Did you know?

Christians do not believe their religion emerged from Judaism. Christian doctrine teaches that their belief system emerged along with Judaism from Abraham. They emerged together, not one from the other.

The idea that your soul will go to Heaven immediately upon your death is not biblical. The Bible actually teaches something quite different - that you wait in the ground after your death, until Christ returns and resurrects you. The soul going to Heaven upon ones death is a later addition designed to make a better sales pitch.

That "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son" cannot possibly be true. The Apostle Paul himself ruled this out without knowing what he was doing. In making his case against following the Judaic laws, he based his argument on the claim that a universal God would not be fair if he did not reveal those laws to the gentiles as well. But Paul committed the same error because there were millions and millions of gentiles that were not revealed these same messages. Paul, in ruling out Judaism because it rests on an unfair view of God, commits the same error because Christianity rests on an unfair view of God not revealing his message to the whole world. Paul simply did not know how big the world actually was.

That Jesus barely suffered at all in his trip to Earth. Certainly, Jesus spent one horrible day that most would not want to endure - or would they? According to the Gospel of John, Jesus was fully aware of what was happening and knew that once his mission was "fulfilled" he'd return to Heaven. One day of torture and then the rest of eternity in Heaven! What a great deal. Who wouldn't sign up for this bargain?

The only way Jesus could possibly suffer is if he did not know what his fate was to be. But John's Gospel rules this out, making Jesus' mission little more than a painful inconvenience. He knew he would be in Heaven later in the day so how bad could it really be?

If your baby dies, it goes straight to Hell. This is mainstream Christian doctrine. It is just not part of the sales package. Very simply, according to Christian belief, anyone who dies without actively choosing God's grace is destined for Hell. You can take some comfort in the later (primarily Protestant) assertion that God knew all along if your baby was going to be saved or not. He may have saved you baby because he predestined it to be saved. Or maybe not.

Catholic tradition dealt with this problem differently. They inserted the concept of "Limbo" so your dead baby did not have to suffer the torments of Hell. Recently, though, the Church in Rome has dispensed with this concept, which was never part of official doctrine. That still leaves the issue unresolved.

The "true" story of Christianity is quite a bit different from the version you'll hear from Christian evangelists and missionaries. This site is aimed at providing the information you need to make an intelligent choice about whether to follow this faith. It is the equivalent of kicking the tires, looking under the hood, and reading the fine print before making a huge commitment based on what the salesman is pitching.