Alright, so recently I've attempted to explain Christianity to a few people. It is weird how much more difficult it is to someone who doesn't have all of the "Sunday School" background that so many of the people in our little sheltered, Baptist-youth-group lives have had. It turns out it is a huge thing that is difficult to capture in a few minutes of explanation (who knew?). So I'm going to give it a shot here, and all my readers can feel free to try to poke holes in it or refine it however they see fit. Maybe at the end of it, we'll all have a better idea of what it means to believe. I'm trying here to develop it with little to no Bible lingo, so bear with me if it gets a bit philosophical or esoteric.
There is a God. This is evident to anyone who looks at the universe or at his own consciousness. Many people (seemingly smart ones, at that) don't buy this, which amazes me, but I cannot explain the existence of matter in our universe or the human consciousness without an all-powerful, infinitely intelligent Creator. However, I admit that this is not the final argument by any means, but for the remainder of this discussion, I am going to assume a Creator-God who is perfect in nature, intelligence, and every other manner. Also, I think it is worthwhile to mention that I think perfectly pure nature implies perfection in every feature of nature: perfect love, since a perfect God has no room for the impurities that corrupt love (such as jealousy, insecurity, etc.), and perfect justice and righteousness. I think these two will be relatively sufficient for this discussion.
Based on these ideas, a perfect God would not create creatures that he did not love. The alternative picture, a being creating things only to destroy them out of spite or a desire to feel more powerful, does not fit with a perfect nature. Again, some smart people throughout history have disagreed with me, and so I don't presume that this argument is final, but I don't want this little essay to get too long.
If there is an infinitely powerful God who created everything we see, including us, then our only response should be one of worship of him. By worship, I don't mean a group of created, primitive humans doing chants and dances around a fire to appease the God who created them. I simply mean that we should assign worth to this being because He is the only thing worthwhile that exists. Everything we do should be with respect to this being. Doing otherwise would be worse than my Lego creations defying my nature and saying that they knew best, since I didn't really "create" them, I just put them together, and I am not a perfect creator in the first place.
However, humans don't do this. We rebel against God on every level of our existence. We try to find joy in places where it does not exist because we want to be in control. Instead of simply resting in the divine nature that created us, we want something that is impossible: to be God ourselves. We seek "pleasures" that make us feel important or sexy or powerful or rich, even though these things will pass away like dead grass and mean nothing. This basic attitude is what the world today knows as Sin. Even though God loves his creatures, part of what it means to have a perfect nature, as mentioned above, is perfect righteousness or justice. Based on this rebellion and treason that humans commit and have been committing every day since we've been around, our just punishment is the end which we've been chasing: apartness from God. We futilely try to find joy and fulfillment apart from God, and so we are banished to that state.
Fortunately for us, God, in his perfect love for us, planned a solution for humanity's rebellion: Jesus. God's nature was incarnate in human form in the person of Jesus. Jesus lived an infinitely perfect life on Earth and was subjected to the suffering and horrible death and pain that we deserve. Most importantly, he was subjected to the banishment from God that all deserve through this death. In this way, God's righteous judgment for the sins of man was poured out on the one man who lived perfectly. He then was resurrected by God, therefore overcoming the curse of sin in mortality and death. We must acknowledge our own sinfulness and our need for restoration. We must put our trust in that work to regain fellowship with our Creator, the end for which all men were created. We must spend our lives striving to participate in the divine nature by living according to it, summed up by the moral law given in the Bible (Ten Commandments, Jesus' teachings, Paul's teachings, etc.), although nothing we can do is worth anything in comparison to Jesus work -- God loves us only because Jesus' righteousness counts for ours. We should also, as a natural reaction to the mercy we have been shown, care about other people and want them to have the joy that we have, since we didn't deserve it any more than they did, and since doing so is sharing in the restoring of humanity that God is doing. The Bible is the story of God's restoration of man, culminating and centered completely around the person of Jesus. All of this was done for the glory of God in the way of our enjoyment of and participation in his nature.
Alright, I know this was really long, and I'm sure I left out some stuff. Try reading this as someone who has no idea about anything relating to Christianity. If you find yourself saying something like, "But I don't understand how
that necessitates
that," feel free to mention it.
