Wonderful Christianity

Christianity is amazing.  Christianity is profound, perhaps even absurd, and one of the greatest faults of modern Christians is that many fail to see it as such.  The modern Christian is all too often wanting in the simple virtue of wonder.  Christians fail too see the implications of Christianity, both in their own lives, and in the world around them.

Because let's face it:  Christianity is not the easiest pill to swallow, both for Christians and those who are not Christian.  However, in the modern time, the term "Christian" has been so used and easily tossed around we seem to forget what Christianity is about.  Some think it a moral system, some think it a social justice mission, some think it the first wave of hippyism, some think it one spiritual teaching among many, some think it delusion, some think it a nice story with a cool moral.  The list seems endless, tailored to fit any view.  But what is Christianity?  True Christianity?  To understand that point, and thus, to understand why Christianity is so sensational and fantastic, we must address the person of Jesus Christ.


Most people, and many many Christians, do not "get" Jesus.  Our greatest crime as Christians is that we do not "get" Christ, and that when we do, we don't want him.  That's why we crucified him.  Christ, you see, is not one nice guru among others, nor is he one enlightened fellow among others like Buddha, Baha'u'llah, Muhammad, or others.  Many people like to think Jesus Christ is one flavor of man's diverse religious palette, an option among other equal options, killed/rejected because he was a prophet like the rest.  The way many people have watered down Christ, he may well have been Barney the Purple Dinosaur.  Make no mistake about it at all, Jesus Christ was a dangerous man.  Christianity doesn't exist because we like the teachings of Jesus and think they're just swell guidelines.  Christianity exists because we believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, fully man and fully divine.  Christianity asserts that God and Man collided in the person of Jesus Christ, a man like us and yet the Son of the Father.  So what does that mean?

It means we're children of God now and forevermore.  The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons and daughters of men could become the sons and daughters of God.  This is the great premise of Christianity, not that we're a whole bunch of goody-goods saved from savagery by a Jewish carpenter, but that at a point in time and space, the transcendental became physical, Heaven touched Earth, and God became Man.  This was not a nice guy being nice.  This is re-writing the very foundations of existence.  Jesus Christ changed everything.  He is still changing everything.  It's not enough to just do what he said and call it adequate.  With Jesus Christ, there is no such thing as "adequate".  A Christian is never stationary, they're never sedentary, they are constantly being remade, constantly being renewed, constantly being driven to greater and broader heights.

The only duty of the Christian is to come to know the real Jesus Christ, to let him live in you.  Every aspect of a Christian's life, whether it be active or contemplative, ordinary or extraordinary, spiritual or temporal, is because Christ dwells within him.  The Christian is the living testimony to the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, he is the shining witness to Christ's life, death, and Resurrection.  Many proclaim that we live in a post-Christian world and wonder how that ever came to be.  I cannot say for sure, but I'd bet a considerable amount that it was because Christians forgot how wonderful Christianity is.  We forget that Christianity is not just an aspect of our lives, like our career, our hobbies, and our preferences.  Christianity is who we are, it rewrites the very basis of our existence.

Christians are tasked with no simpler a task than saving the world, by way of bringing everyone before Jesus Christ.  We cannot hold this to ourselves.  We cannot just be another flavor of the world, for it is only through Jesus Christ that the world has flavor at all.  Christianity is not just a preference, it is the Truth, revealed in love.  We cannot treat it as anything less that.  We cannot sit contently with ourselves, nor can we go forth as conquerors.  We must go forth as witnesses, carrying a power that is not our own, relying not on our own strength but on the strength of He who sent us.

So to you, the Christian reading this, I give you this warning:  Do not take Christianity lightly.  Do not think it easy or insignificant to be a Christian.  Do not think it optional, or preferential, or inconsequential.  You were chosen for this, you were made for this, and it is discovering Jesus Christ that you will be discovered.