The Basic Christian Message Seen in a Movie

I went to see the movie Letters To God with my wife the other day, and it demonstrated to me what the basic Christian message is, that the world can be hard and cruel, but with God in those trying times we can live joyfully.

Spoiler Alert! This paragraph gives key details about the movie. If you want to be surprised by the movie you should read this after seeing the movie. The movie is the apparently true story of a young boy dying of cancer. What makes him unique is that he regularly writes letters to God and puts them in the mail. The boy has a single parent, his mom, and an older brother, who handles it pretty well at times and feels neglected at others. There is a grandmother who frequently helps. A substitute mail carrier, Brady, gets involved. Brady has been making irresponsible decisions because of the bottle and this has forced his ex-wife to take full custody of their son. He becomes involved in the boy’s life, and as the boy nears death he reads the letters which are really prayers and they inspire him. He gives some of the letters to people who are being prayed for in the letters. Brady has a major transformation, changing his life around as well as others have transforming experiences of various degrees. Many in the whole community are inspired to pray and get closer to God by the letters and the young man’s life. The movie is truly inspiring and there were quite a few tears around the theater,

(If you go to the theater be prepared that while the story is inspiring and touching the acting is somewhat overdone as well as some of the production values were less than stellar. This is not an Academy award-winning production, but this is an inspiring Christian story.)

My point, though, is that the story exemplifies basic Christianity in a format similar to the gospels. The underlying story is that man is put in a world with sin, sickness, death, and evil forces conspiring to rob him of both the quality of life and life itself. The answer is that we need a power greater than ourselves and the forces against us to overcome. God provided this power by sending his son Jesus Christ. As we follow his ways, praying to him daily for strength and deliverance we can see a wonderful life. This wonderful life is built around a personal relationship with God by prayer and discipleship to the basic things God wants us to do, and is strengthened in the company of other believers living to do the same. All of this is presented in the endearing story of young man’s life as he is dying of cancer.

Like the gospels, the movie did not get into all of the divisive issues that complicate many from this basic Christian message. There was no focus on the method of baptism, the meaning of communion, the type of church rule, which manifestations of the spirit are allowed in our day and time, or how the end time events are going to work out. There was no “Christology”, “Eschatology”, or” hermeneutics”.

Just like the stories in the gospels Letters to God teaches basic Christian principles in story form. Once again this movie showed me, like many other movies, Christian media, songs, stories, and so forth, that the real powerful Christian message is so much simpler than all of the divisive theologies that fragment the Christian faith. There is a lesson in here for all of us.

Original Christianity

This web is a look at primitive, original Christianity, how it developed over time into innumerable denominations and divisions and how original Christianity compares to current practices. It is a resource for looking systematically at the beliefs and practices in the original Christian church, numerous movements and churches since, the modern Christian church, with discussion about how all these changes happened and especially focusing on how well each of these compares to scripture.

Why?

"Jesus Christ is Lord" is the common belief of billions of Christians. But there are tens of thousands of denominations. While ancient denominations like the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox claim to be the original and consequently "true" church, innumerable churches and denominations have started citing error in these ancient bastions and/or the leading of the spirit to reform the church and restore the church.

There are numerous disputed issues. Cessation doctrine (prophecy and the gifts of the spirit ended with the apostles), infant baptism, the inerrancy of Scripture, the form of Church government, the role of women in the church, and currently, the acceptance of homosexuality are just some of the many disputed doctrines that cause the Christian body to be so divided.

The Reformation movement performed an invaluable service. But instead of simply reforming the church or simply working to create one more correct alternative church the Reformation movement worked to increase the number of disputes over scripture and consequently the number of splits has increased exponentially.

The problem with looking at all the denominations is that it can become confusing to just compare this church or denomination to that one. The complexity of looking at all the theological implications can become overwhelming. For many busy people that means just making the best, less than fully educated decision they can, and staying with the church of their heritage or finding a church where they feel they can grow. Just finding the information can be an overwhelming task. Putting it into some understandable framework is an even more complicated task.

This web site, rather than trying to just compare all the current positions on the differences goes back to the beginning (primitive, original Christianity) and evaluates Christianity starting at that point. This includes looking at the gospel accounts, but also includes looking at early church documents as well as other ancient documents, both secular and religious. (There is also a section on Philosophy because its profound impact on Christian theological development.) The articles have numerous references to works both in print and online.

Next the web site looks at the developments in Christianity from original Christianity forward to see how the church developed over time comparing each development with what we know about original Christianity. The goals are:

To trace the development of the church from start to now to see how the church at large wound up with all these competing churches/denominations today, and

To equip people with the knowledge of original Christianity to enable people to make an informed decision on what is the true faith and practice of the church Jesus Christ started.

For an overview of the articles by category, go to the Table of Contents Page.

This is a work in progress. My prayer is that sharing my journey is helpful to you and that together we can grow in the faith that Jesus Christ made available some two thousand years ago.

Also Please Pardon our Dust. There are hundreds of posts and some of them still have typos. If you find typos You can contact Mark at [email protected]. Please be so kind as to mention the name of the post as well as to copy and paste the section with errors. Thank you and God Bless You.

The Basic Christian Message Seen in a Movie

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