The Truth About Christianity

I want to start this off by saying that I am no expert on theology or Biblical literature or anything like that. I'm not a pastor, I'm not a theologian, and I have no formal training or schooling. But I've read the bible, and I've been learning and thinking about these things my whole life. Some I learned from my dad, who pastored at one point, some I've learned from reading, some I've learned from experience with God. That being said, here's my rant:

I have a lot of issues with how the Church in America looks. I don't mean churches, I mean the Church as a whole. One element of Christianity that everyone seems to dwell on is the idea of the afterlife. Not that there's anything wrong with believing in an afterlife. It's important, and one of the things that Jesus said he came to bring was "eternal life." But I think people are mistaken when they think that the whole point of being a christian is getting to go to heaven. It isn't about fire insurance. It isn't about being good and getting to play a harp and wear a robe when you die instead of going to hell.

This misconception comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the fall and what it means. Yes, after the fall, the curse dictated than man has to die. Suffering and toil come into the world, blah blah blah. Everyone's heard that a million times. But that isn't the only part of it. Before man falls, he and God are humanity in perfect relationship. After the fall, that perfect relationship is broken. Sin has come between them. Paul has something to say about it in Romans 1:21, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles."

The ultimate problem isn't that man now has the knowledge of good and evil. The problem is that he let go of the knowledge of who God is. By disobeying him, he refused to acknowledge the creator's role as God. The serpent told Eve that after eating the fruit she would "become like God" (Gen. 3:4). By disobeying God's only command, Adam and Eve were essentially saying, "No, I will be my own God. I will follow my own commands." And since man refuses God's sovereignty, he forgoes God's protection, as the latter part of Paul's passage indicates:

"Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." Sin and death are not punishments in as much as they are the logical consequence. After man rejects God's sovereignty, the protection that comes with it is also rejected, and God essentially has to watch as man destroys himself with his own rebellion.

Every man has eaten the fruit and rejected God's sovereignty and protection, save one. Christ was in perfect relationship with his Father. After his Baptism God says, "This is my son whom I love and with whom I am well pleased." He does nothing in his ministry without consulting and following the will of the Father, and he follow's God's plan even to his own death. The primary thing that he gave up wasn't his life, though. He took the full burden of the world's sin on his shoulders, and that burden separated him from God. He gave up the perfect relationship with the Father that he had. That's what he means when he says "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" That is a sacrifice far more painful than anything that he endured in his tortures, brutal though they were. And because of his sacrifice, we now can have relationship with the creator.

That's why I get angry when people think that christianity is about being pure and good, or about going to heaven when you die. This isn't a self help class. This isn't fire insurance. Those are tertiary elements. Christianity is about having a relationship with the creator of the universe, even though you don't deserve it, but he was willing to give up everything to let you have it anyway. Behavior is a byproduct. Heaven is a bonus.