Christianity Thought Questions
1. “As odd as this might sound, faith and belief don’t matter much in most religions.” “…but to be a Christian has typically been to care about both faith and belief.” In what do you have faith*? (May be answered by thinking about --- why do you do good?)
- *Faith is subjectiveconfidence or trust in a person, thing, deity, or in the doctrines or teachings of a religion, or view (e.g. having strong political faith) without empirical evidence. The word faith is often used as a conceptual synonym for hope, trust, belief or knowledge.
2.“Christianity is a “rescue religion,” and “therefore anyone who hears this story confesses her sins, and turns to Jesus for forgiveness can be saved.” Tell how forgiveness (of yourself or others) has impacted your life.
3.“Christians are monotheists, but theirs is a soft monotheism compared to the hard monotheism of Jews and Muslims, who refuse to petrify God in graven images and even to imagine God in human form.” “So Christians see God as a mysterious Trinity: three persons in one Godhead…” Do you think the Trinity makes Christianity a “soft monotheistic religion? Why or why not.
4.“Christianity is a missionary* religion. Unlike Jews and Hindus, who do not typically seek to make converts, Christians have long heeded Jesus’s “Great Commission” to “go and make disciples of all nations”. How has the world benefited from missionary work? How has it been harmed?
*A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development.The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem (nom. missio), meaning "act of sending" or mittere, meaning "to send". The word was used in light of its biblical usage; in the Latin translation of the Bible, Christ uses the word when sending the disciples to preach in his name. The term is most commonly used for Christianmissions, but can be used for any creed or ideology.
5.“Evangelicalism is often confused with fundamentalism, and though each stresses conversion and champions “family values,” they are actually quite different.” Have you been confused between these two groups? Discuss their differences.
6.Prothero discusses that “observers of American religion have long noted that Christians are now divided along political rather than denominational lines”. So the real “mixed marriages” are now between conservative vs. liberal.Explain. Do you agree with him?
7.Admission to the Christian family continues to be orthodoxy (right thought) rather than orthopraxy (right practice). How does this differ from Hinduism? From Buddhism? Can you have right thought without right practice?