For example, in most [idealistic] religions, the central focus of the teaching is the idea of a superhuman, ideal entity such as a god, and each such religion is formed having as its centerpiece a belief in that god. This type of religion is most like what we usually bring to consider as being a religion, and thus is the most conventional. If we ask the true nature of the entity represented by these idealized, yet anthropomorphic, human-like gods, we can say that it is actually a concept of the ideal which we human beings each carry within our hearts.
We human beings are the animal that has developed the highest ability to think. Accordingly, each moment of each day, we think that we wish circumstances to be like this, or to be like that, or that things should be like this or should be like that. We contrast this with the state of the world before us, the state of circumstances we see around us, that are just as they are with all their seeming imperfections. In such manner, the state of the way that things should be that we human beings have the capability to envision within our heads is typically called the ideal. Those religions that arose centered upon such higher ideals, focused on images of the ideal, and setting high value on the ideal, are the ones we most usually think of as being religions. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and many others—even many flavors of Buddhism—most belief systems that we commonly call religions belong to this category. They each hold up some perfect, idealized state or other world, in the light of which this world we live in is just a shadow. They point to some other state of being, or some heaven, toward which we aim, but in contrast to which human beings and the unsightly human world fall far, far short.
From: A Heart-to-Heart Chat on Buddhism with Old Master Gudo