"When I see your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars that You set in place, what are humans, that You are mindful of them, mere mortals that You care for them?" (Psalm 8: 4 & 5).
If you humbly grasp that you're a "mere mortal," you're able to grasp that God is Mystery, far bigger and greater than any human words, human ideas, holy books, rites or rituals can ever grasp in entirety here on earth.
There's a reason for Heaven. That's where we will know God as we are known by God. Not before that: "At present, I know partially; then I shall know fully as I am fully known." (1 Corinthians 13:12.)
Unfortunately too many take the next line of Psalm 8 - "Yet You have made them little less than a God" - a little too seriously and for the wrong reasons.
"Little less than a God" means that we are created in God's Image. I can understand wanting to call God "Father" and "He" because I believe God is a relational Being. And I do call God "Father." But I can just as easily say "Mother" and "She" because women as well as men are created in God's Image. To quote Psalm 131, sometimes I am a child at rest on my Mother's lap.
What does that make God - a hermaphrodite? No. A Mystery. A Mystery containing elements of the male and female because we're both created in God's Image. But God is far greater and beyond any human concept of sexuality or Being.
Because we're created in God's Image, God has given all humans the capacity, the soul, to eventually know God as we are known.
Because we're created in God's Image, all human beings have God's Law written in their hearts and souls. All human beings have the capacity to live in the Presence of God and live in relationship with God.
Different religions exist because since the time humans came to this planet, different pray-ers and thinkers have searched for Who and What God is and searched for ways to ritualize and express humans' relationship with God. If we would put all religions together in one vast, beautiful mosaic, we'd see where they diverge in their ideas and where they overlap. So often religious leaders concentrate on where we diverge in our beliefs, and we get into this elitist club kind of attitude that frankly turns non-believers and searchers off.
Yes, different religions have different beliefs - the differences are real. Since God is Truth as well as Beauty and Love, one day we will know the Truth of Who God is. We will know the Truth of how Immortality works. We'll get it. After we're dead and able to fully know God as God fully knows us.
In the meantime we can concentrate on what the great mystics of different traditions agree on: God is Creator. All of the Universe is interconnected, interdependent, sacred territory. God is Love. God is Truth. God is Peace. Many would teach that Life continues past death.
For me personally I believe we can look at Reality around us and learn some of Who God is.
I don't believe such a complex, interconnected, interdependent Universe could come about by chance. I believe it is more logical to believe in a Creator than not to. A Creator Who is transcendent - separate and above creation, but a Creator Who is also immanent - lives within creation.
And because I see the reality of elephants twirling their trunks together in affection, wolf packs running together, and human babies dying if they don't receive love and touch, I believe this Creator is Love. Love would not create, then stand back and disappear. Love would desire to somehow live in relationship with us. Because we as human creators create from who and what we are, I believe God does as well. The Universe is relational, interconnected, full of acts of love, because that's Who God, its Creator, is.
Do I believe, as a Christian, that Christianity is a religion far superior to all others because it Knows More about God? I don't like the word "superior" - it smacks of elitism. But I do believe the natural, logical progression of action for a God of Love living in relationship with us is to choose to personally come to us, live with us, take on our human flesh in full intimacy with us. Because that's what human intimacy is - to become One Flesh.
To me, the idea that the God of the Universe would take on human flesh, would teach us, heal us, save us from the death of sin in person, is the most Mind-Blowing, most Radical, most Glorious, Most Mysterious Good News anyone could discover.
But I explain this belief to others, share it, only if they so desire, because I don't believe our Courteous God ever wants us to shove our beliefs about Who God is down others' throats. To act like a Know It All is to be that arrogant "little less than a god" who ignores the Mystery of How God individually loves, interacts with, guides, comforts, and offers salvation to every human being who ever has lived and will live who is open to God's call. This is The greatest Mystery of all, the one that will awe and delight us the most - when we're dead and God can finally Divinely Reveal everything to our satisfaction and, most profoundly, to God's.