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Summary

Around the World: A Christian Look at the World's Religions

Christianity makes an exclusive claim—Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life John 14:6—but it is also the most inclusive faith, because that good news is for all who hear it. Other major religions also carry exclusivity claims of their own, yet the Christian gospel is uniquely both narrow in its way of salvation and wide open in its invitation. This series surveys five of the world's major religions—Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism—not to flatten them into sameness, but to understand our neighbors well enough to bear faithful witness to Christ.

Judaism: Law, Land, and a Rejected Messiah

Judaism shares more vocabulary with Christianity than any other religion, since the Old Testament is the Jewish Scripture. The Torah (the first five books, meaning "an arrow that hits the mark") sits within the Tanakh, alongside oral tradition compiled in the Talmud, with its 613 commandments and rabbinical commentary. Observant Jewish life centers on the Shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, prayed twice daily, and on tikkun olam—repair of the world through halakha, the daily walk of ethical living and Sabbath rest. Tradition affirms thirteen principles of faith weekly, much as Christians confess the creed.

Yet Judaism denies the Trinity, denies Christ's death and resurrection as saving, and largely no longer waits with anticipation for a Messiah, history having dashed those hopes too many times. A common Christian misconception is that Jewish people don't need the gospel because they are God's chosen people with their own covenant. Scripture says otherwise: Jesus, a Jewish man, told a Jewish man that no one comes to the Father except through Him. Paul's anguish in Romans 9-11 shows the gospel came first to the Jews, was rejected, went to the Gentiles, and is to be carried back. Witnessing to a Jewish neighbor must reckon honestly with the Holocaust and with Luther's regrettable 1543 treatise (which contradicted his earlier and later kinder writings), but the connecting points—one God, sin and forgiveness, the need for an intercessor, the attributes of mercy—are abundant. See Around the World: Lesson 1- Judaism and Around the World: Lesson 2.

Islam: Submission Without a Savior

Islam began in 610 with Muhammad's claimed revelations from the angel Gabriel and developed into a religion, culture, personal faith, and political system in one. Its six articles of faith confess one God, Allah, with Muhammad as the seal of the prophets; belief in angels who tally good and bad deeds; belief in books (with the Bible considered corrupted and the Quran final); belief in prophets including Jesus (as prophet only, not divine, not crucified); belief in a Day of Judgment leading to a sensual paradise or hell; and belief in predestination. The Five Pillars—the confession, five daily prayers, almsgiving (zakat, meaning purification), Ramadan fasting, and pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj)—structure the believer's life under heavy law.

Abraham is claimed by Muslims as "the first Muslim," with the line traced through Ishmael rather than Isaac, and Islamic teaching requires Abraham to be sinless because prophets must be infallible. The Quran rejects Jesus's divinity, death, and resurrection, teaching instead that a look-alike was crucified while Jesus was taken up to Allah. Connecting points exist—virgin birth, miracles, sinlessness of Jesus, belief in one God, judgment, afterlife—but they should not be mistaken for sameness. The Christian witness leans hard into the law: no one can stand under it (Romans 3:20; James 2:10), which opens the way for the gospel of grace. See Around the World: Lesson 2.

Hinduism: A Worldview That Absorbs Everything

Hinduism predates every other major world religion and is less a single religion than an all-encompassing philosophy and worldview. It is at once monotheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, and pluralistic—every god, idea, or practice can be welcomed if it serves the worshiper. Its scriptures, the Vedas, with their commentaries the Upanishads, teach that everything has a soul (atman) and that the goal is union with Brahman, the impersonal soul of the universe. The godhead manifests as Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver), and Shiva (source of good and evil), each with female counterparts and countless avatars.

Key concepts include karma (the moral law of cause and effect across lives), samsara (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth), and moksha (release into Nirvana, oneness with Brahman). Sin as Christians understand it does not exist; humanity's chief problem is faulty self-awareness—failing to recognize one's own divinity. The four aims of life (pleasure, success, duty, liberation) are pursued through the ways of works, knowledge, and devotion, the last of which worships nature itself as manifestation of God. The caste system, embedded in the Laws of Manu, has been broken open by Christian witness because in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free Galatians 3:28.

The great difficulty in witness is that Hinduism will say "yes" to Christ—and mean something entirely different. Jesus is a karma killer: His love for sinners Romans 5:8 does not depend on our deeds, and He makes us new creations now 2 Corinthians 5:17, not after countless rebirths. Where Hinduism aims for humans to become one with God, the gospel proclaims that God became one with us (John 1:14; Philippians 2:6-8). See Around the World: Lesson 3.

Buddhism: The Middle Way Without a God

Buddhism arose in the sixth or fifth century B.C. when Siddhartha Gautama, a sheltered prince troubled by the suffering of life, sought wisdom through asceticism, then meditation, and finally claimed enlightenment under a tree at age 35. His starting point was suffering; the Christian's starting point is the good Creator of Genesis 1:1. Buddhism splintered into many schools—Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, plus an esoteric stream—and developed three concepts of Buddha (cosmic, avatar, and attained), no equivalent of Scripture, and no single canon. Its core teachings include dependent origination (everything is interconnected), samsara, and the Four Noble Truths: suffering exists, suffering arises from craving for survival, suffering can cease through detachment, and the way is the Middle Way—the Eightfold Path of right view, resolve, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and meditation.

Buddhist meditation seeks to empty the self; biblical meditation fills the self with God's Word (Psalm 1:2; 2 Timothy 3:16). Buddhism has no God, no Creator, no Scripture, no sin, no Savior, and no concern for justification—because reincarnation always offers another chance. Without sin, there is no law; without law, no need for the gospel. The Christian witness must hold the fullness of the law that kills so that the fullness of the gospel can give life. See Around the World: Lesson 4.

Sikhism: Reform Without Rest

Sikhism emerged from a sixteenth-century reform movement within Hinduism in northern India. Its founder, Guru Nanak—a contemporary of Luther—claimed enlightenment and taught three foundational principles: worship only the one God (lowercase, not the Triune God), seek God in the heart through meditation rather than pilgrimage, and recognize the equality of all people regardless of caste or gender. He retained the Hindu doctrines of maya (illusion), karma, and reincarnation while rejecting idol worship and asceticism in favor of married, ordinary life.

Ten Gurus center the faith, the last being Guru Gobind Singh, who instituted the Five Ks (sword, uncut hair, wooden comb, special undergarment, steel bracelet) and declared that after him the scripture itself, the Granth—a collection of poetic hymns—would be the living Guru. Sikhism teaches five evils (lust, anger, greed, attachment, ego) opposed by five weapons (truth, compassion, contentment, humility, love), and salvation as merging with God after potentially millions of life forms. Crucially, there is no assurance of salvation, no certainty of an afterlife, no promise that this life will be the last. When a Sikh loses a loved one, goodbye is goodbye.

This is the weight that ought to move Christians to witness. We dare not superimpose Christian categories—God is not a Guru, and the Gurus are not God—but we can speak honestly of the One who has secured what no amount of meditation or good works can: real liberation, real freedom, real eternal life. As Christians, we are still ourselves, united to Christ, with assurance now and forever. See Around the World: Lesson 5.

Why This Study Matters

Christianity cannot be set on a shelf alongside other religions as one option among many. Scripture alone is God-breathed, and the gospel alone gives true freedom from sin and death. Yet learning these other faiths is not idle curiosity—it is preparation for love. Pray for your non-Christian neighbors. Learn where they actually stand, since within each religion there are many schools and degrees of practice. Use the connecting points God has graciously provided as bridges, not as doors that lead anywhere a person wishes. Always be ready to give the reason for the hope that is in you, with gentleness and respect 1 Peter 3:15, holding fast to the one Lord who became one with us so that we might be His.

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