CHRISTIANS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND

Our Christianity is the religion that is always trying to understand.

- By Rev Tom Cant

Christians do not possess a set of rules and regulations to follow and obey.

There never was a time when Christians knew exactly what to believe and how to behave.

Not even at the beginning with the first 12 apostles and followers of Jesus.

In the opening days of the church, in the time of Peter and Paul, there was the dispute over how to receive non-Jewish converts.

Christians have always been confronted with the need to define and express our belief in a way that is real and appropriate for our time but always in a way faithful to God.

So, the new converts to Christianity could easily make mistakes. We saw how difficult it was for the Christians in Corinth to break free from their previous social conduct.

Their new commitment to Jesus of Nazareth and of Calvary was so different from what everyone accepted as normal behaviour.

The same happened in the Christian community in Colosse.

The new Christian community emerged within a city housing a very large and prosperous Jewish community.

Thousands of Jews had settled in Colosse.

They had been deported from Babylon in 500 BC after the Babylonian Exile.

Some of their number may well have been the first Christians, convinced that Jesus was indeed their God-given Messiah.