Christianity - Christianity 3 - Christianity 4
  

This coming to know Christ is what makes
Christian truth redemptive truth, the truth
that transforms, not just informs.

Harold Cooke Phillips

   
Note:  Our pages on Christianity are not at all intended to try to convert
anyone to the religion; rather, they're presented with the intent of giving
people food for thought about the religion, its purposes, and the people
who follow it and who call themselves Christians.

   

If Jesus is Lord then the only right response to him is surrender and obedience.  He is Savior and he is Lord.  We cannot separate his demands from his love.  We cannot dissect Jesus and relate only to the parts that we like or need.  Christ died so that we could be forgiven for managing our own lives.  It would be impossible to thank Christ for dying and yet to continue running our own lives.

Rebecca Pippert

      

The root of the matter, if we want a stable world, is a very simple and old-fashioned thing, a thing so simple that I am almost ashamed to mention it for fear of the derisive smile with which wise cynics will greet my words.  The thing I mean is love, Christian love, or compassion.  If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.

Bertrand Russell
  
Jesus could weep.  Sometimes when you look at the ugliness that makes you weep, you know that the heart of God is also weeping.  Jesus is for real.  He does not give up on anyone, least of all on me.

Desmond Tutu
Questions of Faith

  

Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a living presence.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

   

The Christian is not one who has gone all the way with Christ.  None of us has. The Christian is one who has found the right road.

Charles L. Allen

     

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be
a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man
who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  Either this man
was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.

C.S. Lewis

   

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If you wish your children to be Christians you must really
take the trouble to be Christian yourselves.  Those are the
only terms upon which the home will work the gracious miracle.



Woodrow Wilson
  

I maintain Christianity is a life much more than a religion.

R.M. Moberly

  

It is the great work of nature to transmute sunlight into life.
So it is the great end of Christian living to transmute the light of
truth into the fruits of holy living.

Adoniram J. Gordon

  

The Christians do not commit adultery.  They do not bear false witness.
They do not covet their neighbor's goods.  They honor father and mother.
They love their neighbors.  They judge justly.  They avoid doing to others
what they do not wish done to them.  They do good to their enemies.  They are kind.

St. Aristides

  

Christianity - Christianity 3

The purpose of Christianity is not to avoid difficulty, but to produce
a character adequate to meet it when it comes.  It does not make life easy;
rather it tries to make us great enough for life.


James L. Christensen
  

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by the word.
It is every individual's individual code of behavior by means of which he
or she makes him or herself a better human being than their nature
wants to be, if they followed their nature only.

William Faulkner

 

I have an unquenchable desire to slow down and find my life going deeper in my walk with Christ.
I want to meet him in the depths of my soul, away from the stress and press of everything on top.
A relationship with Christ is the key to fulfilling our deepest longings.  All of life is about filling
the void that sin and separation from him have created within.  Filling the emptiness with piles
of things, earthly friendships, satisfying experiences, and sensual encounters ultimately
proves to achieve less than what we had hoped for.  Christ is the only one who fits.

Joseph M. Stowell

   

   
Christianity was a difficult struggle for me for a very long time, mostly because of my logical/rational mindset and approach to life. I didn't choose the way my mind works, but I do have to respect it, and my mind didn't allow me to accept blindly much of the theology and dogma that I heard being preached at services I went to. I found it difficult to believe that so much was being taught that wasn't at all Biblical, and I didn't know what to do with that--if the New Testament is our Holiest text, shouldn't our beliefs come directly from there?

Reading the works of Ralph Waldo Trine and Emmet Fox has helped me a great deal in coming to terms with many of the doubts I've had, for they also approach their relationship with Christ from a practical, logical perspective. Helen Keller tells us to value the faith that doesn't come easily, for the faith that we struggle with becomes stronger through the struggles. The bottom line for me is this:  Christ came to teach us how to live our lives so that they'll be fulfilling and full of love, and if we're to get all we can out of this life, we need to heed his words and make them a part of our lives.

Christianity is about reaching potential and loving unconditionally, not about following rules blindly and judging and condemning others. Christianity is about brother- and sisterhood in Christ, for a house divided simply cannot stand.

There have been many horrible things done in the name of Christ and of God, but those have been the actions of people who were selfish or arrogant or afraid to lose their power, so they acted in un-Christian ways and passed their actions off as valid in the eyes of God.  I cannot let my faith in Christ and God be swayed by the selfish and hurtful acts of others who don't want to take the responsibility necessary to live a Christian life and give up their futile attempts at control.

So I believe.  I believe that God is with and in us, always, and that Christ knew this and lived this in order to show us many important things that we need to know if we're to live fulfilling lives.  Christ taught us to love, to be responsible, and most importantly, to have faith in unity, God and life, to have faith that things will be fine if we let things work as they've been made to work, instead of trying to control every aspect of our lives ourselves.  Now, I don't love as much as I could, and I sometimes shirk responsibility that I don't really want to have, and my faith often falls short so that I try to control things that are simply out of my control, but I try.  And it's in the trying that I grow.

Christianity is not about rules and regulations--it's a way of life that was given to us so that we may make the most of this beautiful gift of life without the worries of what will happen to us when we die--instead of focusing on the fear of the unknown, we can focus on the beauty of the known.
  

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Jesus had the same needs we do as a human being.  He needed food,
shelter, safety, and love.  He showed us how God loved him and provided
for him.  He showed us his need for rest when he pulled away from others
to a quiet place.  He showed us how God wanted us to love our brothers
and sisters by loving the people around him.  He showed us his need to
depend on God and for relationship with God when he prayed.

Betty Blaylock
  

When I look at Jesus' warm and intimate friendships, my heart fills with praise that
Jesus was. . . a man.  A man of flesh-and-blood reality.  His heart felt the sting of
sympathy.  His eyes glowed with tenderness.  His arms embraced.  His lips smiled.
His hands touched.  Jesus was male!  Jesus invites us to relate to him as the Son of
Man.  And because he is fully man, we can relate to Jesus with affection and love.

Joni Erickson Tada

   

  

Jesus' ministry was clearly defined. . . . A choice was made--
life abundant, full, and free for all.  Make no mistake about it,
the day the choice was made, Jesus became suspect.
That day in the temple he sealed the fate already prepared for him.
How was the world to understand one who rejected
an offer of power and control?


Joan B. Campbell

  

The essence of religion is that it releases in people a power and a force beyond human
capacity to generate, by which they may rise to a plane of existence in which they are
superior to everything life may bring them.  There once lived a man who had the gift of
power to overcome anything the world could do to him; and through the years other
people, through contact with this man in spiritual communion, have found the same
power.  Wistfully, we remember that once he said:  "Verily, I say unto you, they that
believeth on me, the works that I do shall they do also; and greater works than these
shall they do."  Why are we not "doing works" like that?  What is wrong?  His was a
way of living that made weakness and trouble drop away like withered leaves in the fall.
Is it a lost art?  How shall we find it again?
    If the art has been lost to many of us, what can we do?  The answer is, go back and
examine it at its source.  And when we go back and analyze the life of Jesus, the source
of his power, and of his Divine energy, we are impressed by his faith in God.  He
believed God was near to him, using him.  He believed in God with the faith of a child.
He kept in close contact and communion with God and as a result he was
an open channel for Divine energy.

Norman Vincent Peale

Christianity - Christianity 3

Once in a while there comes into the world one who from the very first recognizes no separation of his life from the Father’s life, and who dwells continually in this living realization; and by bringing anew to the world this great fact, and showing forth the works that will always and inevitably follow this realization, he becomes in a sense a world’s savior, as did Jesus, who, through the completeness of His realization of the Father's life incarnate in Him, became the Christ Jesus.  He in this way pointed out to the world how all men can enter into the realization of the Christ-life and thus be saved from all impulse to sin.  And so instead of coming to appease the vengeance of an angry God—difficult for one who has any adequate conception of God even to conceive of—He brought to the world, by exemplifying in His own life as well as by teaching to all who will hear His real message, the method whereby all of us can enter into the full and complete realization of our oneness with the life of the tender and loving Infinite Father that dwells within.

Redeemed from the bondage of the senses through which alone sin comes, and born into the heavenly state, into life eternal, is everyone who comes into the same relations with the Father, and hence into the same realization of their oneness with the Father's life, that Jesus came into.  It is difficult, however, to see how anyone will be redeemed from the bondage of sin and enter into the heavenly state simply by believing that Jesus entered into it while here.  No amount of believing that He lived the life He lived will take anyone into the heavenly state, but living the life that Jesus lived will take everyone who lives it there, in any age and in any time, even whether or not they know that such a man as Jesus ever lived.

Ralph Waldo Trine

  

   

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It is a great deal better to live a holy life than to talk about it.
Lighthouses do not ring bells and fire cannons to call
attention to their shining--they just shine.

Dwight L.  Moody
   

I believe that I possess this value:  to serve Jesus.  I am less at peace
than if my goal would be to attain a professorship and a good life, but
I live.  And that gives me the tremendous feeling of happiness, as if
one would hear music.  One feels uprooted, because one asks, what
lies ahead, what decisions should I make--but more alive, happier
than those anchored in life.  To drift with released anchor.

Albert Schweitzer

  

Jesus does not respond to our worry-filled way of living by saying that
we should not be so busy with worldly affairs.  He does not try to pull
us away from the many events, activities, and people that make up our
lives. . . . He asks us to shift the point of gravity, to relocate the center
of our attention, to change our priorities.  Jesus does not speak about
a change of activities, a change in contacts, or even a change of pace.
He speaks about a change of heart.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

   
  
The main point of Christianity was this:  that Nature is not our mother:  Nature is our sister.

G.K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy
  

Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross;
he waited until one of them turned to him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison

  

I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state
of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor
a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that
there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone.
I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely
compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an
awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy Mystery.

Brennan Manning

   

       
   

Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.