Articles

Christianity

Posted by Paul Hazelden on September 17, 2021 at 9:31am

[Back to Spiritual Challenges]

When talking about a religion or belief system, please be particularly careful to ensure that any comments are fair and helpful.

Introduction

Christianity, as it is commonly practiced, can appear to be very odd to the ordinary person.  But then, the Christianity we see today is two thousand years old, and a lot can happen in that time.

Many people have the impression that Christianity has moved a long way from its roots: almost everybody likes Jesus, but hardly anybody likes the Church.  It seems that, to those looking in from the outside, the Church does not look very much like Jesus.  And, to be honest, it often doesn't look very much like Jesus to those inside the Church, either.

Christians often seem to be very concerned about things which don't matter to most people.  One of the important historic conflicts was about the date on which Easter should be celebrated.   But, even today, many Christians have strict rules about things like who is allowed to officiate at a communion service; they worry about which colour robes the Priest should wear at which time of the year, and a lot of other details which are only important (if at all) from a very specific perspective - and which seem very unimportant to most other people. 

Sometimes Christians appear to be (and sometimes, like many people, they really are) closed-minded, dogmatic, intolerant and bigoted.  The Church has often been - officially, at least - on the side of the rich and powerful, keeping the unwashed masses in their place. 

But Christians have also been on the forefront of much social change, they have created most of the best organizations and structures within our society (such as hospitals, schools, universities and charities) and today they are also very often involved in running and volunteering for projects which support social change, which care for the environment, and which help poor, vulnerable and excluded people.  It's a mixed story.  The Church and Christian people have often been pulling in different directions.

At least part of the difficulty people have with Christianity does not come from the reality on the ground.  Some of the difficulty comes from history and culture, from what is assumed about Christianity, and from memories of pictures and fantasies created in the Middle Ages.

Some of the difficulty comes from the social reality that a significant number of people today attended Sunday School as children, and then dropped out of church when they become teenagers, so their understanding of the Christian faith is shaped by messages produced for children, and this understanding is then passed on to others.  As fewer people attend church, fewer attend Sunday School, and this child-level understanding is turned into folk-memory and passed down the generations, accumulating more strangeness along the way.

But some of the difficulty comes from what is actively communicated by the Church.  And a large part of the communication problem comes about simply because Christianity has this long and complicated history stretching back two thousand years: inevitably, a great deal of teaching, language, customs and culture have accumulated over that time.  Much of the variety in doctrine and practice come about because of the different priorities and pressures experienced at different times and places, the many different perspectives on the events of those two thousand years, and the ideas surrounding those events.

All of which means there is actually a lot more agreement between the various parts of the Christian faith than you can see from the outside.  You hear about the disagreements, because that is what gets reported, and what generates noise.  You don't hear much about the sensible stuff, and the things we agree about.  Every now and then, a Bishop will hit the headlines with some odd idea or interesting political comment, and it always produces the same response: why doesn't the Bishop talk about spiritual matters?  The answer is normally fairly obvious: the Bishop does talk about such things, constantly, but these messages never get reported, they never make the newspaper headlines because they are not news.

So there is a great deal of agreement and cooperation between different Christian groups, but it is mainly happening quietly, 'behind the scenes' - and most of the disagreement is about issues which the Bible says little or nothing about.  Most of the odd things make more sense when you understand how we got here ... but, apart from satisfying our intellectual curiosity, there is very little benefit to be gained from understanding such details.

There is a big difference between many of the things which people are interested in arguing about and the things which are historically central to the Christian faith.  And some of the difficulty in communicating about the Christian faith comes about because people who have grown up in a 'Christian' culture (and many who have not) tend to assume that they understand Christian jargon, theology and principles, and then assume that all Christians believe and practice things according to their understanding.  I have frequently been told that I am a Christian, and therefore I must ... whatever.  And when (as often happens), I say that is not the case, the other person tells me I am 'not a proper Christian', or some such phrase.  They 'know' (for example) that Christians are bigoted, so if I claim not to be bigoted, then (they conclude) either I am lying, or I'm not really a Christian.

The fact is that Christians disagree about a great many things, but most of them are not central to the historic Christian faith, and you have to put some effort in if you want to understand the rest: it is not trivial or trite.  On the other hand, it is, I believe, worth putting in some effort to understand the important bits - because, apart from anything else, our civilization has been shaped by it.

We are aiming to focus mainly on the Christian faith from the perspective of Jesus, using only language which makes sense to people outside the church.  As we do this, we can attempt to imagine what the Church might look like if it concentrated on following Jesus in the modern world.  We will be putting less emphasis on the details which only Christians are interested in,

As always, if anyone wants to offer a different framework or strategy, please let us know.

The Gospel Message

As many people know, the word 'gospel' simply means 'good news'; it is the term used by the early Church to describe the ministry and message of Jesus.

Jesus spoke a clear and powerful message to the Jewish people of His day.  Here is one way of summarizing His message.

  • The kingdoms of this world rule by power, but your Heavenly Father is building a kingdom of justice and peace, ruled by love, and He invites you to be a part of this kingdom - both to live as a citizen and to make it real for other people.  You can choose which kingdom you want to live in, whether to accept or reject His invitation: one choice leads to 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, please let us have it!  But this is a message which was expressed in terms which communicated powerfully to His hearers - to the Jewish people of His day; they don't necessarily communicate His message as well to people who do not share that cultural and religious background.

The early Church seems to have adopted a simpler gospel summary: 'Jesus is Lord'.  This contained a dual message - on the one hand, it expressed allegiance to Jesus as your one lord and master; on the other hand, it rejected the political authority of Caesar.  Again, this spoke clearly and powerfully to the people of that time, but it speaks less clearly to most people today.

Since then, people have expressed the gospel message in many different ways.  Here is one possibility.

  • Choose life; love everyone; build justice.

Choose life.  Once you see it, the whole Bible is simply a series of messages on this one theme - meditations on what it means, and stories which explore the many ways it works out in the real world.  God wants you to choose life, because He loves you and wants the best for you.  Jesus told us and showed us what it means.  And because because we are all connected, none of us can fully live without a community or without a wider complex ecosystem, to choose life for me means to choose life for everyone and everything.

Love everyone.  Love God, love your neighbour, love yourself, love your enemy.  Love one another.  Jesus made it very clear.  Don't just have warm feelings about them: love them, act in ways which demonstrate the unconditional love God has for everyone.  God is love, so follow His example.  Offer encouragement, help and practical support to those who are not interested and those who don't deserve it, because God sends His sun to shine on everyone, good and bad alike.

Build justice.  God loves everyone, so He doesn't want anyone to be hungry or hurt or abused.  He knows what a wonderful world this could be if we would only share and support one another; if we would only make it our aim and priority to be peacemakers, creating the conditions for justice and peace.  Justice is a theme throughout the New Testament, but we often miss it because we translate the word as 'righteousness' - which is the small, personal aspect of the much bigger social project we are committed to if we choose to follow Jesus.

Restore relationships.  This is one vital way in which we see the gospel message bearing fruit in everyday life.  We inevitably hurt one another, and have a natural desire to see wrongdoing punished; but, within God's Kingdom, the harm done by wrongdoing is primarily understood to be the damaged relationship, and the primary goal is a restored relationship.  This is why forgiveness is so important: it does not undo the harm, but it heals and restores the relationship - if punishment is required, then we can leave it safely in God's hands.  And accepting forgiveness is the other side of the same coin: the relationship cannot be restored as fully as it could be, if one party is unable to let go of their guilt.

Christianity - for Everyone

Here we are attempting to use only language and terminology which makes sense to people outside the church.

The 'Ground Up' project articles:

Older articles from the previous site, which will probably need to be re-worked at some point:

Christianity - for Christians

Here we are writing for Christians, and for anyone interested in Christian thought and practice.

External Links

Here are some other websites and articles we think are helpful.

 

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