What is Christianity?

-OR- World-views: We each have one.

When someone asks the above question to a 'church-goer', many different answers will be offered: "It's a religion." "It's a good place to meet girls!" "It's a set of rules that I follow." "It's a relationship." I might agree that each of these statements has some truth in them.  But I don't think that these really give the whole picture.


If someone were to ask me what Christianity is, I would have no problem telling them: it is Reality itself.

Let me back up a bit. See, humans are all the same in this way: each of us holds to a certain set of beliefs and assumptions about the world we live in whether we know it or not.  Really, most don't realize they have 'em.  In philosophical circles, these 'things' are called our World-view. This set of beliefs can vary widely amongst people all over the world. They cannot all be the same since they are different.  Very often, too, world-views people hold are internally contradictory.

A way of looking at World-views is that we all look at a picture of Reality, but it really comes in the form of pieces of a picture that are thrown in a box. We all think our jigsaw puzzle is what fits Reality. Many of us will get a few pieces put together, or many might get the frame done (resting back on their elbows and thinking they are so smart). But often, many of us don't even possess the right pieces that correspond to the picture on the Box.  Thus, we have all sorts of people running around and wondering why they are dealing with confusion, despair, loneliness, pain, apathy, etc. as they look at the improper pieces in the pile in front of them.

For some, it may be easy to think of it in this way: we all carry our own map of what we believe reality is. Every world 'system' holds a different map (and often inside each system they have their own assortment of maps, too). We each walk through life looking at our maps.  But here is the rub: Reality has it's own terrain. There are all sorts of people running around reading their maps and they find themselves in a ditch (I know this first hand). There is really only one terrain; not all of the different maps can be accurate. It is possible for them all to be wrong, but they can't all be right.

Here's a third way of thinking of it: everyone thinks of Reality as a Story. Now a good story properly told has four parts. First, there is a beginning, or Creation. For the Darwinist, Atheist, Materialist (all the same basically), their story goes, "In the beginning, particles..." The Creation of a story is where we meet the actors and where we get the setting for the rest of the action.

The second part of any story is when something bad happens. We see this in just about every movie we watch--the Fall. The actor comes across the problem that the Story needs to fix. According to the materialist, the problem is: Education--we just need to know more! (Subsequently, for him the holy vow is, "Studies show...")

The third part of a well told story is the Redemption. This is often the climactic, soaring point in the story that owns every bit of the story prior-to and following. Again, the materialist will put forth...more education, more research, more studies...Science will discover it eventually (apparently the follower of Yeshua is not the only one who lives by faith).

Finally, a good story will end with the Re-Creation, or Re-Generation. This is the happy ending! This is where all things get a new Beginning, where old mistakes are forgotten in a new cleansing of Reality. For Karl Marx, the most philosophically consistent materialist, this will be the point where we cast of private property in the name of Community, forever eschewing the Old Way.

Then again, Marx was a polylogic.  There is a head scratcher!

Actually, when one studies the Great Religions of the World, every single World-view contains these exact four parts to their Story. Again, while they could all be wrong, they cannot all be True. Even though the Baha'is will claim that all roads lead to Paradise, we know that logically this can't be true. For the Buddhist, one will be Recreated when one finds Nirvana (though we know that smells like teen spirit). Remember, the cyclical nature of Buddhism, too, has been inductively shown to be flawed by the discovery of the Big Bang.

My friends, I will tell you now about a better Way.
In the Beginning...This is different than "Once upon a Time..." This is not how fables start. This type of phrase seems to be making an actual statement on Reality.  Besides, it is very precise; it is not 5 seconds after the Beginning.  It's not centuries following the Beginning.  It says a priori, or 'of first importance.'

In the Beginning, God made... Let's remind ourselves that Science--the good science of physics, to be exact--has determined that this phrase probably very well is True. We understand that the Universe began at a certain point in the past. All that we measure--Space, Energy, Time--began at a certain point in the Past. (BTW--this alone disproves every world religion that needs some sort of Infinity, or cycle, to exist. Moreover, it is impossible to cross an Infinity--we would never get to Today if an Infinity really existed. Eastern religions and the New Age fall under this category.) Aristotle said, 'A first Cause needs a First Causer.'  One of my favorite thinkers says it like this: a Big Bang needs a Big Banger.

In the Beginning, God made the Heavens and the Earth. We have just started at the first verse on the first page, and yet the abundance of Truth that we can observe scientifically and objectively, 'out there,' shows an amazing element of design. Now, I am no scientist, but from what I have studied, the laws of Physics confirm a Big Bang that was so infinitesimally fine-tuned (at the level of a millionth-of-a-second) from the Beginning simply so that we could exist--and know that we exist. On top of it all, this planet displays such amazing an variety of flora and fauna. And yet, within the trillions of cells in our bodies there exists thousands and thousands of volumes of books' worth of information within our DNA. Information, they have assigned the chemicals four letters, that is so precisely ordered that it causes jaws to drop.

In the Beginning, God created Order out of Disorder. The Bible tells us many different things about the world and it is not at all inaccurate (as often as people try to find otherwise). Isn't this amazing?! Whenever the Bible--66 books and letters written by over 40 men--spoke on something, it was speaking what is, what exists, what is Real. It is utterly consistent. The Bible speaks of human emotions. It speaks of war and battle. The Bible tells us of God's love. It reminds us that we are broken and fail to be able to repair ourselves. It reflects what actually exists in Reality, written on paper over time spanning centuries. And, while it is not a scientific Book, when it speaks on Science, it is not wrong though it was written even before the 'great' discoveries that came along.

The Fall happened. Every one of us rebels/has rebelled in our own way against God. But then we get the Redemption: God sent His Son to come into History. God loves us in this way--Yeshua came to Mankind to show the Way Reality works. The Fact of His life is another indisputable and amazing Rock on which we can stand. He really walked the Earth and He really lived among us. He really died on a Roman cross and then His tomb was really found empty three days later. This is beyond a reasonable doubt, even if some choose to disagree with it. Jesus said there would be a Day when He comes back--we would all know the Day because it would be unmistakable. That Day will be a Day of Wrath (Romans 2:1-5, John 3:36) and no more chances will be available to the one reading this. That Day will bring the Re-Creation, or the fourth part of our Story.

There is only One World-view that comports with the Truth of Reality.

If you have any problems with what I have written, or any questions, please make a comment below. I will answer it to the best of my ability, and if I don't know it, I will probably know where to send you. May God's Light shine on your soul today. 1 John 1:5-10