Dave's Thoughts

My friend Dave recently wrote a article on "What is a Christian." Here is what he thinks:

As other writers have already noted, it's a little odd to ask people what Christianity is to them, as if the label was just an empty shell that we're given the opportunity to fill with whatever we think would make a good "Christianity." Such a man-made religion is simply a philosophy and has little ultimate bearing on questions of our life now, and our life after death. But Christianity is a faith founded by Jesus Christ and a life lived in prayer with him.

And again, as been already pointed out, the most obvious thing to do is to study Jesus's teaching in order to find out what is Christianity. And by the way, those who are so easily inclined to insist that the Scriptures were written by the apostles in order to "hold power and instill fear" need to consider for a time why these same writers looked so bad in their own writing, and how it was that they happily suffered hardship through the last years of their lives.

During this Christmas season, Christian rejoice – an activity all too lacking in our culture – because we believe God has entered into human history as one of us, and poured out his life for us, so that we can share in his life in this life and the next.

Read the "Our Father" prayer offered by Jesus in Matthew chapter 6 to find out what Christianity is like. Worship of God and knowledge of him as not just Master but as our Father, trust of a child in him for our life's needs, acknowledgement of real sin, seeking of pardon connected to our pardon of others, (and not denying the reality of sin in either case,) and prayer for deliverance from real evil.

Saying "This is what I think Christianity is" is as misguided an effort as going to McDonalds and saying, "This is what I think a cheeseburger is." The thing already is what it is before you arrived. Go ahead and study it or reject it, but don't presume that you can sort of fill in the blanks with you own ideas and then claim, "I'm kind of a Christian."

And yes there are hypocrites in Christianity. That's perfectly reasonable to expect, isn't it – that some people would try to obtain the benefits of a particular faith without having to actually go through the conversion of life that that same faith might ask for. And there are hypocrite atheists, too – but since they don't exactly represent anything substantial they don't end up embarrassing or failing anyone when they offend their own sensibilities; and no one reports on their personal downfall as indicative of an entire people-group.