The spectrum of Christian belief is broad, but there is a central core which all true
Christians agree on. For myself, I am an "evangelical", meaning that I consider the word
of God as revealed in the Bible to be true. That doesn't mean I take every word literally.
After all, when somebody says "you have your father's eyes", we are all capable of
recognising this as true without getting hung up on the literal absurdity of such a
comment. Why then do so many have such problems with scripture ?
If you want a clear and well researched summary of the Christian faith, you could do a
lot worse than Frank Lane's analysis of
the Apostles' Creed. However, the essence
can be summed up in four points :
The universe was no accident. It was created and is sustained by God. And as any artist or
model maker will understand, God loves His creation. But God loves us, the pinnacle of
that creation, more deeply and totally than we can conceive.
We, however, rebel against God. We reject His word, and we treat the law of love He gives
(for our benefit) as a hardship. He gave us free will because He loves us, but we abuse
that free will and consider ourselves better than Him. This causes us to be alienated from
our loving heavenly Father.
This alienation is painful to God, but He knows we can never be right with Him through our
own strength. Therefore He devised a rescue plan for us. For this plan, God came to earth
in the person of Jesus Christ, and submitted Himself to the excruciating death of
crucifixion. In doing so, He took on Himself all the debts we owe and the penalties we are
due, thus releasing us to come to Him.
But it doesn't end there! As well as cancelling our debt by taking the punishment for us,
Jesus conquered death and rose out of the grave. Because He has done so, death has no
dominion over anyone who accepts Christ's gift of new life.