Christianity, the Cliffs Notes

So I was thinking about how I could sum up Christianity in one word for an atheist who was inclined to hear me out.  The word is “love”.  That is nice and touchy-feely, and somewhat nauseating, but just what do I mean?

For me the journey has been a long one, and promises to last for the rest of my life and possibly for eternity. But it began with giving up control. In the 12 step model, you pick a higher power.  Many people use that concept to reconnect with the God they shelved after their childhood.  Some people choose “the group” or even “a doorknob.”  The point isn’t to solve the question of if there is a god or not, the point is to give up your illusion of control. For a “person of the book” (Muslim, Christian, or Jew) we put our lives in God’s hands, in whatever way we understand him or her or it.  This is where the doorknob only gets you sober and no further. In Christianity, God in his most irreducible basic element is relationship.  He is three in one (father, spirit and son) and he is in constant relationship.  He models for me how to be in relationship with one’s self and with people outside one’s self because he IS relationship. And I know this from reading the written accounts of man’s experience of god from the past 3000 years. And because I commune with him every morning before I begin my day. I know him. He is the same for me as he was for everyone else that has searched for him. And he wants to have a relationship with me. The creator of everything (because I cannot believe that we are here with the bees and the complex inner workings of nature and the stars and the unfathomable amount of knowledge that we humans are incapable of ever discovering, I am humble enough to believe that there is someone bigger than small little us), knows me better than anyone, better than I know myself.  And he’s got my back. This frees me from worry and control. This frees me up to trust. It frees me up to take what I learn from my relationship with him and apply it to the people and the world around me.  And he is love.

What I learn from love, can only be communicated in love.  And he designed humans to want to learn and then pass on what we have learned.  We are all waiting to be vessels of love.  And so I wanted to communicate this simple truth to you.  You and I are designed to love because someone engineered us that way.