What is Christianity?

This seems like such a basic and ridiculous question. It seems so obvious doesn’t it? Why am I bothering to ask this question? Yet, why is it that we have so many variations of this thing we call Christianity. Some of the variations seem to be in direct opposition to one another — appearing to stand for completely opposite things. It leaves me with the question of what is Christianity?

The answer depends on several things. Are we talking about Christianity the religion, the institution, the way of being, or something else?

All of these present different ideas and variations within those ideas.

And that’s not counting the things that aren’t religious that use Christianity for its own purposes — things like Christian Nationalism.

So what is Christianity? At its core Christianity is supposed to be about following the Christ. It’s the way of Christ if you take the word and break it down.

If that’s the case, then this seems easy — you take a look and see what Christ taught and go and do that.

So what might those things be? Love God, love everyone else. It’s really just that simple. And complicated. I guess you can try to spin it — plenty of people do. They give exceptions for who doesn’t qualify — because of their sexuality, nationality, skin color, beliefs, etc. But Jesus didn’t make those exceptions. He literally said love God and love your neighbor. And, oh, by the way, who is your neighbor? Everyone who is made in the image of God. He kept it…