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.