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Posted : 21 Dec, 2008 05:08 PM
The Basics of the Christian Faith
The Basics of the
Christian Faith
The
Beginning
God
created the universe out of nothing. God did not create himself � he has
simply been there for all eternity, past and present and future. He need
not create himself, as he is God, and beyond our Comprehension.
He
created the universe, the stars, and the earth in seven days, and
everything was �good� before the seventh day. It is at this point that
Lucifer falls from heaven. Lucifer falls not because God made him to
fall, but his own pride gets in the way. It brings him to the point where
he wishes to usurp the Throne of God, and place himself on equality with
God � preposterous. He is cast out from heaven, and thrown to the earth,
along with �a third of the stars of the sky�, which would refer to the
angels that joined him in his rebellion.
i.
This brings up a delicate topic � free will. Why would
God be so foolish as to give his creation free will to choose? Well, honestly,
if one were forced to love God, then they would simply be no different from a
robot programmed to sweep a floor. God gave free will to give us the
opportunity to participate in the fullness of love, the fullness of worship,
based on our own choosing, not his.
ii.
There are consequences, of course. Just as you have are
free to swipe a twenty from your mothers purse, or
leave it there and abide by her rules, so you will be punished if you choose to
disobey her. She is your authority � she bore you into this world. So it is
with God � he is our authority, he is the one who created us, who knit us together
in our mothers womb.
iii.
Punishment by God should not be seen as something
unloving, for it is the fullness of this love that punishment is brought.
Discipline is given to any creature who is in
authority over another. Just as a father disciplines a son because he loves
him, and wants to see him go right, so God punishes us for sin, if only to
bring us to the knowledge that we have wronged the one who loves us dearly. On
earth, while we still live, every trial, every tribulation is a means to get
our attention � our attention on the God who loves us, and is flashing warning
sign after warning sign to bring us back into his fold.
iv.
So we move to the issue of Hell. Why would God create
such a place? Surely this is not the act of a God who loves us deeply, and
wants only our best. Hell is a place of eternal punishment for those who have
not followed God. It is not a place that God places us into, rather, it is a
place that we have created for ourselves by choosing not to follow him. So we
have refused to follow him in our earthly, mortal lives, so those choices will
follow us into eternity, either leading us to eternal life, or eternal
separation, hell being the latter, of course. Hell is simply separation from
God. We, every human being, has a choice to make in his life, whether he will
listen to the call of God and follow him, or to make his own path � one
contrary to what God has shown us, and refuse to follow him. So a man makes his
own grave, his own punishment. It is said in scriptures that God does not wish
for any to perish, but all to come to repentance and life.
So
God created man on the sixth day, and on the seventh he rested. Man was
perfect, and created to be the authorities on earth, over all the
creatures of the sea, land, and air, and was commissioned to lead all
creation in worship of God. Very simply, we were the high priests. I
think a lot of people are confused here and feel as though this is some
sort of thing where God needs us to worship him. He doesn�t. Infact, he is so far independent of us that we need
�him-, rather than the other way around. He is the means in which we
live, he gives us breath every moment, and without him we are nothing. It
is our duty to revere the very being who created us � just as a child
adores his mother, so we adore our spiritual father. I also think the
word worship must be clarified. Worship is not as you perhaps have come
to believe it. It is not a set apart time of day where I bow down to the
ground and bow before some image. No, worship is simply our expression of
being in relationship with God throughout our lives. In a sense, it is
being knowledgeable and maintaining simple reverence of God throughout
our days. I can worship God in anything, be it work, sleep, or
relaxation. Worship is difficult to explain very simply, as it is a broad
broad spectrum which can not often be limited
to one thing. So, as simply as I can make it, Worship is living in
relationship and knowledge of God.
Sin
Sin
is missing the mark. Now there will be arguments regarding God creating
evil. I do not hold to that belief in the slightest. I believe that God
has created us as a people that he wanted to give freedom to. Freedom to
love him, or freedom to refuse him. To refuse
him would be sin, thus, in some strange way, we allowed evil into our
lives when Eve bit the fruit. The origins of evil and of sin are not
nearly as important as the grace we�re given for committing such acts,
though. To dwell on evil only invites such things into our lives. So God
gives a single rule in the Garden of Eden, not to eat of the fruit of the
knowledge of good and evil. A simple rule? One rule for eternal life, and
the punishment, clearly stated, is death. Free will works, and Satan,
Lucifer, the Serpent, influences Eve enough that she bites � literally.
Adam joins, and soon both realize they are naked, that they have missed
the mark.
Even
in this, where death was guaranteed, and would work its course � when God
had every single right to abandon us to the sin and death that we so
chose, he offered a way out. He told Eve that one day, her seed would
crush the head of the serpent, and the serpent would bite his heel. The
first prediction of a messiah, as some figure that would redeem the human
race and conquer death.
I
must clarify something, and that is regarding sin in the Christian life.
If any professed Christian tells you that he does not sin, he is a
blatant, hypocritical liar. Sin is not absent from our lives, as much as
we would desire it. The book of Romans states that all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. That
includes everyone, I�d be guessing, including Christians. Many of us are
self-righteous and only use our �faith� to advance ourselves. I admit I
have slipped from my walk now and again to pursue my own selfishness, and
I am not proud of it, but I can explain the meaning of Grace perhaps a
bit better further on.
Sin is sin. There is no greater sin than
another, there is no sin that eternally condemns
you no matter what you do. �Mortal� sins were those contrived by the
Catholic church to scare parishioners into
living lives that they could not reach. All sins are equal in Gods sight,
and all are equally deadly. When you hear extremist Christians blaming
the homosexuals for the worlds problems, and America�s
downfall, don�t listen to them. They are self-righteous prigs who search
for nothing more than a tunnel in which to spew their own hate. Please do
not make the fatal mistake of judging the rest of Christians, and
Christianity, based off of these extremists who take the Biblical word of
God out of context to the worst extremes.
Israel
Israel is
unique, and if anyone doubts such things, then they have certainly not
examined history. The Jews, a small minority originating among the Akkadians near Ur,
where Abraham hailed from. This �chosen people� of God were infact that. The miracles performed, including the
plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the Conquest of Canaan,
were all used to show Israel and the World that Yahweh was God. I know
that it is difficult to view the forty years in the desert as possible,
but it was. Miracles are supposed to take us out of our comfort zone of
relying on our own intelligence and rationalizing to get us out of a
situation. Miracles call us to believe in something that is not tangible �
and that�s understandably difficult for millions of people around the
world. How glorious would it have been, though, to witness the parting of
the Red Sea?
Despite
these miracles, Israel
rebelled. Just as Adam and Eve refused the grace of God, so did Israel.
Now, this is coming to a point where I�ll talk about the Conquest of
Canaan. As many of you have likely heard, it was ordered that the
Israelites murder every single person inside of Canaan,
including women and children. This is not something God would do, would
it? Alas, it is, but I would like to offer an explanation that may be
difficult to understand, yet valid enough. These people were judged by
God, and Israel
was the tool used. In Deuteronomy 9:4-5, we see this explained. �4 After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not
say to yourself, "The LORD has brought me
here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness." No,
it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you.
5 It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are
going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the
wickedness of these nations, the LORD your
God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your
fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.� Deut 9:4-5
So
there it is. These people were killed the same reason that the world was
flooded centuries and centuries earlier, when the world was so steeped in
sin that it could not even be salvaged.
Israel
would achieve some sense of redemption. After continuous rebellion and
enough sin that would have surely fed all of us up to the breaking point,
God still relented on destroying these people he had prepared to be a
light to the world. So the Northern province of Israel would fall first to
the Assyrians in 721, and would be exiled. There was never a righteous
king of the people of northern Israel, and thus their
judgment came swifter than that of the south. They persecuted prophets,
worshipped idols, and ignored the warnings of God until the Assyrians
came knocking.
The
southern Kingdom
of Judah would last
another two hundred years or so, falling finally to the Babylonians
around 568, I believe. They were exiled as well, though still would be
allowed to return in 536, when Cyrus the Persian allowed them to return
to Jerusalem
and rebuild the temple destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II. If you�re getting
it, God has not completely judged these people to a point where he would
not give them grace. They have received duly more than they ever
deserved, and yet still quarrel and disrespect the God that has done so
much for them.
Israel
would be prophesied about in the future, and their temple was destroyed
in 70 A.D, per the prophecy of Christ forty years earlier. A few prophecies
dotted about regarding the Jews returning to Israel and rebuilding the
temple in the last days, but that isn�t what I want to really focus on
during this...whatever this is.
Christ
So now we move onto perhaps the most
controversial of the topics, Christ. He was prophesied in the Old
Testament as the Jews �Messiah�, and held more than a hundred prophetic
passages about himself that were fulfilled in the New Testament about
him. See this website for the prophecies and appropriate scripture that explains
the prophecies. http://www.cynet.com/Jesus/PROPHECY/ntquoted.htm
Moving
on from the prophecies about him, very simply, he was the Son of God.
There is nothing that I have found in the New Testament, or really any
other religion, that could explain such. Arguments regarding the validity
of scripture � that it tampered with and changed to give more power to
political figures or something is preposterous, as there are thousands of
recorded manuscripts dating from 100-300 ad that coincide with the Bibles
that we have today. There are even more manuscripts in line with the Old
Testament. In my own search for Faith, I investigated a few of these myself, and I would urge you to do the same if
you doubt, which I�m sure plenty of you do.
Christ
offered life, life that none of us could attain on our own � eternal
life. Back in the Garden of Eden, our relationship with God was severed
so totally that there was no chance that we would be able to reach God on
our own. We would need divine influence, divine favor, and that is just
what we received. Now, in understanding the relationship of God and Jesus
and the Holy Spirit, I can safely say that I don�t understand it. I�m
pretty sure any mortal, fallible mind can not hope to understand an
infallible God completely. So, we are stuck to resorting to our own logic
and understanding in some vain attempt to explain the divine. I view the
trinity as just that, a Trinity. Stack two triangles underneath another
triangle, and while you have three triangles, you still have one triangle
if you look at the outside edges that connect them. Three in one, but
still separate, right?
So I
argue that Christ offered us relationship with God again. He was both
fully God and fully Man, both things that I can not fathom. His flesh was
that � flesh, but he was spirit born, hence I can sort of understand the
relationship, but whatever arguments you have regarding it, I couldn�t
start to question, as I still struggle to understand the idea myself.
Fathoming the unfathomable, I suppose.
How
did Christ offer us this relationship? Well, simple faith. But what does
faith mean, and how does one have faith in the Son of God? We also have
to understand the difference between belief and faith. Well, look at it
like this. Say you�re about to jump out of an airplane. You have a
parachute on, and are all psyched because you know that you�ll have a
blast and all that. So you believe in your parachute � you believe that
it will do its job, that it is what it says it is,
that sort of thing. So you jump.
i.
The difference is here. Belief is all of those things I
just said. You have the knowledge that the thing you�re
believing in is just what it says, or what others, say it is. You
believe a parachute is a device that can save you from plopping into the ground
and causing a ball of dust to pop out like in those old cartoons. Faith is just
another step further. Faith is stepping out and using that parachute. You can
believe that the parachute will save you, but if you don�t take the moment to pull
the cord, you�ll most certainly die.
ii.
Look at it another way. I can believe that water will
quench my thirst, that it will save me from being dehydrated and will be cool
and refreshing and all that, but putting faith in that water is acting on the
belief that it is what I believe it is, and drinking it.
iii.
Belief is knowledge and understanding of what something
is, faith is acting on that belief.
So
now that we know what faith is, we can look at Christ offering relationship
with God in a whole new light (I hope). The difference that Christ made
on the world is that he was just so radical. I would imagine that the
reason most people decide against becoming Christians is because they
don�t want to have to �live by rules� or be restrained in doing all of
the fun things they have done before. Well, Christ never said that this
new faith would be easy. He promised tribulation, persecution, and a lot
of things that we would look at today and never choose in a million years.
But despite all of these troubles, we�re promised something else �
Eternity. With a God who loves us enough to send his begotten � not
created � Son into the world to die for us. Now I would guess some people
argue this, but I doubt there is anything I can say to change your minds
about the subject. I struggled with this whole idea of Christianity till
I finally made a decision in 2005. So I never grew up with this, but it�s
all fascinating. Christ died, fulfilled the prophecy back in Genesis
about crushing the serpents head when he rose again three days later. I
fully believe that Jesus Christ of Nazareth was the only Begotten son of God, that he died on a Roman cross and
was buried three days before rising again and ascending to heaven.
I urge you to research this, and not
just turn to flaming. If you have questions, I�d be happy to try and
answer them, but I am no authority on the matter, that is for certain. I
think the best thing I can offer you is to explore it for yourselves. All
Christians are Hypocrites, including myself. I�ve accepted that, because
I know that I strive for perfection and preach against the very things I
do. I do not want to do them, but I do, and the only thing I can cling on
is this idea of grace and forgiveness and hope � something I could not
find in any other faith or belief system. So check it out, please. I hope
you have enjoyed reading all this, as I did �not- expect it to get this
long. Peace!
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