Why do people abandon Christianity for other religious systems?

Every day, there are people who walk away from following Jesus in order to embrace another religious system that either rejects the claims of Christ or provides a mere shadow of what the Bible states about Jesus Christ. So what causes people who have claimed to believe and follow the Jesus that we read about in the Bible to end up adopting or adapting to religious systems that contain faulty and heretical teaching?

In a letter in the Bible, a man named Paul prayed that early followers of Jesus "would be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding". Paul then reveals the knowledge and understanding that marks the core truth about Christianity:


"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. " Colossians 1:15-20

When we fail to know, understand, and embrace the truths that mark the core of the Christian faith, we place ourselves in a position to be influenced and misled into false and heretical religious systems. The reality is that in order to see and expose heresy and false religious systems for what they are, one first needs to know truth. All religious systems claim to represent truth; yet all religious systems differ on what the core religious truths are. Thus, two contradictory truths can not both be true; one is true and the other is false. Only by knowing truth can one fully embrace that truth and be aware of the heresy that many false religious systems present.

So have you critically thought about what you believe, regardless of the religious system you now subscribe to? Do you know why you believe what you believe? Do you really know, in an in-depth manner, what the religious system you follow believes about the nature and character of God, humanity, and other key truths?

Do not believe what you believe because you have been told it is true; believe what you believe because you have critically examined what you believe and know that it is true.