The Christian Life

The perfect Christian does not exist. You will not find a perfect Christian. Even though Jesus Christ lived a perfect life, He was not a Christian; He was fully God and fully man. If you don’t feel like you can live up to the characteristics of a Christian, in a way you are right. None of us are 100% true Christians. As Romans 3:23 states, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (New American Standard Bible).

Some people believe they can never become Christians because of their past, or think they aren’t worthy of being followers of God. They may think God doesn’t love them or won’t forgive them. They are wrong. There are plenty of people with bad track records who turn things around and become believers. 

As stated on X, “If a believer tells me they have a squeaky clean past I will heavily doubt them unless they prove to me otherwise. God should have killed me many times over.” It’s not too late to stop your current lifestyle and start embracing a life full of truth, love, and hope. In the Bible, we learn about Paul the Apostle who was a violent persecutor of Christians before becoming a Christian himself. Personally, if I had to choose between my old lifestyle and my new one, I wouldn’t want to go back.

The Christian life for many around the world is not what it has been for us Christians in America. We have faced minimal persecution, whereas believers in other parts of the world have faced severe hardship. I believe that is about to change sooner than most of us expect—very soon.

When you follow God in a world that hates God, you will be swimming upstream. Sure, God can bless you and make your life better, but it will almost certainly include trials, suffering, persecution, lost friends, etc. In fact, I would argue the hardships will exceed the blessings for most of us believers who are really trying to walk with God.

Why become a Christian then? For me, I realized the world didn’t have much to offer and that if there is no God, it’s all basically pointless. I thought many times about why I’m even doing the things I’m doing if there is no God. Why shouldn’t I just die today and avoid further suffering? Maybe so that I don’t hurt my family? I wanted to know if God really did exist. 

Given that God does exist, you can have a truly purposeful life full of hope. Given that God is infinitely just and merciful—and considering that we all deserve Hell—the hardships faced by believers will pay off one day. One day there won’t be a world like the one we live in where there is such evil, pain, joyless moments, and hopelessness. As 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 states:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Not to mention, without God you will have a void in your life as we are designed to worship God; just look at how all of us have worshipped something other than God at one point or another in our lives. You are better off to follow the truth in the long run. By simply rejecting God, you will end up being eternally tormented in the Lake of Fire for all of the evil you have done. By accepting God and being “born again,” you will secure yourself an eternity of life with the possibility of rewards. Those are the only two options. Purgatory does not exist.

If you have no interest in Christianity and think it’s stupid, I suggest trying to find just one thing you like about it, and praying to God to give you the passion to become a believer. Whether you end up in Heaven or Hell for eternity, the choice is ultimately yours, not God’s. If you want a basic idea of what the “New Heaven and New Earth” will be like—using human words to describe the indescribable—here is a post: