I believe that the universe is ruled by a personal God who is very concerned about the affairs of men. I believe that we are all going to die someday. But I believe that this fact is proof that somehow, somewhere, sometime, something went terribly wrong. You just cannot convince me that man was made to die. It wasn't supposed to happen that way. Somebody blew it. So sin entered the human sphere, and man is destined to die as a consequence.

But man's failure is not God's failure. God did not become less God because of man's fall. So God's standard is still perfection, but no man can live up to it.

Our solution to this, is to expect God to lower His standards a bit out of recognition for our limitations. But God is not willing to be less holy to compensate for our imperfections.

So what does He do?

God is a God of justice. To satisfy justice, all He has to do is destroy us. But God is also a God of love. Because He is a God of perfect justice, he cannot lower His standard, but because He is also a God of love, He wants to redeem us. God's solution to this, was to send His own Son to live a perfect life. Jesus lived a perfect life, and then preceded to take the punishment for all of our sin. He became guilty of our sin so that we could inherit his righteousness. So we all have a choice. We can live a perfect life, and then stand before God in our righteousness and be judged on the kind of life we have lived, or we can stand before God clothed in Christ's righteousness, and be judged on the kind of life Christ lived.

But remember, God's standard is absolute perfection. In my case, the choice is quite simple, because I have already blown the first option. But that's the point. The Bible says that all have sinned and come short of God's glory. So we're all in the same boat. There is nothing we can do to be good enough for God.

Without His mercy, we are sunk. This, then, is why I am so troubled when I see sincere people prostrating themselves over and over again in hopes that God will love them. God's love is always given freely. We don't need to do anything (indeed we can't do anything) to earn his love and mercy. It is only available as a free gift. This is the essence of the Christian gospel.

I hope you can see that, when viewed from this perspective, all religions come up short, because all religion is about man reaching up to find God, and God is unreachable. Not only is God unreachable, but he is absolutely unreachable. But while we cannot reach God, God can reach us. So it is of the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed. The whole purpose of religion is to keep us so busy trying to be good enough for God, that we cannot see his hand of mercy reaching out to us.