why i’m a christian

1. i believe in the existence of God (see notes “why the existence of God is reasonable“, “memorial stones part I” and “memorial stones part II“).

one of the biggest objections to the existence of God is the existence of evil.  there is much i could say on this but to get to the heart of the matter, i will quote from rankin wilbourne who has responded better than i have:

“…the flaw in that line of reasoning is the assumption that the world is filled with pointless evil.  That is, if evil appears pointless to me, therefore it must be pointless.  But that’s not only bad logic, it’s incredibly arrogant.  Just because you can’t see or imagine a good reason why God might allow something like this to happen doesn’t mean there can’t be one…not only is that arrogance that is the epitome of blind faith.  How do you know?  

Now look, evil is evil and suffering is suffering and why God allows it in the first place we don’t know.  But that doesn’t mean that God can’t work through evil for his good purposes.  If there is no God and we are merely the product of blind evolution taking its course then why are you so upset about nature taking its course?  It’s natural – death, destruction, violence.  In nature lions eat lambs; they eat baby lambs.   That’s just nature taking its course.  On what basis then can you say it ought not to be this way?  Suffering can only appall you if you have some sense this is not the way it’s supposed to be.  But on what basis are you appalled?  Unless you are assuming the very thing you are denying: the reality of something beyond nature, something above nature, something supernatural.   In short you do not have a right to be upset about suffering if you reject God.   Which means if you reject Christianity the fact that suffering does appall you means suffering is an even bigger problem for you than for the Christian. “   

2. if God indeed exists then it would be very difficult for the finite (i.e. human beings) to know God unless God revealed Himself. He has (through the world he has made). people still don’t feel God was being clear enough. the best way God could communicate Himself was if he became one of us (i.e. a human being) and just told us directly that He is God.  He did.

a) Jesus, a real person attested to by history, even by people that thought he was just a regular guy.

b) he did claim to be God (see John 1:1, Jn 10:30-31, John 20:28).  why do you think people got so pissed with this guy and wanted him hung half-naked on a piece of wood?

3.  any guy could say he is God but, of course, that doesn’t mean he is. now if a guy says he is God that means he can only be one of 3 things (taken from c.s. lewis’ argument)

1) a liar (he said what he knew was not true)

 2) a lunatic (he actually believed what he said, even though it wasn’t true)

3) Lord (he actually is who he said he was…God)

it would be nice if He could prove that He is God too.   He did (He did something no one else has ever done…He brought Himself back to life after He had died.).

Q: well how do i know that is true?
A: no one has ever found his body. buddhas remains are still around. muhammad’s remains are still around. not Jesus’ though.

Q: well people just probably jacked it and destroyed it! right?
A: well there were some rumors that this would happen so the authorities made pretty sure it wouldn’t…ever heard of a roman seal? if you cross it you die…and it was defended by a squad of roman soldiers who would be punishable by death if they let this happen. yeah, it would be pretty freakin hard for some dudes to defeat a squad of killing machines, then roll away a huge stone that was prolly a couple tons w/o anybody noticing.

Q: yeah, i dunno. if He really did come back to life wouldn’t there be some witnesses?
A: there were. like 500 of em. 500 people don’t have the same hallucination. plus i don’t think they’d all be willing to die for something they knew wasn’t true. cuz back in the day they killed people for believing this. actually there are still people being killed today for believing this.

Q: i’m still not convinced. what now?
A: check out this site.

4. well if Jesus is God, then we best listen to what he has to say.

a) He says He loves us but we have disobeyed God (yeah, the stuff that i know i ought to do.  i don’t do it all the time…actually i don’t do what is good a lot of the time).

b) He says that is a problem.  in fact its such a problem that the penalty for our sins is death (if He is fair then there would have to be punishment right?).  no amount of good we do will make up for what we did wrong (if there was just one drop of poison in a cup it’s still contaminated)

c) He says He loves us so much He will take our penalty on Himself and give us the credit for His right life.  He became for us the perfect sacrifice on the cross (i.e. He is the only one who lived a perfect life because He is God and He is the only one who could die in my place because He was a human)

d) He says if we trust him in this, not only are we good with Him but now we’re His masterful poem in this world to do good (we’re not saved because we’ve done good but we’re saved to do good).

That’s the real good news: not only does He forgive us, He unites Himself to us.

i believe all of this. those are some main reasons why its reasonable to be a christian.

 

my story (or how i was converted):

I practically grew up in the church since both my parents went to church.  I don’t know exactly when I accepted Christ for the first time.  I heard the gospel message and responded to it many times. But being that I was young and did not fully understand or really consider the implications of salvation my responses were probably not too serious.  Up to the point of about 5th grade I did not consider Christ a major part of my life and going to church was just something I did.

Around this time I started developing kidney problems. It got so bad that, one day, I woke up with my body almost completely swollen and I was rushed to emergency at the hospital. I did not understand why this was happening and my parents could not help me in this situation. I had to stay overnight at the hospital for a couple of days….something I ought to have been terrified of since I was afraid of the dark and was such a momma’s boy.  Strangely enough, I began to feel such peace at the time.  I learned that people were praying for me and I figured that it could only have come from God.  I had been so dependent upon my parents before but throughout my stay at the hospital I did not even need my mother to stay with me.  Christ helped me through my illness and from that point on I started to take God a lot more seriously and I began to seek a deeper relationship with Him. I learned He was not just a distant power but that He was personal and knew me personally.  In the summer after my 7th grade year I went to a Christian camp and rededicated my life to Christ.

Since then I’ve been on a continuous journey seeking to mature in Christ.  It’s been full of many ups and downs but the Lord has always proved faithful.  As the years have gone by I have learned the importance of His Word in my life which truly keeps me from becoming calloused by the world and constantly challenges me to be more like Christ.