One of the key reasons Truth gets lumped in with the religious is because of the similar ways in which they are articulated. Both claim to be knowledge, but Truth is living. Truth is expressing and becoming knowledge, as it is processed through time. Religious stuff is previously expressed Truth broken into truths or truisms, mixed with untruths and symbolism.
Religion goes and-in-hand with culture. Truth underlies it all. This isn’t to say that every religion holds a kernel of Truth, for to hold it is to pervert it, to kill it. We build prisons with the bones of Truth, not sacred spaces. From there one inmate shouts to the others about love and sin and repentance, and on and on, through the ages.
Not everyone who preaches a religious perspective is forceful in their delivery, but many are. Enough so that when we hear Truth expressing through a person, we may draw that association, for Truth is always intense and energetic, as it is precise and correct. People who tell you that their religion is precise and correct are selling you a lie. They may consciously believe it themselves, but deeply they know it is not true, hence the salesmanship. They must convey to convert, to sustain the lie in themselves, and so they imitate the passionate delivery of an ever-renewing mind to make their dead “truths” seem alive.
Truth does not convert. Truth just is. Taking it or leaving it doesn’t even matter. Conveying itself is simply what happens, because what else is there to convey? Truth is perpetually speaking itself through those who are Truth-alive.
The listener will likely take or leave what they hear. If they take it, then they are as self-alive as those who leave it, adding what they like to themselves and discarding the rest. In such a world, it is better to live truths in the least-perverted way possible, untranslated by desire, superstition, and politics, be a good person, and all that… but, ultimately, the person doing so must cease to be for Truth to be the case. And so when we say it is better to be a good person than not, what we really mean is Purgatory is less painful than Hell. Neither will ever be Heaven.
Sorry, religion. I stole from you this time.