They thought we were mad.

When I was 11, my friend Daniel and I claimed that we were going to have eternal life. It was an idea our classmates thought was nuts.

Despite being surrounded by cultural Christianity, the core tenets of the Christian faith were still alien to most in the classroom. Even the concept, written in John 3:16, that churches put on posters and promulgate often, had up to that point never been contemplated by my peers.

As my form debated our unexpected views, it became clear their conception of the afterlife under Christianity was decidedly unbiblical. It was the same idea recently expressed by Donald Trump. In August, he was asked “Do you believe in heaven?”.

He replied: “I do. If I’m good, I’m going to heaven. And if I’m bad, I’m going someplace else, like over there, right?”

But Christianity, as the bible explains, rejects this notion. It teaches that none of us is able to receive eternal life though simply trying to be good. Paul writes in Romans 3 (NTFE):

God’s covenant justice comes into operation through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah, for the benefit of all who have faith. For there is no distinction: all sinned, and fell short of God’s glory—and by God’s grace they are freely declared to be in the right, to be members of the covenant, through the redemption which is found in the Messiah, Jesus.

In other words, our nature is such that we cannot meet the level of holiness in our own right. We need God’s grace given to “all who have faith”, and it has to be a genuine faith as James 2 points out (“faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead”).

I was reminded of that moment from my childhood when reading N.T. Wright’s biography of Paul. He talks about the importance for Christians in getting to grips with the biblical texts and what they really mean. He writes:

[Paul’s] towering intellectual achievement, a theological vision of the One God reshaped around Jesus and the spirit and taking on the wider world of philosophy, would provide the robust, necessary framework for all. When the church abandons the theological task, with its exegetical roots in the work of Paul and his colleagues, we should not be surprised if unity, holiness, and care for the poor are sidelined as well.

Cultural Christianity has many merits, but it lacks, as they say on the packet, the active ingredient.