What Is the Point of Christianity? A Return to God

What is the point of Christianity?

Christians knew the answer to this question for a great number of years, yet the collapse of religious knowledge which plagues the modern world has deprived the faithful of the answer to this essential question. The loss of our answer to the question of Christianity’s purpose destroys the commitment which Christians show toward their own religion. This weakened faith then allows the amnesiac Christian to be quickly overcome by the many factions which are hostile to Christendom in our current time.

It is for that reason, then, that the point of Christianity must be clearly stated:

The point of Christianity it to undo the effect of man’s Fall. God created man in a perfect and sinless state. Adam and Eve then sinned against God, and the product of their sin was a world in which more sins could thrive. Humans are corrupted by this world, and Christianity cures the corruption.

A great many people struggle to come to terms with the purpose of Christianity. This is because modern people are hugely materialistic, and their view of the world in which they live has been shaped by a misunderstanding of empiricism which is commonly misrepresented and then exalted as science.

A Review of the Fall of Man

To understand the end of Christianity, we must return to its beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He proceeded to fill His Creation with various things and to create divisions between them. After the bulk of His creative work was done, He made man and fashioned a wife for him from a rib.

The two humans then lived in their Garden and, believing God was not watching, chose to partake of the fruit of good and evil. This act of disobedience was the first sin, and the perfection of paradise had been ruined, so man was cast out.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, they did not die, but they continued to live on Earth and in sin. During the course of their lives, they began to judge good and evil for themselves and committed many errors in the process. Through these errors, the world around Adam and Eve was made corrupt, and sin was allowed to flourish therein.

Why Sin Was Allowed to Flourish

The sin which was introduced into the earthly environment spread quickly; this is because of the ease with which material things may be turned to evil. Now, nothing material is inherently evil, for God had looked upon His creation and saw that it was good, but an immunity to evil was not imbued within it. This is because if material were good, and if it could not become corrupted, then it could only ever be perfect. Yet only God is perfect, and He does not possess the ability to create another perfect thing. His creation of a second perfect being would be a sin, for a second perfect being would be a god alongside God.

Yet this would violate the First Commandment of the Lord.

So the world was necessarily corrupted by the actions which sinful Adam and Eve took after they had been placed upon it.

Humans as the Inheritors of Sin

We humans, as the progeny of Adam and Eve, are the inheritors of this corrupted world. We are not born fallen, for we do not inherit the guilt of our fathers, but we bear the consequences of their actions. As such, we experience the influences of the fallen world, and its assault begins as soon as we leave the womb.

And humans, as infants without knowledge of good and evil or obedience, quickly succumb to the corrupting influence of the wicked world in which we are set. So we that are made in Gods image have that image tarnished shortly after we leave the womb. The murk which is placed over us then worsens over the course of years as we slowly develop a mature understanding of what we are, what we were, what we might be, and how far in displaced we have become from what is our proper state.

This realization of our fallen state is difficult to obtain, and most people never acquire it. Even those who do come to accept man’s fallen state only encounter it after many decades of error.

This realization of one’s own insufficiency then marks the beginning of a person’s life as a proper follower of Christ. In practice, this takes the form of one’s looking back at the many misdeeds in their life and that person’s new resolution to repent for their wicked behaviors.

The Recovery from the Price of Sin

The point at which a person begins to introspect and to speak to themselves sincerely about what they have done and why they have done it is the moment at which the constant decline of their all-too human condition may be halted. The genuine and repentant person may then begin to restore the image of God that had once existed within them.

So the decline may then be replaced by recovery. This recovery process is characterized by three key features: prayer, fasting, and the remembrance of God. As a penitent person prays, he prays for two things: mercy and forgiveness. In his prayer for mercy, he is constantly reminded of his own weakness and thereby develops humility, which is the key virtue that may save one from any sin; and in his prayer for forgiveness, he reiterates the misdeeds of his life. This allows the repentant one to accept their misdeeds as a part of their character and to recognize when and where future errors might arise.

The purpose of fasting in the life of a penitent individual is to develop their free will. Humans have been created with free will, yet people have varying amounts of it. Some people have free will in abundance, and others have little. However, a person’s free will may be trained and increased as though it were a muscle being strengthened. Fasting is the training process that builds free will. Through fasting, one practices self-denial and enhances their discipline in a method that has been reliably used for millennia. this enhanced discipline then enables a person to resist temptations more easily than one who does not know deprivation.

The third need for the recovery from a life of sin is the constant remembrance of God. Jesus Christ has taken the form of man and lived in a manner such so that, if followed, a person may be free from falling into wickedness. In this way, He serves as a regulatory mechanism for those who accept his divinity. When a penitent person keeps the Lord Jesus Christ in their mind, the regulatory effect His example exerts on them then prevents a relapse into sin.

The Recovery from Sin

A repentant person may, by adhering to the three criteria presented, slowly recover the image of God which exists inside them. This is analogous to the restoration of a painting which has been damaged due to many years of weathering and abuse. This restoration process is likely to last for a long time, but it does not last forever. God has created each individual man and woman for a purpose, and that purpose is to exist as the image which God had intended for man before being corrupted. Humans are born bearing that image, and they quickly lose it through youthful ignorance. A human may recover this image and return to the idyllic state.

It is at this point, the point at which the human has regained the image of God within them, that the goal of Christianity has been achieved. The effect of the Fall has been undone within that individual, and the world may come more closely to the perfect primordial state. This is the purpose of Christianity, to achieve theosis.

Originally published at https://www.theosischristian.com.