A SIMPLE ANSWER
I believe ALL religions are seeking something beyond the natural world. We, as humans, innately know there must be something more to life. Something spiritual. Something forever. You can “feel” it. If not, what’s the point? Every human civilization throughout recorded history has had some form of religious belief system – some form of deity or deities to worship, to please, or to appease. C.S. Lewis, the late Christian apologist who lived from 1898 to 1963, a contemporary of J.R.R. Tolkien (“Lord of the Rings” author) and a prolific 20th century author himself (his last work was “The Chronicles of Narnia,”) wrote a work called “Mere Christianity.” In this book, Lewis put forth the idea that all people have a “God-shaped hole” in their spirit that only God could fill. This appears evident by all of mankind’s attempts at seeking some form of god through various faiths and religions throughout all time.

Even today in a mostly secular, intellectual society that believes in only what it can see, the need to fill this “hole” seems even more voracious. We fill it temporarily with drugs, sex, alcohol, work, extreme thrills – even religious traditions and practices – all just fleeting, non-sustaining moments of happiness; many dangerous or even deadly; all eluding the pure, endless joy that we all seek, which until it’s happened, you wouldn’t know it, but it can only be satisfied by a personal relationship with the one True God through Jesus Christ.

If one were to take an academic look into all of the world’s major faiths, there is a stark difference between Christianity and all the other theistic ideologies. The following stories illustrate this difference:

EXCERPT FROM A TRUE STORY I AM WRITING
One evening, just before one of our concerts at a popular NYC nightspot, my wife came home with a briefcase that she found, left in a taxi. She figured we’d have a better chance of finding the owner rather than leaving it in the cab. She found a business card amidst an over-stuffed mass of paperwork inside the well-worn, leather satchel briefcase. She called the number and reached an office in Texas. We were called back in a short while – the owner of the briefcase was on his way over in a cab!

When the guy arrived (I wish I could remember his name,) he was so joyful and happy, and so thankful. We invited him in, and proceeded to have an amazing visit. He told us that the documents in his briefcase were worth $3 million dollars, and there was no way to replace them (this was the early 80’s – laptops, cell phones and the Internet were years away from becoming “everyday.”) No wonder he was so happy. When I asked him what business he was in, he said he was in New York to raise corporate donations for a Christian organization. I was very intrigued. I remember wondering, quietly to myself, why would companies give so much money to a church based organization? I asked lots of questions. We told him we were Christians, of course. My wife and I both went to a Methodist church when we were kids. But then I took what I thought was an intellectual approach. I told him about my friends and associates that came from such a diverse range of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. New York City is such a melting pot of belief systems. These friends and associates were Buddhist, Orthodox Jew, Reformed Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist, Agnostic, Protestant, Catholic, Mormon – you name it. (I think I also told him that I leaned toward Agnostic – a belief in some form of God, but against religion in general.)

Then there were the “new agers.” The “spiritualists” who commune with the spirits and the stars. I even had dealings with transcendentalists – people who practiced levitation and believed one could walk through walls and at will, have out of body experiences. And these guys were top training and motivational consultants to the US Military, IBM and law enforcement in NYC (I was bidding on video production for them). After I pointed out how all of these people that I knew with so many different beliefs were really good people – better than me in many respects – and how I was sure that God would let them into Heaven, if He really existed.

Then I asked what I thought was the smartest question yet – I asked this man what the difference was between Christianity and all these other religions. His answer stunned me and fascinated me at the same time. All I could say was “wow!” He grabbed a pen and a bar napkin left over from our wedding that was stacked on the table. He drew two horizontal lines – God on top and Man on the bottom. He’d name a religion, then draw an arrow from man to God and say “Man’s attempt to reach God.” After a few of the key religions named, he then changed and drew an arrow from God to man and said “God’s attempt to reach man by sending His Son Jesus Christ to earth to live as one of us and show us the way.” “Wow!” was literally all I could think of.