Towards A Better Christian Faith

Faithful Christians are going to think outside the box and produce an even better Christian Faith than the world has seen in the past. Scripture says so.

“until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 4:13 NIV

A child starts small with small ideas. With time the child grows bigger and his/her thinking becomes deeper and more complex. In the letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul was writing to a small church in a small but vibrant new movement. Two thousand years later, the Christian Church is also bigger and her grasp on what she believes is deeper and better. While It is easy to read this verse and decide that I need to mature some more, and that my local church could do some things better, the “all” in this verse really applies to “all” of us worldwide.

It is striking how the Bible expects a better, global Christian Church, and we Christians do not. Perhaps in America we need to get our eyes off of the battle with our culture (gay marriage, abortion, etc.) for a few minutes and ask ourselves just what kind of larger church are we moving towards? Events are moving us in a certain direction. The Christian Faith has grown and matured over the centuries, but we are not done yet. We are not one yet.

Over a century ago, America began to distance itself from its deep Christian roots, finding some of those ideas too simple compared to modern science and its morals often wooden and harsh. Secular, liberal, western thought replaced it but that is now failing. It hasn’t brought the promised, more open and free culture it hoped for.

The brilliance of this verse to the Ephesians is that it frees us Christians from this-is-the-way-we-have-always-done-things. It means we can look at what has worked in the past, learn from what went wrong on our part, and apply what we believe to a new era with new issues. While our basic beliefs shouldn’t change, they should deepen. Paul comforts us when he says we are going to get it all very, very right in the end.

America and the West may be looking for better ideas to build on. A better Christian Faith, might be just the thing.