As they say, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. This Monday morning seems as good a time as any to get our bearings. So let’s kick off the week here with this – what’s the center of Christianity?
Let me remind us all that Christ School is open to students of any and no faith. You didn’t sign any kind of “statement of beliefs” when you became a Greenie. We seek to support and celebrate the healthy development of every student’s spirituality, wherever that may take them. That said, as chaplain I really do hope to offer an accessible and digestible understanding of what Christianity is for anyone interested.
So! for anyone interested…
What’s the center of Christianity? It’s the Good News that God’s Kingdom is here.
Now there’s a lot in that little sentence. It takes the whole Bible and your whole life to really understand it. But it’s not a mistake that Paul uses these very words in 1 Thessalonians 2.
“So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the Good News of God, but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us… For you know how like a father with his children, we challenged each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into His own kingdom and glory.” (vv.8, 11-12)
What’s this all about? What is the Good News? What is the Kingdom of God?
Think about what it means to get news. “News” is when someone tells you that something has happened. Sometimes it’s small and doesn’t make much of a difference, like “it’s Tender Tuesdays in Stolz.” But sometimes it is big, like a category one hurricane is coming to Asheville. Big news changes your life.
Of course, news can be good or bad. We have certainly gotten a lot of bad news since Sept 26, and we’ll probably keep getting it for some time. Bad news tells us that something has happened, and it’s likely going to make our lives worse. But Good News…
Good News is just the opposite. It is the announcement that somewhere “out there” in the world something has happened and it’s going to make your life better. When you weren’t thinking about it, far away from you something happened, and in the best way, your life will never be the same.
That’s what we Christians say that Christianity is all about. It’s the Good News that, because of Jesus, we are way better off – perhaps eternally so. It’s the news that all because of some THING we didn’t do or maybe didn’t even ask for, we are going to be OK. That THING is the Kingdom of God.
This post is already long but I’ll say this about the Kingdom of God. It’s the Bible’s way of saying that God is trying to fix things here in creation. It’s as though the universe itself got away from God, and God is trying to get it back. God is trying to reestablish His relationship with our world so that He can make things right. When God is King, things go the way they are supposed to. As one kids’ Bible says, “All the sad things become untrue.”
I know this is a lot to take in at a time like this. It might even be downright unbelievable… that there is a God who is trying to make things right in our world, even Helene. That God is somehow at work to clean up the messes we’re living in. That the all powerful God is – in some sense we often can’t see – rooting for us. I know it’s not always how things look and, depending on the day, it may seem so fanciful as to border on insanity.
But if it were true, wouldn’t that just be Good News?
Until tomorrow,
H