While Christianity is the predominant religion in the western community I still often have the impression that very few people actually know what it is about. Rather, very often I encounter (non-Christian) people that disagree with a ridiculous form of Christianity, that I would disagree with as well. This might seem strange, but I bet you are actually familiar with the problem. How often have you encountered non-scientists having very little understanding of evolution, statistics, climate change or the scientific method in general? I think these problems have the same underlying cause, we don’t talk to people that are different from ourselves and overestimate our knowledge.

So here’s the Christian faith in five main points:

1. God created the universe (this does not mean in 7 days) and he created humans (maybe through evolution, that’s not central to Christianity), because he loved us and wants to be with us.
2. However, we humans are not perfect. We sin all the time, I for example sin a lot (I’m self righteous, arrogant, greedy and proud, to name but a few). Instead of asking whether you sin, ask yourself whether you feel guilty every now and then. If yes, this is a strong indication that you have an inner moral compass, which standards are higher than your performance. A hint that this moral compass is not actually made by yourself, but by somebody else.
3. As such, we are not able to come close to God, because He does not tolerate unrighteousness. Exactly how you would not tolerate a murderer murdering in front of you. You would stop them, so he will stop us (Please note, it’s not only because we have done bad things in the past, but because we continue to do bad things, we’re not one-time offenders, but rather serial killers).
4. To solve this problem and have community with us, God came down in human nature as Jesus Christ. Jesus lived a perfect sinless life and took upon him all the sins of us humans. He offers us to take away our sin and give us His righteousness.
5. The only thing we have to do, is accept this. Importantly (and this is what so many people get wrong), I’m not saved, because I’m a good person (I’m not), but because Jesus is a good person. We christians are not better people, we are all sinners through and through. But Jesus died for our sins, and he offers to die for yours as well.

This is the Christian faith in a nutshell. Will every Christian agree with this? Most likely not, but most denominations (i.e. churches) would.