What is the Christian Faith?
6: What do Christians believe
I have always found it helpful when making a summary of Christian belief to use the words which are found in the baptism service. At this special service in church we welcome children or adults into membership of the church and the people who are present are asked to declare their commitment to some important beliefs. You can imagine that you are in the baptism service and consider these three questions for yourself.
Christians believe that we can understand God in these three important ways.
Question 1
Do you believe and trust in God the Father who made the world ?
Between 5,000 million and 4,000 million years ago the earth was formed. By 3,000 million years ago life had arisen and we have fossils of microscopic bacteria-like creatures to prove it. Some time between these two dates that mysterious event, the origin of life, must have occurred. We don't know for sure how it all happened, there are many biological and scientific theories which try to explain what processes were taking place.
Christians believe that the world was made by somebody who knew what they were doing – it wasn’t an accident.
All of this is fascinating and one day we may know a great deal about how creatures were created from the building blocks of life itself. But what or who lies behind creation and where did the very basic substances methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and other gases come from? Some say it was all just an accident. The Bible paints a picture of creation which doesn't tell us how it happened either. What the Bible does try to do, is to say that it wasn't all an accident. It didn't happen by chance, behind it there was a Creator, it was if you like 'An Act of God.' Try taking a deep look inside yourself and ask this simple question,
Do I feel like an accident ?
One thing upon which all the worlds great religions agree, is that life comes from God and it is not an accident but precious to him. I would think that most of us would say that we didn't feel like an accident, we feel special. The Christian faith says that although as human beings we co-operate with God in the work of creation, it was God who made you, who loves you and that God cares about you. You are not an accident, you are an Act of God, you were made for a purpose and it is only when we meet with our Creator that we realise just how important our lives really are and what God's purpose for us is.
Where did the world come from ?
If you look at the story of creation in Genesis in the Old Testament there are no big bang theories, no theories of evolution, we are not told which test tube God mixed with which. It is simply not given for us to know. This is very sad we love to understand, but God does not give us that privilege. No, rather we have a story, which tells us in broad brush principles that God made it and we messed it up.
We don’t know how the world was made, but Christian believe that they do know who made it.
There is nothing which says whether it was made by evolution, perhaps it was and perhaps it wasn't. The old debate is rather sterile and as Christians we simply have to say we don't know how. When Darwin wrote his book 'On the origin of the species by means of natural selection' in 1859, it created rows of immense proportions. Sadly it was a none argument because the Bible does not give us a chronological account of creation in the creation stories. Indeed modern chronological timescales are of little importance to any of the biblical writers, even in the New Testament the writers feel able to move incidents from the beginning of Jesus ministry to the end with complete abandon. It was Saint Augustine who suggested that the Biblical writers might have been presenting a literary account of creation rather than a scientific one and that creation might have taken rather a long time. To use the word ‘day,’ is a good way of separating the things that God did. This would explain how the story has day and night going on before the before the sun and moon were created. We really don’t know, but what the Bible does is to give us very clear statements about God, the world and how we should respond to it.
We learn that work was planned into society as a means of us being occupied and producing from the world. God is a God of work. We might conclude that God would not be pleased at the thought of people being unemployed. It interesting that politicians say to Christians and religious people that they should keep out of political and secular issues. This is a strange idea since for the Christian there can be no dividing line between church things and state things. God put it all together and he laid down principles for living. We live in God's world, it is vibrant and full of God's life. The Old Testament prophets saw this. They saw the mind of God in simple illusions from life like boiling pots and plumb lines, and so they were angry when they saw poor people and people who took advantage of the weak.
There has been a tendency to regard the creation rather like a larder which God has given us to keep us alive. The Christian view is that the world is not a larder simply to be consumed for our own use. Creation is good and of value in itself, apart from its usefulness to mankind. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, which means ‘beginning,’ it says
'God saw everything that He had made and it was good'. Gen 1:31
Again in one the Gospel stories in the New Testament part of the bible which recorded the life of Jesus the Apostle John wrote
‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son John 3:16
The word for world is KOSMOS which means everything! God loves everything including the soil and the fields, all of creation and space itself.
Question 2
Do you believe and trust in his Son Jesus Christ, who redeemed humankind ?
Of course all the worlds major religions agree on the first question and could say that God created all that there is. What makes Christians different is that they believe something very important about a man called Jesus who was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago and grew up in a Jewish community in Nazareth. The historical evidence for the life of Jesus is recorded by independent Jewish and Roman historians, as well as by his followers in the pages of the New Testament. However, Christians believe that Jesus was not merely a man, but God himself in human form. Jesus made this claim for himself and it brought him into conflict with the religious and civil authorities at the time, the final result was that Jesus was killed by being nailed to a wooden cross. Christians believe that three days after his death Jesus rose from the dead. He spoke with his disciples and assured them that as he had conquered death, so they need never be afraid, even of death itself. God would always be with them. The first disciples believed so passionately in the teaching of Jesus and were so sure that he was alive, that their message spread far and wide. They led brave lives teaching about Jesus and many were killed and tortured. Yet so strong was their belief and so powerful the message, that within centuries the Roman Empire was converted to Christianity and the Roman Emperor Constantine himself became a Christian.
The most important church service is one called the Holy Communion, which Jesus commanded his disciples to do in remembrance of him. In that service we remember that Jesus died on a cross and that as he did so he said ‘Father forgive them’ and poured out forgiveness, even on those who crucified him. In this service we are reminded of Gods great love for us his children and the forgiveness which the death of Jesus assures us of. Can you believe in a God who forgives us even when we reject him and nail him to a cross. That is what we mean he ‘redeemed humankind,’ God loves and forgives us.
What we believe about Jesus is critical as to whether or not we should call ourselves Christian. He made bold statements and said that the words he spoke and the things he did, were nothing less than the words and actions of God himself. If Jesus was telling the truth then in his life we can see what God is like, in a way that our minds can understand. We can see that he cares for us, that he goes out of his way to forgive and help us. What do you believe?
Question 3
Do you believe and trust in his Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God ?
After his death and resurrection, Jesus left his disciples to spread the good news of all that he had said and done. He also gave them a promise that the Holy Spirit would always be with them. Christians believe that God’s Spirit is still with them enabling the church to serve God in the world. This is what makes the church different from just another club or human organisation, it is a place where Christians can come together and find God present in a special way.
It is strange to think of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Yet although we know God in these three ways we are told that he is very much the same God. Jesus prayed that the oneness which he had with God should be in his church as well. For this reason we believe that Christians should learn to put aside differences and share together as one church without denominational barriers. Our church as St Mark’s welcomes people of whatever church background, or none, to come together as one family without divisions. Jesus died for all people, he didn’t pick and choose and we want to offer the same welcome to all people.