Over the past six years and more than 300 blog posts (this is #317), I’ve made an effort (not always successfully) to try and keep myself out of the picture. After all, this isn’t supposed to be about me but about our common faith and the God who is at its center. However, I was asked the other day by a Christian friend what I would say if I were asked why I believe. I thought this would be a good thing to share with the BAAD readers.
I told him I’m not a Christian because it makes me feel good but because it’s true. The very miracle that is at the center of our faith, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, is the best documented event in ancient history. We have eyewitness accounts of that are considered genuine even by secular Greek scholars and historians, genuine in that they were really written by who we believe wrote them and they wrote what they believed they saw.
I’m challenged occasionally by atheists who want to discount the documents of the Bible because the writers were “biased;” they were Christians after all. My response is always “If you saw Jesus die a terrible death, put in a tomb sealed with a ton and a half to two ton stone, then saw Him walking around three days later and the tomb empty, wouldn’t you become a Christian. The fact the writers were Christians is evidence for the genuineness of the record they’ve given and not against it.
Another reason I believe is all the New Testament writers except for John died a terrible death but never recanted their message. In fact, many continued to preach the gospel to their tormentors while dying. Bartholomew was skinned alive, Andrew was crucified on an “X” shaped cross, Thomas was run through with a spear while preaching to a crowd in India, Peter was crucified upside down. All could have been spared if they had said the gospel was a lie, yet all continued to speak of Jesus as they were dying. Their concern was for those listening and not for themselves.
I believe because the Bible has been shown to be reliable both internally and externally, internally because it contains predictions of future events which come true. Externally because it has been tested and has the greatest manuscript authority of any ancient document or collection of documents, greater than the Homer’s Illiad, Plato’s Republic, and Caesar’s Gallic Wars. There are nearly 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament in existence and more being discovered all the time. The earliest manuscript is dated within 30 years of its writing and less than 90 years of the events it records.
I believe because the existence of God is by far the best explanation for the existence of the universe. Without God, we would need to believe something comes from nothing, order comes from chaos, abstract thought comes from matter in motion, consciousness comes from a collection of amino acids in a primordial soup.
Astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross came to believe God existed and reasoned a God intelligent enough to create a universe like ours may have wanted to communicate with His creation. Ross began to read the books of the major world religions to see which best matched the cosmos he had studied as his life’s work. Interestingly, he found all but the Book of Mormon and the Bible to be unscientific. He then realized the Book of Mormon was somewhat accurate because it greatly plagiarized the Bible. But the Bible was an accurate representation of the Universe he knew, so he pursued the Christian God and began Reasons to Believe, a ministry attempting to show people the sound scientific basis for the Christian faith.
Why is this important?
Ours is a faith founded on fact and reason. We need not shrink from critics who seek to discount the things we believe. We have the upper hand and can stand strongly in the marketplace of ideas.
Let me add one more reason I believe. I believe in Jesus Christ, the God who sat and conversed with people like the woman at the well in John chapter 4, because like that woman, I’ve met Him. We talk every day, and as I study His Word, I see Him more clearly, feel Him more closely, and as a result seek Him more earnestly.
Enough about me; what about you?
Believers Armed and Dangerous 