The most popular religion in the world today isn’t Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity. It’s not Islam, Judaism, of Baha'i. Most people who subscribe to this religion don’t even know its name, and so they can be found in synagogues, temples, churches, and coffee shops alike. The most popular religion in the world today is defined by a single tenet: be a good person and when you die you’ll go to a better place. This used to be my religion, and I assumed that if you boiled all the world’s religions down, this was their essential message. I was taken aback when I learned that the Bible flatly rejected it. Now I understand why.

1. It's based on the idea that we get to set our own test

The greatest weakness with the idea that you’ll go to heaven as long as you’re a good person is also its greatest feature. This belief is so attractive because everyone gets to define what “good” is. We assume that what we mean by “good” is obviously what matters most to God. But what most people call good today is just an expression of twenty-first-century Western social norms. People, for example, might consider themselves good because they attend the right protests, avoid the wrong foods, and use the right pronouns. But other generations and other cultures around the world have had completely different definitions of what constitutes being good. Who says that you’re right? If you think you’ll go to heaven because you’re a good person, does it really make sense that you would get to define for yourself what it means to be good? Can you imagine writing the entrance exam for a university and asking to make up the questions yourself?

When a person came to Jesus and casually called Him “Good Teacher,” Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Luke 18:19). The point Jesus was making was that moral goodness is defined by and illustrated in the character and will of God. Even at their best, people always get it partly wrong.

2. It's based on the idea that we get to grade our own performance

When people say that they think they’ll go to heaven because they’re a good person, not only do they think they can define what good is, but they assume they know how good is good enough. I’ve never met a person who thinks that getting into heaven requires a perfect score. Some people assume that people should be graded on a bell curve. Others think that their good deeds can be used to cancel out the bad. But what legal system in the world grades people on a sliding scale? Or trades crimes for good deeds? You’re either guilty or you’re not.

In the simplest moral test described in the Bible, God gave Adam and Eve just one command, and they still broke it. God declared that the penalty for their sin would be death and banishment from the garden and His presence. There’s no hint of a three-strike rule or anything like it.

3. Salvation can’t be earned, so it’s offered as a gift

The world’s most popular religion teaches that you can earn a place in heaven by being good enough. The Bible teaches that we’re not good enough (Romans 3:10), so God created a way that He could offer salvation to people as a gift we can receive through faith. As it says in Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”

The bad news of the Bible is that we’re not good enough, and God isn’t impressed when we reject His standard of what’s good and make up our own. But the good news is that He loved us enough to pay the penalty for our sins and offer us salvation as a gift we receive through faith. Have you responded to the gift of love that He died to provide you? It’s the gift that we all need!

In awe of Him,

Paul