Christianity is weird!

I believe that Christianity is what makes the most sense of human existence, but it also is full of weird.

God

The Christian god is a being that exists by necessity, therefore, God was not created. God is a maximally great being. There is no superior or even equivalent being. All power, intellect, knowledge and good morality is of and originates from God. This single infinite being is in three distinct persons (called Father, Son & Holy Spirit). These persons exist in harmonious continuous relationship.

God is the source of all being, and the origin of all other existence. God made all space, energy, matter and living things by speaking them into existence out of nothing. God made humans with intellect, free will and inherent personal value, finite beings in the image of God.

God the Son took on humanity; Jesus of Nazareth was born a dependent human infant. For a time he set aside his powers of deity, but in his person he continued to be God. He learned as a youth and grew to human adulthood. He participated in the full range of human experience, including both good and the bad. Jesus even died, brutally killed for no fault of his own. However, God raised Jesus from the dead, remade fully alive, physical and still human.

Jesus and His Kingdom

Jesus came to introduce a new kingdom that was not of this world, in which all people had equal and significant value. Jesus God is king of this spiritual kingdom, a kingdom for all people, a kingdom established by death and resurrection, a kingdom of beneficial love.

(Jesus was a Jew. The Jews had an expectation of a coming leader that would make a new Jewish earthly kingdom. The title of this leader is messiah in Hebrew, or christ in Greek. Jesus is the promised messiah and he did bring a new kingdom, however, it was a kingdom very unlike what the Jews were expecting.)

All we ordinary humans have failed to be good at some point in our lives, and this has a consequence of death (spiritual death). In substitution because he deeply loves us, Jesus God took that consequence for us. Therefore, if we are following him and in his kingdom, he forgives us for our failures to be good. And, God adopts us as his own loved children.

To achieve this, Jesus died the most excruciating and shameful death on a Roman cross. God, however, raised Jesus back to life, thus approving everything Jesus had said and done. Christians now remember the curse of his death as a victory. They consider the blood that Jesus lost as evidence of the powerful work accomplished by his death.

Values of the Kingdom

The law of Jesus’ kingdom is his unique value system - sacrificial love for the benefit of others. Jesus taught that the evidence we are his followers is that we love each other like he loved us. We are to do good even to our enemies. We must be people that forgive others as God has forgiven us.

We are powerless to change ourselves to be like this. However, God quietly works with us to change us from the inside out to be like Jesus.

Good relationships grow and flourish by this value system. The kingdom is lived in community, particularly with others that follow Jesus. However, it also is generously lived this way towards everyone.

After returning to life, Jesus came back to his friends with a renewed and upgraded physical human body. It was the first evidence of his promise that those in his kingdom will be resurrected later with similar immortal bodies. Jesus promised he would return again at the end of time, and then God will make all things new again.

Christian Community

In the mean time Jesus said he would send an advocate to us who would encourage us and give us strength, the Holy Spirit God. (He then left this earth.) Until the end time, those who follow Jesus Christ also encourage each other in living how Jesus taught.

These who are called Christians make communities which are often called churches. When they meet together they talk to someone not visible (pray to God). They orient themselves by praising this invisible being. They listen to talks about aspects of what Jesus did or taught. Sometimes they eat a meal of remembrance about Jesus.

Some church groups have traditions that are quite unique to them. These traditions connect the people of today back to hundreds of years of established practice, and connect people in many places to shared practice at the same time. Their liturgy includes what is done, what is said and sung. Not all churches do the same things or emphasize the same things, however, a primary purpose of all Christian churches is to tell people about Jesus and help people follow Jesus.

 

So Christianity is very weird. But weirdly too, I believe it makes sense and is practical. It certainly is meaningful.

Could I interest you in it?

 

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The value system perspective used here is based on ideas I learned from a friend.