7 Obstacles To Genuine Christianity

Why do we have very few genuine Christians? Why do we have countries which are populated mostly by Christians and yet their crime rate and human rights abuses are also one of the highest in the world?

This is because there are so many obstacles to the making of genuine Christians. I mention 7 in this article.

When people are on the process of spiritual awakening they can see more clearly these obstacles to genuine Christianity. When they are spiritually awakened, they try to get rid of these obstacles. This is because they have that uneasiness and spiritual hunger for genuine spirituality. As we experience these signs of a spiritual awakening we wake up spiritually and face these obstacles with courage and summon the strength to get rid of them.

The first obstacle is something that was done a long time ago but whose effect has gone down through the centuries reaching us and we do not know for how long this obstacle will still oppose genuine Christianity. This obstacle is the decree of the Roman emperor Theodosius promulgated on February 27, 380 making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire, thus outlawing all other religions.

Because of this decree thousands upon hundreds of thousands of people became Christians without really knowing what Christianity was. In other words the Church was infiltrated, nay inundated, by nominal Christians. This situation persists today.

The second obstacle was the abandonment of the catechumenate, the process lasting for 3 years whereby adults were educated in the Christian faith before baptism. This was compounded by the baptism of infants. There would have been no problem even with infant baptism if the catechumenate was faithfully followed. But it was not so. People were baptized who did not know what they were going into and infants grew up without being educated in the Christian faith. The result has been the increase in the number of nominal Christians.

Today there is a program of catechumenate for adults and some kind of post-baptismal catechumenate but the genuine catechumenate producing genuine Christians is no longer implemented.

The third obstacle is the idea being floated around that to be a Christian all you need to do is to be a good person in your respective church. If you believe in the teaching of your church and you follow its ordinances and rituals, then you are a Christian. Crusades upon crusades have been conducted to disabuse people of this idea, but this idea persists among the members of the churches and even among non-members of Christian churches.

The fourth obstacle is the idea also being floated around that all you need to be a Christian is to be baptized. This is especially common among Catholics. They think that by having their babies baptized they have been turned into Christians. This is a misunderstanding of the ex opere operato (literally "from the work having been worked") doctrine of the Catholic Church. This doctrine states that if a sacrament is validly administered then it effects what it is supposed to effect, even if the one who administers the sacrament is a great sinner. When we apply this to baptism, it means that if the baptism is validly administered, then the effect of the sacrament is there, the grace of God is given. But it does not mean that by the mere fact of baptism the one baptized is a genuine Christian. It only means that the grace of baptism is given to the one baptized.

The fifth obstacle to genuine Christianity is related to the one mentioned above. It is the preoccupation of Christian leaders with the externals like church building, church attendance, paintings, sculptures, shrines, etc. The time devoted to these things takes them away from the time to be devoted to the essentials of Christianity: living the life of Christ, preaching what he has done, teaching his character and attitudes, etc.

The sixth obstacle is the neglect of the spiritual life. This is partly due to the fact that most people still think that the human being is composed of body and soul only. They do not think of the spirit as an essential component of the human person. They think that the soul and the spirit are the same. When you do not think that the human person has also a spirit you will not care about the spirit, since you think it is non-existing or is the same as the soul.

The seventh obstacle to genuine Christianity is the imposition of one’s interpretation of Scripture on others. Teachers of the Bible forget that the Scripture is rich in meanings and cannot be exhausted. So, different churches are built on different interpretations of the Scriptures. This is an obstacle to genuine Christianity because it gives the impression that Christians cannot agree or cannot be tolerant on certain points of the Scripture. Christianity then becomes a following of this or that interpretation of Scripture rather than of living the life Christ, which is what genuine Christianity is.

These obstacles continue to oppose genuine Christianity. Until when? We do not know. But until these obstacles are gotten rid of we will continue to have very few genuine Christians.

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Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Effecting or Implementing Genuine Christianity

In times like these when people are searching for something that they can depend on, when the lure of materialism has so miserably disappointed them, when everywhere people are looking for something that works, Christians and even non-Christians are looking for genuine Christians. How then do we effect or implement genuine Christianity so that we shall have genuine Christians around us?

There have been many books written and programs designed to supposedly effect or implement genuine Christianity. But the impact of the ideas in these books and of the activities in these programs seems to be negligible when viewed from a wider perspective. They have not really made the impression that here at last is something that works and works well, is surely effective in the making of a genuine Christian, anywhere, in whatever condition of life, in rich or poor countries, in the northern or in the southern part of the world.

I propose 5 steps in the effecting or implementing of genuine Christianity.

Step 1. Live Christ. This is most basic and most essential and yet is missing in our programs. These programs want and teach Christ to be the center of life, but nowhere can we read in Scripture that Jesus wants to be the center of our life. He is our life, not the center of it. Paul the Apostle said, For me to live is Christ. He did not say that Christ was the center of his life.

Remember that illustration of a circle where Christ represented by the cross is at the center? And the Ego or I is down below him? This was supposed to be the image of a spiritual Christian, where Christ is the center of life and all the other details of a person’s life revolves around him. This kind of Christianity where Christ is only one of the elements of our life, although supposed to be the most important and in the center, cannot effect genuine Christianity.

The life that can effect genuine Christianity is a life not just Christ-centered but Christ-lived. Jesus lives through and through that life and is not just its center.

And how is the life of Christ effected? We go to step 2.

Step 2 is pray Christ. We do not say pray to Christ. We do not even say pray with Christ. What I mean is pray Christ, pray the Christ prayer, the prayer of Jesus as he prays to the Father. Jesus is the one who is the central person who prays. His principal work now is prayer. We are in him, we realize that we are praying him, we are praying his prayer. This is not a five times a day or even fifty times a day prayer. Just as Christ prays always we always pray. Sure we go to special times of prayer, but even outside of these times we still pray. We pray when we sleep, when we rise up, when we prepare for work, when we go to work, when we rest, etc. Our whole day is a day of prayer in Christ. The Spirit of Jesus enables us to pray the prayer of Christ always, throughout the day and night.

Step 3. Preach Christ. Do not just preach something about him. Preach him and what he did. Announce to the world and all who he is, describe him and his wonderful, lovable qualities. Preach him as one who is not just a figure of history but as the great Presence at the present time, as the person most interested about us and them.

Listen to preachers who preach Christ and him crucified. Nowadays with the Internet you can choose your preacher, you can choose your personal pastor. Just beware of impostors. There are plenty of them.

Step 4. Teach Christ. Again it is not enough to teach about him. Teach him. Discuss him with other Christians. Let others talk of him. Draw out the opinions of others about him and lead them to what the Scriptures say of him. Most of all do not teach morality, that people are supposed to follow this and that commandment. This is Phariseeism and Jesus condemned it in no uncertain terms.

Learn from teachers who teach Christ and not their own ideas. You can find them in the Internet. Again be wary of fake teachers of the Christ.

Step 5. Serve Christ. When you help somebody be aware that it is Christ you are helping, not just this person with his need. Jesus has identified himself with all of humanity, and when you serve a member of that humanity, you are serving Christ.

And let Christ serve. As you live his life he wants to serve others through you. Allow him to do just that. Then the ones you are serving will feel the love of Christ.

When these steps are done we shall have a real spiritual awakening as more and more Christians are spiritually awakened and aware of what genuine Christianity is. There are indeed signs of a spiritual awakening around us as people have this uneasiness and spiritual hunger for the real kind of Christianity.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Seven Indicators of a Genuine Christian

Spiritual development is a necessity in genuine Christianity. This is because genuine Christianity is a live organism. And any live organism needs to grow, to develop. Genuine Christianity develops spiritually.

Genuine Christianity can be distinguished from its counterfeit, nominal Christianity, by certain indicators. I give seven here.

How To Distinguish the Genuine from the Nominal Christian

If you do not have the Spirit of Jesus it is impossible to distinguish between a genuine Christian and a nominal Christian. Both may speak the same language, dress in the same way, go to the same church, perform the same religious activities, play the same sport, live in the same neighborhood or subdivision.

But one is alive—the genuine Christian, in the life of the Spirit. The other is dead—the nominal one. The first is heading to the joys of heaven, the latter to the torments in hell.

How To Use These Indicators

The following indicators therefore are not external criteria by which we can segregate the genuine Christians from the nominal ones. They are indicators which we can reflect upon and search within ourselves to discern whether we are genuine or nominal Christians.

Of course, the elements in these indicators naturally and normally surface in the lives of people who are genuine Christians. But again their manifestations can be imitated by the ingenious nominal Christian.

For example, we may think that a person who devotes one hour every day faithfully in praying while kneeling in a church has a personal, growing love for Jesus. Such may be very deceptive. It may be true that indeed he has a personal, growing love for Jesus. It may also be true, as Jesus once commented, that he is pretending to pray long prayers in the hope of devouring the houses of widows. The Pharisees were performing long prayers but Jesus told us they were not following him; they rejected him.

While it is true that there are millions of Christians who are satisfied and comfortable with their nominal Christianity, there are a few though who sense that their lives lack something which they may not be able to pinpoint out or even vaguely describe. For these few the indicators described here may help them reflect on their lives and motivate them to search how to live a genuine Christian life.

It may also happen that a nominal Christian reading these indicators may come to the realization that what he has been presuming all along his life, namely, that he is a real Christian, is an illusion. Upon knowing this he may want to move from nominal to genuine Christianity.

These indicators are to be taken as an integrated whole set of indicators, not each one separately. If an indicator is missing, most probably the person is not a genuine Christian.

The Seven Indicators

1. The person has experienced God speaking to him personally, either through a preacher, a book, or other circumstance.

2. The person has experienced listening to an explanation of the Bible or reading it such that he felt his mind was opened. His reaction is: Now I know, whereas before I did not realize this was the meaning. If he is literate he has experienced a thirst for reading God’s word. If he is non-literate he has experienced a thirst for listening to the reading of God’s word.

3. The genuine Christian has a personal, growing love for the person of Jesus the Christ, talking with him with more and more time of his day.

4. He has a certain or sure conviction of the forgiveness of his sins, whether past, present or future. He has no fear of being punished for his sins, either past, present or future sins.

5. He has a complete distrust in his works as a means of pleasing God.

6. He has a deep and growing love for other genuine Christians and he seeks out their company.

7. He has a compassionate love for the non-Christians and the nominal Christians and desires to bring them to genuine Christian life.

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Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Why Most Christians Are Nominal Christians

Spiritual development in our churches can be gauged by the extent to which their members have become genuine Christians. But as this article will show, most Christians or members of these churches are just nominal Christians.

According to current statistics there are more or less 2 billion Christians in the world. That is one third of the world’s population. These belong to different churches, denominations or religious groups. If all of these were genuine Christians we would not be in a mess of so much poverty, crimes, violence and environmental degradation.

The problem is that most of these so-called Christians are only nominal, not genuine. They have not even begun so much as an inch in their spiritual development.

Meaning of Nominal Christians

They are nominal because they are Christians in name only. A majority of them are called Christians because they were christened or baptized. Others consider themselves Christians because they were born of Christian parents and/or were dedicated by their parents in the church. Still others think that they are Christians because besides having been baptized they go to a Christian church for worship and have prayed the prayer to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.

They are also nominal Christians because their leaders may not have realized that they themselves are also nominal Christians. Thinking that they are real Christians, they think that their followers are also real Christians.

There have been many attempts to make these nominal Christians into genuine Christians but the effectiveness of these attempts have been very minimal.

Why? Why are the results minimal?

Reasons Why Most Christians Are Nominal

I give three reasons for this state of affairs. There may be more.

Reason 1 is that most Christians are satisfied with nominal Christianity. This kind of Christianity is enough for their classification in the census of their government, in their day to day lives, in getting their marriage license and contract, in enrolling their children in school, in applying for a job, in dying and getting burial services in the church. Since they are already satisfied with this kind of Christianity, they do not see the need of improving upon it or of making it genuine.

Reason 2 is that the Christian leaders who realize that most Christians are only nominal do not fully know how genuine Christians are formed and how different they are from nominal Christians. They just keep on hoping that by their homilies or preaching, by Sunday schools or catechism classes or seminars before the administration of the sacraments or by their theology or religious studies subjects in school (now called mostly values education), by small group Bible studies or in their various church related organizations, their followers will become genuine Christians. They think that nominal Christianity and genuine Christianity exist in a continuum, from the most nominal Christianity to the most genuine Christianity with intermediary grades or levels between these extremes of the continuum.

These leaders do not realize that the difference between nominal and genuine Christianity is not one of degree but of kind. The one is not real, it is zero. The other is real, it has a positive content, at least 1, so to speak.

Reason 3 is that most who desire to lead others to genuine Christianity do not know how this is effectively done, in a way that there are substantial and lasting results. Look at this example.

A crusade is organized in a nominally Christian locality. The leaders and followers of different cooperating churches and denominations work out the whole crusade, from the scheduling, the choice of and invitation to an evangelist, the preparation for the venue, etc., up to the publicity of the crusade and daily prayers for the success of the crusade.

The crusade is done on schedule. Hundreds profess to receive Christ as Lord and Savior and are channeled to local churches for baptism and discipleship training. The newly professed now populate the local churches and they remain there or go back to their former churches or just drop from both.

For a while the locality experiences a positive change. Fewer people get drunk at night, more attendance in churches is observed, fewer acts of criminality occur. After several months or a year or two conditions become “normal” again: increasing number of crimes and stable or declining numbers in church attendance.

Genuine Christianity has not really invaded that locality. There was only a facelift of nominal Christianity. Sure, some lives here and there are drastically changed. A former gambler now becomes a student of the Bible and he will become a preacher soon. A prostitute now stops her trade and becomes a choir member. But the impact on the society as a whole is minimal.

Jesus came to give us genuine Christianity, not nominal Christianity.

When we have a constantly increasing number of spiritually developed Christians, we will have genuine Christianity. Spiritual development is our need as Christians.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Free and Full Christian Service

The Spirit of God leads us to prayer and to his written word in order to develop us spiritually. There is one more thing that he uses to finalize, so to speak, his work of spiritual development in us. And this is free and full Christian service. He leads us to serve others freely and with all the powers and resources he has put in us for this work.

The Purpose of the Miracles

If we read the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles we notice that Jesus and his disciples served other people’s needs. They healed the sick, raised the dead, cast out demons, feed the hungry, gave drink to those who were in the marriage feast, and so forth. These are usually termed as miracles.

When we were studying the Christian religion we were taught that these miracles were done to prove that Jesus was God. And because many today already believe that Jesus is God, we were taught that God had made his point clear through the miracles he once performed and therefore there is no need anymore for miracles during our time. People already believe that he is God and there is no need for Jesus to prove to these people that he is God by miracles.

Such a view does not understand the real purpose of the so-called miracles. They forget that if Jesus’ primary purpose in performing those miracles were to prove that he was God, then he was using only those people upon whom he performed the miracles. Such cannot be the case. Jesus does not use people, he loves them.

The real purpose of the so-called miracles was to help people, to serve them.

Miracles Were Done by Jesus as Man

Secondly, this view forgets the fact that Jesus performed these miracles not by his divine power, but because as man he trusted in God. He again and again called himself “son of man” to tell us that he was truly man. And Paul tells us that he left the form of God and became as fully human as we are except in the matter of sin. He was sinless because he obeyed God in everything.

It was by faith that he performed all those miracles. That is why he told us that if we have faith we can also perform what he performed, and greater than those which he did.

Jesus’ Followers Continued the Work of Helping Others

When Jesus left the earth physically the Apostles carried on the ministry of serving others. They healed the sick, raised the dead, fed the hungry, especially the widows. When there was a complaint that the Greek speaking widows were not properly taken care of, the Apostles instituted the group of deacons to take care of the widows. From then on the deacons were more and more in charge of the temporal needs of the church members.

The Situation Today

Today there are very many members of Christian churches who are poor, hungry and destitute. No one, even among the leaders of the church, the successors of the Apostles and deacons, seems to take care of them freely and fully. If there is real spiritual development the Spirit will lead us to take care of these poor church members.

We are not fully developed spiritually unless these poor church members are given their basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, education and medicine.

The Reason for this Situation of Un-served Church Members

And the reason why we do not do this is because we do not obey the Spirit in his leading us to prayer and his written word, in his preaching and teaching.

If we pray as he tells us to pray, if our church leaders preach the Good News of our complete salvation in Jesus, if our church teachers show us more and more of the character of Jesus by their words and works, then we will have Christians who will serve other Christians as Jesus want them to be served. Because we will have Christians after the heart of Christ.

Free and Full Service

This service is free. For Jesus said, Freely you have received, freely give. But in most of our hospitals run by Christian religious people the price of the services is just too much for these poor people.

This service is full. For Jesus said, Love one another as I love you and he also wants us to serve others as we would have them serve us. But in many situations the rich are given preferential service by our church leaders. And the poor are given partial attention only.

There is so much to be done in our spiritual development. Until the poor are served freely and fully, we cannot say we are spiritually developed as a church of Jesus.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.