Can you give some examples?
Some gnostics, in which I include pre-Christian, prototypical gnostics, believed that it was only by grace that they were given the secret, saving gnosis. Either you were chosen or you weren't - there wasn't a whole lot you could do about it. Other gnostics were ascetics and mortified their own flesh, but others simply relied on grace.
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We can also consider certain sects of Hinduism. It's a common idea that, when the world devolves into sin and the Dharma has been forgotten, God will put on a physical form and restore order. In the Bhagavad Gita 18.66 Krishna, who is an avatar of Vishnu, says:
Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me. I shall deliver you from all sinful reaction. Do not fear.
The idea of surrendering to God, rather than relying on your works, is
ishvara pranidhana and taught about, for instance, in Patanjali's yoga. There's a story about a yogi who wanted to know how long it would take him to attain liberation. A messenger from God came down and observed him for a while, finally telling him it would take 1,000 lifetimes. The guy considered himself very holy, so he was miffed. He said he'd try even harder. "Oh," the messenger said, "then it'll take 10,000."
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We can also talk about Bhakti yoga, in which the sole practice is love for God. Some yogis argued that it would be impossible to work to God by yourself, so all you had to do was express gratefulness to God and remember the love that God had for the practitioner. God, whichever one you worshiped, would let down his golden hook and take up the practitioner when he or she was ready.
But what if you didn't worship? You'd go to hell, right? The texts are full of stories of people accidentally showing reverence to the gods. For instance, maybe they'd spill a bit of milk while walking by a statue. Or, if they'd been reborn as a fly, they'd land on an altar. In any case, the gods would take any excuse to elevate someone. Of course, plenty went to hell, but this doesn't mean the gods didn't care.
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I wanted to include nondualists in Hinduism, since Advaita Vedanta is the best example of nondualism in world religion, but nondualism has become more popular in the West without Hindu underpinnings, so this probably wouldn't have been fair. For instance,
A Course in Miracles is usually considered to be a nondualist teaching. In any case, in nondualist thought, there have been
a lot of avatars of the divine who seek to wake up the ignorant.
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Buddhism does not have any deities per se, and they usually don't have any saviors, but Pure Land Buddhists sort of do. Amida (or Amitabha), created a Pure Land, a place to which your average person could go after death and achieve enlightenment very easily. The practice of monasticism was seen as being too difficult, so he swore that he'd make it much easier by using his own merit on behalf of others. In Jodo Shu, all people have to do is chant "Namu Amida Butsu" which roughly means "I show reverence to Amida Buddha," and they're assured of a rebirth there.
The Japanese have two phrases,
joriki, which means "self-power," and
tariki, which means "other-power." Joriki is what we're talking about here as bad religion: "I'm going to get to liberation on my own." Tariki means reliance on someone else's strength. Christians aren't the only ones who have noticed this dichotomy.