IS CHRISTIANITY BELIEVABLE?

Is Christianity really true? I have several friends right now who have very different beliefs about God. Some are Hindu, some Buddhist and some Mormon. I love these friends of mine and they are some of my favorite people in the world but some of our conversations lately about spiritual things have really got my thinking about what it is I claim to believe. For most of my life I have held a belief in the Christian God, the Bible and God's Son Jesus because is been all I've known. What I'm realizing though is that my friends believe for the very same reason, it's also all they've known and it's how they've been raised. They hold to their beliefs just as tightly and maybe more passionately than I do. What can me made of all this?

What's really true about God, eternal life and how to get there? Is belief in God like choosing between Mac and PC where you pick the version that works for you and they both get the job done? One thing that seems obvious to me when it comes to different beliefs is that they cannot all be true. There are simply too many fundamental differences to say this is the case. For example, Mormonism believes that good deeds and obedience lead to eternal like, Buddhism believes meditation and chance get you to nirvana and Christians believe that faith in Jesus is the only way to heaven.

In the last few years and especially last few months I've been investigating different spiritual beliefs to find out what's true. Here is what I've found:

DOES GOD EXIST?
It seems to me that there are very few atheists out there, several agnostics and the majority of people believe in a God of some form. The atheists I've heard speak seem so set on disproving God that that they are entirely unwilling to look at the evidence objectively before making a decision about him. The agnostics that I know are very open to the idea of God, they just have lots of questions about Him and the rest of us who believe in some way, shape or form of god often site the world around as the best evidence that one exists.

Looking at the world, it's complexity and the incredible power required to create such a thing should lead every person to the conclusion a higher being of some kind is responsible for what has happened. Admitting the possibility that God exists is the first step in discovering if he really does. Since the majority of people believe in some type of creator, I'm not going to spend more here but would like to address now what is known about this creator god and which version of him we should believe in.

CREATION VS. EVOLUTION
A quick side note before moving on. The debate of creation vs. evolution is a very heated and polarizing topic that can quickly separate the worlds of faith and science. I don't think this should be the case. Whatever is true about God and any faith held in him should not go against the truth of of our world as studied by science. I have studied science in both undergrad and grad school and have spent some time trying to reconcile how the creation of the world and faith in God can go together. What I've realized recently is that I think most of us have been debating the wrong thing. The big question in not evolution or creation (in my opinion there isn't enough evidence for either one right now) but whether or not one believes in Darwinism or design. For a long time there has been this assumption that a prerequisite for belief in the Christian God was a belief that the world was created in seven days. I don't think this is the case because based on what we know right now, the idea that God might have used evolution as part of his plan in creating the world (theistic evolution) is certainly plausible. While I think evolution and Christianity can go hand in hand, Darwinism and Christian belief cannot. At the core of Darwin's theory are several basic premises such as everything came out of nothing and matter came out of non-matter. This means the Darwinian theory denies the existence of God in the beginning which is essentially the same as atheistic belief. The verdict is still out as to exactly how the world was created. We might never know completely, but the latest research from the world's top scientists gives ever increasing evidence that our world was made by design and not out of nothing as Darwin suggested.

HOLY BOOKS - THE BIBLE
The next logical step after acknowledging that a creator God might exist is to ask the question, "What is he like?" and "What can I know about him?" This is where you and I have a variety of options to choose from. It seems that virtually every culture from the Native Americans to the East Asians to the pilgrims has their own story of God. There are several similarities between them all such as an explanation of how the world was made, a belief in some kind of afterlife and a description of how to get there. The details of all faiths as well as descriptions of the god they believe in can all be found in their religious books that have been passed down through the generations. Looking at these religious texts is the best way in my opinion to find out which God(s) is real.

I have looked into several of the texts from different faiths and won't give you a summary of them all here but would like to tell you why I think one of them - the Bible - stands out among the rest.

Historical Accuracy - The events of the Bible from the age of the empires through the time of Jesus and the early church seem to be very accurate with what we know about history today. This book is a historical account of the world as told mainly through the Jewish people and is not a series of made up stories. Some of the events that transpired in the Bible are hard to wrap your mind around such as the fall of the city of Jericho and the flood but there actually is archeological evidence in support of such events. While other religious texts are also historically accurate, it is important to note that the Bible is not a bunch of allegorical stories.

Divine Inspiration - This in my opinion is what sets the Bible apart the most. Over 300 things were written about Jesus in the Old Testament and every one of them came true with his birth, life on earth, and death. The odds of one man fulfilling just 8 prophecies is staggering, like 1 in 100 quadrillion. In addition, the fact that the Bible was written over a period of 1500 years in 3 different languages and by 40 different authors but yet reads from beginning to end as one consistent story speaks to the fact that God must have orchestrated and inspired the thoughts and writings of it's authors. No other religious book can claim this kind of divine inspiration. Several books and their single author claim to have been inspired as God's messenger but that is not convincing enough for me. I could write a book with my own twist on religion, Oprah has already done this. That doesn't mean that Oprah or I are god.

JESUS AND THE RESURRECTION
There are several theories about whether or not Jesus was real and did the things the Bible said he did. The Mormon, Jewish and Muslim faith acknowledge that existence of Jesus although they have different theories about who he was. In one of his books, Josh McDowell gives a list of writers including Ignatius, Clement, Polycarp and many others who lived during the time of the early church and attested to the fact that Jesus was the son of God and to the truth of the account of his life as recorded in the gospels. (Click here for a online version of Josh's book and read pages 77-86 for all the details).

Many of these writers died just after 100 AD so it is uncertain as to whether or not they knew Jesus personally since he was crucified around 30 AD. Even if they they never met him or were too young to remember, they would have known his disciples and would have heard eyewitness accounts of his life. Don't you think there must have been something in the way people talked about Jesus and they look in their eyes when they did that made them sure he was real. Don't you think that watching at least eight out of the twelve men who knew Jesus the best, his disciples, endure torture to the point of death would be enough to make them believe that they were telling the truth about Jesus? (Click here for listing of when and how the disciples died)

For more information about the age of the earth, Noah's ark, and evolution check out another of Josh McDowell's online books, "Why Skeptics Should Consider Christianity" by clicking on the image to the left.

I do want to say here that if you go online you will find critiques for Josh's books just like you will any other book. If you wish, you can go online and find reasons and theories to refute every single thing that I am suggesting in this article. You can explain away Jesus, the Bible and even the flood if you would like. But please be aware that just because someone writes something and you read it does not make it true. Truth is what stands up under the scrutiny of fact, history and experience. The Apostle Paul lived just decades after Jesus and predicted that you and I would try to find a way to not believe in God. He said these words in 2 Timothy 4:3, "The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear”. I'll be the first to admit that we don't have every piece of evidence to prove the existence of God and the truth of the Bible beyond a shadow of a doubt. But we are told in the Bible that we this is the way it's supposed to be.

In John chapter 6 listen to what Jesus says:

"Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."

Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"

Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

"Believe in the one he sent". What does that mean? It is obvious from the previous verse that the "he" refers to God, and since Jesus was talking to Jews they would have know that the "one God sent" was referring to the messiah or Son of God. So in effect, what Jesus is saying is that the only way to eternal life is though faith and belief. The writer of Hebrews reiterates Jesus' words by saying, "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6).

If God is real, it seems that the choosing of whether or not to believe in Him, His Word or His son with enough evidence to ensure an easy decision is not what God desires. Faith and belief are part of the equation then. Believing by faith is not easy. Listen to what Jesus said as we pick up a few verses later in John: "But you haven’t believed in me even though you have seen me." What was true in Jesus' time is still true today - we must come to a conclusion on who Jesus is. Is he real, a fake, a nice guy or is he the son of God who came to take away the sins of the world.

Based on these things, it seems there is evidence to support that Jesus was the son of God and that he was resurrected from the dead.

THE ONLY LIVING GOD
If it is true that Jesus was resurrected, which I think it is, that is something no other faith can claim. All faiths like I said have some theory of afterlife and how to get there but how do we know that any particular God can deliver on their promise. The Christian God showed by raising Jesus from the dead that he has power over death and power to grant eternal life. We can go to the grave of any other religious leader from Buddha to Mohammad to Joseph Smith and still find them there but we can't find Jesus. All the roman officials had to do after Jesus supposedly rose from the dead was produce his body and they would have stops Christianity in its tracks. Because they didn't and because Jesus is alive today, I think that the Christian God is the one true, living God.

I hope you will consider these things about God carefully because this decision is not meant to be made on a whim. We might not have every bit of evidence and you might still have questions but for me the evidence is convincing enough. Choosing to not believe in Jesus is far riskier that choosing that he's real. Think about what happens if your wrong in each case. If you believe Jesus is real and he's not then there is no afterlife and nothing happens to you when you die. Basically, you spent your life trying to love people and be kind when you didn't have to. If you remain skeptic about Jesus and he turns out to be real, then there is an eternity and you spend it apart from him in a place eternal pain and suffering. That logic alone is enough to make me choose carefully.