It all sounds like a bad bar joke doesn’t it? Who is right and who is condemned? Christianity, Buddhism or Atheism. Which one is the biggest religion out there? It’s interesting how some atheists seem to spend more time proving there is no God than there are Christians spending time with the God they believe in.

For me Christ is so much bigger than Christianity. Don’t get me wrong, I am a believer in everything Christ stands for. I am not too sure if I believe in everything that Christianity stands for. I love this quote from Bono: "I have this hunger in me…everywhere I look, I see evidence of the Creator. But I don’t see it as a religion, which has cut my people in two. I don’t see Jesus Christ as being any part of a religion. Religion to me is almost like when God leaves – and people devise a set of rules to fill the space."

How can absolute Love offend or show favouritism? If the God of the Bible is firstly love, and secondly has created man, how can there be any hint of discrimination in his Heart? Why would He love a homosexual any less or love a so-called Christian any more (I just lost a few Facebook buddies with that statement)? How can any utterance of perceived wrong doing of a child cause offense to a father who is Love utterly, completely and supremely? I believe that the God of the Bible, whether you believe in Him or not, has been misrepresented. If you don’t want to believe in God, at least don’t believe in the correct version of who He truly is.

When Jesus say “I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no one gets access to God, if it isn’t through me.” (Joh 14:6), He’s not trying to be exclusive. He is expressing an utterance of an all-embracing, all-inclusive absolute loving heart for the whole world. He’s saying that “Whether you believe in me or not, I am restoring access to God for you as well. I hope you would believe, but that’s not my motivation. I am going to do die for you anyway.” When John saw Jesus for the first time he said “There is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (Joh 14:6). 1John 2:2 - “and he--he is a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world (YLT) . Christ came to restore access to God. For everyone. Let the penny drop in your heart. It’s not offensive. It has just been evangelised in an offensive way.

Whether you are a believer or not, the story of Christ has not always been told the way it should have. I believe that God is not affected by our injustices. Only we are. As far as He is concerned the species of sinner has been extinct for 2000 years (2 Cor 5:21). In fact Ephesians 1:4 states that Christ has chosen us before the foundation of the earth to be found holy and guiltless before the Father. If Christ in fact did come to save the whole world as John said, then surely Ephesians 1:4 includes everybody as well.
It was people, not God, who used the term Christian for the first time (Acts 11:26). Just because it is written in the Bible is not to say God said it. Christianity has come a long way since then, and there is nothing wrong with calling yourself Christian. I think it’s important to understand what being a believer in Christ is truly all about. For starters, it’s about having no prejudice in your heart whatsoever, and it’s about including the whole world in God’s loving heart, whether the whole world believes it or not.

Remember, read the bible in context of: an absolute loving God, the absolute redemption work of Christ FOR THE WHOLE WORLD, and of course, in context in which it was written.
You are blessed and sinless before God. May His faith, not your own, convince you of that.