WHY I AM A CHRISTIAN

Why I Am a Christian

1. It is reasonable that God might exist.

2. Further, it is reasonable (based on the evidence) that this God who might exist might be personal and therefore have communicated with human beings.

3. The world's religions are a reasonable place to look for evidence of such communication.

4. Among those representing the world religions, Jesus of Nazareth seems to hold the consensus as the person most likely to provide convincing evidence of the God who might exist. (Since Jesus is- in some way- incorporated into all major world religions. If all the world's religious leaders were locked in a basement until they could elect only one person to represent the best of their beliefs, I believe Jesus would be the person selected.)

5. The resurrection of Jesus is a reasonable explanation for the existence of Christianity as a distinct belief system from Judaism.

6. An examination of the various alternatives and existing evidence convinces me that the Resurrection is, in fact, true.

7. If the Rez is true, then Jesus' statements about himself, God, Truth, Sin, etc. (The Christian worldview) are true by deduction.

8. Based on this conclusion, I relate to the God who I now believe exists through Jesus.

9. My experience matches what Jesus describes, providing personal verification of the truth of Christianity.

10. Based on Pascal's wager, I await eventual verification of this conclusion after death, but haven't lost anything if I am wrong.

First, for my skeptical friends, I know this outline can be faulted a hundred different ways, so its not that I haven't thought of your objection before. This is simply the way I put it all together for me.

Secondly, the resurrection of Jesus is crucial to my faith. As far as I know, Christianity is the only religion that has an explicitly confessed point of falsification. That is, it tells you, up front, how to disprove it. Read I Corinthians 15:14 and 17: "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith....And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is foolish." Now this is significant because it is turning the entire worldview onto its head and standing it on one assertion. If this is disproven, then the whole structure collapses. Try to get someone in the New Age or atheism to give you a similar statement of falsification.

Third, there are only a finite number of possibilities for what happened to Jesus.

1) He never existed. (Disproven by the testimony of his first century enemies, who accepted his existence.)

2) He purposely faked his resurrection (which means he was an evil genius. Hardly plausible given what we know of his life.)

3) The resurrection is a mistake or hallucination. (The transformation and experience of the disciples cannot be explained by a mistake and mass hallucinations do not happen on this level.)

4) The disciples faked it. (No motive and not capable of doing it. Read the Gospels!) 

5) He never actually died, but just passed out and recovered. (No possible way this could have happened.) 6) Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples. Given everything that must be explained, 1-5 fail, leaving 6 as the only possibility that explains all aspects of the sudden birth of early Christianity out of Judaism.

Fourth, while my personal experience proves nothing, it is important if my personal experience matches the experience described in the Bible. This is often overlooked. For example, the Bible says we are persons made in God's image, but fallen into sin. This has great explanatory power for what we see in actual human beings, and beats the pants off any other view of human nature. Also, the transformative aspect of Christianity may be easily discounted because of hypocrisy and outright evil on the part of Christians, but the evidence of a conversion such as St.Paul, St. Francis, C.S. Lewis, Charles Colson. It is exactly what Jesus described and effected during his life.

Fifth, I believe strongly that the inclusion of Jesus in the belief systems of non-Christian religions (such as Buddhism and the New Age) gives real credence to my assertion that Jesus is the most likely place to look for the truth about God and the resurrection is the key to our view of Jesus. If the Resurrection is true, then all of Jesus' teaching and assertions can be used as authoritative, because he is the Son of God as he claimed to be.

Finally, Pascal's wager is critical to this argument. The great French Mathematician and Christian wrote that if we "wager" that there is no God, and we are right, we win nothing. If we "wager" that God exists, and we are wrong, we lose nothing. If, however, we wager that God exists and we are correct, the payoff is inestimable. If we wager there is no God, and we wrong, we lose everything and more than everything. Therefore, even if the argument is not flawless, it leads to a position that allows anyone to sleep more soundly.

So there is the argument. I invite any response and certainly hope you share my conclusions will use the outline freely.


EVERYONE'S GOT AN OPINION!

George Burns once said he thought it too bad that the people who know how to run the government are so busy driving cabs and cutting hair.  His point is well taken, as the deluge of public opinion on government, politics and world events have made separating fact from feelings a near impossibility.  Everyone has an opinion and everyone is letting it be known. 

     Where once news commentary was relegated to a three-minute segment at the end of a broadcast, it now has become the main attraction; hours and hours of opinion dotted occasionally with something called “news.” 

     It is certain that opinion has been around forever.  A person’s opinion of an issue, in large measure, shapes how that persons thinks and reacts to issues, problems and life in general. Now, I‘m sure knowing what you believe is healthy, and in many ways separates humans from other animals, but something has changed in the way opinion is shared.  Where once it was with discretion and usually offered by invitation only, opinions today are imposed with no holds barred or permission asked. They gush from television, radio and print like a fire hydrant jetting water.   Even now the weather channel promotes certain views on global warming.  That was at one time my “safe channel” for watching un-opinioned programming.  I’ve since changed channels to the continuous fireplace burning on our local community station.  Opinion is taking over the world as everyone in the media business have opinions to promote. 

Our problem today is what Robert Frost so adequately said:   “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t and the other half who have something to say and keep on saying it”.  What we hear today on the news and opinion stations is not “news” or “conversation”, but monologues that say nothing or the same thing over and over. 

The use of experts on the news channel is a little over stroked.  Who are these guys and what makes them experts?  I once heard a good definition of an expert, “A little squirt under pressure” or “Anybody with a brief case fifty miles away from home”.  It has been said that “sound is more manageable than silence”.  

So, while I’m at it here are five (or so) of my choice opinions:

1)             I think we wash cloths to much

2)            I think atheism is far better for Christianity than TBN

3)            I think the insurance industry is one of the biggest scams in history

4)            I think Elvis is really dead

5)            I believe passing kidney stones is worse than giving childbirth

6)            I believe I should keep my opinions to myself.  

You can also view this at my Mac blog here . Bookmark the new address!

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TAKE NOTICE, TAKE NOTICE!!!!

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Thanks....Bob

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Belief In Cows

I’m going to copy a section from a book tiled “Blue Like Jazz” by Donald Miller, but before I do that I need to explain why. Last week I taught a session on doubt at our church here in Vancouver. Now I know that most Sunday morning sermons are on faith and things that build our faith and this is a good thing. But in reality, we all are faced with the negative, guilt-ridden part of our personal belief system that still deals with the doubts lurking in the back stages of our lives. I know that most churches have buried their corporate unbelief in the back parking lot and live in “denial” about the subject. While we might pretend that doubt is none existent in our churches and personal lives the bible is full of people who doubted and still received God’s blessing and the fulfillment of His promises. We’ve all read about the man who answered Jesus with, “Yes I believe, but help my unbelief”. How about Jesus dying words to His Father on the cross when in His humanity He asks his Father, “Why have you forsaken me”? Often our doubts are expressed in questions towards God, such as Jesus had. In our human form we will always have these doubts. Thank God that He bestows His GRACE upon us because of His work on the cross and not our strains of weak efforts to believe all things perfectly.

I’ve changed the text from first person to the group in order to protect the guilty.

Donald Miller writes (from Blue Like Jazz): I think our desire to believe in a God other than Jesus had mostly to do with our boredom. We want something new. We want something fresh to think about, to believe, to twiddle around in our minds. I understand the plight of the children of Israel, to be honest. Moses goes off to talk with God, he doesn’t come back for a while, and so the people demand a god they can see and touch, a god they can worship with the absolute certainty it exist. So they build a golden cow (odd choice, but to each his own). Moses comes back from talking with God and finds the children of Israel worshiping a false god, so he goes postal. Imagine us as the children of Israel when Moses comes down from off of the mountain.

“What are you doing”, Moses ask.

“Worshipping a golden cow.”

“Why? Why would you reject the one true God?”

“Because I don’t get to see Him or talk to Him. I am not even certain that He exist.”

“Are you on crack? Weren’t you around when God parted the Red Sea? Weren’t you there when God fed us from the ground, made water from a rock, led us with a cloud?” Moses screams.

“Calm down, Moses. Listen, man, you always go up to God and come back with a sunburn, and you have God hover around your tent in a cloud, and you have God turn your staff into a snake, and we get nothing. Nothing! It’s not like we have this personal communication going with God, you know Moses. We are just sheep out here in the desert, and, honestly, we were better off as slaves to the Egyptians. That is where your God brought us. We need a god too. We need a god to worship. We need a god to touch and feel and interact with in a very personal way. So we made a cow. You can also wear it as a necklace.”

Moses response to us, “before I put all of you to death and send you home to the one true God, I want you to understand something. I want you to understand that God has never been nor ever will be invented. He is not a product of any sort of imagination. He does not obey trends. And God led us out of Egypt because you people cried out to Him. He was answering your prayers because He is a God of compassion. He could have left you to Satan. Don’t complain about the way God answers your prayers. You are still living on an earth that is run by the devil. God has promised us a new land and we will get there. Your problem is not that God is not fulfilling, your problem is that you are spoiled.”

Moses made it clear that God was not here to worship us, or to mold Himself into something that will help us fulfill our level of comfort. We want spirituality to be closer and more real. I think I understand why people wear crystals and perform chants and gaze at the stars. People are lonely. Not in a lover or friend way, but in a universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny little people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars of stars. We might want a god who has a call in radio show, but God is not like that he wants us to seek him and obey Him. Maybe we can realize that we desire false gods because Jesus will not jump through our hoops and our faith is not about image and ego nor is it practicing spirituality. God desires us to be faithful to our faith in Him as our God.

Why write?

In some parts of the world a writer is considered a failed conversationalist. I might fit into that grouping at times. Is all writing original? We hope so, at least we try to be. A good writer is not a single person trying to express himself. He is a whole lot of people trying to be that one person who is the writer. This takes a measure of courage, the courage that feels like taking your clothes off in public. That is what good writing feels like for the writer. In our generation we have writers and typists. I'm honestly trying to write. In doing so, I quote others to better express my own self. Ernest Hemingway said that "the best gift a writer can have is a shockproof built-in bullshit detector." Every great writer has to have one of these.

Wish me luck.