The One Question Every Soul Must Answer
What Must I Do to Be Right With the Ultimate Reality?
The Two Roads That Diverge in Eden
Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” …And the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you… I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:13–15)
From that moment two roads opened before humanity.
One road says: “You will not surely die… you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The other road says: “You will surely die unless the woman’s offspring crushes the serpent’s head.”
Every religion that has ever existed stands on one side or the other of that divide.
This article is long because eternity is longer. I will not caricature the great faiths. I will quote them at length. I will let the Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Muhammad, and the rabbis speak in their own voices. And then I will show why the New Testament insists that every one of those voices, for all their wisdom and beauty, is finally echoing the serpent’s promise: You can save yourself. You can become like God.
Only one voice says the opposite: You cannot save yourself. But I already have.
Let us walk slowly down each road.
Judaism – The Covenant That Exposed the Heart
Judaism is not just the oldest monotheistic faith; it is the womb from which Christianity was born. Every page of the Christian New Testament is soaked in Jewish Scripture, Jewish hope, Jewish categories.
When Israel stood at Sinai, the sequence was crucial:
“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:2–3)
Grace came first. Deliverance came first. Only then came the Law.
Yet within forty days the people were dancing around a golden calf, shouting, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:4). The rest of the Hebrew Bible is the story of a God who keeps loving a people who keep running back to the serpent’s lie.
Moses, on the edge of the Promised Land, spoke words that already contained the entire gospel:
“And when all these things come upon you… and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes… And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” (Deuteronomy 30:1–6)
Notice: Israel cannot circumcise its own heart. God must do it.
The prophets hammered the same theme:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel… I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts… For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31–34)
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:26–27)
Even King David, the man after God’s own heart, knew he could not clean himself:
“Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! … Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me… The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:2, 10, 17)
Yet after the Babylonian exile, when the Second Temple was built, a new system arose. The rabbis taught that since there was no longer a temple altar, atonement could come through charity, prayer, and Torah study. The Mishnah declares:
“Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai said: …‘It is not the dead goat that atones, but the day itself [Yom Kippur] that atones for those who repent.’” (adapted from Yoma 8:9)
Maimonides (1138–1204), the greatest medieval Jewish thinker, wrote in his Thirteen Principles of Faith, affirmed belief in the coming of Messiah and the resurrection of the dead, but he also wrote in his Mishneh Torah:
“Every person can be as righteous as Moses or as wicked as Jeroboam… Free will is granted to all men. If a man desires to turn toward the good way… he can do so… This is a fundamental principle…” (Hilchot Teshuvah 5:1–2)
The tension is visible: God must circumcise the heart, yet every person can choose to be as righteous as Moses. The prophets say only God can make a new heart, yet the rabbis say you can make yourself righteous.
Jesus stepped into that tension and split history in half. When a rich young ruler asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Then He listed the commandments. The man said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said, “One thing you lack. Go, sell all you have… and come, follow me.” The man went away sad (Mark 10:17–22).
Jesus was exposing the rabbinic illusion: you cannot make yourself good enough, because goodness is not just outward obedience. It is a heart that loves God more than money, reputation, anything.
Judaism, when it is most faithful to its own prophets, testifies that human beings need a divine heart-transplant. When it drifts into self-reliance, it becomes another echo of Eden’s lie.
Islam – The Straight Path of Perfect Submission
It was the month of Ramadan, 610 CE. A forty-year-old merchant named Muhammad ibn Abdullah, known in Mecca for his trustworthiness (al-Amīn), had taken to retreating to a small cave called Hira above the city. One night, alone in the darkness, a presence seized him with terrifying power.
“Iqraʾ!” it commanded. “I am not a reciter,” he gasped. The presence squeezed him until he thought his ribs would shatter, then released him and spoke words that still echo across the world:
Recite in the name of your Lord who created, Created man from a clinging clot. Recite, and your Lord is most Generous, Who taught by the pen, Taught man what he did not know. (Sūrah al-ʿAlaq 96:1-5)
Muhammad stumbled home trembling, crying to his wife Khadījah, “Wrap me up! Wrap me up!” He feared he had gone mad or been possessed by a jinn. But Khadījah took him to her Christian cousin Waraqah ibn Nawfal, who recognised the signs and declared, “This is the same Nāmūs (the angel of revelation) that came to Moses. You are the prophet of this nation.”
For the next twenty-three years the revelations continued, sometimes gentle, sometimes violent, until they filled 114 chapters of the Qurʾān. The message was uncompromising: there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His final messenger.
Islam’s answer to the question “How do I become a good person?” is given in one blazingly clear verse:
Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or the west, but [true] righteousness is [in] one who believes in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveler, those who ask [for help], and for freeing slaves; [and who] establishes prayer and gives zakāh; [those who] fulfill their promise when they promise; and [those who] are patient in poverty and hardship and during battle. Those are the ones who have been true, and it is those who are the righteous. (Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:177)
That single sentence (176 words in Arabic) is Islam’s complete moral manifesto: correct creed plus exhaustive deeds, sealed with perseverance under trial.
The entire religion is built on five pillars, each one an act of submission (islām):
- Shahādah – bearing witness that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger
- Ṣalāh – five daily prayers facing Mecca
- Zakāh – giving 2.5 % of savings annually to the poor
- Ṣawm – fasting from dawn to sunset during Ramadan
- Ḥajj – pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime if able
Do it all with ikhlāṣ (sincerity) and you are counted among the ṣāliḥīn, the righteous.
On the Last Day the scene is stark:
Then, when the Horn is blown, no relationship will there be among them that Day, nor will they ask about one another. Then as for one whose scales are heavy [with good deeds], he will be in a pleasant life. But as for one whose scales are light, his refuge will be an abyss. And what can make you know what that is? It is a Fire, intensely hot. (Sūrah al-Qāriʿah 101:6-11)
Even the Prophet himself is not exempt. In Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (Vol. 8, Book 76, ḥadīth 470–474) we read:
The Prophet said, “None of you will enter Paradise by virtue of his deeds alone.” They said, “Not even you, O Messenger of Allah?” He said, “Not even me, unless Allah covers me with His mercy and grace.”
Mercy, then, exists, but it is never the mercy of a Father who adopts rebels as beloved children. Allah’s ninety-nine names include al-Raḥmān (the All-Merciful) and al-Raḥīm (the Especially Merciful), yet the Qurʾān repeatedly thunders:
They have not appraised Allah with true appraisal. Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Exalted in Might… To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth… All are devoutly obedient to Him. (Sūrah al-Anʿām 6:91; al-Baqarah 2:116)
The word “son” or “father” in relation to Allah is blasphemy (shirk), the one unforgivable sin:
And they say, “The Most Merciful has taken [for Himself] a son.” You have done an atrocious thing. The heavens almost rupture therefrom and the earth almost splits open and the mountains almost fall in ruin That they attribute to the Most Merciful a son. And it is not appropriate for the Most Merciful that He should take a son. (Sūrah Maryam 19:88–92)
A Muslim remains forever ʿabd Allāh, a slave of Allah. Never a child.
The great medieval scholar Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), perhaps Islam’s most profound thinker after the Prophet, wrote in his Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (“Revival of the Religious Sciences”) that the highest station is maʿrifah (gnosis of God), but even he ends with fear:
“The servant should stand before Allah as a bankrupt, having nothing of his own… hoping for nothing except the mercy of his Lord.”
Hope, not certainty. Fear (taqwā) is the engine that drives every act of obedience.
The famous ḥadīth al-Jibrīl (in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim defines three levels of religion: islām (outward submission), īmān (faith), and iḥsān (excellence), which the Prophet defined as “to worship Allah as though you see Him, and if you do not see Him, know that He sees you.” Constant surveillance. Perfect performance under the divine gaze.
This is why Islam is the purest monotheistic works-righteousness the world has ever seen. The path (shirāṭ mustaqīm) is razor-straight. The rules are crystal-clear. The scales on Judgment Day are exact. There is no incarnation, no substitutionary atonement, no indwelling Spirit who cries “Abba, Father!” in the believer’s heart. There is only the slave striving to make himself acceptable, hoping the Master will be pleased.
The serpent’s lie in Eden is stripped here of every mystical veil: “You will be like God” is replaced with “You will be accepted by God if you obey perfectly, and if you fall short, perhaps He will overlook it.” The initiative remains entirely human. Allah commands, man obeys. Allah may forgive, but He is never obligated to forgive. The relationship is always Master and slave, never Father and child.
Jesus, by contrast, taught His disciples to pray “Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9) and declared, “No longer do I call you slaves… I have called you friends” (John 15:15). He said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He took the scales into His own hands, lived the perfect obedience we could never achieve, and then credited that obedience to everyone who simply trusts Him.
In Islam you must make yourself righteous. In Christ, He makes you righteous and then enables you to live righteously, by the Spirit He gives as a free gift.
That is the gulf between Mecca and Calvary, between the Straight Path that you must walk alone and the Way who walks it for you, with you, and finally in you.
Hinduism – The Eternal Wheel and the Self That Must Become God
Hinduism has no single founder, no single book, no single doctrine. It is a river fed by thousands of streams: the four Vedas (c. 1500–1200 BC), the Upanishads, the epics, the Puranas, the six Darshanas, the Tantras, the teachings of countless gurus.
Yet one doctrine binds them all: samsara, the cycle of birth and death driven by karma.
“Whoever performs good deeds, enjoys happiness; whoever performs bad deeds, suffers pain. This is the law of karma.” (Mahabharata, Shanti Parva 211.14)
To be a “good person” means first to follow one’s svadharma:
“For a Brahmin, study and teaching, sacrifice and officiating at sacrifice, giving and accepting gifts are prescribed. For a Kshatriya, protection of the people, giving, performing sacrifice, studying, and non-attachment to sensual pleasures. For a Vaishya, agriculture, cattle-rearing, trade…” (Bhagavad Gita 18:42–44)
But dharma only improves the next birth. Moksha requires more.
The Chandogya Upanishad (c. 700 BC) contains the mahavakya: “Tat tvam asi” – That thou art. The individual soul (atman) is identical with Brahman, the ultimate reality. All separation is illusion (maya).
The path to realizing this can be karma yoga, jnana yoga, or bhakti yoga.
Krishna tells Arjuna:
“Even if you are the most sinful of all sinners, by the raft of knowledge alone you will cross over all evil… Therefore, having become a yogi, O Arjuna, perform actions, abandoning attachment… Better is one’s own dharma though imperfect than the dharma of another well performed.” (Gita 4:36, 3:35, 18:47)
In the bhakti traditions (Ramanuja, Caitanya, the Alvars), grace is more prominent:
“To those who are constantly devoted and worship Me with love, I give the yoga of understanding by which they come to Me… Out of compassion for them, I, dwelling in their hearts, destroy the darkness born of ignorance with the shining lamp of knowledge.” (Gita 10:10–11)
Yet even here the devotee must first offer total surrender. The initiative is still human.
The serpent’s promise is spoken openly: You are already God. You have only to realize it. Your effort, across millions of lifetimes if necessary, will make you divine.
Buddhism – The Path That Ends in the Extinction of Self
The night was still and hot. A twenty-nine-year-old prince named Siddhartha Gautama slipped past the sleeping dancing girls, past the guards, past the golden cages of palace life, and rode out into the Indian darkness. He had seen four sights that shattered his world: an old man bent double, a sick man covered in sores, a corpse being carried to the burning ground, and a wandering ascetic with shaven head and ochre robe, face calm amid the horror. The first three sights showed him that no palace wall can keep out aging, sickness, and death. The fourth sight whispered that there might be a way out.
For six years he punished his body almost to death. He sat with the greatest yogis, mastered breath control until his lungs screamed, ate one grain of rice a day until his backbone touched his stomach. Nothing worked. Liberation did not come. Finally, remembering a childhood moment of effortless peace under a rose-apple tree, he took a bowl of milk-rice from a village girl named Sujata, bathed in the Neranjara River, and sat beneath a fig tree, vowing, “Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up… but I will not move from this seat until I have attained full enlightenment.”
At dawn on the full-moon day of Vesak, the tempter Mara and his armies attacked with storms, fire, and seductive daughters. Siddhartha touched the earth with his right hand; the earth itself roared in witness that his virtue was complete. Mara fled. The veil of illusion tore. Siddhartha became the Buddha, the Awakened One.
Seven weeks later he walked to the Deer Park at Sarnath and turned the Wheel of Dharma for the first time. Five former companions listened in stunned silence as he spoke the Four Noble Truths:
“Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the unbeloved is suffering; separation from the loved is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering.
This is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is the craving that leads to renewed existence… craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for non-existence.
This is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving… the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of that craving.
This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: the Noble Eightfold Path – right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.” (Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 56.11)
Notice the clinical precision. The Buddha is not a savior; he is a physician. He diagnoses the disease (dukkha), identifies the virus (tanha, craving), announces that a cure exists, and prescribes the medicine (the Path), and then steps back. The patient must take the medicine himself.
The Dhammapada, the most beloved collection of the Buddha’s sayings, drives the point home with hammer blows:
“By oneself is evil done; by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself is one purified. Purity and impurity depend on oneself – no one can purify another.” (Dhammapada 165)
“You yourselves must strive; the Tathagatas only point the way. Those meditative ones who tread the path are released from the bonds of Mara.” (Dhammapada 276)
“All conditioned things are impermanent – when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. This is the path to purification.” (Dhammapada 277–279)
There is no refuge outside the self. No god to cry to. No sacrifice that can transfer merit. No grace that declares the guilty innocent. Only the lonely, heroic, utterly self-reliant struggle to uproot greed, hatred, and delusion.
For monks and nuns the discipline is ferocious. The Vinaya Pitaka lists 227 rules for monks (311 for nuns): no killing any living being, no stealing, no sexual activity, no lying, no intoxicants, no eating after noon, no dancing, singing, music, or shows, no garlands, perfumes, or ornaments, no high or luxurious beds, no handling gold or silver. Break a major rule and you are expelled for life. The rules are not punishments; they are training tools to burn away attachment.
Laypeople keep the Five Precepts, but serious practitioners take eight or ten on holy days. Meditation – first samatha (calm) then vipassana (insight) – is the furnace. The meditator watches every breath, every sensation, every thought arise and pass away, noting “rising… falling… itching… thinking… planning… anger…” until the mind sees directly that there is no permanent self behind the stream of phenomena.
The Buddha described ten fetters that bind beings to samsara: belief in a permanent self, doubt, attachment to rites and rituals, sensual desire, ill will, craving for fine-material existence, craving for immaterial existence, conceit, restlessness, ignorance. The arahat, the perfected one, cuts all ten. At death the fire goes out completely – parinirvana. Not annihilation, the Buddha insisted, but something beyond all categories:
“There is, monks, a domain where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no wind… no this world, no other world… neither coming nor going nor staying… unsupported, unmoving, yet delightful – that is the end of suffering.” (Udana 8.1)
Later Mahayana schools softened the edges. Pure Land devotees call on Amitabha Buddha and are reborn in his western paradise by his grace. Zen speaks of sudden awakening. Tibetan vajrayana uses mantras, visualizations, and guru devotion. But even in these traditions the decisive factor remains one’s own mind. The guru can point, Amitabha can provide a boat, but you must still climb aboard. The final step is always yours.
The Buddha himself, on his deathbed at Kushinagar, spoke his last words to the weeping monk Ananda:
“Ananda, it may be that you think: ‘The word of the Teacher is no more; we have no Teacher.’ But it should not be seen like that. The Dhamma and the Vinaya that I have taught and explained – those shall be your teacher when I am gone.” (Mahaparinibbana Sutta, Digha Nikaya 16)
And then his very last sentence, spoken to all the monks:
“Handa dāni bhikkhave āmantayāmi vo: Vaya-dhammā saṅkhārā appamādena sampādetha.” “Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All conditioned things are subject to decay – strive on with diligence.”
No final benediction. No “I will be with you always.” No promise to carry anyone across the river. Just the command to strive, and then silence.
That is why Buddhism, for all its compassion, all its psychological brilliance, all its serene monasteries and golden statues, is the purest, most uncompromising expression of the serpent’s promise in Eden. There is no God to save you because there is no permanent self to save. You must save yourself by seeing through the illusion of self, and you must do it alone, across countless lifetimes if necessary, until the flame of craving is blown out.
Jesus did not say, “Strive on with diligence until you extinguish yourself.” He said, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” He did not point to a path and step aside. He said, “I am the path.” He did not leave his disciples an impersonal Dhamma. He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” He did not tell them to burn away the self. He said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
In Buddhism the final goal is to disappear. In Christ the final goal is to be found forever, hidden with Him in God.
That is the difference between a physician who hands you medicine and walks away, and a Bridegroom who becomes the medicine, drinks the poison for you, and carries you home in his arms.
Taoism – The Watercourse Way of Wu-Wei
Taoism is the quietest of the world’s great religions, and in some ways the most seductive. It does not thunder commandments from a mountaintop. It does not threaten hellfire or promise streets of gold. It simply watches a river carve a canyon and whispers, “Be like that.”
Tradition says that an old man named Li Er, keeper of the royal archives in the state of Zhou, grew tired of the corruption of courts and rode westward on a water buffalo. At the Hanku Pass the gatekeeper recognized him and begged, “Sir, before you disappear into the wilderness, please leave us a book.” The old man wrote five thousand characters, handed over the scroll, and vanished forever. We call him Lao Tzu, “the Old Master,” and the book is the Tao Te Ching, “The Classic of the Way and Its Power.” Most scholars today date the text between the late fourth and early third century BC, but the legend is too beautiful to discard.
The very first line disarms every religious climber:
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. (Chapter 1, my own rendering from the Mawangdui and Guodian texts)
Already the mountain has disappeared. There is no summit to reach, no ladder to climb, only a return to something we never should have left. The perfect person, the sheng jen or sage, does not strive upward; he sinks downward like water seeking the lowest place.
Chapter 8, one of the most beloved passages, says:
The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao. In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, go deep in the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In ruling, be just. In business, be competent. In action, watch the timing. No fight: no blame.
Water is soft, yet it wears down granite into sand. It never forces, yet nothing can stop it. This is wu-wei, usually translated “non-action,” but better rendered “action that is not forced,” “effortless action,” or “doing without doing.”
Lao Tzu hammers the point again and again:
The Tao abides in non-action, yet nothing is left undone. If kings and lords observed this, the ten thousand things would develop naturally. (Chapter 37)
The sage acts without acting and teaches without speaking. The ten thousand things arise and he does not turn away from them, he produces them but does not possess, he acts but does not rely on his action, he accomplishes but does not dwell on his accomplishment, and because he does not dwell, it does not leave him. (Chapter 2)
A later classic, the Zhuangzi (late fourth century BC), tells the story of Cook Ding cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui. The knife glides through the spaces between joints and tendons as though dancing to music. When the astonished lord asks how he achieved such skill, Ding replies:
What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, I saw nothing but the whole ox. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. Now I meet it with my spirit rather than looking at it with my eyes. My senses stop functioning and my spirit moves as it pleases… There are spaces between those joints, and the blade of the knife has no thickness. When that-which-has-no-thickness enters that-which-has-spaces, there is plenty of room. That is why after nineteen years the edge of my knife is still as sharp as if it had just come from the whetstone.
This is wu-wei in flesh and blood: perfect mastery that feels like doing nothing at all.
The Tao Te Ching offers three practical treasures for daily life:
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world. (Chapter 67, adapted from Stephen Mitchell)
Another chapter lists them as mercy (ci), frugality (jian), and not daring to be first (bu gan wei tian xia xian). The sage “wears rough clothing and carries jade in his bosom,” outwardly poor, inwardly rich.
Later Taoist tradition split into philosophical Taoism (the quietism of Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi) and religious Taoism (alchemy, immortality techniques, temples, gods, and rituals). The philosophical stream is the one that concerns us here, because it is the purest expression of the serpent’s whisper in Eden.
Notice what is still required of the individual.
You must unlearn everything culture has taught you. You must let go of desire, ambition, fame, even morality itself when it becomes rigid. You must become empty, soft, yielding, infant-like, female (the Tao is always imaged as mother, valley, womb, the dark and mysterious). You must return to pu, the uncarved block of wood, original simplicity before names and distinctions arose.
Chapter 28 says:
Know the male, yet keep to the female; become the valley of the world. Being the valley of the world, eternal virtue will never desert you, and you return to the state of the uncarved block.
Return is the key word. The Tao does not lift you up; it invites you down and back, to the place before striving began. But the invitation still places the entire burden on you. You must do the returning. You must do the emptying. You must practice the not-practicing until wu-wei arises spontaneously.
The Zhuangzi is full of stories of crippled beggars, deformed outcasts, and useless trees who are wiser than kings because they have been forced by circumstances to stop striving. The rest of us, healthy and successful, must voluntarily become useless. That takes tremendous discipline disguised as non-discipline.
Even the famous image of the sage who “sits and forgets” (zuo wang) is an advanced meditative technique requiring years of practice. The Tao gives birth to all things, but it does not carry you home on its back. It waits, patient as a mountain stream, for you to stop kicking and simply float.
And so, for all its beauty, Taoism remains another exquisite variation on the original lie: You can save yourself, not by frantic effort, but by effortless effort. You can become one with the ultimate by returning to the primal state through your own insight and letting-go. The self is gently dissolved instead of violently extinguished (as in Buddhism), but it is still the self that must do the dissolving.
There is no incarnation of the Tao, no Tao made flesh who lives a perfect human life in your place, no Tao who dies under the curse you deserve, no Tao who rises from the grave and breathes his own spirit into you so that the returning happens from the inside out.
There is only the great, nameless Flow, and the lonely, quiet struggle to stop resisting it.
The water is always moving downward. You must become water. No one will become water for you.
That is why, when all the poetry is stripped away, Taoism is still the serpent speaking softly: “You will be like God, knowing, not good and evil, but the hidden harmony behind all distinctions, if only you will return by your own wisdom.”
Jesus, on the other hand, did not say, “Become like water and float back to the Father.” He said, “Let the one who is thirsty come to me and drink… Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37–38). The flow comes from him into us, not from us into the nameless void.
The valley does not fill itself. It is filled.
The Exclusive Claim of Jesus Christ
Every religion we have walked through, from the Torah of Moses to the Tao of Lao Tzu, places the decisive, final weight on the human being.
- Judaism (in its post-exilic, rabbinic form) says: Study, repent, do mitzvot, and God will count you righteous.
- Islam says: Submit perfectly, perform the pillars, let your good deeds outweigh your bad, and perhaps Allah will have mercy.
- Hinduism says: Follow your dharma, accumulate good karma, realize your identity with Brahman across countless lives.
- Buddhism says: Walk the Eightfold Path alone until the fire of self is extinguished.
- Taoism says: Return to the uncarved block by effortless effort, by your own letting-go.
Grace, where it appears at all, is almost always responsive grace: God, Brahman, Amitabha, or the Tao reaches down only after the climber has already ascended most of the mountain.
Christianity turns the entire mountain upside down.
The New Testament does not begin with a new and higher law. It begins with a declaration of bankruptcy.
You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus… For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:1–9)
Notice the verbs: You did not make yourself alive. God made you alive. You did not raise yourself. God raised you. You did not seat yourself at His right hand. God seated you there – while you were still dead.
That is not improvement. That is resurrection.
Every other founder of religion stands on the earth and points to heaven. Jesus stands in heaven and says, “I came down.”
Every other teacher says, “This is the way; walk in it.” Jesus says, “I am the way.”
In the upper room, the night before He was crucified, Jesus looked at His confused disciples and spoke seven staggering “I AM” statements that still burn like seven suns:
- “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35) Not a recipe for bread. The bread Himself.
- “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) Not a lamp to carry. The light that walks in human skin.
- “I am the door of the sheep… If anyone enters by me, he will be saved.” (John 10:7–9) Not a doorkeeper. The door.
- “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11) He does not merely defend the sheep from wolves. He becomes the Lamb in their place.
- “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25) Spoken to Martha beside her brother’s tomb – moments before He called a four-day-dead man out of the grave.
- “I am the true vine… Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” (John 15:1–5) The spiritual life is not effort directed toward God. It is Christ’s life flowing into us.
- And finally, the claim that ended every hope of syncretism forever: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
Thomas had asked, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus did not answer with a map. He answered with a person: “I myself am the way.”
If those words are not true, then Jesus is a megalomaniac far worse than any cult leader in history. If those words are true, then every other religious system, no matter how noble, is a road that ends in death.
The apostles never softened the claim.
Peter, fresh from betraying Jesus three times and being personally restored by the risen Lord, stood before the very council that condemned Jesus to death and declared:
This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:11–12)
Paul, the former Pharisee who knew the Torah backward and forward, wrote to the Galatians in white-hot indignation:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel… But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:6–8)
And to the Romans he wrote:
If righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (Galatians 2:21)
To the Corinthians:
I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:2)
To the Colossians:
In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things… making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:19–20)
The early Christians did not go to their deaths singing, “Many roads lead to God.” They went to the lions singing, “Jesus is Lord,” knowing that to confess any other name meant safety.
The Nicene Creed (325 AD), hammered out in blood and fire, does not say, “We believe Jesus is a way.” It says, “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ… Light of Light, very God of very God… who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.”
Augustine, who tried every philosophy and every pleasure before he collapsed under a fig tree and heard a child’s voice say, “Take and read,” wrote:
“You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
Pascal, twelve centuries later, put it even more sharply:
“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him… though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God Himself.”
Every other religion says, “Here is the abyss. Here is the ladder. Climb.” Jesus says, “Here is the abyss. I have already descended into it, filled it with My blood, and risen out of it, and now I carry you across on My back.”
That is why the New Testament never speaks of Christians “finding God.” It speaks of God finding us.
The shepherd seeks the lost sheep until he finds it. The woman searches the house until she finds the lost coin. The father runs down the road to embrace the prodigal while he is still a long way off.
You do not climb to God. God climbs down to you, becomes a man, lives the life you should have lived, dies the death you should have died, rises as the guarantee that death is defeated, and then gives you His own perfect record to everyone who simply stops trying to earn it and starts trusting Him for it.
The Bible calls this justification by faith alone.
It is the most offensive doctrine ever preached, because it leaves absolutely no room for human boasting. It is also the most liberating news ever spoken, because it means the worst sinner who trusts Christ is safer than the most devout monk who trusts his own devotion.
Every other system finally says, “You must become like God.” Jesus says, “I became like you so that you might share in My life forever.”
That is the scandal of the cross. That is the glory of the empty tomb.
And that is why, when all the beauty and sincerity and moral grandeur of the world’s religions are laid side by side with the gospel, there is still only one voice that says:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest… For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
He is not waiting for you to become good enough. He has already become enough for you.
The question is no longer “How can I climb the mountain?” The question is “Will I let the One who climbed down carry me up?”
Choose. The arms are still open. The tomb is still empty. The invitation still stands.
The Final Call
You have a choice. Everyone chooses. Not making a choice is choosing.
Right now, in the quiet behind your eyes, you know the verdict of every religion we have examined. You know the weight of the scales, the endless wheel of karma, the silence of nirvana, the effortless effort of wu-wei, the trembling hope that your prayer, fasting, and zakat will finally tipped the balance in your favor.
You also know, if you are brutally honest, that you have never perfectly kept a single one of those paths. Not for a day. Not for an hour.
Every system finally whispers the same crushing truth: You cannot climb the mountain. Not in one lifetime. Not in ten million.
And yet every system still demands that you keep climbing.
There is only one voice in all of human history that says the opposite.
There is only one Man who stepped out of eternity, took your flesh, kept the law you broke, carried the curse you earned, died the death that belonged to you, and then rose from the grave with the shouted announcement:
“It is finished.”
Tetelestai. Paid in full.
That Man is now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and from that throne He speaks one sentence that silences every other religion:
“Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)
He is not calling you to a new technique. He is calling you to Himself.
He is not waiting for you to become good enough. He has already become enough for you.
He is not asking you to tip the scales. He tipped them once for all when He poured out His life-blood on a Roman cross.
He is not asking you to extinguish your self. He is offering to give you a new self, born again from above, indwelt by His own Spirit.
He is not asking you to return to the uncarved block. He is asking you to become a living stone in a new temple, a branch grafted into the True Vine, a sheep carried home on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd.
This is the moment the Bible calls “today.”
“Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 3:15)
Today is the day of decision.
Today you can step off every treadmill of self-salvation and fall into arms that have already caught you before you even knew you were falling.
Today you can become one of the children of Truth = TeknaTruth.
The Greek word Tekna means “children,” but it is a very specific kind of child: one who has been begotten, born from above, carrying the very DNA of the Father. Jesus used it when He looked at Nathanael and said, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” and when He prayed on the night He was betrayed, “Father… I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am” (John 17:24).
Paul used it when he wrote to the Galatians:
“For in Christ Jesus you are all sons (huioi, grown heirs) of God through faith… And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (Galatians 4:6–7)
And John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, wrote:
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called tekna Theou, children of God, and so we are… Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:1–2)
TeknaTruth are not people who have achieved truth. TeknaTruth are people who have been birthed by the Truth Himself (John 14:6), because the Truth became flesh and made His home among us.
TeknaTruth are no longer labors to become like God. TeknaTruth wake up every morning already loved, already accepted, already hidden with Christ in God.
TeknaTruth are not climbing a mountain. TeknaTruth are being carried up the mountain in the arms of the One who conquered it.
TeknaTruth do not fear the scales, because the Scales were nailed to a cross and declared, “Paid.”
TeknaTruth do not dread karma, because every last debt was cancelled at Calvary.
TeknaTruth do not strive for nirvana, because the Prince of Peace already lives inside.
TeknaTruth do not try to return to the uncarved block, because he has become a new creation, the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.
Today you can become a child of Truth.
All you have to do is the only thing you were never able to do on any other path: stop.
Stop striving. Stop performing. Stop bargaining. Stop pretending.
Look at the One who is looking at you with nail-scarred love and say, out loud or in the silence of your heart:
“Jesus, I am the prodigal. I am bankrupt. I have nothing to offer You but my sin and my exhaustion. I believe You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I believe You died for me and rose again. Be my righteousness. Be my rest. Be my everything.”
The moment you do, something irreversible happens.
The Father runs down the road and throws His arms around you while you are still covered in the pigpen. The Spirit breathes resurrection life into your dead heart. The Son credits His perfect record to your empty account. You are declared righteous, adopted forever, sealed with the Spirit, destined for glory.
You become, in that instant, a child of Truth.
The tomb is still empty. The throne is still occupied. The arms are still open.
But the Bible is mercilessly clear: the door will not stay open forever.
“Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near… For He says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (Isaiah 55:6; 2 Corinthians 6:2)
Choose this day, this hour, this breath, whom you will trust.
Trust yourself, dressed in whatever religious clothing you prefer, and you will stand before the throne with nothing in your hands.
Or trust the One who stretched out empty, nail-pierced hands and said, “Father, forgive them,” and let Him place you in Himself forever.
Jesus is waiting.
Not for you to become good enough. He is waiting for you to become His.
Come home, weary climber. Come home, exhausted monk. Come home, trembling Muslim. Come home, searching Hindu, Buddhist Taoist Jew Gentile.
Come home.
The Father is running.
The table is spread.
The ring, the robe, and the sandals are ready.
Today, if you hear His voice, become a TeknaTruth.
Tomorrow is not promised.
Eternity is coming.
Choose Life. Choose Truth. Choose Jesus.
Come while there is still time.