Why Christianity Part II

Why Christianity Part II – This discussion is why did I choose to become a Christian. In the past blog I touched on my experiences with religion and how religion has hurt more people in the name of God then anything else. I am not bashing churches, just organized religious concepts. There is a difference between church and religion.

Religion is a structure that cultures, communities, and or person(s) people create. It is their interpretation of the bible and their organizational structure of how its followers should live. Church in Christ time was a place in which individuals would meet to learn about God’s word and the concentration was set around a community of people who would help one another grow in their individual walk with God. It was also a place for people to gather and devote some personal time to worship God and increase their knowledge of the knowledge handed down to them.

There was structure, there was punishment for disobedience. Punishment wasn’t physical harm but more isolation like. For instance in 1 Corinthians 5:1-12 Paul looks at how the church was suppose to deal with those who openly lived against the bible and had no desire to live according to it’s laws. In 2 Corinthians 2:5-11 he expands his thoughts on discipline in the church. Once again we can see the love of God in these verses as he instructs them not to overwhelm the individual who may be at fault but forgive and comfort him so he will not become overwhelmed by excessive sorrow, and they were to reaffirm their love for the individual. Much like how parents would discipline their children.

Church is supposed to be a place of joy where people of like mind would gather in unified worship of their heavenly father. If it wasn’t for church I wouldn’t be writing this today. I guess in a way you can’t have church without religion, but I think I have found the closest thing to it in my church. So how did I get her, how did I get to a point where I could absolutely believe in the bible to the point of sacrificing my relationship with my own relatives as in the first blog? Why would I choose to live a lifestyle that is so opposite from the society I live in? Why not just live life to the fullest and enjoy all the pleasure available in the world today, besides we only live once right and life is short?

As I mentioned I was always around the bible in some way shape or form my whole life but never took a hold of it. I enjoyed drinking, smoking, partying, sleeping around, basically I enjoyed not being accountable to anything other then my moral conscious. That’s the thing about the bible once you read it you begin to see your accountable to God for your actions. As I got older I met my wife and she was a semi-religious lady at the time who was going through a rebellious phase in her life. We met at a club and started dating. Not the prime area to meet someone.

Our first three year would be on and off partly because we both were to self center and could never look past our own desires. After a while my wife got sick of the life we were living and wanted to go back to the Christian life she lived previously. So I started attending church with her to avoid arguments in our relationship. I wasn’t going because I wanted to; I was going to make her happy. That became a problem because her heart was in it and she wanted to start living a cleaner lifestyle which meant no more partying, having sex before we were married, etc. That’s were the problems began again, because I was still living this life and didn’t want it to change, so eventually we ended up breaking up because my wife wanted to be in a relationship with a person with equal morals. She still loved me tremendously but we would never work out with such different morals.

Before we broke up church was starting to make a dent in my heart and I was agreeing with the messages, but I never took it upon myself to make a one on one relationship with God, I was a Sunday Christian…come Monday I was back to being a non-Christian. But even as we were broken up I still desired to go to church, it was something about that two hour period in which you could close your eye’s and let the songs sink into your heart and hear all this wonderful news out of the bible that I loved.

So I continued to go to church on my own, but I hadn’t made it my own. I was still out there living the same life which was still opposite then what the bible was teaching and I knew it. I started to think I could never be a Christian or live the life that God wanted me to because I loved the sins of the world to much to let them go. Then one day 8 months after being broken up, which from day one my wife never saw or talked to me not once during this time, she showed up out of the blue.

Long story short things got a little better and a couple years later we got married, but during this time I slower went back to my old ways and my wife was miserable. Then something happened, a bad night that changed the rest of my life. It was December of 08 and I was out with some friends of mine clubbing it as I usually do and my wife was at home pregnant with my son. I was drinking and having what I thought was a good ol time as I became plastered.

During this period I believe my friends and I got into a verbal dispute with some other group of guys. As we were leaving the club four deep we were confronted by eight of these guys. One thing led to another and a real messy fight erupted. The only thing I could think is getting my car and grabbing my friends and burning rubber. As I ran to get my car I looked back to see a group of four guys chasing after me and eventually they caught up to me a couple blocks away in one of the nastiest darkest alleys in a neighborhood with a dangerous reputation.

I was face t face with these guy, and drunk as a skunk. What was racing through my heart is there is a chance I am going to be killed and two things rushed through my mind in those hard seconds…..if I die I know I am going to Hell, and my wife will have to raise our son alone with a $12 an hour job. I was eventually over taken by this group and they proceeded to do their best on me. In my mind I prayed out to God and I made a promise to him that I have kept to this day. I promised him that if he saved my life I would never drink again and I would try my best to live a better life for him.

All this was happening for about 10 second in an alley with no lights were no would see us, where they could of taken there time. After I prayed, and I mean the second I was finished something had spooked these guys to the point where they didn’t just stop, they took off like a bat out of hell. They ran so fast that they didn’t even bother to open the gate as they took off. I believe to this day God somehow scared the ba-jesus out of them somehow because when I got up there was no one around us, no cars, no light, nothing to cause these guys to take off the way they did. I ended up walking to a police station because I was pretty beat up and calling my wife. I knew my life would be changing when my wife walked in the police station as the view of her pregnant, scared, and full of tears came across my eyes.

This is where my story really takes place in Why Christianity Part III