What Is Christianity?
Clip Art of Jesus
Christianity is the largest of the world religions with over two billion followers world-wide. It gets its name from Jesus of Nazareth, known as Jesus Christ. 'Christ' is not a name but a title - it means 'anointed' or 'chosen one' because God chose Jesus to make reconciliation between himself and us for our disobedience of his rules - which disobedience we call 'Sin'.

Although modern science can explain a lot more than our predecessors could, most scientists and philosophers today agree that we can still only explain how a small part of how the universe works and they can't explain why it exists, what was there if anything before it started in a 'Big Bang', or what purpose it serves. Religion is complimentary to science and attempts to explain the 'why'.

There is some similarity between the beliefs of the major religions, but also some fundamental differences, including how the Supreme Being or 'God' is described and what people believe the Supreme Being expects from us. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all believe God has set rules by which we should live but interprets those rules differently. They've recorded their interpretation of God's rules in their respective Holy Books - The Torah, The Bible, and the Qur'an.

Christianity teaches that we should live our life according to God's rules, showing respect to him and to each other, but because humanity always fails to live up to the high standard those rules set, it causes a separation between God pushes us, in the same way that a separation is caused between a loving human parent and a disobedient child.

However, it's the unique Christian belief that God has a perfect loving nature which is so fundamental to him that, because humanity fails to obey his rules for living a good life, he came to earth himself in the form of Jesus as our 'Saviour' or intermediary between himself and humanity to make amends for our wrongdoing, since it's only God's own perfect nature that is capable of making such a reconciliation.

That's why Jesus is called 'Christ' - the 'chosen one' of God, chosen to make amends for our disobedience of his rules.

For a fuller description of the Christian faith, click here.
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