Laurence J. Peter1 once said, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe."
True enough - many people struggle in wondering whether there is a god, whether there is life after death, and why they are even alive. Certain individuals have come to me and asked me what I believe. The more I think about it, the more frustrating it gets. The question always comes back to me, nagging at me to define my actual beliefs. I usually state the mere basics of my belief, briefly ending the discussion with, "Oh, I'm a Christian." Yet until now, I have never come to defining what it really means to be a Christian, and what I truly believe.
As a Christian, I believe that there is only one true God, revealed to us in the Bible2 (Genesis 1:1) as being Creator of all things, a God who is powerful, sovereign over all creation, loving, compassionate, perfectly righteous, and who is everlasting and unchanging.
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Ch...
English: John the Baptist baptizing Christ
English: Jesus Christ baroque sculpture in Holy Sp...Although we cannot see God with our naked eyes, we can see everything that God has created: the planets, stars, animals, and mankind. Genesis 1:272 tells us that God created human beings in His own image; He has authority over all and should be feared. I believe in the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Apostles' Creed3, which says that God is all mighty and states the incarnation, that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, therefore fully God and fully man. He came down to earth and died on the cross as the ultimate atonement for the sins of the world and the sins to come. I believe Jesus literally descended to Hell and rose from the dead on the third day.
I have...