It doesn’t matter what you believe, because all religions are basically the same ?

Myth # 10: It doesn’t matter what you believe, because all religions are basically the same.


This is a common sentiment. The trouble is, it’s false. What a person believes about the ultimate meaning of life matters infinitely to them. Believers, at least, recognize differences in belief. They risk torture and death for their beliefs. They quite literally stake their lives on them.
But are they mistaken? Does it really not matter what you believe? Are all religions at the bottom the same?
Undoubtedly, there is much common ground between religions. Many, for example, accept a Creator and have some idea of origins. All have a sense of good and evil. Most foster worship and teach an ethic for living. There are indeed many similarities.
But the similarities are by no means complete. In fact, the differences are staggering. Take conceptions of the divine, for example. While Buddhism prefers the emptiness of Nirvana to any positive or definite idea of God, tribal religions are polytheistic. And in between, we have everything from the impersonal Brahman of Hinduism to the intimate personal Lord of Christianity.
A further idea is the Christian idea of the incarnation. That God entered history as a human being is a claim unique to the Christian faith. Other religions might claim temporary manifestations of deity from time to time. Christianity alone rests on the assumption that God literally became man for our salvation.
Are these beliefs all the same? Hardly. They are at variance with each other; they are even contradictory. They might conceivably all be wrong, but they certainly cannot all be right.
That means it does matter what you believe. All religions make exclusive claims. We need to examine these claims to determine which are true. And the truth demands a final choice.