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Christianity

Page history last edited by Paul Hazelden 2 years, 8 months ago

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Christianity

Introduction

Christianity, as it is commonly practiced, can appear to be very odd to the ordinary person.  And it seems to have drifted a long way from its roots: almost everybody likes Jesus, but hardly anybody (outside the Church) likes the Church.  It seems that the Church does not look very much like Jesus, to those looking in.  And, to be honest, it often doesn't look very like Jesus to some of us on the inside, either.

 

Christians are often very concerned about things which don't matter to most people: they worry about celebrating Easter on the right day, and who is allowed to officiate at a communion service, and a lot of other things which are important from a very specific perspective - but, if you don't share that perspective, they can seem very unimportant.  And sometimes Christians appear to be (and sometimes they really are) closed-minded, dogmatic, intolerant and bigoted.  But they are also very often involved in and volunteering for projects which care for the poor, the vulnerable and the excluded, and for the environment.  It's a mixed story.

 

Part of the communication problem comes about because of the long and complex history of the past two thousand years, and the language, doctrines, customs and culture which have accumulated over that time.  Much of the variety in doctrine and practice come about because different people have different perspectives and different priorities, which means there is actually a lot more agreement behind the scenes than appears from the outside.  Most of the odd things you see sort of make sense if you understand how we got there ... but who has time for that?

 

So: what I'm proposing here is to split off the details which only Christians are interested in, and focus mainly on the Christian faith from the perspective of Jesus, and what he had in mind, using only language and terminology which makes sense to people outside the church.  And it is an attempt to imagine what the Church Jesus had in mind might look like in the modern world.

 

 

The Christian Faith - For Ordinary People

One way of summarizing the message of Jesus is this: you can choose to live in a world where people pursue their own selfish interests through power, or you can choose to live in a world in which people pursue the interests of others through love.  But you can't do both.  Your Heavenly Father is building a Kingdom ruled by love; you are invited to be a part of it, and to make it real for other people.  One choice leads to life, a full abundantly experienced life; the other choice leads to conflict, isolation and death.

 

(If you think you have a better summary of Jesus' message, let us have it!)

 

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