The Unique Answer of Christianity to the Three Religious Questions

Every religion gives answers to three main questions:

• Does God exist and if so, who is He?
• Am I okay with God and if not, why not?
• If I’m not okay with God, how do I get okay with Him?

Here is a quick survey of the answers to these questions by the world’s major religions and by Atheism:

	Atheism	Hinduism	Islam	Judaism	Christianity
Does God exist and if so who is He?	God does not exist	God exists and manifests himself in multitudinous avatars	God exists as one solitary being who created all	God exists as one solitary being who created all	God exists as a triune being who created all
Am I okay with God and if not, why not?	Either I am not okay or it is a non-question	I am not okay because I am ignorant of the truth	I am not okay because I rebel against obeying Allah	I am not okay because, like Adam, I rebelled against God	I am not okay because, like Adam, I rebelled against God
If I’m not okay with God how do I get okay with Him?	You don’t need to get okay with God	I must work through various levels of existence until I reach perfection	I must observe the 5 requirements: belief in Allah and His prophet, alms, fasting, prayer, and pilgrimage	I must keep His laws as revealed in the Old Testament	I can’t keep His laws; I must be rescued by a sacrifice that is sufficient to cover my guilt and be enabled to keep His law

Is it possible for everyone to be correct?  No, logic’s law of non-contradiction holds true.  Nothing can both be and not be.  “God does not exist” and “God does exist” cannot both be true.  It is impossible to predicate of the same thing, at the same time, and in the same sense, both the absence and the presence of the same fixed quality, in this case, truthfulness to reality.

And each of the world’s major religions give very contradictory answers to the three questions, and they are certainly contradictory to the view of atheism.  The possibilities then are that none of them are in agreement with reality or that one of them is.  If none of them are then there is no credible answer that has been provided to the shape of reality, unless it is by some one or few lone voices who figured it out but haven’t won the day with their viewpoint, that is, haven’t been able to publicize it enough or get agreement enough for many to know about it.  We might see that in some sense Hinduism, Islam and Judaism are in enough agreement as to the method of getting okay with God that we might see them as a possible right view of reality together, despite having some contradictory aspects to them.  But Christianity stands quite apart from them and from atheism in its answers to what fits reality.

To me, the evidence against atheism is substantial enough to rule it out, so my search for answers revolves around the religious perspectives with a contrast between Christianity and the other major religions.

The ‘Who Is God’ Question

In terms of who God is, the Christian view, the trinitarian view of God’s being, seems to accord more with reality that the singular or solitary view of God as a unipersonality.  Judging from the nature of human relationship it appears that our diversity in unity is better explained by a God who is Himself in relationship as a unity and diversity.  Human relationship and psychology comports more with an origin in a God whose own pattern of relationship within the Trinity is reflected in our relationships with one another.

For example, we long for unity with other humans while at the same time yearning for a seemingly contradictory urgency to be seen as special and unique.  These longings aren’t at odds in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each being in total unity with one another while able to be their own unique and special selves.  Though this suggests that humans are in some way not okay because we haven’t been able to navigate this that successfully, our longings at least fit with that from which we were sprung.  Our desire for community and uniqueness are proper, we just aren’t able at all times to make them work together.

Again, our entire relational matrix revolves around love, the desire to be loved and to love.  If we are a reflection of who God is then it seems He too must be relationally focused and that seems less possible for a solitary divine personality than it does for a trinitarian God.  A trinitarian God is all about relationship and particularly about love.  The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, the Father loves the Spirit and the Spirit the Father, the Son loves the Spirit and the Spirit the Son, and there is no jealousy or competition for that love.  And this love has existed before we came to be.  Love finds its perfect expression in the Trinity and becomes the pattern for how our relationships should function, though, once again, this reveals our not being entirely okay as humans because we continue to fail to achieve our ideals and yearnings regarding love.

The trinitarian God also seems to make more sense as the source of the amazing diversity we see in our universe.  It is not that a solitary personality could not create diversity, but it seems to flow more readily from a God who is already a diversity within a unity.

The ‘Why Am I Not Okay’ Question

In the atheistic viewpoint there is no basis for saying I am okay or not except for a consensus among humans that certain behaviors are not appropriate or okay for us to engage in.  There is no absolute standard for right or wrong, rather, only a judgment on the part of other humans as to what is right or wrong.  Some atheists will hold that we can have ethical discussions despite not having moral absolutes, while others will say ethical discussions are moot.  That latter view fits better with the atheist perspective.  If there are no absolutes there is no basis for ethics.  In whatever way you choose to affirm or not affirm life (one proposed atheistic ethic) is none of my business unless it gets in the way of affirming my life, but even then, who am I to say that your failure to affirm my life is wrong.  Your viewpoint is no more valid than mine, so it is really a matter of who has power to enforce their viewpoint.

That viewpoint does not seem to fit with our experience as humans.  It seems that there are things that are absolutely wrong and right.  It always seems wrong to torture a child, to cheat another to get ahead myself, to want the destruction of anyone who does not agree with me, or to use someone to their detriment that I might have my desires satisfied.  It seems impossible to live as if there is not right or wrong other than what consensus at the time merits so.  Our hearts don’t naturally beat to that rhythm.

Given then, that we are not okay with the God who affirms that there is right and wrong, the question of how we get okay with Him certainly makes sense and, it seems, favors the view of Christianity, that the way to become okay is not something we can accomplish by doing better or getting motivated to do better.  Experience has told us that no one, or at least very view, have been able to achieve what might be called “good enough” for God to make things right with Him.  The view that we can do enough favors only the very few who are strong enough to comply with the highest standards of right or wrong and leaves those who were raised in dysfunctional situations or had little help toward being good at a fatal disadvantage.  That doesn’t seem fair.  And if we’re honest with ourselves, none of us does good enough.  How can the bar be set any lower than perfect?  And even the best of us seems to fall way below that.

Of course, if God doesn’t hold people accountable for not being okay and impose fatal judgments, then no sweat.  But no accountability doesn’t seem to fit with our own standards of justice.  Is God less just than us?  How could there be no repercussions for wrongdoing or reward for well-doing with Him?  What would be the point, then, of even worrying about how we do?  But we do worry and we do care.  And our sense of justice urges us on to reward well-doing and negate wrongdoing, the latter of which is most often pursued through punishing it.  Is this a marred reflection of Divine justice?  If so, it is nevertheless a reflection, a bread crumb back to the God who made us in His image.

So only Christianity seems to offer a way to be okay with God because it, alone among the religions of the world, says being good enough is impossible and not the path to right relationship with God.

The ‘How Do I Get Okay” Question

Christianity alone says that justice must be met with regard to how we live our lives but that there is nothing in us that will enable us to live the kind of lives God says is right or okay.  In fact, the Christian perspective is that “eternal life” (a life that is in right relationship with God) is only possible if we receive it as a gift.  And that gift is only offer-able because God took the justice we deserved upon Himself.  The second person of the Trinity took on human nature, never ceasing to be God, of course, which would be impossible, lived a perfect life, the perfect life we are unable to live, and then, undeservedly, was punished as a wrongdoer, executed, the innocent for the guilty.

None of the other systems sees this as necessary.  They don’t view humans as messed up enough to need a substitutionary sacrifice to cover our abject failure and inveterate inability to not do evil.  Evil is a word that is reserved only for certain people, certainly not descriptive of the vast majority.  But Christianity sees evil present in all of us and all of us on the precipice of being sold out to evil given the right circumstances (think William Golding’s Lord of the Flies or Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now).

In Hinduism there is forgiveness offered as a gift (Krishna offers Arjuna that possibility) but the forgiveness does not come because God saw justice satisfied on Arjuna’s behalf.  It is simply a gift.  That may seem more loving than requiring justice to be satisfied first, but that does not meet our need for justice.  The movie The Mission tells the tale of an indigenous population of Brazil, being exploited for slaves by the Spanish and Portuguese, and of the Jesuit priests trying to minister to them and fend for them against their oppressors.  One slave trader in particular, who has murdered his own brother over a love interest, is wallowing in guilt until one of the Jesuits invites him to do penance by working with him to help those he once captured and sold as slaves.  He asks the slave trader to carry all his instruments of war (armor, weapons) up to the heights above the falls to accompany him on his mission.  When the nearly physically destroyed slave trader and Jesuit troop finally come in contact with the indigenous people, one of the native men takes a knife and approaches the slave trader, the slave trader thinks to kill him and justly so.  But instead this Christian convert from the indigenous people cuts away the burden the slave trader has been carrying and throws it over the falls.  He is forgiven.  But his forgiveness only means something to him because in some smaller way justice has been served.  He has done penance and those he sinned against saw it and forgave  him.

But the problem as Christianity sees things with humans is that we cannot do enough penance to cover our guilt.  The deserved justice is death and separation from God.  So God has to do our penance for us.  Jesus chooses to die in our place.  If we accept his sacrifice as being for us and end our rebellion against the One who made us by acknowledging our inability to do enough, He forgives us.  He cuts the rope that connected us to our guilt and it falls away.  Then He places His Spirit in us to help us begin to live the way that is okay, that fits with love and rightness.  Our biggest problem, our own pension for evil, is dealt with through forgiveness and a new heart.  Jesus called it being born again.  It is a radical rebirth.

And this way is open to any and every one.  The vilest sinner can be forgiven and brought into relationship with God, and so can the most privileged do-gooder.  They are both equally in danger of judgment, guilty of rebellion, and each capable of then recognizing their desperate situation and capable of choosing to accept Jesus’ offer of forgiveness based in his own death on their behalf.  As one of Jesus’ apostles says, “All of us has sinned and fallen short of God’s glorious standard of right, being declared righteous before God freely because of the redemption that is in Messiah Jesus” (Paul, in his letter to the Romans, chapter 3, verses 23 and 24).

Conclusion

Being a unique answer to the questions does not make Christianity’s answer the truth, but the way its answer seems to fit with our reality in a way that the others do not, does indicate its truthfulness.  Christianity answers all the longings of our hearts.  All those longings are put there by the God who made us the way we are.  Our longings are a reflection of His character in our hearts.  And in this case we may say, the heart doesn’t lie.