This blog being only a periodical diary of mine for others to read, I will not dive into theology at the deepest levels. I will only try to attempt at explaining the title Christianity vs. Christianity on the simplest terms I can muster.
Christianity to those that truly hold in their hearts that Jesus is the God of the Bible is fundamentally different than Christianity to those that call themselves Christians, yet do not hold Jesus as the God of the Bible. I am NOT talking about Christian Christianity vs. secular Christianity. I am talking about Christians proclaiming themselves Christians of Jesus and Christians proclaiming themselves as Christians, but have a different Jesus at the core of their belief system. See Christian Research Institute for a further clarification.
One such person that I am talking about is Jim Wallis of the Sojourners. One way to judge if a group of people, or a person, are Christians is to read their statement of belief. In these statements one can determine if they are Christians of Jesus, or not.
In an article written by Jim Wallis, Neither Democrats nor Republicans have a clue, in the third paragraph he states:
Thousands of verses in the Bible make poverty a moral and religious issue. The environment — protecting God's creation — is a religious matter and moral concern. Important issues of war and peace are deeply theological and just as much a “life issue” as is abortion. And human rights are rooted in the religious concept of the image of God in every person.
It is true that poverty and abortion are two, of many, moral issues that concern Christians. The question that needs to be applied here is “how” these issues are addressed, and then solved. The Christians of Jesus will address these issues amongst themselves in their churches, locally, and churches amongst themselves in a broader scale. From this facet of argument the theory is that the secular portion of the believer will attempt the influence of their respective government representative to alter future laws and policies and/or enforce existing laws and policies.
Jim Wallis takes these moral issues to the plain of employing government power. What Jim fails to realize concerning government is that government is pure power, or force, through its policies and laws. The local police and the military is a concrete definition of force. The subject matter of government power is subjective, not objective. How government addresses social issues is by applying government power, or force, to social policies. If Jim were a Christian of Jesus, government force would be the last apparatus he would want to utilize for social change.
In the Sojourners statement of belief few are listed bellow.
We believe commitment to be centrally important - to God, to one another, to our sisters and brothers on this planet, and to the Earth itself.
It is true for the commitment to God, but commitment to someone else should not be applied on the same level and degree. The NT communicates that believers ought to love God with all their heart and all their mind. This principle should not be applied, and therefore dangerous, in the same manner to other humans.
We refuse to accept structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class.
In the many years of applying government enforced social policies, the American society as risen to a level that social “structures” and “assumptions” have been literally abolished in the public spectrum. What cannot be eradicated of “structures” and “assumptions” is on a personal level. There will always be those that hold prejudices of some form. To apply a government policy that affects personal belief is treading in the wrong direction, and therefore harboring a wrong idea.
We believe that gospel faith transforms our economics, gives us the power to share our bread and resources, welcomes all to the table of God's provision, and provides a vision for social revolution.
This statement is not that of Christianity of Jesus due to the word “our.” The sharing of bread and resources is strictly individualistic and personal at a Christian level, not publicly applied and forcefully applied by government policies. Simply put, the bread and resources is an individual's given by God, not “ours” by distribution enforced through government policies. Sojourners falsely assume that the "bread and resources" is a public item to subjectively distributed by applying government enforced policies.
Again:
We believe that Jesus' way of nonviolent transformation and peacemaking is not a Utopian dream but a necessary path.
In other words, the Sojourners believe Utopia is not just a dream, but ought to be a reality, when applied by government force. Utopia cannot be realized through cooperation individually (Utopia by nature is one big human machine, there are no individuals, but human parts of a whole), but only forced upon by government power. This is not Christianity of those whom they believe in Jesus of the Bible.
Jim Wallis’ Christianity is not of Jesus of the Bible, even though he says it is in the statement of faith. He must come to understand he has the wrong Jesus.
In summation, as I have mentioned in the beginning, Christianity is not a religion by definition. Religions of the world state bulleted items for its members to follow; in other words rules and regulations. If these set rules and regulations are followed to the letter, then the follower is granted acceptance into heaven. Christianity plainly communicates that these rules and regulations are set by God of the Bible, and they cannot be followed by human application. Therefore humans are doomed to hell. Jesus came to fulfill the precepts of Judaism; in other words He is the only human that followed these rules and regulation. If a human cannot follow God’s law by his own power, then by default the argument says Jesus wasn’t just human, but God. He was fully human (born), and fully God (spirit).
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