Are Christians “better” than other people?

Many people resist Christianity because they believe that Christians consider themselves “better than” or “above” non-Christians. This is absolutely not the case for real Christians! We fully know that we are not better than anyone else; moreover, we often know a multitude of non-Christians who are much “better” people than ourselves. This may sound somewhat paradoxical or backwards, but allow me to explain.

First of all, Christians believe God loves us, that He values our eternal soul, and that he alone is Good. In truth, God really is the only one who is good. We are all created in His image and yet I would assert that, by nature, we don’t have His goodness (or God-ness). While many would disagree, there is a very logical explanation for this but, not to digress, I’ll put forth that argument in a separate post.

That said, what we do have (i.e. what God instilled in each of us), Christian and non-Christian alike, is conscience. We all know inherently what is good and what is bad. Most of us, therefore, set about the task of doing what is, in fact, good. A large subset of us also know about (and try to adhere to) a set of rules known as the Ten Commandments. These commandments come from the book of Exodus and they, along with many other scriptures, actually document what we should do and what we should not do. Some people are much better at following them than others, however, none of us–if we are really honest with ourselves–fully follows this Divine law. It’s just too high of a standard; one that is far beyond our reach.

An essential part of becoming a Christian is discovering that we don’t innately have the ability to be truly “good” in the way that God originally intended us to be. We realize that if only we are willing to accept His free gift (Christ’s atonement..but again, for times’ sake..more on this later), God will receive us exactly the way we are, in our current state of “goodness”….or “un-goodness”. From there, He will teach us–through the Holy Spirit–truth, perseverance, discipline, honesty, purity, kindness; basically, goodness. Often, we still miss the mark but we gradually become better, we do more “good” for the world, and we please God. We don’t strive to become better than non-Christians but, knowing God, we eventually become better than our former selves, and far better than we could ever have been had we not chosen to trust in Him.