I grew up going to church but I’m not religious now and I never really understood this part.
Please, no answers along the lines of “aha, that’s why Christianity is a sham” or “religions aren’t logical”. I don’t want to debate whether it’s right or wrong, I just want to understand the logic and reasoning that Christians use to explain this.
The simple answer is that the “you have to be good” Christians are not the same people as the “Jesus forgives no matter what” Christians. Beliefs and doctrines vary wildly throughout Christianity, and different Christians often believe contradictory things. This isn’t helped by the fact that the Bible itself, being a collection of many books by many authors, contains contradictory viewpoints. This allows believers to focus on the elements they like and ignore the ones they don’t.
Once I decided to treat religion seriously (I’m an athiest) and understand it is a major part of society, history, and the lives many (possibly most) people in my life I tried to do some research and understand what Christianity really was. I essentially came to the same conclusion, and just the idea of what God is varies wildly.
The thing I always wonder now is whether Christians (or religious people in general) really know, or even think about, just how different their beliefs might be. Even if they call themselves by the same thing (Christian, Catholic, protestant, etc)
The few times I’ve tried talking to friends about this I’ve gotten the impression that they don’t even understand or have never thought about this. I’ve just come to understand that there’s no one answer to any belief system. You have to ask an individual, and they might not even have any answers because they’ve simply not considered it before.
The lack of consideration is another important factor. Even a single person might hold contradictory views and beliefs simply because they haven’t really given them a whole lot of thought.