A Good Reason To Keep Bringing the Good News

How many people keep with the religion they were raised with? It looks like Hindu, Jews and Muslims retain the most. The great breakdown in the middle splits Protestants up and the rest are together. Both Greek Orthodox and Catholic are Catholic, so it's a distinction without a distinction. Catholics and Protestants are all Christian, so it would be interesting to see this chart with all that combined. What cheers me though is look at the bottom. Atheists. Not so good about keeping those faithful.

It's true we are spiritual beings in physical bodies. God created us, and Atheists can deny it all day long, but we all yearn for Him. Deny Him and He gets replaced by someone or something else. False religions, false prophets, drugs, things, government, all false idols. It's no wonder that people attending church regularly, in every survey for years, rate themselves happier than those that reject religion and God. 

Our natural state is to believe in, and yearn for God. Atheists have to be worked on hard, and as we can see, it doesn't stick. 

It's also motivation to keep spreading the Good News. Let's lower those percentages for the other religions, and definitely get Atheists down to a couple percent. Off to the side of this blog are people that need to hear about Jesus, and we can start by praying for them. It changes daily. You can go to the website and get it emailed to you daily.

By the way, what unifies us as Christians is we share One Lord, One Body (the Church), One Purpose, One Father, One Spirit, One Hope, One Faith, One Baptism and One Love, the same salvation, the same life and the same future. (From The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren)

Knowledge Check - Religion

How well is your basic understanding of the world's religions? Click here for a quick 15 question quiz.

This is from a national poll done by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Unfortunately, atheists and agnostics have more knowledge of religions than people that are religious. I’m not surprised at this. Most Christians, once they accept the truths of our faith, quit learning. Same principle I think as most people’s vocabulary quits expanding in high school, and people’s political views get cemented in.

It’s important for everyone to keep expanding their knowledge all the time. Especially Christians, that are under assault worldwide, need to be able to confidently discuss their beliefs. I’ve heard many Christians say they don’t have the time for Bible study, or to read books of apologetics. When I hear someone say they don’t have time for something, then it’s not important to them. We need to understand other’s faiths, so we can communicate with them from a place and language they understand. We need to understand our own faith to grow stronger in it, and to develop a deeper relationship with God and each other.   

Knowledge and faith need to be balanced. Christians need to be informed. Really, when atheists know more than people that proclaim a faith, there's some self evaluation that needs to happen, and some work to do.

There's a "on the other hand" issue here. On any secular issue, whether politics, history or literature, most people seem not to know much, as evidenced by Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments.

Regardless, Christians should know what they believe and why.