My Beliefs – Christianity and Me

One God – Many Churches

I have always found it confusing and strange that one religion can have seemingly endless different variations, but giving it more thought I guess it isn’t surprising at all. Roughly a third of the world’s population follows some form of Christianity, around 2.6 billion people. It is a global religion encompassing a diverse range of cultures which all have different histories and perspectives. It is also very old being founded sometime in the 1^st Century AD. Given this it is hardly surprising that differences have arisen between different groups.

As far as I can work out there are three major groups of Christians: Orthodox (0.28 billion), Catholic (1.35 billion) and Protestant (0.96 billion). They split at different points in history, see my basic schematic below inspired by BBC Bitesize, I don’t know why they pulled apart, but I will be looking into it. These are then split further based on more nuanced interpretations of the Bible and the weight that is placed on different aspects of the teachings and writings contained therein. There is a comprehensive (but not necessarily exhaustive) list available via Wikipedia.

*A **very** brief history of the main divisions of Christianity adapted from BBC Bitesize*

What do all Christian’s believe?

In my experience all Christians believe that there is one God, whom we should honour above all things. We believe that Jesus was the Son of God born from the virgin Mary and that he came to fulfil God’s law written in the Old Testament. We believe that through his crucifixion and resurrection he took the burden for our sins and opened the possibility for us to have a right relationship with God. This right relationship comes about through following and believing wholly in Jesus Christ and dedicating our lives to following his teachings. We believe that there will be an eternal life after our physical life ends where we will join God in heaven.

The Nicene creed, written in the 4^th Century at the council of Nicea, is a unifying statement of what is held to be true by the whole church. It was originally written in Greek and was used to teach the central beliefs of Christianity to a growing community. Many Christians recite the Nicene creed during their worship, particularly at Eastertime. It is accepted as authoritative by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican and many Protestant churches.

My Thoughts on the Nicene Creed

The Creed:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven,
was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.

My Thoughts:

I am a scientist and understand and accept the scientific theories (ideas that have been backed up with rigorous data collection and physical proof) of evolutionary biology. I also accept the Big Bang however I do not believe that science or any human mind will be able to fully comprehend or explain and then prove an answer to all of life’s questions. I agree wholeheartedly with this first paragraph.

The second paragraph is a summary of how God became flesh and sent his own son to die for us. It does seem to have a few redundant passages as we have already stated that God made all things. I think the triplet “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God” is significant. They really wanted people to know and accept that Jesus wasn’t made in the usual way but is a part of God made into a human being. In fact, over half the paragraph is a description of how Jesus was both man and God.

The final paragraph used to really get my back up because of my own ignorance. The part explaining the Holy Spirit I am completely down for. The Holy Spirit has been with me as a tangible force many times helping me to feel completely present with God. I took Umbridge at the phrase:

“We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church”

I confused catholic for Roman Catholic and apostolic for Apostolic Church. These words do not refer to the denominations, the names for the denominations came from these words. The word catholic means “universal” and the “apostolic” means we believe that the church began with the apostles at Pentecost. I agree with both of those statements.

A Modern Creed

I think the Nicene creed does a great job of summarising what all Christians hold to be true, but I think the language is outdated making it open to misinterpretation and inaccessible to many people. It was written and agreed by men, not by God or the Apostles and should reflect the language and time it is currently being used in. Here is my attempt at a modern creed, it is written from a white European perspective so would need adapting for different cultures but:

The Almighty who made everything.
Not just what we can see and understand but also all the things we cannot see or understand.

The Holy Spirit the giver of life,
Who spoke through the prophets.

Jesus Christ, The only Son of God.
Not created through sex but made from God.
When Jesus was born from the virgin Mary
God was made man.
Jesus was crucified to save us,
He died and was buried,
In agreement with the Old Testament,
he rose on the third day,
He went up to heaven where he is seated
at God’s right hand.
Jesus will return to judge all of God’s creation and his kingdom will have no end.

We worship God the Almighty, The Son and the Holy Spirit together.

We believe in a universal church planted by Jesus Christ and founded in his Apostles.

We acknowledge one baptism for the
forgiveness of sins

We look towards the resurrection of the dead and eternal life in the world to come.

Amen

This was a very long post and, I think, potentially radical in some respects. My hope is that it has stimulated or challenged some of your own thoughts and ideas. I have said it in other posts, and I will say it here. I am a new Christian raised in the UK. I am ignorant of many things and am constantly looking to learn. I welcome your comments and emails.

God Bless,

E.M.

My Sources:

Here are links to articles that I found extremely useful when writing this post. They were all working and accessible at time of publication.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zc668mn/revision/1

https://www.churchofengland.org/our-faith/what-we-believe/apostles-creed#na

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zbj48mn/revision/8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members#

This is a declaration of what I, as a Christian in the UK, believe at this moment. I am new and I think ignorant, but I don’t view that as a hinderance to my faith or believe that my opinions should be discredited on account of it. Jesus instructed us to be like little children. When I think of children, I see them trust without all the facts, they want to understand but accept that they don’t or cannot understand everything, they express their emotions and are authentic. God wants us to be like that. To trust, to be authentic and to accept that we cannot have all the answers.

I haven’t included any references in this blog because these are my beliefs built up throughout my life but considered much more deeply over the last year. I have no firm idea of where I fit within the Christian Church here in Britain and this is the first step towards me trying to figure that out.

I am not trying to upset or discredit anyone directly, but I do wish to state where I sit on the following topics.

Love

God loves us all unconditionally. That means that even though we fall short God loves us. Even when we think someone is not worthy of love, God loves them. What we have is the choice to accept or reject that love. Rejection hurts God just as it hurts us when we are rejected in life. Accepting the offer of that love, acknowledging that we cannot perfectly follow God and need something given by God’s grace to make up the distance leads to salvation. I believe that true love is a beautiful gift from God and that it is perfect between two adults.

Salvation

God bridged the gap between our behaviour and what God expects by being born to a woman as a man named Jesus Christ. Jesus grew up and as a man was baptised and went on to sacrifice himself to redeem us of our sin and allow us to access God’s love and The Kingdom of Heaven.

The Trinity

God exists in three parts but is one being. There is God as The Lord, a parental figure guiding and desiring the best for us acting as both the nurturing and critical parent. There is God as humankind, Jesus the Son of God born by a remarkable woman, Mary, who redeemed us all in the eyes of God. He was able to connect with us on physical level and gave us the Gospels. He taught us how to move past the Old Testament Law so that everyone could come to experience God’s love and grace. Finally, the Holy Spirit, I see this like a child enabling us to be curious, to feel our emotions and God’s presence in the moment. To spur us to action and give us the little push we need to be brave.

Communion

To me the last supper was an invitation for us to remember and thank God for the redemption we were gifted. I think it is a metaphor and that Communion can be celebrated at home with friends over any food or drink not just bread (or wafers) and wine (or grape juice). I think any Christian that believe Jesus came and sacrificed himself through Gods will to save us can lead a ‘communion’ the important part is to thank God for the gifts we have been given.

Organised Religion

Jesus is the head of the Church and any that believe in him have the right to be a member of that Church and spread what is truly fantastic news. We are all priests in that regard. I believe God has gifted some with ability to share the truth of God’s News more effectively than others. I also believe that there is a place for structure particularly as things grow in size. I can’t get away from the fact that Jesus spent a lot of time throwing religious leaders out of their temples though. I think the devil can lay many traps for those in religious authority and that we need to be very careful when considering what is truly important to God and therefore what should be important to us. I do not think anyone should be kept from a position of authority within a Church on grounds of gender identity, sexual orientation, age, race, or any other label. God made all of us in their image. It is ludicrous to pick one label over another. God is the I Am, God is all things, all peoples. To discriminate against a particular label discriminates against a part of God.

That’s all I have in me for now. I really welcome your thoughts, feedback, comments, advice, and most of all your prayers. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I urge you to be polite in your feedback even if you have taken great offence to or been angered by what is written. I am always learning and always willing to listen to those that state their point without hate or malice.

God bless you and keep you,