In the spiritual mush of relativism that our culture has become, it seems like the question I most often hear goes something like, “Well how do you know Christianity is the right religion? What about all the other religions and philosophies out there?” That's a fair question, and one that I hope anyone who decides to follow Christ has thought through – even if they may not have ever articulated it. First of all, I do not consider myself to be “religious.” I do not hold to a certain set of beliefs, tenets, and rituals that I think will make me a better person, or that by them I somehow earn favor with God. When I say I am a Christian it is not something I claim out of tradition, my background, or as just “my path.” I am a follower of Jesus Christ because I believe in Him. I believe He is real and the claims he made are true - not “truths” as in good advice to live by (although they are that), but ABSOLUTE truths. They are facts I have discovered, and they in no way depend on me or my belief to establish their reality. So I am not trying to push my version of things on you, but rather conveying to you what I have discovered. If you are honest with yourself you'll find that anything you hold to be true (whether that's a belief in tolerance, fairness, human equity, or just the facts of a certain event) you feel compelled to pass on to others as well – that is the nature of truth.
So here are the reasons I believe the Bible, and the claims of Christianity to be the ultimate truth.
It is logical.
While belief in God does require faith, it is not a blind faith that is devoid of reason, but rather the result of a logic that recognizes its own limits. Every belief system (including atheism) requires a certain measure of faith, and in comparison to these I have found Christianity to be much more logically sound than the alternatives. Yes, there are things about God that as a human being I simply cannot understand, but if God really is God, than it makes sense that there would be things about Him that would be beyond comprehension. To accept that God does not exist requires a huge leap of faith and leaves you without a viable explanation for logic itself. As CS Lewis put it,
- “Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no
creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the
purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my
skull happen – for physical or chemical reasons – to arrange
themselves a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the
sensation I call thought. But if so, how can I trust my own
thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that
the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I
can't trust my own thinking, then of course I cannot trust the
arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an
atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot
believe in thought, so I can never use thought to disbelieve in
God.”
The more we study the universe we inhabit, the arguments for how something so complex, orderly, and intentional could just come to be on its own become more and more confused, twisted, and ridiculous. Evolutionists keep pushing back the timetable, hoping the statistical improbability of their claims will be lost in the vastness of time. Atheist philosophers and moralists come up with convoluted reasons for why society is the way it is – redefine and shift values to try and explain a changing world, all the while the truth of God's Word remains the same. God's fingerprints of design are all over the world He made, from the stunning complexity of micro-organisms that were once thought to the be “simple building blocks of the evolutionary process,” to the huge amount of information perfectly encoded into our DNA, to the vastness of space and the ordered chaos that keeps our little sphere just right for life to thrive. Only the foolish or the willfully ignorant can deny the ordered design that permeates everything. When I see Mount Rushmore I don't have to think through all kinds of reasoned arguments about how it came to be - the logical conclusion my mind automatically reaches is that an intelligent (and gifted) designer/sculptor intentionally carved out the faces of four US presidents on the side of that mountain. To say a universe thousands of times more complex than that just came to be through undirected, natural processes contradicts the reality of design that I easily recognize in every other area of life.
It is the best explanation for what we observe to be true about ourselves.
Science is a useful tool, but science is purely external observation. It can tell us how things react or behave and even make predictions based on evidence of how they will react in the future or have reacted in the past given a certain set of circumstances - but it is limited in that it cannot explain why. It cannot discern a sense of purpose or meaning behind the things it observes. It can guess, but in order to know why it must have some kind of inside knowledge of the thing it is observing. When it comes to people, however, we have one area where we don't merely observe, we experience. We have inside information. Not only can we discern our own reasons and motives, but we can communicate with other people and compare their “inside information” to see how it matches up with our own experience. What we observe about ourselves should give us the best clue as to whether there is anything outside ourselves that might be hidden from other areas due to the limits of our observation.
I recently read a blog post by an Atheist entitled “The problem of evil still exists.” The Christian response to the problem of evil is basically that God desires a love relationship with us and therefore gives us the opportunity to choose either to accept or reject Him. This means there are those who have chosen evil and God has allowed this world to experience the natural consequences of those choices. The author of this article argues that this is not enough to explain how there can be so MUCH evil in the world. Couldn't God have allow a certain amount of autonomy without it getting so out of hand? What about natural disasters - were they the result of someone's choice? While I'll resist answering all his critiques here, I mention it to bring up an interesting point. Throughout the article he continually refers to evil and calamity as if he knows what they are. Where does he get that understanding? He even goes so far as to compare one evil against another. What basis does he use for that comparison? What does he mean by the word EVIL? Or the word GOOD for that matter? Without God, what is the standard by which good and evil are measured? Who gets to decide how much evil is too much evil? You? Me?? What is striking as you compare different cultures throughout history and throughout the world is not the differences in their moral standards, but how very much alike they are. If morality is just a function of cultural conditioning as some claim, then how did so many cultures come to basically the same conclusions? How can we claim one set of moral standards to be “better” than another? What makes our morality better than the morality of Nazi Germany or tribal Africa or American slaveholders in the 1800's? The fact is we as humans not only recognize that there is a moral standard to which we ourselves are accountable, but to which society is accountable as well. What we observe within ourselves is that there is an outside, transcendent morality which demands we behave in certain ways and expect others to behave in those ways as well. We feel wronged when this is crossed by someone else and guilty or at best humbled when we fail to live up to it ourselves. Without God there is no reasonable explanation for this moral sense which all of us have and which transcends every other system we try to set up to explain it.
It is unique.
In his book Mere Christianity, CS Lewis makes this observation about the nature of reality:
“Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. For instance, when you have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go around the sun, you would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match - all at equal distances from each other, or distances that regularly increased, or all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go father from the sun. In fact, you find no rhyme or reason (that we can see) about either the sizes or the distances; and some of them have one moon, one has four, some have none... This is one of the reasons I believe in Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up... it has just that kind of queer twist about it that real things have.”The landscape of world religions is a world like the one in Johnny Depp's movie Edward Scissorhands - plastic, formed, cookie-cutter. In suburban Maryland where I live, the urban sprawl of the late '90's and early 2000's left many farmland developments where landowners sold huge tracts of land to be developed quickly into “high-end communities." The result is house after house, row after row of houses with the same floor plan, design, even siding. Among these modern semi-manufactured homes the original homestead stands out like a sore thumb. It looks displaced, organic, natural... real. This is the flavor Christianity exudes when you truly study and compare its teachings to other religions. A God who is completely whole in Himself, yet desires a relationship with pathetic little humans so much He is willing to die for them. A Savior rejected and killed by His own people to accomplish they very act of saving them. An unrelenting, unattainable standard of holiness, yet the infusion of grace to cover those unable to move toward God on their own... This is no ordinary “be good and god will be pleased,” or “follow this set of rituals and you will be blessed” religion. This is about a relationship we didn't earn or deserve with the living God! It is messy, complicated, and difficult as real relationships are. It makes demands of the will that go against our natural tendencies of pride, stubbornness, and self-determination, but those who are willing to yield to it find freedom, peace, contentment, and life that can only really be understood by those who have experienced it.
It works in the real world.
“Jesus did not come to make bad people good, but to make dead people live.” I'm not sure where this quote originally came from (I've seen it credited to a number of different sources), but it reflects the heart of the gospel of grace. God's main concern in our redemption was not to provide us a better life here on earth, but to rescue us from the penalty of our sins. Almost as a by-product of a relationship with the Creator of the universe, is the advantage of learning how to live. The principles of Scripture work because they are guidelines set by our Maker. I have seen marriages restored, addictions overcome, families healed – all by following the principles found in God's Word. By applying God's truth about human nature, morality, and responsibility to government, the founders fathers of the United States set up a nation that has prospered and influenced the world like no other. There are countless humanitarian efforts carried out in the name of Christ all over the world. The influence of Jesus and His teachings have changed and shaped the course of history, and while there are a few negative examples of those who have clearly mis-used and mis-represented the Bible, most of that influence is recognized by even the secular world as positive.
It is God-centered, not man-centered.
At its core, religion - whether “Christian” or not - is actually very man-centered and selfish. It's about getting the right formula, the right set of prayers, rituals, works, etc... to get God “on my side.” The Bible is clear that God never intended for us to be “religious” - He wants intimacy with us. True Christianity is the only belief system where God invites us into a relationship with Him; not for what we can get out of it, but simply out of love. Other religions use fear, coercion, bribery, guilt, and any other host of methods to bring its followers into subjection. What is striking about the God of the Bible is that He claims to be the all-powerful, supreme creator and authority over the whole universe, and yet He never forces anyone. He states His claim and then patiently waits for us to willingly submit in gratitude and love to Him. When His anger is shown it is always in righteous judgment, never in an effort to coerce. This goes completely against human nature and stands out among the myriad of religious systems which focus on man-centered issues, use man-centered formulas, and aim toward man-centered goals. The ultimate goal of Christianity is not a better world or earthly kingdoms or sensual pleasure - it is God Himself. Glorifying Him, honoring Him, being with Him.
