Christianity Questions 12
|
What, briefly, makes you think Christianity is true? There is so much that could be said. But here are 2 little arguments to think through concerning the story of Jesus Christ and then the nature of true love: The story of Jesus ChristThe account of Jesus' life does not look like something that has been concocted to gain acceptance with people. You do not invent a story about an engaged girl conceiving a child out of wedlock and claiming that no man was involved. The Jews held pre-marital chastity in such high regard that an immoral woman could be stoned to death. The Gentiles were the opposite. For them a tale of a virgin birth would simply invite ribald jokes. Such a story would curry favour with no one. A similar line of argument pertains to Jesus' death on the cross. Are you really going to gain credence with Jewish people by telling them they were complicit in crucifying their own Messiah? And a Saviour who was beaten and led to death on a cross is surely not the currency with which to impress a popular following in the cynical hard-bitten Roman Gentile world. Further, the same logic applies to the resurrection. It is not a thing easily believable by anybody, Jew or Gentile. So, no matter how you look at it the story of Christ hardly bears the marks of something which was invented in order to gain a following. The nature of true LoveThis is what we might call 'Love's Argument.' Let me run through the reasoning briefly. Most people acknowledge that love in all its different forms, love to neighbour, romantic love, family love etc. is both the greatest experience and the ideal way to live life. Also we would recognize that true love, will contain an element of self-sacrifice. It is more than you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. It includes suffering if necessary for the good of your loved ones. Jesus said, 'Greater love has no man than this, that he lays down his life for his friends' John 15v13. And most people would honour such self-sacrificial love, whether it is dying to rescue others or giving your most precious possession to feed the hungry, as worthy of praise. The argument quite simply is that it is only the God of Christianity, the God who came down at Christmas and went to the cross to save us, who makes sense of such love. Atheistic evolution with its survival of the fittest, 'look after number one' philosophy certainly doesn't fit with such love. Hinduism with its many gods, often the opposite of one another, the god of war, the god of peace, the god of love and the god of hate, cannot make love a priority because to every positive the negative must equally be acknowledged. In Islam, Allah has many names, but not one of them is 'love', and though he is supposed to reign on high as potentate, he has never put himself out for anyone, so how can he teach me to love? But then there is Christ; the Word made flesh, God become man. Why? He came among us because he loved us and came to rescue us from the darkness of our own sin and foolish rebellion against God. He did it to bring us back into a relationship with the God. And that rescue, motivated by love, took him all the way to the self-sacrifice of the cross, as there he paid for all our failings and wrongdoings which cut us off from God. Now, such a God, can rightly claim to be the God of love. He knows what it is to sacrifice himself for others. And such a God makes sense of our love, and has the right to call us to love one another. If it is not blind chance and impersonal laws of physics, but this God who is the ultimate reality, then love is really significant and really makes sense. If he is not there, it doesn't. More info: See, for example, The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, published by Zondervan. |
