About this site
When a friend asked about Christian beliefs, I tried to find a good reference for them, but I wasn’t happy with what I found on the internet. That may have been a problem with my search results, but I found a variety of sites which were academic, legalistic, pedantic, impersonal, or otherwise failed to convey the personal meaning and uplifting inspiration that I find in the Christian faith.
That motivated me to record the understanding I have received, both to clarify my thoughts and in the hope it may be useful to others.
Some people I have known were sent to the best private church schools and learnt just enough about Christian beliefs to get a wrong understanding and reject them.
I have known people facing pain and loss, whose advice from churchy friends, although well meant, seemed like unfeeling and unhelpful platitudes.
Real life has plenty of dark valleys for us, and it’s the difficult challenges and hard questions that can lead us to deeper understanding, and show how Christian beliefs make perfect sense of life’s harsh realities. I felt there needed to be a forum where those difficult questions of life, and perplexing aspects of belief, could be raised and reflected upon from a Christian perspective.
This site is not intended for debate for or against Christian beliefs, but to provide a forum to explore how they may offer help and comfort to people who are looking for answers to life’s ultimate questions and confusions. To help with that, I have tried to summarise those beliefs in the Belief section, but they are more meaningful when found from bible verses in the Discover section. But most of all, these beliefs make sense when applied to life’s hard challenges, and I hope the first Questions section will help with that. When that section is developed, please share your questions, concerns, or comments. Due to the feral nature of so much of internet activity, I will moderate entries before listing them. I have also added a section with my personal reflections and discussions (Reflections), which I may be of interest.
References to helpful website links or published books are also welcome.
Let us explore!
Human Perspective
A few years ago, I read that 95% of the universe was unknowable, as it was composed of dark matter, about which we could gather no data.
When I mentioned this to a retired research scientist, he suggested a further uncertainty. He explained that dark matter had been postulated as a solution to unexpected results from the formula for gravity between known bodies in the universe. But this formula, which works for the distances in our solar system, may not be valid for the huge interstellar distances to which it was being applied.
In summary, he thought we don’t know how much we can never know, but it seems to be most of everything!
Yet what we have been given to know is fascinating, so let us see.
Aims and Assumptions
Given this uncertainty, what basis do we use for our reflection?
My aim in this site is to present the Christian perspective from my understanding, but also to outline the possible basis for different understandings within Christian belief as defined by the creeds. For that to be meaningful, we need to include all of the difficult questions in how that belief applies to our lives, to the ultimate questions of existence. So, I have a blog page for those hard questions where sincere contributions are welcome.
Here, the bible will be used as the source for guidance, but I realise some denominations may vary in how much emphasis is given to our heritage of understanding of the bible. I have also included a blog page for reflections on bible verses, and another page for wider reflection on Christian faith.
The pages outlining basic belief can only give a dry skeleton, while I hope the blog pages of reflection will give an understanding with some relevance to your life.
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