Realizations

Philosophy in the Middle of the Desert

What does it really mean to love YHWH with all your heart?  January 5, 2023

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Psychology,Science/Atheism/Evolution/Creationism — milesprowers @ 8:23 am
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[Written on David Day 2023, 1/4/23]

First of all, I don’t know that it ever just says “heart” except in conjunction with “mind” and “soul” — and Jesus adds “strength” (as One who only has authority to add something to the greatest commandment), so perhaps really it’s just loving YHWH with ALL of your whole BEING or EXISTENCE. Which is interesting since the very word YHWH means existence — the eternally existent being. 

To understand what YHWH really wanted when He commanded to love Him with all our being is to understand who YHWH is in the first place. For how can we love someone we don’t know or even know about? 

Before there was the Hebrew language with its Hebrew word for existence by which God could give the Hebrews a name for Himself —YHWH— He was just the eternally existent one, and existence itself. The existence of everything that has been or could be, within the entire universe or without the entire universe. 

But the greatest command “to love YHWH” was given by God to Earthlings upon the Earth with an Earthly perspective and an Earthly relationship to Him. So regardless of anything God is or has been through the entire universe in all of existence, who God is (as much as it is relevant to us) is almost exclusively as He pertains to the Earth and who He is in relation to the Earth, from an Earthly perspective. Thus to obey this command to love YHWH is to obey it as an Earthling would, as it pertains to the relationship between God and Earthlings.  (And of the Earthlings, God revealed himself most explicitly to the Hebrews in a Hebrew way using Hebrew language (and surely somehow in accordance with Hebrew culture), so that they could truly know and love Him, in a way that was most natural for them.) 

What is our knowledge and experience of God from an Earthling perspective? He is the Creator of the Earth. We don’t really know anything else about Him except what has been revealed to humans from His Divine Revelation, and that being specifically as He relates to the Earth and its creatures (which He created). 

So YHWH is really a Hebrew name given to the supernatural Deity who created Earth. In His most basic characteristic as it pertains to Earthlings, He is simply the Creator of Earth — all of creation with all its creatures (which includes us). 

So if the most basic characteristic of YHWH is that He is the Creator of all Earthly creation and creatures, then to love YHWH is to love the Creator of Earth. 

What is it to love the Creator of Earth? Somehow loving a cosmic force we can’t see or experience in daily reality? We can really only love Him as much as we can know Him, which is only as much as we can experience Him in our Earthly reality. 

So we love Him for what He is and was before any Divine Revelation was given — The Creator — the certain creative force of Earth and all the universe. We love God because we experience His creation, and to the degree that we love creation for all the ways it makes us feel pleasure, so we love the source of creation which is the source of our pleasure. We are creatures designed to feel pleasure from creation into which we were created and which we were created for. Our response to feeling pleasure is to love the thing which created our pleasure. So we love sunshine, good food, coffee, sex, funny animals, wonder-inspiring imagination, and profound philosophies. They gives us pleasure and so we call them good and we love them. Naturally we wonder where those things came from in the first place, and our love for those things extends to the creator of those things, who is surely as good as the good creation He chose to make which gives us pleasure. 

We ourselves are part of that good creation (which we have called “good” because it gives us pleasure) so likewise we are good because we are pleasure-producing creations. Because it is our very bodies, hearts, and minds which are the actual things producing the hormones which give us pleasure (not the things in creation themselves). So we feel the love of our Creator for us because our bodies produce pleasure hormones, and He created us and our pleasure-producing functions, and so we love Him for it being the ultimate source of our pleasure. Our love bypasses creation to the Creator of creation who created our bodies which feel pleasure and who also created the creation which interacts with our experience to release the pleasure.

It’s hard to love the Creator for who He is in concept alone. It is when the concepts of His infinite power, knowledge, presence, and love are displayed for us experientially through His interactions with our Earthly reality that we come into awe, wonder, marvel, and love. It’s our awe of creation that extends to having awe for the Creator of creation. It’s the love we feel for creation that extends to having love for the Creator of that creation. We are in awe of the Creator’s infinite power, knowledge, presence, and love from what we see in our natural Earthly experience, and also this is magnified through Divine Revelation. 

Whatever love we can have for the Creator from our natural experience alone, it is magnified by Divine Revelation which clearly communicates how the Creator interacts on a supernatural level with His Earthly creation— through providential actions, prophetic words, supernatural dreams and visions, and miracles.  

Whatever nature of the Creator we can ascertain through natural experience and logic, it is through the written record of the Bible that we know more clearly the nature of the Creator through the recorded events and words attributed to Him. 

We read about God’s creation of the world, how He interacts with His Earthling creatures, how He expressly says how much He loves us all and then proves it by His supernatural actions. Now we have glasses by which we can read nature to clearly see what were previously only assumptions. We knew God loved us from the pleasure He created us to experience, but now with Divine Revelation we have Him actually telling us He loves us and showing us in actual history. 

So to love YHWH with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength is to love the Creator of Earth with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. 

What is the Creator’s desire, as it pertains to our Earthly world and us as His Earthlings He created? Obviously His greatest desire, as it pertains to us, is for us to be what He created us for. So to show love to our Creator, we be what He created us to be. 

Therefore, to love YHWH with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength is simply to BE what He created us to be with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. 

God is not some kind of mythological deity sitting on some magical golden throne somewhere up there in space or another dimension. He existed long before any creatures or cultures or languages or religions or rituals. And so His desire for us loving Him isn’t us following some cosmic rule book or magic rituals or religion to please Him. Before He gave Moses the Law, and before He gave him the Hebrew name YHWH, He was what He always had been for Earth’s existence: the Creator of Earth. So the truest way to love the Creator of Earth is to be in alignment with what He created you to be, which is also to be in alignment with all His creation. 

This is Shalom. ALL of creation with all its creatures interacting in harmony. Human beings being what they were each individually created to be by their Creator with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Loving all creation around them (which they were designed to do) with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength — which is inadvertently loving the Creator who made and loves that creation. And then also our love for creation extending to the source of creation, which is its Creator, to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.  

There’s no way around it. Loving YHWH with ALL your heart, mind, soul, and strength is an interdependent love fully involving the love of Creator, creature, and creation with all being (heart, mind, soul, and strength). 

 

The Overflowing Garden of Eden/Shalom November 11, 2022

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 12:50 pm
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[Written on 11-11-22]

The eyes of the LORD go to and fro throughout the whole Earth looking for one whose heart is a tender soil into which He can sow the words of Eternal Life, which is the seed of Agape. If the words sown resonate and are met with a curiosity and openness, the seed takes root, and the residency of God’s Spirit and His Eternal Life and Agape starts to grow inside the person alongside their growing belief, though it starts out just as small as a mustard seed (the smallest of all seeds). As the believer starts to see the world through the Truth, the Spirit confirms his faith and grows it more and more, until finally it becomes a tree so deeply rooted that when the floods come it won’t wash it away, and so large even the birds of the air can rest on its branches. The more the believer abides in the Agape of God, the more he experiences the life of God, aka Eternal Life, aka God’s own Spirit, making him so deeply rooted he is unshakeable and his actions are the same actions that God’s Spirit and Life (which is now coming out of the believer) would do. 

The Agape seed grows an Agape tree which, like a wellspring of living waters welling up into Eternal Life, eventually overflows and bears Agape fruit. The Agape fruit itself has many more Agape seeds within it, which, when consumed and sown into new tender hearts/soils, have the potential of planting new Agape seeds, growing new Agape trees, and bearing new Agape fruit, just as the living waters well up and spill over, and the mustard seed spreads through the garden like a weed, and the yeast spreads through the dough. After all, the world will know we are His disciples by our Agape for one another. 

But the Creator in His love, desires His creation to be the maximum He created it to be, and so, like any gardner, He prunes the branches (He disciplines those whom He loves) so they bear more fruit. And so we will be grown to our maximum design, bearing a hundredfold of fruit, and then we shall all be one: others having Eternal Life through abiding in our Agape, we who have Eternal Life through abiding in Jesus’s Agape, just as Jesus had Eternal Life given to Him from God through abiding in God’s Agape (John 5:26: “For as the Father has life in Himself, so also He has granted the Son to have life in Himself”).

And so God’s Spirit will overflow and take root in more and more people’s hearts, growing to bear more and more fruit, until finally He (His Spirit with its Agape and Eternal Life) will reside in the whole Earth in our hearts. Then the world will be as He created it to be: Shalom.

 

God is a greater reward than what would come from anything else we could pursue October 26, 2022

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality,Psychology — milesprowers @ 9:52 pm
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[Written 102622]

Why do you keep saying you want to be with Me? Stop telling Me that and just be with me. I’m always just one thought away. 

If you really want to be with me so bad, then why aren’t you?  Because of all the stuff you have to do? So then, all those things you need to do are what you REALLY want, and then you also want to be with Me, but just when it’s convenient and fills in the cracks in your schedule, as the leftovers. 

You want to be with Me, but what you really want are the things that doing the things you’re doing will get you: the reward of all these things you’re doing. But don’t you think that I’m a greater reward than whatever reward you’ll ever get from those things? 

What are you really doing these things for? 

Significance?  What could be more significant than being known intimately by the Creator of the world? Certainly not being best friends with the President or Paul McCartney or Tim Keller or Tony Robbins or whoever. 

Love and connection? What human being could ever love you unconditionally? And yet I love you unconditionally, because I know and understand why you’ve done everything you’ve ever done, and see your shortcomings based on your limited knowledge and strength and love you for who you are, in spite of all your shortcomings. No one else could ever love you that much, because no one could ever know why you do what you do like I do. And further more I’m the one that created you! So I love you greater than a parent loves their child, which is the strongest natural love on the planet. A parent doesn’t design and plan the DNA of their child, and yet I do. I love you more than any conditional lover or any passive child-bearer. 

Certainty? All resources of money, jobs, assets, real estate, and possessions can all be taken from you in a moment in this life by conscious and unconscious acts of nature, and even your very life with all its resources. You need a certainty that can take care of all your needs by manifesting resources from nothing, inspiring the hearts and minds of humans to give you the things you need, and a certainty of security and safety for your very soul when your Earthly life is through and you can’t touch any resources and are completely at the mercy of the spiritual realm… this is the kind of certainty only I can give you, and no other can. 

Variety? Who inspired the men of history with whatever strokes of genius, creativity, and artistry they manifested? They were seeking My mind for ideas to be given to them from the infinite ether of new possibilities beyond their own normal scope of thought. The world has never even seen a fraction of a percent of all the ideas in My mind, that is infinitely advanced beyond whatever greatest ideas have come through man so far. The greatest things on Earth, the greatest music, stories, films, foods, adventures — the highest possible variety that this Earth can offer — all came from My mind and I have even greater ideas than all of that. I already know what it will look like and I can tell you the best is surely to come. Pursue Me and My mind, which is THE SOURCE of variety, and all the best ideas and adventures will be given to you. For what adventure could be greater than one that is the most fulfilling for how you were designed, and only I know how you were designed and what circumstances in life will bring out the best in you, and also only I know what mission in life will make you feel the best, be the most fulfilling, and the most impactful, as tailored to your design and plan. 

 

Our Existence Proves God Loves Us October 22, 2022

Filed under: Uncategorized — milesprowers @ 11:50 am
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[Written on 102322]

People can say that certain things are not planned by God, such as extreme evil and violence in the world, and that’s reasonable since it seems inconsistent with God’s nature, desire for the world, and plan. 

But at least one thing is impossible to say that God wasn’t behind it, and that’s the creation of the universe. It’s one thing that clearly is impossible to have made itself or come about naturally, and so God HAD to have done it. God doesn’t need anything, is completely content in Himself, and yet He made the universe. He didn’t have to, but He chose to, because obviously it was something He desired to do that brought Him pleasure. And so He is pleased by the universe, because it exists and must have been chosen to be made because it brought Him pleasure. He desired it, and since it’s still here He STILL desires it, because it brings Him pleasure and delight, and His desire for it is also love for it. And so because the universe is here, it proves he loves the universe.

Likewise, YOU being part of His Creation were made by Him, though He didn’t have to, but He chose to, because YOU bring Him pleasure too! He had a desire to make the universe, and then desired to keep building on that universe until He used it to make you. He wants you here, has desire for you to be here, because you’re here. If he didn’t want you here then He wouldn’t have chosen for you to be here. And that desire for your existence is also His delight, which is also love.

And especially as intricate as human beings are, and seemingly impossible to have evolved by random chance, perhaps more than any other creature, humans have clearly come into existence because God chose for them to be here. He laboriously worked to bring them here, spent all that design and work to bring them here because He REALLY wanted them to be here, had a STRONG desire for their existence, because they bring Him GREAT delight— He LOVES them: the idea of them, the design of them, the experience of them, the relationship with them. And YOU are one of them! So by you — the most elaborate piece of all Creation — simply being here (as impossible as it seems) it proves how much God wants you here, and obviously delights in you and loves you. 

 

A Man After God’s Own Heart March 6, 2014

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 6:23 pm
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I think of a child running through the meadows, wide-eyed with wonder, a radiant smile, hands outstretched to Heaven, spinning around, throwing up flowers to the sky, to God.  Taking in the mountains and fields, loving life, rejoicing in it.  Loving God who he can feel there with him, who he knows intimately, talks to and praises openly, with all his heart, thanks God for the beauty of nature, which he knows are God’s gifts to His children, fruit of His love.

And God responds to this innocent boy, perfect in heart, by coming alive around him.  As the boy runs, the flowers around him open up, the clouds part to reveal a beautiful sunset, a breeze blows his hair, light shines down on him, birds fly by, deer appear.  It’s the manifestation of God smiling and hugging the boy, telling him how much He loves him.  And likewise, as if trying to hug back just as hard, the boy shouts at the top of his lungs, “LORD!  I love you with all my heart!!!”

And being overwhelmed with this euphoric experience he falls backward into a soft bed of flowers, eyes closed, no longer focusing on the manifestation of God, but rather God Himself, there beyond the senses. He doesn’t know what else to do except whisper over and over, “I love You.  Thank You.  I praise You.”  Then his joy reaches the next level where his smile turns into a frown and tears of supernatural joy freely flow from his face.  The boy doesn’t care who sees or about anything else going on, because all he cares about is loving and worshiping God as much as he can.

[written with my left hand, while my right was sprained, on 1/16/14]

 

My Valentine February 15, 2014

Filed under: Celibacy,Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 10:53 am
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[written on 1/25/14 with my left hand, during 24 hours of silence; posted in honor of Valentine’s Day!]

If you’ve gone through a whole day without loving God, trusting God, or truly focusing in on Him/tuning into His voice… then you failed your top priority of the day.  The day was a failure.  You got an F.  You didn’t pass the test of loyalty.  After all, isn’t this the greatest commandment in the Old and New Testament, and indeed the meaning of life?  “Love the LORD your God with all your heart…”

If you don’t feel love for God in your heart something is wrong.  Stop everything you’re doing; take off from work if you have to.  Until you’re right with God, until you get to the place where you can honestly ask God to give you opportunities to proclaim His name today, to proclaim your Love.  And then go out actually looking for those opportunities.

God wants us to love Him like a lover — like in Song of Songs — consumed with Him as if we have a crush.  God wants me to run out through the fields to find a tree that I can carve a heart with both our initials in it.

We always put God on the shelf, getting Him out when it doesn’t conflict with anything else.  But why not put everything else on the shelf until it doesn’t conflict with God?  Why not love God and trust Him even if it means we die?  [21514- As my friend, Spencer Argow, pointed out to me last week, the last time I saw him before he died:  “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” ~Job 13:15]

[I should note that writing this article is my very act of living out my advice, as this came to me during a time when I have so much stuff people want me to do, and I chose to put it on the shelf until I’m right with God again.  It’s kind of corny, I know, but that’s the point!]

 

Lonely God February 8, 2014

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 6:25 pm
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[1/27/14-  while listening to John Reuben’s I Pictured It]

Lonely god. A phrase I thought of a week ago. How truly sad it is, this creator god who creates children to love him, but instead even the best of us confine him to increments of our time disproportionate to our other affections. What a shame that I truly care more for his children than I do him, the very one by whom I exist. I’m scared to lift my hands in praise to him because I care more about what my brothers and sisters think, than what my father thinks.  He gets excited when an opportunity arises for us to talk about him, to mention him like we would a lover. But when we think he’s not looking we change subjects or imply that we don’t even know him. And his smile becomes a frown as he turns his head and leaves before we see him and realize he overheard us. And I feel this god crying out in the wilderness, saying, Why won’t anyone come live with me?  Why only brief visits?  Is it the way I look?  Or is it because we don’t have anything in common?  Nothing to talk about?  But oh, my child!  Don’t you have more in common with me than anyone else?  Shouldn’t you have more to talk about with me than anyone else?  You are made from my own genes.

What would happen if we went to live with this god?  And got his advice and encouragement all day?  Ran to him when we were injured or rejected, knowing he would only run to us, embrace us in love and cry with us. And there, resting in between his shoulders, we could feel his heartbeat.   [Deuteronomy 33:12]

People are actually dying around us and yet we are still too afraid to just trust God, to just praise Him as much as we know how, and let him come to us and supernaturally change things, for the best of our own lives and ultimately everyone we are connected to.   People are on the verge of dying and will one day not be able anymore to feel the effects of the reckless faith we could have had. And God cries out to us:  Why won’t you just trust me?!  What have I ever done to you that you would doubt me like this?

O Moses!  What did you find out there in the wilderness?
O David!  What did you find out there in the wilderness?
O Jesus!  What did you find out there in the wilderness?

 

Courage January 25, 2014

Filed under: Uncategorized — milesprowers @ 5:37 pm
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Just because you’re not afraid right now doesn’t mean you truly aren’t afraid. Change your circumstances and see if you’re still unafraid.  It’s then that you will realize you’re living in fear.  Not happening to feel fear at this moment is not the same as having courage.  Courage is a way of life, just like fear is a way of life — regardless of the circumstances.  While fear is passive and pessimistic, courage is active and full of faith.  You only live once, so which life do you want to live?  A mediocre one or a legendary one?  For all in life is a choice and every moment in life is a step: a step inward or a step outward.

We hide behind excuses and shelter our timid selves with the lie of the world which says we’re supposed to be afraid.  And we willingly blind ourselves so we can ignore the fact that the path to courage begins with just one small step.  It’s so much easier to be lazy, to be passive, to stay in our comfort zones and be miserable.  The miserable life is an easy one to live, but a happy one is very difficult.  Because friends and confidence and blessings come from rejection, trials, and sacrifice.

So we’d rather just pretend the world knows what it’s talking about when it says you were born this way, that your identity is either fearful or courageous, so there’s no use in fighting it.  But is that realistic?  Isn’t it more realistic that our brains and bodies adapt to our surroundings and the habits we determine for them?  Maybe some people have natural tendencies towards fear or courage, but who of us hasn’t had a moment of fear and courage?  It proves that if we’ve had courage before we can have courage again.  Some of us just have to fight for it harder than others, and some of us aren’t willing to fight at all.  But the fight is only one step at a time, and the first step is the hardest.  And then we can take another step outward, toward a lifestyle, to a habit of courage.  Why not choose a life of courage?  You will choose your next step.  Posting this was my small step towards courage.  What is yours?

[written with my left hand]

 

The Paralysis of Analysis November 29, 2012

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 12:26 am
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[Written on 112812- while on a spiritual high after seeing Shane Claiborne speak, and then having an extended time of devotion/meditation]

“And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” ~Heb 12:2

The Christian life is a race.  In a race you can’t think about how weak you feel, how tired you are, but you ignore those thoughts and just keep running.  Otherwise you start to dwell on them and then think how to soothe the pain: “just slow down a little, you can still win, or maybe you can go all out to win a later race.”  No, this is the only race we have to run.

Likewise, don’t even entertain negative/depressing/pessimistic thoughts, because once you allow them in, you inevitably start to dwell on them and then on how to soothe them, aside from God.  When in reality God is what you need to soothe them.  And He will soothe them if you give them to him.

Negative thoughts are never from God.  Why would he ever have reason to put a negative thought in your mind?  What good does it do?  Does it increase your faith?  Make you more in love with Him or others?  Make you more likely to share the gospel or serve?
No.  Never.  Negative thoughts are always from the enemy.

Some argue that they aren’t pessimistic, they’re just being realistic. “I’m a realist.”  But since when does God want us to be “realistic”?  Is the Holy Spirit’s intervention in our lives realistic?  Is the supernatural realistic?  No.  God has told us to hope beyond hope (Rom. 4:18).  Have hope even when it doesn’t make sense, doesn’t seem realistic.  After all, we really do have something to hope in that should trump all our current circumstances (salvation from sin/judgement, God’s presence and bliss in Heaven, the love and peace of God, the promise that all things work for our good).

“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.”  ~1 Cor. 13:13

This is what you’re supposed to believe is realistic:  that you have to do it yourself, you’re helpless, God won’t supernaturally intervene for you, he won’t give you a supernatural filling of peace, you’re left on your own to fight for your whole life trying to survive (finding happiness, not in God but in food and entertainment and your job and comfort).  But is that really more realistic?  Of course not.  But the enemy plants the thought in your mind and once you entertain it, your emotions embrace it.

And yet this kind of thinking directly contradicts Jesus’ whole attitude on Earth, who said: “Do not be afraid anymore, only believe.” ~Mark 5:36, Luke 8:50

Just stop the introspection and live!  Just keep running!
Believe that God is good and really does love you!  Believe that He will actually keep the promises He made to you in the Bible.  Believe that if you resist the devil he WILL flee from you.  Just try it and see that it actually does work.  It gets easier each time, and the first time’s always the hardest.

When that little man in your head starts nagging again just tell him that you aren’t listening today, and keep running the race.  If he starts up again later, then tell him again and ignore him again.  Who is he anyways that you should believe him instead of God?  Instead of listening to him, listen to God.  Embrace the love, peace, truth and goodness of the things of God which he wants you to embrace.

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ,set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” ~ Col. 3:1-2

Look up, not down.

—

Be others-focused, not self-focused.
(But don’t become judgmental towards others as you focus on them, be judgmental of your own sin first.)
Be others-serving, not self-serving.

You can’t change others, so don’t try to change others.  Only God can change them, so ask God to change them.  And leave the ball in His court.  Or does He not truly care for them more than even you do?

Ask that God would create a time of silence in their lives when they can hear Him clearly, hear what He wants to say to them, and ask that He Himself changes them, according to His will, in His timing.  That’s if they even do need to be changed the way you think they do.

Don’t criticize others; encourage them.

If you’re convicted about an area of their life, judge yourself in that area first.  And then let God change them.  If they’re to be changed by you at all, let it be by your love and their own love for God, and His spirit drawing them, convicting them so that they change by their own choice, by the Spirit’s enabling.

And remember that while the Christian life is a race, it’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon.

Think only good things all the time.

🙂

 

Religion: √ Other February 18, 2012

Filed under: Christianity/Theology/Spirituality — milesprowers @ 1:23 pm
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[As written on 012912]

“What religion are you?”

This turns out to be a loaded question.
How would the first Christians have responded?  That was before the term “Christian” existed.
How would Jesus (does Jesus) want you to respond?
“Christianity.”
Oh, so Christianity’s a religion?
In most cases, Christianity is a person’s religion…that is, for a person who isn’t really a Christian.  Christianity is the religion of someone who doesn’t understand what Christianity really is.  Of someone who makes Christianity into a religion.

Or you could say, more appropriately,
“I have no religion.” “I don’t follow a religion.”  “I don’t believe in religion.”
As someone at work asked me,
“Are you religious?”
To which I confidently regurgitated the theologically-sophisticated answer I had been taught to believe:
“No.”
Wow.  I thought he was a Christian.  I didn’t realize he’s an agnostic. 
As I realized what he was probably thinking, all I could do is just stand there, stumped, unable to jump back on my train of thought and explain myself.  I just passed up the perfect Gospel opportunity.

In an ideal situation, their question would be:
“What is your religion?”
In which case, the simple, yet theologically profound, answer is:
“Jesus.”

Most people aren’t theologically aware enough to even realize what Christianity actually is, so most people would think,
Okay, Jesus = Christianity, so Christianity is his religion.
…and be on to the next thing.

But hopefully there would be someone who would at that point question you further.
“You mean Christianity is your religion.  A Muslim’s religion is Islam, not Muhammad.”
And then in that glorious, life-changing opportunity you fulfill the meaning of life, you obey the Great Commission, you plant the seed, you preach the Gospel to them in one sentence:

“Jesus didn’t start a religion; He personally took the place of religion.”
And if they question you further, you answer further.

It’s unclear exactly what the minimum is that a person must believe in order to be saved.  The best example of salvation in the Bible is the thief on the cross in Luke 23, who, to my knowledge, is the only instance in the Bible of someone who is clearly, definitely saved.  Of course the apostles were and all that, but I mean, the thief is the only person God Himself ever told “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  You are saved.

Specific details aside, the Gospel as simplified as possible is this:
Christianity = Salvation by God’s grace through Jesus.

[42112- Perhaps the next time we fill out one of those forms that requires us to specify our religion we should check the box “Other”, and if it provides a blank to clarify we should write in “Jesus”.  That would throw off the nation’s statistics, perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse (as it would seem to indicate Christianity dying off, when in reality it’s being resurrected in a new form, stronger and more alive than before).]

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