What Makes Us Stand Out as a Church? Part 2

Last post wasn't exactly helpful in distinguishing what makes the Church stand out.

For this post, I will attempt to show how the Christian faith sets itself apart from other faiths, and here is where beliefs become important.  For the most part, most of the moral teachings conveyed by world religions are very similar.  What separates the great religions of the world is what they believe and articulate. 

1. The Judeo-Christian faith is the only faith tradition in which the Creator creates the world out of a sense of and a desire for relationships.  Love governs creation from the get go.  This is not the case with most of the other faith traditions. 

2. The Christian tradition is the only religion where God actually became human and died.  Most other faith traditions would consider this scandalous.

3. The Christian tradition holds up a God who not only commands His followers to love their enemies, but this God-in-flesh practiced what He preached by forgiving and dying for His enemies. 

So what? One might say.  What's the big deal in having such beliefs?

Just this: beliefs have consequences.  Regardless of what anyone would like to think, all people are fundamentalists.  Each person has a set of fundamentals that drive him or her to action. 

If at the heart of faith is a God who creates the world out of a desire to be in relationship to it, blesses it with His presence in taking on the very substance of creation, and then readily and willingly dies for that creation--even the not so good parts of it--then, this has some very important consequences for those who come to believe in that God.  For the followers of this God are called to embody the same sort of qualities.