Image via Wikipedia
I’ve heard it said a lot that Christianity is soooo narrow minded in it’s thinking.
I’m like, really? Narrow minded? Wow… that’s not something I wouldn’t attribute to being a Christian.
Why you may ask?
Here’s my thinking.
If only good people get to heaven… then what does that look like?
I mean we don’t want rapists and murderers there right?
And what about other religions?
Well lets add their thoughts to the mix too shall we just to make it ‘fair’
In his book ‘The Abolition of Man’ C.S. Lewis studied the teachings that are most common i other faiths (from American Indians and Ancient Greeks to Chinese, Jewish and Christianity). He put the common teachings in one end… and at the other end out popped these 8 common teachings.
- Don’t harm others
- Honour your parents
- Be kind to others (especially the elderly)
- Always be honest
- Don’t lie
- Don’t have sex with another persons spouse.
- Care for the weak
- Put others first
Now looking at that list your could say… “Yeah that’s setting a pretty good standard…”
But here’s the twist… these religions share the common assumption that people will fail these 8 ‘basic’ things. Someone somewhere is gonna fall of the wagon in one of the above teachings.
But like any system… all the religions have ‘get out of jail free’ cards, a way to ‘make up’ for the failures… and that’s where Christianity stands on it’s own.
The other religions work something like this:
- There is God(s)
- He/they made rules that we need to keep
- they’re too hard
- Stink… try doing good stuff and see if that works
- Good luck with that…
- We’ll get back to you and let you know if you have made it into Heaven or not
And here’s the hard reality… we all know we are screw ups.
I mean, haven’t we ALL had to say “sorry” at some point?
Haven’t well all made mistakes?
Christianity works (a little bit) like this:
- God is God
- He made rules for us to live by
- They were too hard
- We messed up
- God sent his son Jesus to live with us. (Fully God and Fully man)
- Jesus kept the rules, (something no one else could do)
- He kept the law… he declared Gods law good.
- And he took car of the problem in number 4.
We were all going “we’ve messed up what do we do now?” and Jesus did something that the rules (and rule givers) couldn’t do… he paid the price by giving a full and final sacrifice for your sins (our mess ups and sooo much more)
You see Christianity isn’t for good people… people who keep a set of rules…
Salvation is for the forgiven.
Good forgiven people…
Average forgiven people…
Not so good forgiven people…
Even a criminal on the cross who had nothing good to bargain with (line stolen by A. Stanley)
It’s the most fair:
- EVERYONE is invited
- EVERYONE gets in the same way
- EVERYONE can meet the requirement…
You can’t get much fairer than THAT!
Screaming Goose 