Thursday, January 5, 2012

Some Similarities?

Yes, technically the sharing of content is an important part of my faith. It is not, however, the primary part of my faith, as it would be if I followed the Missionary Church of Kopimism, an officially recognized religion in Sweden.

Like many Christians, I hold it important to share the gospel message with others, because I want them to understand what I believe to be the truth about the human condition and God's response to that condition. Also, Jesus told us to. The recently-approved church of Kopimism believes in file-sharing as its most important value -- the free sharing of any information between anybody who wants to do so, regardless of copyright laws or other restrictions. So for them, the act of sharing is far more important than the content of what is being shared.

The opposite is supposed to hold true for us -- we think it's most important that we share the central message of God's love for humanity and his desire to heal the relationship with humanity that was broken by human sin, and how that desire was made reality through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We certainly don't know everything about that message and we might get it wrong now and again, which is one reason we trust God to do the work our limitations prevent. But we usually try to match our sharing with that message.

Of course, there are some pray-now-send-money-get-rich-quick churches, "Buddy Jesus" messages and hipper-than-thou schools of thought that offer different ideas, but those have histories of fading into the background after a little while anyway.

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