Christianity vs. The Bible

A One
A Two
And a Three

It's easy to see the common thread, I think. I put them all together because, the second one kind of explains the first one a little. And the third one just went with it. Rather than do them one at a time, I'm going to touch on certain things from the whole of it in a few different posts.

There's one thing that I don't really like about a lot of Christian jargon - and it's our usage of the words "true" and "real." It's not that they're used improperly or something - often they fit perfectly well. It's just that it seems there should be some better way of distinguishing between nominal Christianity and CHRISTianity. Sadly, I'm not sure what that way is.

Nominal Christians belong to a religion that is just like any other. It's works-based. It's man-centered. It's not Biblical. Christianity is supposed to be God-centered, grace-based, and Biblical. But the label of Christianity gets applied to a lot. And part of the problem is that even the real Christians aren't and won't be perfect (so long as this world continues). So, the active religion - the practiced part of it - can't be perfectly God-centered.

I suppose it's like music. You can get all the theory right, you can be able to name every note; that doesn't mean you're not going to make a mistake when it comes time to play the piece. So with Christianity - even if we KNOW everything correctly (which we don't), we still fail. We still mess up.

And this leads to trouble distinguishing between sincere Christianity and nominal Christianity, between the people who love God who slipped up this time and that time and the people who are just making use of a label. So we have an enormous umbrella known as Christianity that houses everything from Catholics to Amish, from Charismatics to Quakers. And then there's just that group who identify as being "Christian" simply because they believe in a god and were taught to respect the Bible. They don't go to church, don't partake in the foundational things like Baptism and Communion, know practically nothing about Jesus - but they somehow fall in the same category as David Brainerd and Jonathon Edwards.

Christianity as only a religion is just as harmful as any other, as Buddhism, Islam, cults, and that crazy thing about the lizard-people that was linked to a few posts back. The Pharisees had religion. But followers of Christ have Christ Himself.

In the end, what I really wanted to say on this part is that while Threnody is absolutely right that "Christianity" and the Bible are not the same thing - they should be. REAL Christianity follows Christ and the Bible is the greatest tool we have to help us do that.

And, of course, I disagree about the Bible being a flawed, human institution. Since I don't think you can prove (or disprove) the Bible though, that wraps this up for today.