One of the more helpful insights into the Christian life is realizing that there is not just two ways to live, but three. Most people (myself included) want to break reality down into religious and irreligious. However, as the following quote illustrates, from a book that does an amazing job of conveying this truth, both the religious and irreligious are lost. What is needed is the third way...the way of the Gospel. You should really buy this book. It is quite helpful.
Jesus does not divide the world into the moral “good guys” and immoral “bad guys.” He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self-salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We are just going about it in different ways.
This means that Jesus’ message, which is “the gospel,” is a completely different spirituality. The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism. Nor is it something halfway along a spectrum between two poles--it is something else altogether.
The gospel...in its view, everyone is wrong, everyone is loved, and everyone is called to recognize this and change.
--Tim Keller, The Prodigal God
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