The Radicalness of the Gospel

How Christianity differs from every other religious and human system

Photo by Chelsea shapouri on Unsplash

(A six-minute read.)

This last weekend my wife and I found ourselves sitting around a table at a friend’s camp, talking about God with a bunch of people who are trying to figure out their spiritual convictions. There were a couple lapsed Muslims, a lapsed Hindu—and a lot of questions.

Describing their journeys of growing up in strict religious environments, which required constant prayers, fasts, and other religious rituals, they’d all come to the same basic conclusion: they felt there must be a God out there somewhere, but this God probably had very little to do with any “man-made” religion.

Indeed, what they found so troubling is the idea that there is this all-seeing God whose attitude toward us is dependent on our religious conformity.

“I can’t believe in a God who has emotions,” one of the lapsed Muslims thus said, “who gets angry if we forget to pray, or is happy with us just because we fast.”

“All the rules just seem so man-made,” another insisted.

“Like just an attempt to control people?” my wife asked—which elicited much agreement.

Such conversations—which are, honestly, my favorite experience in the whole, wide world, and something I could just do all day, every day—are very common in my world.

Whether it’s the deconstructing Christians, or the ones who’ve totally rejected and thrown away the Christianity of their childhood (like the father of my daughter’s soccer teammate, who shared his story with me last week), or lapsed Muslims, Hindus, or Catholics, the plotline is basically the same: they are done with the idea of a God whose attitude and actions toward them are determined by the degree to which they conform to meticulous and exacting rules and rituals—many of which seem to be man-made anyway.

And every time I have these conversations, I’m reminded of an incredible thought—and I try to share it with others in my bumbling and stammering way.

That thought is simply this: the gospel is so radical.

The uniqueness of the Jesus-story

Obviously, I’m biased. I see the world through Jesus-colored glasses and interpret other religious systems through the lens of a God whose very essence is—and every action flows out of—love.

And when I encounter those other religious systems, the reality of the Jesus-message and story stands in sharp relief.

What I find in Christianity, in distinction from other religious systems (while not claiming to be an expert on any religion other than Christianity, of course), is a personal God whose baseline attitude toward humanity is that of love. We do not earn God’s love, acceptance, and favor by what we do. We do not curry his grace by the rules we follow or the rituals we observe.

His favor, his love, his grace, exist prior to, during, and after our behavior (good, bad, or indifferent).

Indeed, at the very heart of the Jesus-message lies this very simple idea—that God sent Jesus to save us because we can’t save ourselves.

I remember reading a couple decades ago this very thought—which has influenced my understanding on the topic ever since. Writing in 1898 about the religious landscape in Christ’s day, Ellen White explained that “the principle that man can save himself by his own works lay at the foundation of every heathen religion.”

That’s big. It draws a sharp distinction between the religion of Jesus and the religions of man.

Other religions say we save ourselves by our work; Christianity says Jesus saves us by his work.

Other religions say we are worthy because we measure up; Christianity says we are worthy because we are children of God.

Other religions say we must hustle to gain the approval of God (or the gods—or some other unforgiving humanistic standard); Christianity says we are already the object of God’s delight—before and apart from our hustling.

Other religions say we must make sacrifices so God will love us; Christianity says God made the sacrifice because he already loves us.

And this is the radicalness of the gospel (literally, the “good news”), in all its uniqueness and beauty.

Heathen Christianity?

Of course, historically, it’s a little more complicated.

What so often gets presented as Christianity tends to fall into two ditches—which is why Christianity (or perhaps the Christendom version of Christianity) has also been one of the most dangerous and unsafe religions in the history of the world.

On the one hand, some take the freedom of the gospel and use it for all manner of evil ends.

Since the gospel announces God’s love for us apart from our behavior, some have, seemingly, used this idea as a license for abusive and unethical behavior.

This is what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing under the tyranny of Hitler, referred to as “cheap grace.” It’s a gospel without life transformation; a gospel that doesn’t really take root in the heart and lead to a life of love, compassion, kindness, and justice towards others.

On the other hand, there’s still a great deal of Christianity that implicitly—and sometimes explicitly—maintains the principles of “heathenism,” promoting the idea that our behavior curries the favor of God.

Very few people explicitly think or say this, of course, since such an idea fundamentally contradicts the very heart of the Christian message. But it does show up all too often.

Thus, there are strict rules about what people wear, listen to, eat, watch, or can or can’t do on various “holy days.” There are strict rules of conformity, leaving the implicit impression that if one doesn’t uniformly follow those rules, then they’re out of harmony with the community and therefore out of favor with God.

This is thus why there are so many Christians who are “deconstructing,” which is, in my opinion, an attempt—at the very least—to separate man-made religion from Jesus-derived religion.

So hear me out on this: the degree to which any version of Christianity places heavy emphasis on human-derived and human-powered behavior is the degree to which it still has vestiges of “heathenism” in its DNA.

And God sent Jesus to annihilate such human-derived religion—attempting to convince the world that we are already reconciled to him apart from anything we do (see 2 Corinthians 5:19).

The truth is, I believe there’s a longing in every human heart to step into and experience the beauty and freedom of a love-centered story that finds its zenith in the person of Jesus.

Such a love-centered story almost seems too good to be true to hearts that have been shaped and formed by the meritocracy that is human existence. In fact, I myself have to be reminded over and over again that it truly is true.

But the destiny and wellbeing of humanity depends, I’d submit, on the degree to which we allow ourselves to believe this story.

So let’s step into the radicalness of the gospel.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.