Christianity in a Nutshell

I was at espn.com this morning and saw an article on Tim Tebow, the outspoken Christian QB of the Florida Gators. I just had to read the comments that were posted there and it never seems to fail that someone will bring up the punishments of the Old Testament for things like cursing one's parents or working on the Sabbath (death for both). They use these as arguments that Christianity is ridiculous and way too strict and judgmental.

First, allow me to point out that all the references they use are Old Testament references. The Bible says that man fell in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We learned right and wrong and, in so doing, committed the first wrong. It was our human nature first manifesting itself and leading us to selfishness.

Over the years, mankind, without God's laws, seemed to get worse and worse and worse. Certain actions, like murder, seemed to have always been against God's law. But mankind kept falling into deeper depravities until God, that we might stop digging ourselves a deeper hole, decided to start over with Noah and his family. Even after that, there was the Tower of Babel, all the various religions that sprung up within just a few hundred years of Noah, and all the atrocities committed by man against man.

When God led the Israelites out of captivity, he gave them the Ten Commandments and a long list of other commands. This was both to keep them inline and give them some standards to adhere to, but also to show them that they still needed God's mercy because none of them could ever live up to the law of the Old Testament. Because all sinned, there needed to be sacrifices offered to atone for the sins.

In the New Testament, Jesus became that sacrifice, fulfilling all the law (something we could never do), and then dying for us. The old law, in Him, is not washed away in the sense that it's like it never existed, for God is still holy, but it is washed away in the sense that we don't have to try to fulfill it anymore. Jesus fulfilled it. We now have to follow Him and try to live as He wants us to. Even in that, it is not by works that we are saved, but by faith.

That is the point in which Christianity differs from all other religions. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc., all have a list of laws that must be fulfilled. Christianity has the requirement of faith in Jesus and love for God. It may seem like it's so much easier, and, in a way, it is, because once someone is saved, they are guaranteed Heaven. In other religions, once you join up, you still have to earn your way to Heaven. But living a Christian life is also far harder than in other religions, for the law of those religions may proclaim love, but one can't love out of adherence to a law. One has to love out of choice or not at all. Thus, a Christian has to choose to love, to put the needs of others above their own, when that is directly against human nature.

Following the law, by comparison, is easy, because if you do A, B, C, and D and refrain from X, Y, and Z, you get what you want. You may not know where you stand exactly, but there's no question of whether you're doing what you should be doing. But this makes religion nothing more than a contract. If you obey the laws, you get what you want. Otherwise, you don't. There's no love in such a contract and, since you're not the judge of whether you've fulfilled the law, there's no surety that you have met its requirements.

With Christianity, there are no requirements to fulfill, save to belief in Jesus as the sacrifice for our sins, that He lived a perfect life, that He rose again after death, and to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. We can't do either of these last two on our own because, let's face it, we can't love unconditionally. Only God can do that. So even in our "lighter" requirements, we fail miserably, perhaps more miserably than most adherents of other religions, because our fulfillment is based on our hearts and not our actions.

But Christians have God to help us to love like He does, which is another difference between Christianity and other religions. God helps us to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Other religions leave the believer to struggle with fulfilling the law on their own willpower.

Christians and non-Christians alike seem to think that Christianity is about rules and regulations. It's not. It's about love. It's about putting God before all and others before yourself, the very values that others say they laud in people. (Who doesn't get touched by a story of a soldier diving on a grenade to protect his platoon?)

Christianity requires only love for God, faith in Jesus, and love for others (including forgiving them). It's so much simpler than everyone makes it out to be. And so much more difficult to live than they could imagine. But we have God with us, perfecting the work which He has begun in us. In Him, we have finally found our life.