Religious Conversion Paper

Posted: September 6th, 2013

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Religious Conversion Paper

Our current society has various witnessed religious movement. These movements have ethical, philosophical, or spiritual, which has a peripheral position in our religious dominant culture. These religious movements may be novel in origin or form part of a bigger religion. This includes religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and many others. Collectively, there are eight major religions in the world. This paper will mainly focus on Christianity and its belief system since it is largest of all other religions. The Christian religion asserts that God the Father is the creator all things, visible and invisible and holds the interests of humanity best at heart (Fisher, 11).

Christianity is an Abrahamic and monotheistic religion founded on the teachings of Jesus as represented in the old and New Testament of the bible. People who adhere to this faith are referred to as Christians. This religion teaches that Jesus is the son of the Almighty God and the savior of all humanity. Because of this belief, believers of this religion refer to Jesus as the Messiah or Christ. The Jesus ministry, his death and resurrection are in this religion referred to as the good news. Primarily, the gospel from this religion assures its followers that God the Father upholds eternal victory over all that is evil and promises eternal life to those who have embraced salvation through divine grace (Fisher, 24).

According to the Christian gospel, Jesus taught of love and emphasized that it was the greatest commandment. This commandment states that Christians are love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, (and) to love their neighbor as they love themselves. The Christianity Religion offers its believers with the good news on the savior of the world who is Jesus. It assures that  Jesus offers free salvation to those who are willing. This salvation is viewed as the cleansing of one’s sins and the pass to receive eternal life with God the Father. However, Jesus warned that salvation was not an easy task and attaining eternal life would be hard.

He stated that the ways of the world would be a hindrance that compromised this salvation. Succumbing to the ways of the world implies doing what is contrary to God’s expectations. This includes going against his teachings as told by Jesus. Therefore, succumbing to the ways of the world means that one falls short of achieving eternal life as promised, but will rather end up in eternal death (Fisher, 34). For the Christianity religion, all these teachings are recorded in a holy book known as the Bible in form of scriptures. These scriptures were written by men whom Christians believe were inspired by God. It is through this book that Christians learn more on the Christianity religion as well as God expects and has promised for them.

In the world, there exist three subdivisions of the Christian religion. These subdivisions include the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant denominations, and Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches were once together but split from one another in 1504 AD. Consequently, the protestant denomination came into existence by splitting from the Catholic Church in the 16^th century. The Christian religion began in the form of a Jewish sect in the middle of the first century. This movement begun its operation in modern Israel and Palestine and gradually spread to Egypt, Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The Christian religion continued to grow in size in the course of the next decades.

By the end of the fourth century, Christianity had already become the dominant religion in the Roman empire. In the course of the Middle Ages, most of the remaining regions in Europe had received Christianity as their religion with Christianity as the largest minority religion in the Middle East, Ethiopia and North Africa. This progress was largely facilitated by strategies implemented by colonization and missionary work in the Age of Discovery. This facilitated the spreading of Christianity to Australasia, Americas, Sub Saharan Africa as well as the rest of the world.

The missionary work was able to achieve its purpose by spreading news on the religion to mainly atheistic societies. Missionaries such as Johann Kraph and Dennis Rebman spread the news of Jesus and proclaimed that he was the Messiah as prophesied in the Bible, in part one of two normally referred to as the Old Testament. The foundation of these news is expressed in ecumenical creeds of early Christianity that contains predominantly accepted claims to those who have accepted Christianity as their religion. The missionaries taught that Jesus voluntarily endured suffering, gave his life and died (Fisher, 41). However, through God’s grace, Jesus was able to conquer death and resurrect. The death and resurrection of Jesus symbolizes the promise of eternal life to followers who have believed and trusted in this news and have acted to remiss their sins through salvation.

The teachings of this religion further maintain that Christ will grace the world a second and final time, but in glory and honor. He will return to pass judgment to all the living and dead humans and rewardingly grant eternal life to those who followed God’s commandments. Christianity uses this news to teach people and coax them to become followers of this religion in order to acquire eternal life. The Christian religion views Jesus as a model of virtuous life, as well as the incarnation and revealer of God. Christians regard the message born by Jesus as the good news or rather, the Gospel. Since the 4^th century, Christianity has played an important part in shaping the Western Civilization.

The Christian religion has various sets of beliefs they believe I essential for their faith as well as what is involved when one becomes faithful to this religion. Among these beliefs are the creeds. The Apostles Creed is regarded in this religion as the greatest article on Christian faith, which is generally accepted in majority Christian denominations. The Apostles Creed is used by various Christian denominations for catechetical and liturgical purposes. This creed in particular was developed in the period between 3^rd and 9^th centuries. The Apostles Creed highlights Christian faith as believing in God the Father, His son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (Fisher, 67). This belief further maintains on the symbolic and precious death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. This creed also provides its followers with a condition of respecting the holiness of the Church as well as the communion of saints. Finally, the creed assures the followers of Christianity that Christ’s second coming is imminent and that he will come to judge all humans according to how they spent their lives.

One other belief involved with prophesying faith to this religion lies behind the Ten Commandments. The commandments are considered biblical principles relating to worship and ethics of the religion. They play an important role in partly defining Judaism and most Christianity forms. Primarily, these commandments are believed to be God’s law and depict his desire on how people should conduct themselves. They include commands on conducting Worship and paying reverence to only God the Father. The Christian faith depicts the role of worship as a way of connecting God the Father to his followers. This worship is considered achieved in the form of prayer that means conversing with God (Fisher, 42). Other instructions set by the commandments include instructions not commit blasphemy, theft, murder, adultery, and idolatry.

Another belief in the Christianity religion is the birth of Jesus, his life, his works, his death and resurrection. Christianity believes in Jesus as the Son of God who was sent to save the world from eternal death and destruction. The belief holds that Jesus was anointed by God to save the whole of humanity. This faith maintains that believing and accepting the death and resurrection of the Christ reconciles sinful people to God the Father. This is followed by the offer of salvation rewarded by the promise of eternal life. Prophesying faith in Christianity further involves the belief that God the Father has so much love for his people that he offered his only son Jesus for sacrifice in order to reconcile Him with humanity (Fisher, 32). This belief maintains that Jesus voluntarily endured suffering, gave his life and died. The death and resurrection of Jesus is commemorated throughout all Christian services in the world.

For the reflection part of this paper, I believe that my response to the Christianity methodologies I have prescribed would be those of acceptance. The Christian religion asserts that God the Father is the creator all things, visible and invisible and holds the interests of humanity best at heart. Through sin however, humanity falls short of the glory of God. In reconciliation, God offered his only son Jesus as a sacrifice to offer salvation and the gift of eternal life. In my reflection, I believe that the methodologies and ideology behind the Christian religion is logical and offers a testament behind the existence and fate of all humanity.

Works Cited

Fisher, George P. The Christian Religion. New York: The Chautauqua Press, 2006. Print.