Well, here goes.  For my first post, I thought I’d go to the basics.

What is Christianity anyway?

Thousands of careers and billions of words have been spent on this.  I can’t help but believe that we have made it a lot more complicated than it really is.  When somebody gives me a message for my wife, I tell them, “The probability that this message will be delivered intact goes down with each additional word.”   3 words….. pretty good,    5 words…… not so much,    30 words….. forget about it.  The same holds for explanations.  I’m a guy so I’ll boil this down.

Christianity is a way of living based on 2 rules and 2 ideas.   As a famous rabbi once said, “The rest is commentary.”

The rules:

Love God

Love your neighbor

The ideas :

An intelligent creator, God, made everything here for his own purposes.

Christ, his son, lived, died, and arose.  By accepting him and his gift of forgiveness we get to live with him forever, in paradise.

Everything else that you will hear and read is embellishment.  Don’t get me wrong…….as a Christian you should study the bible.  But, you also need to be careful.  I often hear people selling a “brand” of Christianity that violates these rules/ideas………especially  “Love your neighbor”.   Anybody selling a brand of Christianity that isn’t centered on these rules/ideas is misleading you.  Anybody telling you something that puts some other rule or idea ahead of these is misleading you.  At best they are well intentioned but misunderstand…..at worst they are using a patina of Christianity to sell some other agenda.   Be careful…..you need to test what you see, hear, and read against these 2 rules and 2 ideas.  You need to test what YOU say and do against them too.

Christianity,  lived out this way,  is pleasant and easy to sell to others.

So……. don’t overcomplicate it……. love God…. love your neighbor.