Regardless of what Christians might have told you, or whatever impressions they might have given you, church is actually a place where the worst sinners may be found.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t fit in there.  (This also partly explains why some of the “Christians” you meet are such creeps). 
 
The Bible confirms this – that the majority of Christians are not saintly figures, but imperfect, blustering, and sometimes very immoral, people.  Amongst the patriarchs, Noah was a drunkard, Abraham was a liar and Jacob a coward and swindler.  Along the ancestral line of Jesus, we have Judah who visited prostitutes, and Tamar his daughter-in-law who prostituted herself to him (her husband, who was Judah’s son, had died and she desperately wanted a son to carry on the family line).  King David was an adulterer and murderer, and King Solomon one of his sons born out of that adulterous relationship was a womaniser who kept a harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines.  Then you have one of their grandsons, King Manasseh, who engaged in child sacrifices using his own kids !
 
The great apostle Paul, who was responsible for writing more than half of the New Testament, was once a murderer who violently opposed the early church, putting to death those (Christians) who dared to associate themselves with Jesus Christ.  One of his victims was in fact one of key leaders of the early church, Stephen.
 
The (black) list goes on.
 
It therefore comes as no surprise that the apostle Paul confessed in his letter to Timothy  that :
 
“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.  Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy 1 : 15)
 
Christians are the amongst the world’s worst sinners.
 
However, the distinction between Christians and non-Christians, both imperfect and sinners and the former perhaps more so, is that the Christian, by accepting instead of rejecting the death of Jesus Christ on the cross on his behalf, lives under the grace of God, forgiven of all his sins, his “criminal record” wiped clean in God’s eyes.

The Big Deal About Christianity

Is this such a big deal ?
 
Yes, if you accept that we are not born into a meaningless existence – just a mere carbon-based life form albeit more complex and intelligent than others – an improbable result of some random cosmic coincidence that somehow made our planet suitable for primitive cells to evolve into more complex life forms and than humans.
 
Which means that we are the handiwork of an Intelligent Designer, God.
 
Yes, if you accept that God is God – by nature wholly perfect - holy - and therefore unable to co-exist with moral imperfection or sin.
 
Which means that God cannot be approached by morally imperfect creatures like us.  To do so would be like walking into a fire – we will surely be consumed by the holiness of God.
 
Unless, there is a way to wipe away this imperfection, our sin.
 
This way was atonement.  Before Jesus Christ, atonement was carried out by the Jews by sacrificing the life of an innocent animal in the place of a human who should have died because of his sins.  A person could only approach the Jewish temple to worship God only after this sacrifice was made.
 
Jesus Christ replaced this highly unsatisfactory system of animal sacrifices (it was bloody and messy to say the least) with the sacrifice of His own life on the cross.  Like the animal sacrifice, Jesus was innocent of sin.  But unlike an animal sacrifice, Jesus was human.  Atonement by the substitution of a perfect human life in place of a sinner – this was a sacrifice superior to that using animals and permanently satisfies the wrath of God.
 
The only thing left for us to do is to acknowledge and accept this sacrifice made on our behalf.  This is what Jesus Christ meant when He said :
 
“I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father [ ie. God ] except through Me.” (John 14 : 6).
 
This is not all.  While being forgiven of sins means reconciliation with God in the present life, the best is yet to come.  

Life After God

In our life on earth we can only experience the goodness of God in part.  We experience the beauty of creation, and the joys of love and friendship, new lives and personal accomplishments.  But because God has given us the freedom to act in our folly and imperfection, we sometimes do things that hurt ourselves and others, despoil the environment (reaping its destructive consequences thereby).
 
In the life to come (after physical death), we will experience the goodness of God in full.  The environment will be restored.  Hurt, pain and disease will be eradicated.  And our transition to moral perfection will be complete.

A World Without God ?

At the opposite end of this, is hell.  Not a place where God gleefully orders His hapless detractors to be pitifully tortured, but a place where God has completely withdrawn His presence, all traces of His goodness, because it is impossible for a perfect God to exist in the same place with the imperfect – those who remain imperfect because they had rejected the opportunity to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. 
 
Imagine what it was like to be in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994.  Hutus hunting down and slaughtering Tutsis – fellow humans – with almost no feeling or remorse.  It is a world almost completely without a moral compass, people pillaging, raping and killing men, women and children at will.  Only a courageous few act with a conscience, doing what is morally right. 
 
Now imagine what it will be like to be in a place where there are absolutely no morals, where there are no “courageous few”, because God – and the goodness of God – is not present.  There is relentless pillaging, raping and killing at will, hunger and thirst and pain.  But because this is eternity, there is not even the reprieve of death.  This is hell.