Living the Christian Way

There is a deeper meaning of being a Christian than just prayers and adoration for Jesus Christ. Since time immemorial has long been evident in the lives of many people in the world who believe in prayers, sins, heaven, hell, prophets, and miracles. Jesus of Nazareth’s famous crucifixion and resurrection came to be known for the believers, thereby calling him Jesus Christ.

So what’s more with the now largest religion in the world? A faction that is so large with almost 2 billion followers, this most prominent and dominant religion in the western side of the world having different varieties of belief forms and practices has centered its faith to Jesus Christ. Thus, it is called Christianity.

Christianity is based on several key aspects as described below:

1. Living the Christian Life – It is how the way people should live according to Jesus Christ and with accordance to the teachings of the bible. The most common manifestations are the following:
   • Prayer – It is not just a simple prayer but something from the heart. Prayers in secret are advised. With prayers, a Christian is said to communicate with God in order to create a personal relationship with Him.
   • Discipline – A good Christian knows how to handle precautions; by this, it means self-discipline. A disciplined person is unlikely to create chaos and sins.
   • Repentance – As the saying goes, “To err is human, to forgive is Godly.” It is innate in a man to be prone in committing sins but it is only through repentance that God will forgive the sinners. Sometimes making a U-turn is not really that bad for a person who travels along the wrong path. Turn around and repent.
   • Service – To promote and improve one’s spiritual life, a Christian needs to provide service to others by which he can make use of his God-given talents and abilities to help them, especially the neediest.
   • Evangelism – When Jesus Christ said to spread his teachings to the world, He meant to evangelize the world with Christianity. Thus, a Christian, at one point in his life, should evangelize others to the word of God. This is the way Christianity is spread over the globe.
2. Fellowship with God – Jesus Christ has only one great commandment and that is to build a better personal relationship with God. The only way to do this is to love God and thy neighbors above all else.
3. Living away from Sins – The challenge of sins has always been the problem of humans. By being a Christian, it is a challenge to stay away from them and become a person worthy of emulation by doing good deeds and abiding the commandments of God and the teachings of the Bible.

There are also beliefs that distinguished Christian among other religions in the world. Some of them are:

• The Christian God – this is a belief that there is one great Creator.
• Jesus Christ – the belief of God the Son.
• The Virgin Mary – Jesus Christ’s Mother.
• The Trinity – that God is in three forms: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.
• The Holy Spirit – God the Holy Spirit.
• Human Nature – the creation of human in the bible version of Adam and Eve.
• Angels – the cherubim in heaven.
• Devils and Demons – the forces of evil.
• The After Life – the life after death: purgatory, hell, heaven.
• Heaven – the kingdom of God.
• Hell – the kingdom of Satan.

There are also practices that sort Christians from others. Common practices are:

• Baptism
• Honoring the Saint
• Praying the Rosary
• Marriage
• Sainthood

With all these beliefs and practices, a normal Christian should be able to do this by heart and by soul for it is already manifested in them by the time they are conceived in their mother’s womb until the time they will return back to the ashes and face the life after death. Living the Christian way is not simple but there is no other way to live the life in this world where everything is just a means to an end. Following Christ’s life is the only way to heaven — It is just a one-way ticket, a sure ride, so to speak.

Modern Christianity

Christianity, the largest of the world’s religions, was born into the Greco-Roman world. At the outset, it appeared to be a sect of Judaism, but it took its distinctive character from the fact that it centered in Jesus Christ. It seemed to have a scant likelihood of winning a continuing role in history. The public career of Jesus lasted at most three years, and he met the implacable opposition of his people’s religious leaders. One of his inner circles of chosen friends betrayed him to his enemies. He died on a Roman cross, presumably frustrated and a failure. However, his disciples were convinced that he had been raised from the dead. They proclaimed him as Savior and Lord and declared that those who acknowledged him as such would enter upon the kind of triumphant, radiant, eternal life which they saw in him.

The post 1914 decades again brought new challenges to Christianity. From lands and people which had traditionally been Christian came forces, which worked at a vast revolution- political, economic, and cultural- in the entire human race. Two world wars fought with weapons devised in what had been called Christendom embroiled the entire globe. Beginning in 1945 atomic energies, first released in the United States, threatened mankind with extinction. In Europe and Asia old forms of government toppled. In wide areas, notably Russia and China, they were replaced by frankly and at times militantly atheistic Communism. Land after land was industrialized, with attendant challenges to religion. In both Western and Eastern Europe church attendance declined. Outside the Occident, the colonialism which flourished in the nineteenth century was being shaken off. The Christianity which had been associated with Western imperialism was challenged as a cultural phase of that imperialism. Here and there, were resurgence of non-Christian religions- chiefly Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. However, the general trend throughout the world was toward a religion-denying secularism.

In striking contrast to these challenges, there was mounting vitality in Christianity. This was seen in at least seven ways.

1. Christianity was continuing its geographic spread. This was chiefly through Roman Catholic and Protestant missions and to a lesser extent by the Eastern churches. In spite of the increases in population during the half-century which followed 1914, Christians, though, still minorities, increased their portion of the populations in India, Indonesia, and Africa south of the Sahara.
2. Christianity became deeply rooted among more people that it, or any other religion had ever been. The reaction against Western imperialism might have led to a recession in the Christian tide because of the association of missionaries with colonial powers; but instead it hastened the development of indigenous initiative and leadership.
3. Christianity persisted in lands controlled by Communism. In Russia, after a period when the anti-Christian measures of the Communists greatly reduced the number of church members, Christianity revived and grew, even though not to the same numerical dimension as before.
4. New movements were emerging and old ones were being strengthened. In the Roman Catholic Church the Liturgical Movement, Catholic Action, Eucharistic congresses, Christian Democratic parties, the Legion of Mary, many youth organizations and new translations of the Bible into the vernaculars gave evidence of a larger participation of the laity.
5. Efforts to take account of the intellectual currents of the age were made. In the Roman Catholic Church on the Eve of World War I, Rome had taken empathetic measures to eradicate the “modernism” which threatened to corrode the faith of many of the clergies. That action did not, however, eliminate scholarly activity.
6. Christians were coming together as never before. They were still far from being united in one ecclesiastical body, but rapid progress was being made toward presenting a common front to the world. The trend was especially marked in Protestantism, by its very nature the most divided wing of Christianity.
7. Christianity was having a wider moral influence on mankind outside the churches than ever before. For example, it contributed greatly to the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, the most influential Indian of the century, and through him influenced many of his fellow countrymen. Clearly, Christianity was not dominant in the world of the twentieth century but, while vigorously challenged, it was widely influential in the affairs of men.

Christianity has spread in the world big time. Through the efforts of many of our ancestors, it has flourished and later developed us into a valued person making us holistically competent beings. Are you proud you’re a Christian?

Christmas as a True Christian Celebration

We all know that Christianity was founded based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, as written or presented in the New Testament of the Holy Bible. The central Christian belief is that Jesus is the son of God and that his sacrificial or selfless death and his resurrection will lead to the salvation of mankind and the redemption from their sins. Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah, or savior of the people, who would fulfill the prophecies as stated in the Old Testament.

Christianity has branched out into different forms, groups, and denominations, with its three primary divisions being Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and the Orthodox Church. However, the beliefs and practices of all adherents center around their faith in Jesus Christ. Most denominations consider Jesus as the model of a virtuous man. As such, one common ground is the yearly commemoration of Jesus’ birth, which we all refer to as Christmas. In fact, in many areas of the world, Christmas is considered as the most festive and the most religiously significant time of the year.

The Christmas season is celebrated all throughout the Christian population, but it is also celebrated by a lot of non-Christians as a cultural festival. And because gift-giving, putting up Christmas decorations, feasts and parties, and many other aspects of the holiday encourage heightened economic activity among Christians and non-Christians alike, Christmas has become a major event for businesses or for retailers. In other words, Christmas has evolved to become more of a commercial event, rather than an exclusive Christian holiday commemorating the nativity of Jesus.

In the truest Christian sense, the story of the birth the Child Jesus is based on accounts written in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, both found in the New Testament of the Holy Bible. According to these biblical accounts, Jesus Christ was born to Mary, with the assistance of her husband Joseph, in Bethlehem. Popular tradition says that the birth took place in a deserted stable and the baby Jesus was placed in a manger because inns no longer had a room for them. Shepherds tending to their flocks in fields around Bethlehem learned of the birth of the Messiah through the angels and were the first to see the newborn Christ.

Different groups have established different ways of celebrating Christmas and the period leading to it.

The Western Church, for instance, celebrates Advent, which is the liturgical period before Christmas. This period begins four Sundays before December 25 or Christmas Day. Advent is observed by Christians as a period of fasting, prayer, and penitence. Historically, Advent’s main sanctuary color is purple, which is the color associated with penitence and fasting, as well as the color of royalty as used to welcome the Advent of the King.  The Catholic Church still uses purple, which is also the color that represents Christ’s suffering and is the main color used during Lent and Holy Week. The use of purples, therefore, points to a significant connection between the birth of Christ and his death. The Catholic Church believes that the nativity and the incarnation of Jesus cannot be separated from Jesus’ crucifixion.

The Eastern Orthodox Church, on the other hand, practices the “Nativity Fast” in preparation of Christ’s birth. Orthodox Christians enter  the Nativity or Christmas Fast 40 days before the feast of the Lord’s birth in order to purify the soul and body and therefore, to be able to enter  and partake of the spiritual reality of the coming of Christ. This fasting period, however, does not constitute the intense liturgical period characteristic of Lent, instead this is more of an “ascetical” nature. Within this 40-day preparation period, the theme of the Nativity gets introduced little by little in the church services and liturgical commemorations.

Other Christian denominations also celebrate Christmas in their own respective ways. For some, children perform plays that re-tell the events of the Nativity, or they sing carols and jingles that are relevant to the season. Other Christians display re-creations of the Nativity, known as the Nativity scene, in their homes with the use of figurines portraying the main characters. There are also live performances of the Nativity scene using actors and live animals to portray the event realistically.