Christianity, Not One Among Many

Christian or not, any intellectually honest person must admit that there has never been anything that compares to Christianity throughout all of recorded history.  2000 years ago an obscure man from an obscure village wandered around the Levant region of the Mediterranean teaching about God for a couple of years and then was crucified.  At the end of his ministry all his followers fled, betrayed him or deserted him.

Yet, a couple of centuries later he was the center of the dominant religion of the civilized world.  It still remains the largest religion in the world 2000 years later with over 2 billion adherents.  Historians have spent at least 1500 years going crazy trying to understand this phenomenon.  There are, of course, many explanations, but few that are satisfactory and satisfying.  They range from, “God made it happen” to, “it was all an elaborate hoax perpetuate by the Apostles.” 

In order to understand the unique nature of Christianity’s growth it is necessary to look at one other key uniqueness.  Christianity did not begin with Jesus ministry on earth but with his resurrection.  Christians do not follow a prophet like Moses or Muhammad.  They follow a risen Lord.  This is absolutely critical to the understanding of Christianity.  It is impossible to teach the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings or philosophies; as Paul tells us, it will be considered foolishness.  The disciple’s job is to introduce people to Jesus Christ.  It’s his job to teach the wisdom of the kingdom’s ways.

Paul himself persecuted the Christians until Christ knocked him off his horse and blinded him with a bright light to get his attention.  Once Paul had personally met the risen Lord he underwent an very real attitude adjustment.  Read the beginning of Acts.  Massive conversion to Christianity came about because people had a personal experience with the living Jesus Christ.  It is the fact that Jesus Christ lives that makes Christianity unique among all the religions of the world.  The rapid growth happened and continues to happen because Christianity continues to have a leader who is alive and active in the world.

Jesus said that they (non-Christians) will know you (Christians) by how you love one another.  But we love one another because he first loved us.  The entire heart of Christianity rests on the assumption of a personal relationship with a living Lord which rests on the reality of the Resurrection.  This Holy Week we live in anticipation of the celebration of that unique event in history which occurred on Easter morning.

“The Church is like a public swimming pool, all the noise is at the shallow end”