I am curious as to how we perceive Christianity. If we were to break down what we today call Christianity, what would the most essential 5 characteristics/components be? I would love to hear from both the believer (top five importances of your faith) and non-Christians (top 5 things you don’t believe in?) alike. If you are a double-predestination Calvinist, then you can just write TULIP instead of writing out five things. 
Chad really really hopes things are going to turn out ok. He loves his wife - with the passion of 1000 exploding suns, and is a diligent, but surely mediocre father to his brilliant and subversive children.
He likes Chinese food.
About Optimistic Chad
Chad really really hopes things are going to turn out ok. He loves his wife - with the passion of 1000 exploding suns, and is a diligent, but surely mediocre father to his brilliant and subversive children.
He likes Chinese food.
(1) The Trinity: I cannot think of another religion that speaks of God in categories like Christians do.
(2) Jesus the Messiah: He is the center of our faith and we place him in higher regard as Lord and Savior than the rest of the world.
(3) The empowerment/infilling/gift of the Holy Spirit: This is core to the New Covenant.
(4) Communion/Eucharist: I know there may be parallels in ancient religions but I think this is unique today.
(5) Eschatology: I think teaching on the New Heavens-New Earth is distinct from most end scenarios of other religions including many who call themselves Christians (e.g. Left Behind).
That’s my best shot at it!
https://twitter.com/RodofAlexandria/status/22555252512
I’m not sure what you mean for me.
Do you mean, what do I reject about what I think you think of Christianity?
Or
Out of what I used to think about Christianity, what do I now reject?
Yeah, I think he is talking about what are the top 5 teachings/doctrines that you reject from Christianity.
Alright, thanks Rod.
1) The inerrence of the Scriptures.
2) Original sin, and our NEED of salvation.
3) The existence of a created Hell.
4) The substitutionary atonement.
5) The existence of a god.
sort of both an neither. More like, from the inside or outside, what do you see as the most essentially Christian things about Christianity. Whether you reject each one or not.
Ohh, alright. Then my answer would be a little different.
1) The afterlife, i.e. Heaven and Hell. Virtually every Christian, from child to new adult convert believes something about heaven and hell, and implicitly God and Lucifer.
2) The situation on Earth is not as good as it could/should be. And it’s mankind’s (or sometimes Satan’s) fault.
3) The substitutionary atonement.
4) The resurrection.
5) The notion that one day things will be perfect.
Please insert YHWH accordingly. I should have remembered how to spell that, but I spaced.
From someone simple, here are my 5 most important
1 God(the whole trinity)
2 grace
3 learning
4 teaching
5 prayer
here is my go -
1. everything i ever needed to know about YHWH, I learned from Jesus
2. in the title match between relationship and offense, relationship wins by KO
3. forgiveness is indeed divine
4. The Bible is a really messed up book. But its ours. Its the true bedtime story God and I read to our children…
5. never be afraid to do what is good. cuz God has you covered.
you know, its funny, but I have actually been to churches where the top five might go something like:
1. God hates you. He can’t help it because…
2. You suck really bad. It’s not your fault that its all your fault.
3. Jesus for some reason likes you more than his dad. So God beat him up instead of you….
4. If you are one of the ones God picked a really long time ago. Before God made the entire universe…
5. In 6 literal days, about 6,000-10,000 years ago.
I feel like you’re saying this ironicly, as if you were wholly on the outside yourself. Even if you weren’t, I would say such ideas are still apt in such a discussion.
No doubt I was intending to be ironic. I suppose it’s not that I disbelieve that those things are important to some, but it always strikes me as so odd that the core of our faiths could be so different. I for one don’t subscribe to any of the above 5.
Agreed!
It’s interesting what the comment section is kind of demonstrating, though.
I mean, everyone’s response has been unique, but it still looks like there’s even a Top 2 or Top 3 that the believer and unbeliever might equate as a belief of Christians.
Excellent blog choice, to say the least.
1.) God in Christ
2.) Inspiration of the Scriptures
3.) Imago Dei
4.) Baptism
5.) Eucharist
1.I am saved by God through Christ,it is only by His grace and mercy.It is His doing not mine.My resonse is the faith I put in His way of saving me.The way He chose to save us reflect His altogether different from our nture.
2.All the above leads me to the understanding that God is Love.That’s the essence of His nature and apart from Him I am not capable of true love.Only in Him I know what love is.My calling is to reflect this newfound love that He forms in me increasingly and pour it out on His creation.
3.Because of the above I now live (for most parts)in harmony with my Creator who redeemed me for that very reason,to know Him and to live in harmony with Him.
4.I live a new life,life that has a purpose and a calling.That pupose is to pour out everything He pours in me,to love and serve His creation with everincreasing love and selflessness as He forms His nature through the working of His Spirit in me.
5.Through all of this my hope is that more of His Creation will recognize and choose to reconcile with their Creator with the hope that His light will overcome the darkness that is in all of us apart from Him due to ignorance.
* Justification *
* “Because justification summarizes God’s salvific dealing with the world, it is the true subject of theology: ‘The proper subject of theology is man guilty of sin and condemned, and God the Justifier and Savior of man the sinner. Whatever is asked or discussed in theology outside this subject is error and poison. All Scripture points to this, that God commends His kindness to us and in His Son restores to righteousness and life the nature that has fallen into sin and condemnation’ (AE 12, 311). It is the center and the most important article of faith.”
* ‘The article of justification is the master and prince, the lord and ruler, and the judge over all kinds of doctrines; it preserves and governs all church doctrine and raises up our conscience before God. Without this article the world is utter death and darkness.
* It is the hub that is connected to all these doctrines and orders everything, but without these other doctrines, e.g., without the doctrine of the deity of Christ, there is no doctrine of justification: As I often warn, therefore, the doctrine of justification must be learned diligently. For in it are included all the other doctrines of our faith; and if it is sound, all the others are sound as well. Therefore, when we teach that men are justified through Christ and that Christ is the Victor over sin, death, and the eternal curse, we are testifying at the same time that He is God by nature’ (AE 26, 283).
* The doctrine of justification defines who God is: He is the one who was in Christ reconciling the world; He is the one who justifies through faith in Christ (Rom. 3:26). Therefore any concept of God that denies this and believes in a god who has to be reconciled by what man does is idolatrous, even if it manages to include Christ in its scheme: ‘Whoever falls from the doctrine of justification is ignorant of God and is an idolater.
‘When this article stands, the church stands, when it falls, the church falls.’ (WA 40 III, 352, 3) ~ Martin Luther
http://www.lifeoftheworld.com/lotw/article.php?m_vol=8&m_num=1&a_num=1
Anyways that’s what Martin Luther says all Christianity stands or falls on…as for me, these are the 5 main components I’d list:
1) Genesis Chapter 1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
2) Sin
3) The exclusivity of Christ
4) The Cross
5) Heaven & Hell
1. The Trinity
2. Grace
3. Cross of Christ
4. Eternal Security
5. The Apostle Paul
I will be honest but I know this will stir things up….. =)
1- God the Father (the only true God)
2- The human Jesus Christ, miraculously begotten in the womb of Mary
3- The gospel of the coming kingdom of God (we will share eternal life on a renewed earth, not in heaven)
4- The resurrection of Christ as a preview of the resurrection of believers at his parousia
5- The ethical call to love our enemies (means we dont shoot them)
Dustin Martyr
5- The ethical call to love our enemies (means we dont shoot them)
This.
1) Nationalism
2) Anti-homosexuality
3) Anti-abortion
4) Judgmental
5) Ignorant
lol
Love made us, and will yet make us holy, even though
we somehow often prefer wasting ourselves and the world with us;
Love’s work is accomplished (albeit this fulfillment is yet unseen) in Jesus Christ,
and though we cannot imagine the eventual (or eternal) glory,
it is possible by grace to live this, deeply, with others, starting right now.
(That’s mine. I realize that subordinate clauses may have smuggled in more than five).
Good exercise. A struggle for parsimony.
As a Christian fish, I always run the risk of overlooking crucial components of the worldview I swim in, but here’s rough try:
1) Our understanding of who God is.
2) The idea of a redeemed community of believers through the ages.
3 ) The belief in a right and wrong dictated by God.
4) The importance of Scripture (regardless of what words the belief is wrapped in).
5) The world as a battleground between good and evil, with the inevitable future victory of good.
1. A really good organ.
2. Stained glass windows.
3. Hymns, none of that rock and roll stuff.
4. American flags.
5. Oh, uh, Jesus or something…
I was hoping to fit belt buckles and bolo ties in, but they got cut off by Jesus. Top 10?