Christianity is a religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ who was born to Mary and Joseph over 2000 years ago in Bethlehem, in a manger, and grew up in Nazareth. Christ is a Greek word which means “Anointed” or “King”, and refers to Jesus’s Station as the Messiah. At the start of His mission, Jesus went to the desert for 40 days of fasting, prayer and meditation during which time He purified Himself of all temp-tation. After returning, He went about teaching about God’s divine nature being love, and that God loves all people as His children. He asked that people love one’s neighbour as oneself, urging people “In every-thing, do to others as you would have them do to you”. In His teachings, Jesus used many parables such as the parable of the prodigal son, and of the good Samaritan, to convey his basic message of equal respect and dignity of all human beings. Jesus was averse to the way the established secular and religious authorities misused their powers. After just three years of teaching, Jesus was put to death on the cross and Chris-tians generally believe that He rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven. He promised to send the Holy Spirit who would provide help and guidance to understand and appreciate the true nature of His teachings, which can be said to include an understanding of the intrinsic relationship between human beings and the natural and cosmic environment around us.
Three centuries after Jesus Christ died, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and the First Council of Nicaea was convened to agree to a unified statement of Christian beliefs. This resulted in what is known as the Nicene Creed that affirmed the belief in the doctrine of Trinity as Father, Son and the Holy Spirit as three persons in one God, and Jesus Christ as the only Son of God ‘begotten’ by the Father from his own being, and therefore having no beginning, as opposed to being created out of nothing, and therefore having a beginning. Thus, from the Catholic perspective, the Oneness of Reality is personified by the oneness of three persons in one God. But some Christian groups do not perceive Jesus Christ as the only son of God while others perceive Him to represent all sentient beings, or perhaps even the whole of creation.
At the Humanics Sanctuary, Christianity is represented with sculptures of the Garden of Eden, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph’s flight to Egypt as refugees, the Prodigal son, St. Francis of Assisi, Prayer, and Jesus giving the sermon on the mount.