What is Christianity
What is Christianity? It is a way of life, a beautiful understanding of the world, a realisation that we have purpose and meaning in our lives. It is a gift from God that changes people and nations, it is a hope for the future which is grounded in good evidence. It is key to my life.What do Christians believe? There is so much good stuff to tell you about. I can’t condense this to one sheet of paper. But this is a start! Firstly we believe in love. We are here because of love, not just the love between our parents, but the love that envisaged we would be alive in this world from long ago. We believe that love is more than a biological part of our ecosystem, or our evolution, but is a fundamental reason for our existence. And we say that God is love 1. Indeed the activity of God in creating creation, sustaining our existence, providing life and conceiving of and implementing our evolution is all about love.
So why are we here? Christians believe that God's nature is love. The key evidence of this is creation itself. What is the point of creation, of life, of our universe were it not that the creator has a wish to create, engage, be with and work with creation. Just like the potter 2 wants to create beauty, see it, use it, and the potter is part of it, so God is with creation. The Bible is a volume of 66 books. It contains many stories of love. One whole book, the Song of Solomon, is one long love poem. Christians believe that God’s wish for all of us is that we should live to our potential, and find joy and abundance 3 in our lives here; that whatever we have been in the past, however we have hurt or been hurt, there is a new life, a new start, new dreams and hopes, if necessary every day! Christianity gets its name from ‘Christ’, an English version of the Greek Christos. That means the same as ‘Messiah’ or ‘anointed one’. This person is a man, Jesus, who lived 2000 years ago and by which our years are numbered. He was born in Bethlehem which is in modern-day Israel, an hour’s drive from Jerusalem. He led a mostly unrecorded life until he was 30 years old, then he had a three year ministry of healing and teaching around Galilee in northern Judea (as it was called then). His ministry and teaching were remarkable, and one only has to look at the world today to see how much good has been done in the name of Jesus. One of his key stories 4 was about a son who asked for his inheritance from his father, and then blew it all on a high-life and false friends until he found himself in the gutter. Eventually he returned home, hoping to get a job as a servant because he knew his father was a good man and might have pity on him. The father is completely overwhelmed with joy to see him again, and forgives everything, putting on a party for him. His point - true love, honest love, God’s love overcomes and forgives all the pain and loss.
What happened to Jesus? His ministry included many miracles. More than 30 are recorded in the Bible and they range from turning water into wine 5, healing a withered hand6, feeding five thousand7 with the contents of a sandwich box and bringing the dead back to life8. There is faith in this. Today’s Christians, of course, were not there to see this happen, to record it on their phones or write articles about it. Few people could write anyway, but we do have a handful of quality reports on these events. In a world that requires years of clinical trials before a new drug is approved, where scientific proof expects all experiments to be repeatable, where fake news is everywhere, you may think Christians are on the back foot when it comes to proof that these events happened. But the historical evidence is good and is backed up by the experience of people now. Billions say they ‘know’ Jesus in their lives. The choice is yours. You can read the accounts for yourself. Accounts written by those who were anxious that one day everyone should read them. And then make a decision.
The biggest miracle of all Jesus was crucified by the Roman governor of the province at the time, a man called Pontius Pilate. 9 That is recorded not only in the Bible but by, for example, the Jewish historian at the time, Josephus 10. Crucifixion was a visible public punishment and not something people recovered from because, as with Jesus, the soldiers’ job 11 was to ensure death was gross, inhumane and complete. That usually came from asphyxiation. In order to breathe they had to lift themselves up from the pulling back of their arms, and that is excruciatingly painful. Eventually, exhausted with pain and energy they could no longer fill their lungs. Josephus tells us that sometimes thousands were crucified by the Romans in a single day. But the reports of Jesus’ death also tell of a resurrection 12. Jesus was crucified on the Friday and alive and well on the Sunday. That is key in our faith. There was something more than mere humanity in this man, and, according to those that met him, there was profound holiness.
God As hundreds of people met Jesus again, showing off his hands and feet where the nails had been, eating with them, walking with them, they came to realise that Jesus was not only human but, in some incomprehensible sense, Jesus was God as well. God the Father called him Son, in an attempt to explain the relationship in human terms. John was a young follower of Jesus who, after the three years of ministry, spent his later life leading a group of Christians in what is now Turkey. He writes that in Jesus, God came to live among us, but people did not recognise him. But when they did, they saw his glory – a man, full of God, full of grace (God’s kindness) and full of truth 13. Read the first chapter of John’s book in the Bible, his ‘gospel’ which he wrote in his old age, and you will get his drift of thoughts.
So why did God in Jesus visit us? Christians say this was all part of a long-term plan of God. Creation, dinosaurs, humans – full of selfish ambition, determination to ride roughshod over others, unwilling to engage with real love unless it suits them – and then Jesus. Jesus comes to demonstrate the extraordinary enormity of the love that God has for us 14. This Jesus of miracles and self-sacrifice, we believe, was a visitation of God into our world. He said, often, that if you want to know what God is like, look at him. That was not arrogance but truth 15. The ultimate show of love must, almost by definition, be when someone is willing to give up their life for others 16. Christians believe that in Jesus, God did just that. A good man dies – it happens every day. The son of God dies at the hand of God’s creation – it must be for some purpose. Better still, we would say, God in Jesus dies ultimately for us all. By that death we know there is no red line, no limit on what God does for us to know and have a gateway to experiencing the depth of love God has for us. Jesus came to be God with us, to show God to us, to make God imminent (here and now) for us and to dump the fear and guilt that came with old religion and explode with a new joy. And when he left, there was a new aspect of God he introduced Christians to. The Spirit of God17 which lives and moves in all of us, all the time. The God of love, willing to die for us in order to get our lives and minds on the right track. Christians say that Jesus came to reconcile humanity to God, and that one day he will come again to complete the work. What do you think?
1 1 Jn 4:7, 2 Jer 18, 3 Jn 10:10, 4 Luke 15:11-32, 5 Jn 2:1-11, 6 Mk 3:1-6, 7 Mt 14:13-21, 8 Jn 11, 9 Mt 27, 10 Antiquities 18:3:3, 11 Jn 19:32, 12 Mt 28 etc., 13 Jn 1, 14 Rom 8:38,15 Jn 14:9, 16 Jn 15:13, 17 Acts 2