and motivation to live life. Some think that having differing religions is somewhat like people owning different models of car. One may drive Honda, another Toyota, others Hyundai, BMW or Mercedes and they are all cars that bring you from point A to point B.

Cars are real. We can see and touch. Put petrol in it and we can drive. Religion is not the same. Whatever good we get out of it in life, we do not know whether what the religion say about after life is true. For those who had died (the founders of religions included), none came back to tell us if the religion they believed is true. None, except Jesus Christ, who died and was resurrected three days later.

Personally, in anything I need to believe, it must be true. The same is for religion. This quote from an interview of Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, with Susan Wunderink, posted in Christianity Today on 20-June-2008 7:11 AM, titled "Tim Keller Reasons with America" reflects my view of the need for a religion to be true before it can be believed:

QUOTE
Marketing is about felt needs. You find the need and then you say Christianity will meet that need. You have to adapt to people's questions. And if people are asking a question, you want to show how Jesus is the answer. But at a certain point, you have to go past their question to the other things that Christianity says. Otherwise you're just scratching where they itch. So marketing is showing how Christianity meets the need, and I think the gospel is showing how Christianity is the truth.

C. S. Lewis says somewhere not to believe in Christianity because it's relevant or exciting or personally satisfying. Believe it because it's true. And if it's true, it eventually will be relevant, exciting, and personally satisfying. But there will be many times when it's not relevant, exciting, and personally satisfying. To be a Christian is going to be very, very hard. So unless you come to it simply because it's really the truth, you really won't live the Christian life, and you won't get to the excitement and to the relevance and all that other stuff.
UNQUOTE

Do you have a religion as a placebo just to give you peace? It is not enough. It has to be true. Prove it now. It will be too late to find that what you believe is false when you die.