The Big Question 89: What’s So Special About The Christian God?
Feb 22, 2022 1385
Radio Version:
What’s so special about the Christian God?
People who don’t believe in any God – and that’s the majority of people in our society – tend to lump every “god” together. What I mean is that just because they reject the very idea of god, they stereotype all gods into the one single image. Now stereotypying people isn’t very nice, and I’m sure that God doesn’t like it either. It really is quite unfair to him!
The way I understand it, the God of the Christian faith is completely unique. He is very different to all other ideas of God that exist in other religions, faith systems, and cultures. I want to tell you just a few ways in which that is true.
The first quality that distinguishes the Christian God is that he loves unconditionally. For a Christian, that becomes the ultimate and true definition of love. In other faith systems, God loves you only if you obey and please him. So, while they use the word “love,” it only refers to a transactional arrangement.
So “pleasing god” means living the right way, worshipping him the right way, performing the right kind of religious rituals, and treating others the right way. If you do those things, then God will love you, and overlook your own mistakes. It’s like a business deal between you and God: if I scratch God’s back he’ll scratch mine.
But the God of the Christian faith loves because that is the essence of who he is. God loves the good and the bad alike. He doesn’t love people based on their performance.
A second difference between the Christian God and other ideas of god is that the Christian god is passionately looking for a relationship with you. In other faith systems, God doesn’t ultimately care if you have a relationship with him at all. If you do, he’ll love you, and if you don’t, he won’t.
A third difference is that the Christian God comes to you and meets you where you are. In Jesus, he became one of us, to meet us where we are. He literally came to us, because we couldn’t come to him.
In other belief systems, we have to come to God. He stays up in heaven and expects you to find a way to come up to him through obedience and rituals.
A fourth difference between the Christian God and all others is that the true God sacrifices for you so that you may be accepted. False notions of god say that you must sacrifice to or for him in order to be accepted.
In coming to earth, the Christian God has himself already sacrificed everything for your sake. He died on the cross as sacrifice for sin.
Fifth and finally, the Christian God has completely death on behalf of us all. In other belief systems God may be powerful. God may even have power over death. But in non-Christian ideas god hasn’t defeated death for your sake. The true God has.
For those, and many more reasons, I love the God whom the Christian faith reveals. And really, who could blame me?
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