What exactly is it?

I've been thinking about it a lot lately.  Many people dismiss it as 'religious', 'holy roller', 'old-school', and no longer relevant.  Even Christians in an effort to seem relevant, do not use the term.  What really bothers me is that some Christians believe we must stay away from certain terms and tenets of our Bible, to be relevant to people who view us as crazy for our beliefs anyway.  In fact, these very people want us to stop believing.  They think that we can just change our minds from believing in a book of ‘stories’ written 2000 years ago about a god that probably does not even exist.  For that very reason, the fact that our beliefs are 2000 years old, we should forget it and 'get into the 21st century'.  We should 'go along to get along', and 'live and let live'.  If we do not comply, we are 'narrow-minded', 'hateful', and anti-anything that is now openly accepted.  

I do not know what is more treacherous though, the belief that Christians should just stop believing, or the Christians who have indeed stopped believing.  If they ever believed at all.  Believe or not, The Word is The Word, and those of us who know The Word realize we cannot just stop believing.  There's a saying, 'stand for something or fall for anything'.  I do not know who said it, but I agree.  I agree not because I want to be stubborn and anti-establishment; but because there is something deep within me, deeper than an impression, that believes.  It is a living, breathing, confidence in someone bigger than me.  That someone created me, and when I worship Him, my heart and my spirit come into agreement with His.  How does one just walk away from that and stop believing?

Am I being asked to stop believing in my creator so that our new society of ‘go along to get along' feels less threatened? In America, it used to be that people were allowed to believe what they wanted.  Now when we believe, we can be accused of hate crimes.  It seems the reverse is happening.  It is the Christians who are being ostracized.  That however, has been the case since the beginning.  We are used to being ostracized.  

At the mention of the name Jesus or God, some people become quite angry.  They will probably become angrier when they realize that 'holiness' is a relevant term.  It is not a religious, old-school, or holy-roller term.  It is relevant to those of us who still believe.  You see, the Word says 'Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.' --Hebrews 12:14.  So for those of us who believe, we must be holy if we want to go to Heaven.  For believers, Heaven is what it is ultimately all about.  But while we are here, holiness means loving everyone, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us, and it means not changing our minds or 'going along to get along'.

Nowhere in the Word does it tell Christians to hate people, but the Word does tell us to hate sin. Furthermore, the word is quite clear on what sin is.  For those, Christian and non-Christians, who believe we can just interchange, add a little here, take away there; it does not work like that. We either believe the entire Word or none of it.  

Christians will continue to believe the Word.  We will continue to love everyone, and we will continue to hate sin.  We will continue to abide by the laws of our land, but we will not compromise The Word.  It will not always be easy to walk the fine line of obeying The Word and obeying the law, but we will do just that.  Our God, The Word, will direct us.  We believe.