Why Christianity? What Makes It Different?

Aren’t All Religions Basically the Same?

You hear it everywhere: “All religions are different paths up the same mountain.” “They all teach the same basic thing - be a good person.” “It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you’re sincere.”

It sounds nice. It sounds tolerant. But there’s a problem: it’s not true.

The major world religions don’t just disagree on small details. They disagree on the biggest questions imaginable - questions like: Is there one God, many gods, or no God at all? Is the universe created or eternal? Do you live once or get reincarnated forever? Is there a heaven? What happens when you die?

These aren’t minor differences. They are opposite answers to the most important questions in life. They can’t all be right at the same time - for the same reason that 2 + 2 can’t equal both 4 and 7.

What the Major Religions Actually Teach

Let’s compare the world’s largest religions on their core claims. This isn’t to disrespect anyone - it’s to take them all seriously enough to notice that they say very different things.

Notice something crucial: these religions disagree on whether Jesus is God, whether he was crucified, whether there’s one God or millions, whether the Messiah has come, and how people are saved. These aren’t “different paths up the same mountain.” They’re different mountains entirely.

Christianity and Judaism: The Closest - and Most Important - Comparison

Of all the world’s religions, Judaism has the most in common with Christianity. Christians and Jews both look to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and they share the same Old Testament Scriptures. They agree on creation, moral law, the reality of sin, and the expectation of a coming Messiah. But the New Testament teaches that God is fully known only through His Son: “No one who denies the Son has the Father” (1 John 2:23). Jesus made the further claim that he was God: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58).

So what’s the disagreement? It comes down to one enormous question: Has the Messiah already come?

Jews say no - they are still waiting. Christians say yes - Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah the Old Testament prophets described. Christianity does not reject Judaism; it claims to be its fulfillment. Jesus himself said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17).

So the question becomes: does Jesus actually match what the Old Testament prophets predicted about the Messiah? Here’s where the evidence gets remarkable.

Old Testament Prophecies Jesus Fulfilled

The Old Testament contains hundreds of passages that Jewish and Christian scholars alike have identified as messianic - describing what the Messiah would do, where he would come from, and what would happen to him. These were written centuries before Jesus was born. Here are just a few:

• 1
  Born in Bethlehem. The prophet Micah wrote: “But you, Bethlehem… out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2). Written ~700 BC. Jesus was born in Bethlehem (Luke 2:4–7).
• 2
  Pierced and killed. The prophet Zechariah wrote: “They will look on me, the one they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10). Written ~500 BC - centuries before crucifixion was even invented as a method of execution. Jesus was crucified (John 19:34, 37).
• 3
  Betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Zechariah also wrote: “So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver” (Zechariah 11:12). Judas betrayed Jesus for exactly 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15).
• 4
  Buried with the rich. Isaiah wrote: “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death” (Isaiah 53:9). Written ~700 BC. Jesus was buried in the tomb of a wealthy man, Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 27:57–60).
• 5
  The suffering servant. Isaiah 53 describes a figure who would be “despised and rejected,” who would bear the sins of others, and who would be “led like a lamb to the slaughter.” This was written 700 years before Jesus, and both Jewish and Christian scholars recognized it as messianic.

Christianity Makes a Claim No Other Religion Dares to Make

Here is what makes Christianity truly unique among world religions: its central claim is a public, historical event that can be investigated.

The heart of Christianity is not a philosophy, not a feeling, not a private vision. It is a claim that a specific man - Jesus of Nazareth - was publicly executed by the Roman government, buried in a known tomb, and then physically rose from the dead three days later, and afterward appeared alive to hundreds of eyewitnesses (1 Corinthians 15:6).

The apostle Paul said it directly: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Paul essentially told the world: if you can disprove the Resurrection, Christianity is finished.

No other major religion makes such a risky, testable claim:

• 1
  Islam’s foundation is a private revelation. Muhammad reported that the angel Gabriel spoke to him in a cave - alone. No one else was present. You cannot historically verify a private experience.
• 2
  Hinduism’s foundation is philosophical, not historical. The Vedas and Upanishads contain ideas about the nature of reality - but they don’t claim that specific, verifiable historical events prove those ideas true.
• 3
  Buddhism’s foundation is personal enlightenment. Buddha offered a path to end suffering - but his authority rests on personal experience, not a public historical event that others could confirm or deny.
• 4
  Christianity’s foundation is a public event. The Resurrection happened in a specific time, in a specific place, in front of specific witnesses - and it can be historically examined. This is why the previous lessons in this curriculum have focused so much on history and evidence.

What Jesus Claimed About Himself

Many people say, “Jesus was a great moral teacher - but I don’t believe he was God.” That sounds reasonable. But here’s the problem: Jesus didn’t leave that option open.

Unlike other religious founders, Jesus didn’t just teach good things. He made claims about himself that forced people to make a choice:

• 1
  He forgave sins - not sins against himself, but sins against other people. Only God has that authority. (Mark 2:5–7)
• 2
  He said “I and the Father are one” - and the people listening understood exactly what he meant, because they picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy. (John 10:30–33)
• 3
  He said “Before Abraham was, I AM” - using God’s own name from the Old Testament (Exodus 3:14). His audience understood this as a direct claim to be God. (John 8:58)
• 4
  He accepted worship - something no faithful Jew or prophet would ever do, because worship belongs to God alone. (Matthew 14:33, John 20:28)

This is what makes Jesus different from every other religious founder. Muhammad never claimed to be God - he claimed to be God’s messenger. Buddha never claimed to be God - he claimed to have found a path to enlightenment. Only Jesus claimed to be God himself, walking among us.

Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?

C.S. Lewis - the famous author of The Chronicles of Narnia and one of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers - noticed something important. He argued that Jesus’s claims about himself leave us with only three options:

• 1
  Liar. Jesus knew he wasn’t God but said it anyway to gain followers. But liars don’t typically produce the most profound moral teaching in history, inspire billions to lives of love and sacrifice, and then die for their own lie without ever breaking.
• 2
  Lunatic. Jesus genuinely believed he was God, but was delusional - like someone who thinks he’s a poached egg, as Lewis put it. But lunatics don’t produce the Sermon on the Mount, outsmart the cleverest lawyers in the country, or build a movement that changed the entire course of human history.
• 3
  Lord. Jesus was telling the truth. He really is who he claimed to be - God in human form.

Lewis’s point was devastatingly simple: the one thing you cannot say is that Jesus was “just a great moral teacher.” A great moral teacher doesn’t claim to be God unless he actually is. A merely human teacher who claims to be God is either lying or insane - neither of which qualifies him as a “great moral teacher.”

The “One Less God” Argument - And Why It Fails

You may have heard atheists say something like this: “Christians reject thousands of gods - Zeus, Thor, Vishnu, Ra. Atheists just reject one more god than Christians do.”

It’s a clever sound bite. But it’s logically flawed. Here’s why:

Christians don’t reject Zeus, Thor, and Ra for the same reason atheists reject the Christian God. Christians reject those gods because the evidence and arguments point to a very specific kind of God - a timeless, spaceless, immensely powerful, personal Creator - and Zeus, Thor, and Ra don’t fit that description. They’re characters in stories about powerful beings within the universe, not the Creator of the universe itself.

In other words, the arguments for God’s existence from previous lessons (the cosmological argument, the moral argument, fine-tuning) point to a specific kind of Creator. The question is which religion’s description of that Creator best matches the evidence. That’s a very different question from “do you believe in any god at all?”

Key Words to Know

Common Questions & Objections