The reason why Christianity is the world's largest organized religion is not because the world is filled with crazy people who believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And it's not because of blind "faith".
I say again: it is NOT because of blind faith.
Most people appear to define faith as the absence of reason. The spiritual equivalent of cupping your hands over your ears, screaming "Lalalalalala!", tapping your heels together three times, and wishing really hard for something to be true.
Wow, people. Come on now!
The Christian faith is not based on wishful thinking or hopeful thoughts. It's a worldview shaped by logic, common sense, and factual evidence. It is characterized by scientific inquiry, archaeology, eyewitness accounts, and historical analysis.
From the birth of the universe to the thoughts bouncing around in your brain to the complexity of life to the implications of your own free will...how do you exist without, at some point, asking the really BIG questions. Is there a God? Why am I here?
There are those who shrug off the questions and eat a taco.
There are others who say "Well, let's figure this out..."
If your objective is to "feel better", you'll choose a spiritual path that makes you feel good.
If your objective is to discover Truth, then many Christians would claim that the evidence led them to make very specific conclusions about the Bible, Jesus, and what the heck is going on. And for a huge chunk of the Christian population, those conclusions were not based on feeling the fuzzy wuzzies.
Obviously, you intended the period of 2,000 years to mean something. As if that number is sufficiently large enough to have an impact on the validity of those conclusions. Compared to what? Is 2,000 years a lot compared to 50 years? Well, sure...I suppose if we're using our own lifetimes as the measuring stick.
What about millions of years? Is 2,000 a lot? Then again, what is time? It's an aspect of our universe. We live in 4 dimensions: width, length, depth, and time. For us humans, it's linear, finite, and scientifically relative.
To a God that lives outside the constraints of his own creation? Well, time doesn't mean a whole lot at that point. If you are a tiny, blue dot within a massive and beautiful painting on the wall...and God jumped into the painting to binge watch Netflix with you...then he jumped back out of the painting to go about his day...You're thinking to yourself "wow, when's he coming back for season two?" And you look across the broad expanse of the canvas. You're a dot. The canvas is larger than you can ever perceive or comprehend. You can't see the edges. Only miles and miles of canvas, stretching on to the great beyond.
Now imagine that your little dot personality experiences time in the same regard. Maybe it moves one millimeter across the canvas once every 10 years. After 2,000 years, we've moved a little over half a foot? Meanwhile God is looking at the entire picture, all the dots, all the movements, and all the interweaving connections.
There is purpose. There is a plan.
God came down and said so. Face to face. No riddles. Nothing cryptic. Pretty straightforward.
Anyone who claims that we should be able to set a timer to the Master Plan should step back and look at the "big picture".
Because faith and religion is not about proof or evidence. It is not about logic or rationality, either. It is about belief. They believe Christ will come back, and they will continue waiting, for as long as that faith is alive. So, it doesn't matter if Christians are still waiting for Christ 2000 years later. Not even if they continue to wait for another 2000 years. Christians believe in it. It is their right, and we are not in a position to question it. It is their faith, after all.
The reason why Christianity is the world's largest organized religion is not because the world is filled with crazy people who believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And it's not because of blind "faith".
I say again: it is NOT because of blind faith.
Most people appear to define faith as the absence of reason. The spiritual equivalent of cupping your hands over your ears, screaming "Lalalalalala!", tapping your heels together three times, and wishing really hard for something to be true.
Wow, people. Come on now!
The Christian faith is not based on wishful thinking or hopeful thoughts. It's a worldview shaped by logic, common sense, and factual evidence. It is characterized by scientific inquiry, archaeology, eyewitness accounts, and historical analysis.
From the birth of the universe to the thoughts bouncing around in your brain to the complexity of life to the implications of your own free will...how do you exist without, at some point, asking the really BIG questions. Is there a God? Why am I here?
There are those who shrug off the questions and eat a taco.
There are others who say "Well, let's figure this out..."
If your objective is to "feel better", you'll choose a spiritual path that makes you feel good.
If your objective is to discover Truth, then many Christians would claim that the evidence led them to make very specific conclusions about the Bible, Jesus, and what the heck is going on. And for a huge chunk of the Christian population, those conclusions were not based on feeling the fuzzy wuzzies.
Obviously, you intended the period of 2,000 years to mean something. As if that number is sufficiently large enough to have an impact on the validity of those conclusions. Compared to what? Is 2,000 years a lot compared to 50 years? Well, sure...I suppose if we're using our own lifetimes as the measuring stick.
What about millions of years? Is 2,000 a lot? Then again, what is time? It's an aspect of our universe. We live in 4 dimensions: width, length, depth, and time. For us humans, it's linear, finite, and scientifically relative.
To a God that lives outside the constraints of his own creation? Well, time doesn't mean a whole lot at that point. If you are a tiny, blue dot within a massive and beautiful painting on the wall...and God jumped into the painting to binge watch Netflix with you...then he jumped back out of the painting to go about his day...You're thinking to yourself "wow, when's he coming back for season two?" And you look across the broad expanse of the canvas. You're a dot. The canvas is larger than you can ever perceive or comprehend. You can't see the edges. Only miles and miles of canvas, stretching on to the great beyond.
Now imagine that your little dot personality experiences time in the same regard. Maybe it moves one millimeter across the canvas once every 10 years. After 2,000 years, we've moved a little over half a foot? Meanwhile God is looking at the entire picture, all the dots, all the movements, and all the interweaving connections.
There is purpose. There is a plan.
God came down and said so. Face to face. No riddles. Nothing cryptic. Pretty straightforward.
Anyone who claims that we should be able to set a timer to the Master Plan should step back and look at the "big picture".
Because faith and religion is not about proof or evidence. It is not about logic or rationality, either. It is about belief. They believe Christ will come back, and they will continue waiting, for as long as that faith is alive. So, it doesn't matter if Christians are still waiting for Christ 2000 years later. Not even if they continue to wait for another 2000 years. Christians believe in it. It is their right, and we are not in a position to question it. It is their faith, after all.