What difference does Christ make to our lives?

This question is usually asked by atheists or agnostics who don’t believe in God’s existence (atheists) or claim that His existence cannot be proven (agnostics). They sometimes rephrase the same question by asking, “What difference does religion make, or what difference does Christianity make?” or “What’s in it that’s useful for me?” It is somehow a requirement they set before they will believe in Christianity. Here are the answers.

First Difference: Christ teaches us unselfish love. The world was turned upside down by twelve Jewish fishermen, not just with their Christian theology or teachings, but most importantly because of the love they had for Christ and a different kind of love they had for others because of their love for Christ. It was an unselfish, self-forgetful love instead of a self-regarding, self-conscious love. The world saw a love it had never seen before that made the pagans say, “Look how those Christians love one another!” This statement was based on a written account by Tertullian (A.D. 155–220).

It was a love extended to everyone instead of love limited to social class, race, or gender. It was a love of a particular individual or neighbor, not a love of “humanity” in a vague or general way. It was genuine, and people respect what is genuine because there was so much that was fake during the early years of Christianity, as there is today. That was how Christianity spread throughout the world, and that is how we can win the world again today in the exact same way.

Second Difference: Christ gives meaning to our lives. We will come to know that our lives are part of God’s plan and providence. Life is not just an empty, meaningless product of a cosmic accident. Life has an order, and God is the author, and the details of one’s life are connected like the details of a story. It has meaning, even in the parts that we don’t understand.

Meaning is necessary because if life is meaningless, it’s hard to keep on living. Although other religions claim to give meaning to our lives, they offer an abstract or generic set of ideas, such as the belief that the meaning of life is “to be a good person.” Christ makes it concrete, such as the meaning of our lives being to be like Christ, to be holy, to be a saint, or to love God above all things. And Christ gradually reveals to you whether you should live as a priest or a religious, or be holy in married life.

Christ is not just our beginning but also our end or our goal. Life is to work for him, to live for him, to love him, to hope for Heaven with him — an overall purpose for living, “a reason to live and a reason to die.” No matter how rich you are, you will still be poor, spiritually speaking, if you don’t have a purpose in your life. And a lot of poor people in poor nations are really rich if they have this precious thing. That’s why the suicide rate is so low in poor countries with strong religious faith and so high in rich countries with weak faith. If you have everything except God, you wake up one morning and ask yourself what your millions are all for and get no answer.

Third Difference: Death has a meaning. Christians’ reason to live is also their reason to die. Death is the greatest suffering in life because we lose everything: friends, spouses, relatives, wealth, jobs, etc. If a person has no religious faith, death makes life not only meaningless but cruel because what one has worked so hard to acquire, such as wealth, honor, pleasure, or power, will one day just disappear. It would have been better not to be born than to experience some kind of happiness only to have it all taken away.

It does not mean devout Christians become fearless in the face of death. Christians don’t go around asking to be martyred. But when death comes, they don’t panic because they know God, the “Good Shepherd,” leads them “through the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23:4). They know that death, humanity’s greatest fear and last enemy, has been defeated because Christ defeated it on Easter Sunday. So much so that St. Paul mocked death, saying, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Lastly: Christ gives us a deep joy. There are a lot of temporary pleasures and superficial happiness in this world, but not deep joy. We are in an era with more entertainment than at any other time in human history, and yet we are also the most depressed. Technology can’t make you happy. You can get addicted to it, but it can’t make you happy. Addiction is never equal to happiness. It’s the lowest form of happiness because it’s very temporary. Lasting happiness is found in relationships, and the greatest of all relationships is a relationship with God.