In the post before this I mentioned the where will Christianity be in 100 years discussion in my class today. The comment that struck the hardest chord with me was the idea that in order to survive Christianity will have to conform to the times.
This could not be farther from the truth. No matter how much people would like to change our message there is only one way that it can be done. God does not give us room to rewrite the Gospel and the Law so that it can relate to social issues. In fact the cause for all of this rewriting is the Law accomplishing what it is supposed to but people are not being given the Gospel to show them how much God really does care about them. So much in fact that he gave his only son to save us from a fate which we deserve.
Society loves to rewrite the rules for Christianity because they are living under the delusion that as long as the accepted rules are followed then it will merit the Grace of God rather. The Christian church is not one of following Law to be saved but rather a combination of rightly divided Law and Gospel. (A good intro to this idea by Ryan at Wretched of the Earth) The key is the Gospel for salvation we can do nothing on our own to merit God but rather God gives us everything as a free gift no strings attached.
Anyways does anyone have any thoughts about where Christianity will be in 100 years?
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2 comments:
Regarding where christianity will be in 100 years, I just can't imagine Christ won't have returned before 100 years is up - hey, maybe even before 2006 is up! Although I know the Christians of 2000 years ago thought the same thing!
Anyway, I know that's not what you were talking about. You're right that Christianity shouldn't have to conform to survive, but I wonder if we are believing exactly the same things the early Christians did. I somehow think its unlikely, so I suppose our faith has changed. No doubt as we learn more about our world etc. we expand our thinking about God. But the fundamentals can't change - that we are saved by the Grace of God.
Interested to see what other (more learned!) people think.
I agree the Good News will always be relevant and we do never really know for sure when Jesus will be back. Where is it that Jesus makes that comment Joe just to add it to my knowledge.
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