Humanist/Christian

Knowing what I now know in the limited dimensions of my single life experience that has included an extended education and exposure to life and history – even if I were not a Christian, I would want to be christianly even in a total humanist life context.  It would give me the most of what the earth experience has to offer – for the nature experience.  That view was arrived at late in my life – that earth life for mankind has one morality to which all are called, arrived at in a variety of styles, but one standard for all. God offers righteousness (right) to accomplish the goal in an imperfect world. (Faulty man has not achieved the available order in practice.)  For persons of Christian faith, God offers aid to those who seek effectiveness in applying the standard.  Through that faith alone the Christian is provided Christian Hope, identified as immortality related to Christ’s redemptive plan.

In simplicity this faith offers affirmation for life and thought known as righteousness (right), and negative response to evil (sin).  It must be sought for experience under God to verify the spiritual to the individual.  The experience is outlined in Scripture so to gain unity about unseen and overlapping spiritual reality. The heart of the change is the personal exchange between the human person and Jesus Christ in mystery. The person so functioning in faith gains spiritual growth through prayer, through Scripture, through the Holy Spirit, and practice of righteousness (right). That practice begins with prevailing love and ends in ministry.

This is to say that Christians should want to live as Scripture counsels persons to live, in what they affirm and deny in forming their actions in natural life course.  Many persons, even church denominations, have subscribed a secular christianly (instead of carnal conduct) and called it Christian.  God becomes somewhat ephemeral to them, even when taken into reverent consideration.  The Christian is directed to truth and warns of falsity so to love and not to hatred; to family solidarity for social base and warned about breakdown; to interest in, and uses for illness and death; to contributing to others more than taking from them; to favor for liquidity and evasion of debt; to advancement of peace, personal and social, so to seek life balance and hate warfare; to favor of joy in life over sorrow; to make the first purpose of institutions, including government, to serve the people rather than serve the authorities related to the institutions; to projecting neighborliness (friendship) in community, so evading conflict; to the care of the needy and deprived; to include values that affirm integrity and expect conflicting objectives; to the concepts of leadership and followership based on respect; and, the pattern of comparisons/contrasts can be extended beyond the dimensions of one Page.  It is a pattern that is summed up in a word, righteousness (right). 

The tendency to relate Christian values to religiosity and bygone history does not really hold up as cause for downgrading value constancy with us.  What logic holds that because something has been of longstanding (old), may have appeared from some exotic, even unknown, source, is no longer applicable?  We often begin our philosophy studies with Socrates, his student Plato, and his student, Aristotle – all appearing before the New Testament began.  They seem not to have grown old in that they raise the ongoing questions for human life.  The usefulness is discovered in the testing, perhaps retesting along the way.  What alternative has served better than the Christian model, even if or when religion is lifted from it?  The application of human values as related to Christianity is widely agreed upon even when persons resist that part noted as moral.  Even removing the issues of morality, which morality requires something above nature for genuine meaning, the residue of objectives found in Christianity has not been improved upon.  They have verified themselves even when some Christians and churches have disregarded them.  The challenge remains: what is found better for all society?  No one is forgotten for ideals.  Equality based on life meaning prevails.  Jesus challenged the world to discover it in him.  It requires seeking to find it. We are unsure why so many persons do not want God to exist.  God is a loving heavenly Father.