All religions are basically the same!

You may have often come across this claim, or indeed, even made it yourself.

Firstly, no they are not. But there's a more important point of departure: all religions seek to make sense of the world, or our human life in the world. In the terms of that 'making sense' they all seek to deal with the same thing. This they have in common.

What is this 'same thing'? It is what I (after Francis Schaeffer) call 'the dilemma of man'. In Schaeffer's terms this is the fact that mankind shows both grandeur and degradation. He is noble and cruel, selfish and selfless, proud and humble. A mix of opposites, one in denial of the other.

How so?

How so also man seeks community but lives in alienation, is material, but personal, is personal but finite, contingent, yet hopes for what is beyond the present.

How do religions seek to resolve these tensions, if not conflicts?

They do it through their concept of the independent ground of our being, or of reality: personal or impersonal, material or spiritual, contingent (and then, what truly constitutes the ground) or necessary (self existent), and how does this resolve the dilemma: confrontation, ignoring, neglect, negation, or dissolving, or a true resolution that takes the arms of the dilemma and brings them into a final cohesion?

Then, what is the locus, or domain, of the resolution? Is it within or beyond the life-world or the cosmos that is our denominating constraint? Does it conceive the 'system' that hosts the dilemma can also host its resolution, or does is see the resolution coming only from outside or beyond the system that hosts it?

These questions, give us a means of dimensioning the means of resolution that a religion proposes.

Does man contain the means of resolution; which on the face of it seems absurd as the illness cannot contain the cure (homeopathy aside), or must it come from outside man? And who or what is 'outside man, and the system which hosts, contains and embraces him at every existential point? Or is Sartre and crew right in their despair of resolution, leading to resolution only in the work of power over others, while there is no real power over self?

Finally: the results of any proposed religion need to be considered against its proposals. Do they work? do they seem to work? Can they work? 

Do they even deal with the real reality, or deny it, reduce it, or set it to one side?

All worthy points of discussion.

As Schaeffer in his famous trilogy argues: only the 'religion' of the incarnate creator: Yeshua the Nazarene, the Christ, brings this resolution.

It takes seriously the world, it structures the personal, it knows the dignity and  degradation of man and confronts it head on with the need for and gift of new life, Not a thing of us alone and by our own efforts, but be the gift of fellowship with God in Christ, his Spirit come within to grow us into new creatures to live in a renewed creation and so to enjoy him forever.

It comes from outside our Life-world, from the personal-infinite self-existent creator who knows us intimately and takes our significance, dignity and degeneration from being like him seriously.

See the Anglican Catechism or, for a much better statement of our purpose, the Westminster Catechism, in its beautiful opening: 

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, [a] and to enjoy him for ever. [b]

[a]. Ps. 86:9; Isa. 60:21; Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 6:20; 10:31; Rev.
4:11

[b]. Ps. 16:5-11; 144:15; Isa. 12:2; Luke 2:10; Phil. 4:4; Rev.
21:3-4

(apart from that I'd be wary of its Calvinism).