I also think that we can learn a great deal from religious teachings even if we chose not to believe in the religions. I think too many people shut themselves off to reading anything “religious” because they don’t want to have to believe in the more abstract or out there theological things.
Honestly, anyone can learn from the teachings of Jesus or the Buddha and apply them without having to believe in their religions, or even in religion at all. Brother Laurence once said something to the effect of he sometimes wished he could do good things for God without Him seeing it and rewarding it, to do it just to do it. Buddhists also say that we have to not only do the right things, but do them for the right reasons. It’s similar to Epictetus and the Stoics saying that we should do good deeds and be done with it, not to expect something in return or to desire to be viewed as good for doing it. Surely we can all learn from these things and apply them, and that we can all say it’s good to do good and expect nothing in return, but merely to do good because it is the right thing to do, it’s our true nature to be good, and that will bring us true happiness. My understanding of it is that Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Plato, and the Stoics all believe that man was created good by nature, but that it’s temptation and worldly pleasures that corrupt us. And that we should therefore strive to fee ourselves from these things that have power over us. I’ve heard Christians say that people are slaves to sin; the Stoics said that we are slaves to whatever we depend on for pleasure. In both cases, we should strive to free ourselves from these things. Plato described these things, these sins or temptations, as nails that bind our soul to our body, and they are strong enough to make us desire to come back again (reincarnation) to satisfy them. Only by removing these nails can we no longer desire to be reborn again, and only then can we go to be with God. The whole “sin as nails” thing resonates pretty well with the whole Jesus dying on the cross for man, no? And he was around hundreds of years BC. The Hindu concept of reincarnation is pretty similar to Plato’s actually. There’s also Jesus saying he is the way. Interestingly, in the Tao Te Ching, written hundreds of years BC, Lao Tzu speaks of something that has always been, that never changes, that created the universe. He says he doesn’t know what to call it, so he calls it the way.
TL;DR: even if Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Plato, etc. all have different ideas of what happens after we die, or why we should seek God, they all seek God, and they all seek to go beyond worldly things, earthly pleasures, sin and temptation. They seek to return to the good nature that we were all created with. Anyone who sincerely strives to do this is someone I can respect, and someone who is striving to be Christ-like, even if they’re not a “Christian.”
