If you’ve read my books or my blog over the years, you know that I am a Christian that loves the Bible. (Stating the obvious, I know.) But what you may not know is that through the years of my writing of biblical fiction, I have had to study other religions, both ancient and modern, as well.
For instance, when I moved from King David’s reign filled with the knowledge of Old Testament Judaism to ancient Mesopotamia in Abraham’s time, I needed to understand what the people of ancient Mesopotamia believed. What religion did God call Abraham out of to begin a people that would one day bless the entire world?
If you’ve read Sarai, you know a little about the worship of the moon god Sin and other deities of that day. Other ancient cultures had similar worship practices but they might have called their gods by different names, even though they were still worshipping the sun or moon or other living creatures.
Ancient Egypt, as shown in Daughter of the Nile, worshiped a plethora of deities, and Bastet was my Egyptian princess’s goddess of choice. But she could have chosen to worship the sun, Ra, the Nile River, or even her own father, the pharaoh, who was also seen as a god.
In ancient Canaan, the worship of Molech and Chemosh show up in Redeeming Grace, and in King Solomon’s The Desert Princess, a god which required child sacrifice. This was one of the reasons God had Israel drive out the Canaanites from their land. Their hands were stained with too much innocent blood.
Which brings me now to ancient Persia as I am currently studying for Esther’s story. The ancient Persians’ religion was Zoroastrian. This religion holds more similarities to Judaism and Christianity in its belief in a Creator God who is omniscient, omnipresent, and more. But there are several differences, as is true with a number of modern day faiths.
The thing I’ve noticed with many belief systems and how they differ from Christianity is that they often believe that people are basically good. They believe in heaven and hell or something similar, but they believe the way to heaven is based on the work they do in this life. In other words, the idea is that our works are weighed in a balance and if the good outweighs the bad, we get to go to heaven. It is a works-based religion.
I’ve also noticed that several religions come from the teaching of just one person. In other words, God or an angel gives His word to one man who passes on those visions or the words he hears to his followers. They, in turn, follow what that man has proclaimed, whether or not they believe the man himself was a prophet of God.
The difference between all of these beliefs and Christianity is sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious. But the difference is always there.
In the case of people are basically good, the Bible tells us that we all born in sin. “There is no one who does good, not even one.”
As for heaven and hell, Jesus tells us that He is the only way. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Good works do not give us an in with God because, “It is by grace you have been saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
And then we come to how religions arise in the first place. Those that come from one person, such as Zoroaster or more modern faiths, even sects that seem to be Christian don’t have the same credibility as the Bible. Why? Because God used 40 different authors from a wide variety of backgrounds over a period of 1500-2000 years to put a cohesive Scripture together that makes sense from beginning to end. And the prophets of the Old Testament predicted things that actually came to pass hundreds of years later. That is not true of other writings.
I was reading Psalm 22 the other day, and if you read the account of Jesus’ crucifixion alongside of that Psalm, you can see the prophecy unfold. It is as though David prophetically gave us a glimpse of how Jesus felt as He hung suspended between heaven and earth on that cross.
I know that my research is not exhaustive and there may be those who disagree with my findings. But I consider it fascinating from a writer’s perspective that a book could come together over 1500-2000 years by so many different authors and make even a little bit of sense. I mean, I’ve been in situations where one writer starts a story and it goes around the room and by the time you get to the end, you get a good laugh, but it’s not a book you are going to sell to millions of people that will remain a bestseller for thousands of years.
And yet, 40 different authors were inspired by a Creator God who is outside of time, who is the First and the Last, who knows the end from the beginning, to write history past into history future. I say history future because to God it is already history. To us, we are still waiting for the rest that is yet to come. And yet if you get to know the whole book, you can see the continuity and the credibility. I find that simply amazing.
Research sends me on a lot of different trails, but religion is one of the trails I simply need to know if I’m to understand the people of the day. And it pays to understand the times we live in now, which is why I don’t limit my studies to the past. The thing is? There is only one faith that stands out from all the rest, and it stands out in one more way that I have not yet mentioned.
In every religion I’ve studied, men and women are attempting to appease or please their god by what they do. This has led to some bizarre actions on the part of the believers, but each action is done out of fear of not measuring up, not being what their god wants them to do or be. Perhaps they fear the gods will withhold fertility of the land or of humanity. Or they fear for their safety, so they wear amulets to ward off bad luck or demons. And universally, there is the very real fear of death and where we go when we die. Without question for those who believe in an afterlife, and most religions do, we want to go to heaven, however we perceive it to be.
When Jesus came to earth as both God and man (He was both, which is another blog post to speak about in detail), he came to set the captives free, to heal the sick, raise the dead, preach the good news of the kingdom to those who would listen. He didn’t ask for sacrifices or money or anything other than our trust. He asked us to believe in Him. He died so we could believe in Him. We only serve Him once He has set us free because we love Him, not because we fear Him. He promised us eternal life and His unfailing love for us and that He would never leave us or forsake us.
Not one other god that I have studied could lay claim to that kind of everlasting love. No other god ever sacrificed Himself in order to save His people from eternal separation from Him.
There may be stories that sound similar to Jesus’ sacrifice, but if you read far enough, there is always a difference.
I’ll admit, sometimes this kind of research saddens me because each belief system carried or carries a hint of truth, just not all of it. And I wish the people of those ancient times had realized that, just as I pray the people in our day will see Jesus as the way, the truth, the life that He claimed to be–that those who know Him see that He is.
I would encourage anyone who questions the truth of the Bible in comparison to these other faiths, to research these things for yourself. Ask God to show you what is true. Don’t just take my word for it–or anyone else’s for that matter. If God Almighty really is the Author behind those 40 writers who wrote over an approximately 2000 year time span, then He can defend His own writing. Just as any human author might have to defend theirs.
I’ve tested enough of Scripture to know that I believe it is true. Are you willing to read and research it to do the same?
~Selah
#seektruth #notjustareligion #religionorfaith #amazinggrace #relationshipnotreligion
