Mark 12:28-30 (ESV) 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
Christianity is a unique religion in several ways. For one, it presents a loving God Who has reached out to His creation with grace and unconditional love while other faiths teach one must earn their way to God through good deeds. The one aspect of Christianity I would like to address today is Christianity is reasonable. It makes truth claims that can be checked – it can be tested.
In the passage in Mark’s gospel quoted above, Jesus tells us in the greatest commandment to use our mind, and in the Greek this means with our intellect. We don’t see this command in other religions, only in Christianity.
So, what are some of the claims Christianity makes that can be checked? Let me answer this with a true story of a man named Dr. Hugh Ross. Dr. Ross is an astrophysicist who studied the universe intently and came to the conclusion it couldn’t have arisen through chance. It was too orderly. It showed too many signs of design. So, Dr. Ross realized there must be a God who created it. This being must have been greater than the universe He created, intelligent enough to have created it, powerful enough to have created it, and so on.
Dr. Ross then thought a God who is this intelligent and personal may well have tried to communicate with His creation. This communication probably wouldn’t have been a one-time thing since that communication might be distorted or lost over time. No, this God would have most likely have communicated in some sort of writings which could be preserved over centuries and read by His creation. So, Dr. Ross began to read original source documents from the major religions.
He was very disappointed through most of his research as the writings of most major religions didn’t match what Dr. Ross knew of God’s creation. He was disappointed, that is, until he began to read the Bible. In the Bible Dr. Ross saw the creation story which matched the story he saw in the universe itself. The creation order matched what must have taken place for the universe to make sense. Dr. Ross became a Christian because he used his mind to check out what God has said. As a result, he began Reasons To Believe, an apologetics ministry.
The other day, I was in a large group of Christian men and made the statement “I find Christianity to be extremely logical and rational.” I was very surprised to find the room went silent.
Now, I’m no Hugh Ross by any stretch, but I find ideas like “There is only one God who exists in three persons” to be very logical. For a loving God to love, there must be at least two persons so one could love the other. Otherwise God’s loving nature could not be fulfilled. To make His love perfectly complete, though, requires the love of two for another like parents for their children. The love between two who are in love is wonderful but is not really complete until they can love someone together.
I find the idea of an infinite God taking on finite human form to save mankind to be very logical. What better mediator between God and man than Someone who shares the essence of each – has a foot in both camps, so to speak?
God’s justice is consistent and logical as well. God is absolutely just as we saw in a recent blog. His justice is consistent. His standard that blood must be shed to pay for sin does not change through the thousands of years from Adam and Eve to the present day. He sent His Son to save us and not to condemn us. He did this by shedding the blood of the perfect man. Logically, if we are held responsible for the sin of Adam as our perfect representative, then the sacrifice of another perfect representative but without sin was necessary to put things right. And this is where our logical consistent God really shines: there is no requirement for accepting this sacrifice and be cleansed. There is no creed to memorize, no test to pass, no personal payment that must be made. All that is needed is to ask Jesus to apply His blood to your sins.
Why is this important?
We as Christians should never wonder if our faith is rational. Have you ever wondered why there are no books on Hindu apologetics or Buddhist apologetics? It’s because those two religions no not present themselves as reasonable. How about Islam? Have you ever wondered why there are so few Muslim apologists? It’s because their arguments cannot stand the test of logic. Islam is inconsistent. Their god can change his mind, send the devout to hell, reward evil. Inconsistency cannot be defended logically. Philosopher Rene Descartes said we can tell truth from a lie by looking for consistency. Truth is consistent, falsehood is not.
Our faith is not a blind faith. Christians write books like Reasonable Faith, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Cold Case Christianity and hundreds of others showing the truth of the claims of Christianity. We need only look.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 