Making Up A Religion

Or, if you believe in Christianity, God came down and explained the parts of it that we might be able to understand.

 

Yes, I know. Some of you believe that all religions were made up. You don't have to post that. We know.

Years ago, when the only access that I had to the Internet (other than Southmost College's text-based interface) was AOL, I was working EMS at the time. Because I was working for an EMS service that served a mostly rural area, we would sometimes go long periods of time between calls, so I would spend much of that on AOL.

Those of you who remember AOL might recall that they had forum-type discussions as well as a large number of chat rooms. Going into some of the religion chat rooms, it struck me that most of the people who were discussing various topics of religion knew very little about even those they professed to be adherents of.

I spent hours in there making up a religion as I went along, mixing bits and pieces of different religions that I had some familiarity with and stuff that I just invented on the fly, and I had dozens of people emailing me wanting more information. It dawned on me that this is what a lot of people do with whatever it is that they profess to believe.

Many denominations split because of purely human disputes, such as who is to be in control of it, rather than over theological issues.

Even those who profess to be Christians will often first decide what seems right to them, then attribute these attributes to God, saying things like "My god wouldn't..." and following that with something that the actual God of the Scriptures would indeed do. When people do that, I can see that they are being factual, only their god is their god because they made him up.

Some people will do this while continuing to identify with an established denomination or religion with which they are actually in disagreement, while those who are more ambitious record the attributes of their god in written form and create their own religion.

Having said this, there are legitimate disputes as to what the Bible might mean about one thing or another that may result in the creation of various denominations or sects based on alternate understandings of Scripture, but I wonder how many of the denominations we have are distinct because of a refusal to accept things that are clear in Scripture.

As for non-Christian religions, I think we all have an instinctual need to make sense of our world and to feel as if we serve a greater purpose, so I can see that there would be people who would feel as if they had figured it out, or at least enough of it to be able to gather together others who share in this insight.

Yes, a non-Christian might think this about Christianity as well. I get that. As a Christian, obviously I don't share it but I can see that it could be viewed that way.

Of religions that seem to have been entirely made up, I would point to Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction author before he was a creator of a religion, and he didn't even intend it to be a religion.

 

There is a sharp difference, I trust, between the people who make these religions up, those who lead them, and the much larger number of congregants. I'm pretty sure that Joseph Smith knew that he was making stuff up as he was doing it, and those at the top of the organization are in a position to see the warts and all, but this is true of any denomination or local church. However, I sense that the vast majority of Mormons are sincere believers in what they were raised to consider the truth, in much the same way that someone who is raised Baptist is likely to join a Baptist church or none at all.

Growing up, the Jehovah's Witnesses weren't allowed in the house when they came by and, while my parents did not make a habit of treating people rudely, that seemed not to extend to the JWs, and I think that they commonly receive cold receptions. Later, when I moved to California, I invited the Jehovah's Witnesses into my apartment when they came by, and they came once a week for quite a while until, I guess, at some point, they decided to cut their losses, perhaps because I was enjoying the challenge and they were getting nowhere. I attended the Kingdom Hall a few times too, and everyone was very nice.

My experience suggests to me that if the people who I consider to be valid Christians were even half as sincerely devoted to their faith as are the Jehovah's Witnesses, Christianity would be growing rapidly. They are selling what I consider to be a wacky religion, yet the JWs are growing while the mainstream Christian churches are fading. Most cities and towns, even unincorporated villages, now have a Kingdom Hall. How many Christian congregations could persuade virtually every member of the congregation to go door to door, spreading the gospel in the face of the kind of abuse that the Jehovah's Witnesses face every day?

Preaching an even crazier religion, pretty much every Mormon man spends a year or two on the mission field, at their own expense. They don't get to choose where they are going to go, or who they are going to be partnered up with, yet they do it. How many people from the mainstream Christian churches would be willing to do this?

There may be someone here who is a Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon, although I don't think that's the case. If so, I apologize for characterizing your religion as a wacky religion. However, this is defined as being my opinion only, and I clearly understand that my religion, or any religion, might be considered wacky by those who don't believe in it. I can understand that and am not insulted by it.

"For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." -- 1 Corinthians 1:18

On the subject of made-up religions, it is likely that most Christians do not believe everything that is taught by whatever church they attend, or adopted by whatever denomination they belong to. If their differences are based on their understanding of the Scriptures, they have not necessarily made up their own religion. At some point, I suppose the dividing point between a disagreement on a particular point of Scripture and a made-up religion could become blurred.

Someone who grows up in a Baptist church is more likely to become Baptist than anything else, and Presbyterian children are likely to become Presbyterians, and so on. Both are commonly considered to be Christians, yet there are some sharp differences between Baptist and Presbyterian teaching. There is a range of beliefs even between the various Baptist congregations.

When I was a kid, we didn't consider Catholics to be Christians, and I don't think the Catholics considered Protestants to be Christians. This has relaxed somewhat today, but it's not universal, and I don't know if Catholics consider Protestants to be Christians. Today, many Christians consider Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons to be Christians too, although they are somewhat less accepted than the Catholics.

Were the leaders of the Protestant Reformation making up their own religion?