I cannot, in good conscience, attend certain religious services as an act of worship. This is not because I dislike the people involved or wish to be unkind. It is because I am persuaded, from Scripture, that Christian worship is never a neutral activity. To gather in a place of worship is to share in what that worship says about God, about Christ, and about the way of salvation. My conscience, as a Christian and a pastor, is bound to the Word of God, not to social expectations or invitations.

Let me use an analogy. Suppose a friend warmly invited me to a ceremony where a dead pig was hoisted on an elevated throne, incense was offered, and prayers were directed to this animal as a god. I might care deeply for my friend and wish them no harm. Yet I could not, in good conscience, attend that ceremony. To be present, to sing, to bow, or even to sit quietly among those acts of devotion would, in God’s sight, be to participate in idolatry. In the eyes of the living God, there is no difference in seriousness between worshiping an animal, a carved image, or a more sophisticated false deity. Crude idolatry and refined idolatry are both idolatry. That is why my conscience cannot join in any act of worship that is directed to someone other than the true God revealed in Scripture, whatever outward form it may take.

The Bible speaks with great clarity on this point. Israel was repeatedly warned not to “go after other gods” or to learn the ways of the nations in their worship (Deut. 12:29–32). Paul tells Christians to “flee from idolatry” and explains that when people share in pagan sacrifices, they become “participants with demons” (1 Cor. 10:14–22). He also insists that “there is no other God” and “no other Savior” besides the one true and living God (Isa. 43:10–11). Where there is a different god and a different gospel, there is a different religion altogether (Gal. 1:6–9; 2 Cor. 11:4). To join in the worship of another god or another Christ is not a light matter. It is a participation in something God Himself forbids.

It is important to make a careful distinction here. Within the broad household of biblical Christianity there are many congregations whose secondary doctrines and practices I might not share, yet whose worship I could still join, in good conscience. There are brothers and sisters who differ with me on questions such as baptism, church government, spiritual gifts, or the precise details of eschatology, and yet they confess the same triune God, the same Lord Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man, and the same gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. With such believers I can gladly stand, sing, and pray. We may not agree on every point, but we are worshiping the same God and the same Christ. This is why, in the public worship of our own congregation, the call to worship explicitly addresses the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as the One to whom our praise is directed.

The line is crossed, however, when the “god” being named is not the God of Scripture, when the “Jesus” being preached is not the eternal Son who became man, or when the way of salvation that is proclaimed or enacted is no longer the gospel of grace, but something that denies or obscures it. At that point the issue is no longer Christian diversity on secondary matters. It is a different god, a different Christ, and a different gospel. That is where conscience must draw a firm line and say, “I cannot join this as worship,” even if I love the people involved and desire their good.

This is why it is not honest to say that all religions are just different paths up the same mountain. If you compare the major world religions side by side, you find radically different claims about the most basic questions. Some deny that there is any personal God at all and speak instead of an impersonal force or ultimate reality that has no face and no voice. Others affirm millions of gods and goddesses. Some, like Islam and Judaism, insist that God is one person only and explicitly reject the Christian confession that the one God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Still others, such as various forms of modern spirituality and neo paganism, speak of a god and goddess, or invite devotion to a whole range of deities and spiritual powers. These are fundamentally different answers to the question “Who is God?”

The same is true when you ask what these religions say about Jesus and salvation. Some view Jesus merely as a wise teacher whose followers later invented stories about miracles and resurrection. Others say He was a prophet, but not the Son of God and not crucified for sinners. Some say salvation is found by escaping the cycle of rebirth through personal effort and spiritual discipline. Others place the weight on rituals, sacraments, pilgrimages, or keeping certain pillars and laws. The biblical gospel, by contrast, proclaims that Jesus is the eternal Son of God made flesh, that He truly died and rose again, and that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, apart from human merit. To speak as if all these views were simply different versions of the same faith is to empty words like “God,” “Christ,” and “salvation” of any real meaning.

This same concern comes into sharp focus when we move from world religions in general to specific settings closer to home. It is why I could not, for example, attend the Roman Catholic Mass as an act of worship. According to official Roman Catholic teaching, at the moment of consecration the bread and wine are changed in their substance into the very body and blood of Christ, so that Christ is present “in a true, real, and substantial manner.” The Mass is also defined as a sacrifice in which Christ is offered to God in an unbloody manner on behalf of the living and the dead, for their sins. I am convinced that this teaching stands in direct contradiction to the New Testament’s clear witness that Christ offered Himself once for all, that His sacrifice is finished, and that He “sat down at the right hand of God” because His priestly work is complete (Heb. 9:25–28; 10:10–14). To sit, as a Christian pastor, in the midst of a rite that presents itself as a repeated propitiatory sacrifice would, in my understanding, be to say by my presence that such teaching is acceptable, when Scripture convinces me it is not.

The same principle applies, with different details, to worship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Classical Mormon teaching, reflected in the King Follett discourse and in official explanations by LDS leaders, holds that God Himself was once a man who became God, and that faithful humans may in turn become gods as He is. In this system there are many gods, and the god of our world has a tangible human body. Jesus is taught to be the firstborn spirit child of “Heavenly Father” and a heavenly mother, the elder brother of Lucifer and of all mankind. That is not a minor adjustment to historic Christianity. It is a different view of God and a different view of Christ from that confessed in the ancient creeds and Reformed confessions, and far more importantly, from what I am persuaded Scripture teaches: that the Son is the eternal Word who “was God” in the beginning and through whom “all things were made” (John 1:1–3), not a being who came into existence as one god among many.

The same is true for the meetings of Jehovah’s Witnesses. According to the official teaching of the Watchtower Society, there is no triune God. Jehovah alone is God, and Jesus is a created being, the first and greatest creature of God, identified with Michael the archangel. In that system, Christ is not confessed as the eternal Son who shares the one divine nature with the Father and the Spirit, but as a lesser, created being through whom God does His work. The Holy Spirit is not worshiped as a divine person, but spoken of as an impersonal active force. Whatever sincerity may be present among individual Witnesses, this is a different God and a different Christ from the One revealed in Scripture and confessed by the historic Christian church. I could not, in good conscience, sit in a Kingdom Hall and join in songs, prayers, and teaching that deny the deity of Christ and the personhood of the Spirit. To do so would be to treat as Christian worship what Scripture identifies as something else.

If a Muslim, a Mormon, and a biblical Christian stand in a room and each says, “I believe in Jesus,” we have to ask what each one means by that name. The Muslim Jesus is not the Son of God and did not die on the cross. The Mormon Jesus is a created spirit child of Heavenly Father and a heavenly mother, the elder brother of Lucifer. The Jesus of Scripture is the eternal Word, the second Person of the Trinity, who was with God in the beginning and is Himself God, the Creator of all things. We are not talking about three slightly different portraits of the same person. We are talking about three fundamentally different Christs.

None of this means I do not respect or care for Roman Catholic, Latter-day Saint, and Jehovah’s Witness friends and neighbors, or for those from other religious traditions. On the contrary, I am grateful for every kindness shown, and I recognize that many within these communities are serious and sincere, and, by God’s common grace, often do much real good for their families, their neighbors, and the wider community. That does not make any of us less in need of the saving grace of Christ. My aim is not to attack anyone, but to remain loyal to the truth about God and His gospel. Because worship is an act of participation, not a matter of merely sitting in a room, I cannot attend certain services and behave as if we were honoring the same God, the same Christ, and the same way of salvation, when Scripture, together with the official teaching of that church or religion, shows that we are not. In my understanding, doing so would be to engage in false worship. A conscience held captive to the Word of God must refuse that.