Christian Relevance

I was watching a fictional TV show where a group of Anglican vicars were asked to think of ways to keep Christianity relevant. This bothered me a bit, so, naturally, I took it into my imagination, imagining that someone was asking me the question: Is Christianity relevant in today’s world? This is how I imagined the conversation…

Me: Well, is love relevant in today’s world? Is mercy? Understanding? Is compassion, generosity, goodness, and peace? Is the experience and desire for happiness relevant to people’s lives? If the answer is yes to any of these, then, of course, Christianity is relevant. Those who truly live it truly know it — and show it.

Questioner: But surely things such as mercy, love, and joy are not exclusive to Christianity? Can’t even an atheist experience these things?

Me: Oh, we all can experience love and goodness and truth and joy on a natural level. We know and share familial love, romantic love, love between friends, and this is beautiful. We experience happiness, live good lives, value truth, and show mercy. But we cannot experience the heights and depths of love and joy and even goodness unless it’s at the supernatural level. For example, perhaps the most important example, divine love can only be experienced when experiencing the divine — that unconditional, transformative, eternal love by and for which true Christianity exists. The crucifix is itself the sign of divine love: God has revealed Godself to be Love and chose to enter into our broken world, becoming one of us, dying for love of us so that we may not remain forever broken but may rise with Him into eternity.

Questioner: But doesn’t that just sound like so many words? Many, many people would say that that’s just gobbledygook, just superstition or mythology.

Me: I truly do understand that! I was one of those people. But now I understand.

“What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,

and what has not entered the human heart,

what God has prepared for those who love him, go to sleep is did you complete it

this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”[i]

We live by faith.

Now here’s the interesting thing about today’s world. If a scientist was sitting next to me telling you all about the space time continuum or quantum physics, would you understand the majority of what she said? Would your eyes kind of just glaze over and your mind go numb? You might say to yourself, “That’s okay I don’t need to understand it. I’m sure it’s true, but it’s got nothing to do with me. So of course it sounds weird and maybe even unbelievable. But who cares.”

You would care, however, if you wanted to send a rocket to the moon. Then you would need to study and learn the gobbledygook that the scientist was spewing out until it wasn’t gobbledygook to you anymore. If you wanted to build a solar panel and harness the energy of the sun, you would need to understand radiation, electrical principles, and how photosynthesis works at more than just a basic level.

So, too, if you want to experience the profound heights and profound depths of human life, you need to learn and come to some understanding of the supernatural, specifically, of divine love. You can’t just say that you know the sun can produce electricity — to really connect to that power, to tap into it, and to reap the benefits of this resource for yourself and others, you can’t just sit on the surface. You need to go deep. That’ the reason for religion itself — to allow us to be connected to the Ultimate Source, The First Cause and Final End of all things, and through that connection to  have true, powerful encounter and be transformed into the fullness of being human.

We Christians know that we have been divinely loved into being for the purpose of loving divinely. And we understand that Jesus is The Way, the Truth, and the Life. Through Him, with Him, and in Him, we have union with The Divine, we experience the profound heights and depths of being human, we become fully alive.

The fullness of life will always be relevant.

© 2026 Christina Chase

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Feature Photo by Thomas Kinto on Unsplash

[i] 1 Corinthians 2:9-10