The eternal truth

A correspondent from Swieqi (March 17) wrote that "the fastest failing religion is the Christian religion while the fastest growing beliefs are those based on nature".

The Christian religion is fostered by the Christian churches. Among them, only the Catholic Church has existed since the time of Jesus, and all other Christian Churches are offshoots, some recent, of the Catholic Church. Despite constant opposition from the world, the Catholic Church has existed for nearly 2,000 years, a testimony to its divine origin. A merely human organisation would have collapsed early on, especially considering that its human members, including some of its leaders, were unwise, corrupt, or heretical.

The Catholic Church is today the most vigorous Church in the world: testimony not to the cleverness of its leaders, but to the protection of the Holy Spirit. The Church has four chief characteristics: it is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Jesus established only one Church (not a collection of churches) teaching one set of doctrines. Over the centuries the Christian doctrines have never changed. Only they are examined more fully, and understood more deeply, but the Church never understands them to mean the opposite of what they originally meant.

The Church is holy by the grace of Jesus, but each member is not always holy, and Jesus said there would be both good and bad members in the Church (John 6:70).

Because it is Christ's gift to all people, the Church is Catholic (Greek for "universal"). The apostles were to go and make disciples of "all nations", and for 2,000 years the Church has been carrying out this mission.

The Church is apostolic because Christ appointed the apostles to be its first leaders, and their successors were to be its future leaders.

But what essentially separates Christianity from all other religions is that its founder made the most "unbelievable" claim of all. Neither Abraham, nor Buddha nor Mohammed claimed to be God.

But Christ did. And he was crucified for it. The local execution of an unknown revolutionary "madman" in an obscure outpost of the Roman empire would become, and remain, the prime mover of all history.

God's story ended not with Christ's death on the cross, but with an empty grave and a resurrected Christ. Christianity, wrote G. K. Chesterton, "has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave".

The history of humanity has always been one of progress followed by decay. When people tire of Christianity and stop worshipping the living God, they start worshipping idols instead and become as dead as the idols. Idols can take the form of money, sex, animals, and even nature. Worshipping sex, they become perverted. Worshipping animals, they become inhuman. Worshipping nature, they become unnatural. But no matter how hard the world tries to crush it, Christianity will live on because it embodies the eternal truth of God.