#1 - The Christian Faith...in a nutshell.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about Christianity. That makes sense to me because Christianity is completely unlike anything else. So it doesn’t fit in any of the files we’ve created in our minds for understanding life. Therefore the common mistake is to shove and twist it so that it somewhat fits into a file we can understand. The most common file it gets pushed into is the one marked “religion”. I suppose the reason is that Christianity includes faith which is usually thought of as a religious concept. And since the faith is in God, it must be a religion.
This confusion is compounded by the fact that many people, especially those that claim to be Christians, overemphasize matters of doctrine. Rather, I should say, doctrines. The result of this overemphasis is that while the fine points are debated, fought over, and even divided over, Christianity itself is missed. This confusion causes all kinds of problems. Those outside the faith are led to believe erroneous things about Christianity. Those inside the faith get distracted easily and spend a good portion of their time honing their ability to miss the point. And then there's that third category of people: those that are outside the faith who think they are inside the faith. They sit in pews, drop a coin in the plate, attend a churchy thing or two and basically have the same look in their eyes that boys have in third grade English class. “I’d rather be playing baseball.”
My goal, and my calling I believe, is to clear up some things about Christianity for anyone that will listen to me. I talk to people, I preach to people, and now, I will try to blog to people. I hope to help those outside the faith to see the tremendous benefit of believing in Jesus. I hope to help those inside the faith to focus. And as for those in the third category…I hope to make them a lot less comfortable so that they will go ahead and join us as well.

So, here’s what Christians believe in one sentence: Life is better with Jesus.

In a world where evil exists, accidents happen, and bodies decay life is mostly about trying to make the best of a desperate situation. We try to find love amongst self-obsessed people. We try to find joy in a world full of disappointment. We try to find security in a world with no certainty. We try to find peace surrounded by potential and actual hostility. Usually this means settling.

We settle for comfort when peace is not forthcoming. We settle for entertainment when joy seems impossible. We decide that compromise and negotiation is as close to love as we are going to get. If we can just get a decent job, a couple of stable friendships, a cooperative spouse and children that don’t embarrass us, well, I guess that’s a pretty decent life. No one gets what they set out to get. For most they don’t even come close. Even for the most successful, there is always a nagging feeling that something vital is missing.

Turns out, it’s much worse than that. What’s missing is that we were made to have a spiritual connection with God and we don’t. As you can imagine, this corrupts everything. It corrupts our desires. It corrupts our ability to reason. It corrupts our ability to relate. This corruption is a cancer that eats everything it can. We fight it in our various ways, learning to cope, once in a while stumbling onto a trick or two that helps us actually send it into a mild and temporary remission. And that is as good as it gets.

But not with Jesus.

Jesus gives us hope. He gives us definition. He gives us purpose. He gives us moral direction. He gives us his Spirit to work within us to cultivate love, peace, and joy. He also makes possible eternal life and even promises heavenly reward to those that pursue him earnestly and faithfully.
None of these things are possible apart from him. Any amount of hope, definition, purpose, moral direction, love, peace, joy and salvation comes from him whether a person knows it or not.

How does one obtain that which Jesus offers? We embrace him. We pursue him like the cancer cure that he is. We make our dreams about him. We make our purposes about him.
The more one embraces Jesus, the more one acquires all that he offers.
The more one knows him, the more one understands what life is about and how to live it well.
The more one trusts him, the more one can take hardship, trial, and loss and the more one can truly hope in eternal life.
The more one loves him, the more one can love others, the better one can love others, the more one can receive love form others. Not to mention the sheer joy of loving God and experiencing his love as well. Which is like nothing else in the world.
And lastly, the more one obeys him, the more fulfilling life is, the more one finds purpose, meaning, and definition. The better they feel about their own character and the better they can get along with others.

Though embracing Jesus means the letting go of everything else, we believe that the trade is infinitely and eternally in our favour.
Though embracing Jesus means inviting spiritual persecution, we believe the temporary and finite nature of the persecution is a small price to pay for the eternal and infinite treasure that we gain for enduring it.
Though embracing Jesus means being cut-off from secular society (to one degree or another), even that secular society within our own family (the disconnection we experience, either directly or indirectly), we believe that the closeness with God we gain and the hope of HIS approval is worth the disapproval and rejection of others.
In other words, no matter what it costs, we believe that embracing Jesus is worth it.

And that’s Christianity in a nutshell. Of course we have reasons for why Jesus is so vital. And, of course, we have explanations for what embracing Jesus looks like. And all of the reasons and explanations are part of Christianity as well. But the essence is simple: we so believe in the person of Jesus Christ that we put all our eggs in his basket. And I’ve never met a person who has done this say they regret it. Never.