In the last couple years, the trend of the best seller books has change rapidly. Many of them are who is jesus related books. The books are from the well known ‘Purpose Driven Live’ by Rick Warren to the fiction book ‘The DaVinci Code’ by Dan Brown. This trend is the affect on the change of the world’s ideology in the last five years.
The problem to Christianity rise when many Christians can’t distinguish between facts and fictions in books like the DaVinci Code or other similar fiction books. Even worse, the number of misleading Christian is not lesser than the non Christian. A lot of time when a non-Christian ask religious question to Christians, they simply give them vague answers. This shows that Christian people do not know better about Christian theology comparing to non-Christian people.
Nowadays, you can find it easily the fiction books that are trying to change the truth of Christianity believe in your neighborhood bookstore, because the books have been the best seller books. With such strong influences, some questions are rise among us. The questions are why such mistaken believe can be builted gradually or even exists among Christian? Shouldn’t be the Christian more critical with those trend or fiction books? Shouldn’t Christian be the defender of their beliefs?
Clearly, there are serious issues with Christianity today. In this article, you will find that there are two main current issues that Christianity is facing.
Inward problem within Christianity
First issue is inward problem within Christianity. The inward problem can be divided into two major concerns, which are the lack of biblical knowledge, and lack of fellowship.
Most of Christians are lack of biblical knowledge. According to Barna Group Survey only 47 percent of Christian in the US read the Scripture during a typical week. Bible is God’s Word, and the foundation of Christian belief. Thus, many Christian doesn’t know their fundamental believe anymore. If we, as Christian, don’t even read the Scripture anymore, how can we distinguish the biblical truth? In 2 Timothy 3:16, it is clearly stated that ‘All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”
As Christians we always have to strengthen our fellowship with God and among believers. Also according to the survey, church attendance is only 47 percent in 2006 and Sunday school attendance is only 24 percent at the same year. Church and Sunday school are where Christian can gather and build fellowship with God and within Christian community.
In 1 John 1:5-7 the Scripture says that ‘This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.’ If we have a low percentage of church and Sunday school attendance, clearly that Christians are in fact walks in the darkness.
In Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12, it is also clearly states the importance of the fellowship with believers. By fellowship with believers, we can support each other up, so if one falls, the other can help him or her up. This way, we would not be vulnerable against the wrong teaching.
Outward problem of Christianity
Second issue is outward problem of Christianity. Less and less Christian interested to be a witness to others about the truth of gospel. Christians forget to become salt and light, as Jesus commanded. In Matthew 28:19, Jesus has clearly command us to ‘Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. ‘
To be honest, how many person that we have share about the gospel in last month alone? We probably have not done it at all. Many people think that religion is very private things, and they don’t even bother to preach the truth to unbelievers. These are because individualism and new age movement have poisoned Christian mind from being evangelism. In fact, we have to change that and prevent those wrong teaching from poisoning our mind and back to the basic teaching of the bible.
Look at the two main current issues facing Christianity, clearly that we as Christians have to pray to solve these inward and outward issues. By resolving these issues, hopefully we can build a stronger faith of Christianity and our community. In addition, we also can be the light and salt to the non Christian people, so we can straighten the mistaken view of our Lord, Jesus Christ, to non Christian people who are influenced from the fiction book or other mistaken resources.
