"Belief in God was central to the lives of the early Christians but has become irrelevant for modern man" Discuss
Luke's Act's of the Apostles, an early diary of the Christian faith, concludes with St. Paul's arrival in Rome in around 60 A.D. Christianity had come to the centre of world power and learning. However, St. Paul was brought there to stand trial for being a Christian, and eventually sentenced to death. It is all too easy to forget that these were the conditions under which Christianity spent its infancy, and with this context in mind the question of man's need for God seems almost imbecilic. However, ?modern man' is a term that conjures up a very different context, and moreover is constantly evolving ? herein lies the beginning of our study of human faith.
Let us look firstly at fact. The decline of a need for God can be loosely evaluated by studying the influence of religions in the world today. Christianity is not the only religion we may consider here; any that believes in a higher power is relevant to our study because the belief displays the need for a God, even if this need is not manifested in the traditional perception of the Almighty. Having understood this, Christianity is the religion of 33% of the world's population, whilst 22% belong to Islam and 15% to Hinduism. In fact, only 17% of the world's population are ?nonreligious,' and this is certainly evidence of a living God in our world today. Grant R. Jeffrey (1996) notes that Christianity's numbers have increased by 1300% between 1934 and 1994, whilst the world's population grew by only 400%. So is there really a valid argument that human society today is less dependent on God than at the time of the early church? The main problem with such statistics is that being asso ...