If you had to name the biggest difference between Christianity and all other religions,

what would it be?

I think the biggest difference is this.

It's only the Christian faith that says God became a man,

that God took on our humanity. It's a radical and startling claim, and theologians call it

the incarnation. As you'll know, if you've ever come across chili conkarni, chili with meat,

the karn bit of incarnation means meat or flesh.

So the incarnation refers to the idea of God's taking on flesh,

and not just his taking on a human body,

but he's taking on everything that makes us human,

including a human mind and a human soul.

Without giving up any of his deity, God the Son took on a true human nature,

and so according to that nature, he walked and talked, ate and slept,

experienced the whole range of human emotion,

and though he never sinned, did the kinds of things that all human beings do, including suffer and die.

As John's Gospel says, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This is such a unique claim that it moved the English poet Edward Shilito to write,

The other gods were strong, but thou wast weak.

They rowed, but thou did stumble to a throne.

But to our wounds, only God's wounds can speak,

and not a God has wounds, but thou alone.

Unthinkable, surely. But that is the claim of the Gospels, that a baby who was born to a virgin

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