xstemsy (@xstemsy)

This is my first post in what will be a series about Christianity. I hope it will be a series of posts that provides the readers with at least some things they may not have seen before. One of the problems with schools around the world is that they spend years giving out solutions... to people who don't have the problems they are the solutions to. Even what they may call "problems" they may assign for homework or give in tests are completely artificial, and the students do not care about them. What 9-year-old cares about when two trains going between some major cities will meet? It is hard to care about the solution when you do not have the problem. Christians have a similar problem when they try to explain Christianity. It does no good to tell people that "Jesus Saves" if they don't know what Jesus is saving them from. For Jesus to be the solution, there must first be a problem. There is, of course, a problem. Everyone agrees that there is some sort of problem in the world. Anyone who lives in this world and thinks it has no fundamental problems is, to put it in a single concept, crazy. Anyone who thinks we are living in a world with no problems has a mindset so far from mind that there can be no communication between us. But that doesn't mean people agree what the problems are. Some people will identify only small parts of the problem. Some people will mistake the problem for something good. Think of a drug user who does not recognize the destruction they are bringing on themselves as a problem. Some will agree that there are problems, but it is just the nature of the world and there isn't anything that can be done about them except to carve out a small portion of the world for yourself and hope to weather the storm better than the next person. Some will think the problem solvable by human effort. This is important because a critical and oft-overlooked first step in solving a problem is correctly identifying it. Before the Christian can offer the solution, they must first convince someone that: * that there is a problem * that it is much bigger than you realize * that you have no solution to this problem Only then can the solution be offered, and only might someone even be interested in the solution. God is very, very smart, and He is active in this world. I have heard many stories of the people that between their own actions and God's actions have been brought to a place where they can not help but understand that they have a problem. Others live relatively comfortable lives in the world. Or they have tried to solve their problem by building psychological structures of denial. For them, the problem must be shown to exist first. So one of the goals of this first few posts will be to show the problem as clearly as possible. permalink: https://xstemsy.com/xstemsy/post/2026/08/the_problem/ #xstemsyProblem