The Main Difference

The other day, at work, I had a friend ask me, "What makes Christianity different from other religions?"

I only talked about one and I realized that I missed an even more important distinction that I didn't have time to talk about in the midst of the bustle of the day.

1) So the answer I gave was essentially this: You do not need permission and you will find no objection in the orthodox Christian community for testing everything. What it boils down to is that we have a doctrine that requires accountability. I believe that no matter where you start, if you search for truth, you will find God. I encourage anyone to try and poke holes in my current doctrine. I'll be okay being corrected if I'm wrong: the most I have to lose is ignorance. My beliefs, as a Christian, are supported by every bit of scientific data I have ever observed. In many cases, scientific study has helped clarify my understanding of certain passages of scripture that I had struggled with before. Essentially, I believe that every Christian can and should believe in Christ, not just because they feel it in their hearts, but because they know it would be foolish not to. I believe that God is real. Science is the pursuit of knowledge; therefore, every bit of nit-picking and honest scrutiny we do can only lead us closer to God. The reason I am never uncomfortable when people challenge my faith is that what I earnestly believe just makes sense and can be supported by sound logic and observation.

It's not until just a few minutes before I started writing this that I missed something possibly even more important:

2) Love. No other religion is based on a better love story than the one we have in the Bible. Let's set aside the fact that the fundamental claims of Christianity are consistently supported by research and observation and just pretend that ALL religions were equally false. Let us suppose, as our atheist friends do, that there is no God and that all religion is constructed by society to help us deal with the bleak meaninglessness of our existence. Of all that I've heard, no story is more comforting to believe in than that we are created and valued by an infinite and wise God who loves us so deeply that he went to great lengths to allow us to be reincarnated following our impending death and dwell eternally in paradise, a reward we can acquire by no means besides by the mere acknowledgement that our debts are fully paid by God's son and willful acceptance of the gift being offered. If life is what you make it, then I suppose I might still want a delusion that gives me the kind of meaning and purpose that my faith in God gives me.

Once I came to truly understand the Gospel, I realized that I could not in a million years think of a way that the good news of the Gospel could get any better. Salvation in the Christian faith is not obtained by works or performance but by nothing more than simply the expressed desire of the individual to be included as a recipient of eternal life. Not only is Christianity the only religion in which one cannot earn their passage to paradise, no matter how hard they try; but the entire incentive for moral performance as a believer in Christ has nothing to do with self-preservation and everything to do with celebration.

Now, the Bible says that Jesus is the only way to Heaven. But let's entertain the Oprah mindset and imagine that the Bible doesn't state explicitly that we cannot obtain eternal life except through belief in Christ and Christ alone. Let's imagine that every known religion is a pathway to an afterlife in eternal paradise. If that was the case, how can there possibly be an easier or more secure way to get into Heaven than through a prayer in which you ask the creator of the universe to save you, fully assured that God will do it simply because you asked. If it were actually true that all religions lead to Heaven, then wouldn't it be purely idiotic to choose any but the absolute easiest and most secure path to said destination?

3) Humility. Really, humility is a part of love, but I wanted to make it an additional point because I think that it's a particularly poignant aspect of scriptures. The God of the Bible has established no hierarchy in the human race. We are all equals under God's authority. Jesus has repeatedly commanded his followers to be servants to one another. When I say that Jesus made no exceptions in that command, I mean that so strongly that I need to point out that almighty God, the Son, set an example of servitude more comprehensive than any of us could match. No matter how hard we try serving the crap out of each other, we will never come close to what Jesus did. It then goes to follow that there is no more God-like trait we could exhibit than the devotion of our life's resources for the good of others. If you don't understand humility, you don't understand God, who descended rank to save the lowest of the lows. The greatest of Christians will be those who love the most sacrificially, just as Jesus did for us.