In general I agree with the sentiment of your stance. I think that we vary on the importance and place of scripture a bit and the church but definitely find unity at the centrality of the resurrection.
Our differences of opinion are OK. And I appreciated your last post.
Most people who walked away from Christianity did so for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. They walked away from a version of Christianity that could be compared to a house of cards…if someone convinced them (for example) that if the earth wasn’t really created in 6 literal days, then why should they believe anything else in the Bible…that if any part of any of the 66 books of the Bible is proven to be untrue, then the Bible isn’t true, and if the Bible isn’t true, then their version of Christianity comes crashin’ down (like a house of cards).
Who taught them that believing non-essential things, like the literal 6 day creation account in Genesis (for example) was essential to following Jesus…? A person can certainly follow Jesus without believing whatever it is that they’ve decided they no longer believe (non-essential beliefs). And what these folks disbelieve usually intersects with something in the Old Testament.
These people need to know that Christianity can stand on its own two New Covenant, nail-scarred, resurrection, first-century feet. Christianity does not need to be propped up by the Hebrew Scriptures.
When Peter saw Jesus crucified, and he knew He died, and he knew where He was entombed…and then a few days later he shared a meal with Jesus on the beach…Peter’s faith didn’t need any ancient props. Current events sufficed.
Most non-Christians and post-Christians nowadays have a favorable view of Jesus, and while many may not see Him as divine, they still see Him as someone whose life is worth striving to imitate. The point is ~ people don’t leave the church or the faith because of Jesus. He’s not the stumbling block.
Other things have been put in their way, things that have made the church and the faith unnecessarily unattractive and resistible to people who left because of it.
Jesus’ Apostle’s appropriately leveraged the Old Testament to make their case to their fellow Jews in the first-century. But when preaching to Gentiles, even in the first-century, they leveraged a more recent development ~ the resurrection.
Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Jesus’ other earliest followers didn’t choose to follow Him because of something they read; they chose to follow Him because of something they saw
The Bible, especially the New Testament, plays an important role in helping us understand what it means to follow Jesus, but it is not ‘the’ reason I follow Him. I don’t believe because of a book, I believe because of an event that inspired the book. The Bible didn’t create Christianity; Christianity created the Bible.
Christianity existed for well over 200 years before there ever was ‘the Bible’. But Christianity did not exist before there was the resurrection.
Again, I think these truths are important in reaching the next generation, and in re-reaching the current generation as well.
In what you are saying do you see Christ and Christ crucified as an experience or a reality?
