Imagine you're a psychologist whose job is to study marital relationships. Your goal is to find out what makes an effective marriage. You study what is beneficial. You study what is detrimental. At the end of your study, you report your findings to a married couple and say, "I have discovered what can make your relationship with each other healthier. When both of you come home, both of you go off and do your own thing instead of spending time together. If you spent more time together when you immediately came home, debriefing the day's events together, you'd understand where the other is mentally more clearly."
What's the problem with this approach? As a psychologist, you've failed to understand the true nature of an effective relationship--you've provided the couple with a logical set of rules to follow, but there's no heart in it. The couple, now consciously aware that they must perform certain actions to have a more loving relationship, won't be able to strengthen their relationship because they are following logic rather than their passions. They're simply doing the math to get the result.
So, maybe you're just "scratching the surface" of Christianity, just getting into things, unsure of your own beliefs, and wondering, "Gee, I'd love to be a Christian, but I just don't know how I could possibly choose one religion over all the others."
Well, I'll simplify things for you.
How about starting with a belief system that offers a way of life revolving around a heart attitude rather than a set of ritualistic, dragged-out rules to follow? You will find that in almost every religion and system of belief besides Christianity, there are certain moral tenets to follow which will grant you access to paradise/ heaven. The Christian realizes that this is not so.
As Ephesians 2:9 states:
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God" (NIV).
As was seen in the above-example, it is very hard to maintain passion while following a set of rules and "Do this, don't do that's." It is also very hard to imagine the Creator of a universe as grand and vast as ours having his creatures surrender to such a tedious process. That is precisely the reason for Jesus: God knew that we weren't good enough to make it ourselves, so he sent His son, Jesus, as an atoning sacrifice for us. And what Jesus is asking for is not a life full of "good deeds" and pie-in-the-sky religious talk, but a relationship. He doesn't ask that we be perfect, but that we recognize our imperfections and surrender them to him, understanding that good deeds are, in themselves, empty.
Back in Jesus' time, his most fervent haters were the religious teachers of his day--the Pharisees. The Pharisees were proud men of a pious heart, intent on keeping all the Old Testament laws, but so intent they forgot the most important element of all: the heart.
As Jesus says in Matthew 6:5:
"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites [Pharisees], for they love to pray on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full."
The Pharisees probably lived more righteous lives than you or I, in the sense that they kept the law, but they lacked a true, passionate relationship with their savior, which was precisely why their deeds were so meaningless and dead.
So, the next time you have any doubts about being a Christian or why you should be a Christian as opposed to any other system of belief, ask yourself a simple question: Do I want to merely try and conquer my problems by making myself a slave to a system of rigid obedience, or do I want a changed heart? Do I want to be a Pharisee, or a follower of Christ?
References
Ephesians 2:9 (NIV)
Matthew 6:5 (NIV)