Alphabet Religious Soup - part 1

"Pastor, where did all the world religions come from." This question came to me twice in one week a while back. No one had ever asked me that question before. I don't think I had ever overtly pondered the question either. So - perhaps foolishly - I answered the question on the spot by referring both of those audiences to the first Scripture passages that came to my mind. Some months later I've discovered through discussions with other Bible teachers that while my formulation of an answer to this question isn't profound, it also hasn't been written down by anyone, at least not recently. So below you'll find the beginning of a Christian answer to this question. This question will take several posts to answer, so please exercise patience. Hopefully your patience won't be disappointed. First though some comments on why I'm going to offer a "Christian" answer to the question.

It's rather possible that if we took a religious historian, a historian, a sociologist, a psychologist, a liberal Biblical scholar, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Marxist, a secularist, and a Jew and put them around a table with me that we would offer competing answer to the question I've listed above. While much wisdom derived from God's common grace might be shared around the table, there would be insufficiency in all of the answers except that offered by me. The reader might be thinking, "Oh my, what an arrogant blogger!". Don't misread me. The insufficiency of the answers posed by any of the above folks - as fine and moral people as they might be - would be that they lack the viewpoint of the one true God.

I'm of course assuming that one true God exists amidst the competing claims of religious and irreligious adherents. This is what I mean that the below is a "Christian" response to the question. There is no answer to this question that can be answered "neutrally" from the vantage point of a disinterested observer simply looking in from the outside assessing the facts. This is because each observer brings his web of beliefs or worldview with him to the facts of the history of religion and assesses those facts through the interpretive grid his worldview provides him. No one can step out of their worldview and shake themselves of their foundational beliefs to look dispassionately at anything. So I don't offer the below assessment as a disinterested observer but rather as a committed Christian who believes that a true God exists and that He can be known by people.

So where do we begin answering the question, "Where did the world religions come from?". The most suitable starting point is Genesis 1:1. If you look there you'll see a most profound statement. In the beginning there was nothing only God existed. Then God created the universe. When He created He made man and woman in His image (Gen. 1:27). This made man unique among the creatures and formed a relationship between God and man which has a different character than the relationship God created between Himself and the animals. God's creative work must be emphasized if we are to understand the religious impulse which exists universally in the world which is captured in various faith traditions. Made in God's image, man yearns for relationship with the One who made him. This is what lies behind all religion whether true or false.

The world of course didn't stay in the state of bliss. Instead when we flip over a page to Genesis 3 we find that something went horribly wrong in God's world. A rebellious angel - Satan - entered the garden in the form of a serpent. Adam diregarded God's command to tend the garden (Gen. 2:15, the word used in Hebrew has clear religious overtones in that "tending" is to be taken as "guarding" or even "priesting") keeping it not only productive but pure and the results were destructive. While Adam stood there, Eve was seduced to disobey God doubting His Word and goodness. Adam continued disregarding God's command and also ate. Then the cursing began and that's where things get crucial as we look into our alphabet religious soup.

Genesis 3:15 is in the same breath the most hopeful verse in the Old Testament and the most foreboding. It is hopeful in that it is the first preaching of the gospel of salvation through Christ who will crush Satan in His birth, life, temptation, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension and eventual return in world judgment. It is most foreboding in that God here declares war upon Satan. If you think in outlines this point would be titled "The War Begun". Notice carefully in Gen. 3:15 that God is the one who puts enmity - personal hostility - between Satan and the woman and between Satan's progeny and the woman's progeny. The most simple history of the world would be this: God and Satan are at war through those allied with both of them. In Gen. 3:15 God declares war and also certain eventual victory through the seed of the woman who is clearly Christ.

In God the Father's timing He didn't choose to send His Son immediately. The war wasn't a quick one comprised of few decisive battles. Instead decisive victory would be delayed. It is during this time of delay that the world religions begin to arise. In our next post we'll consider how the war continued as Biblical history proceeded.