any intelligent modern people are not Christians because the Christianity they have heard about is a shriveled, distorted version of the robust faith that Jesus taught and lived. All too often the Christianity they reject is one that thoughtful and knowledgeable Christians would themselves discard.
What perception of the Christian faith, then, makes it not only credible but irresistibly appealing to many of us?
Jesus’ teaching represents the noblest expression of moral principles and ethical vision known to humans—an expression all the more notable because it sprang from such improbable circumstances 2,000 years ago. His life and teachings fuel my belief in a loving, powerful God. Several principles explain my faith.
1. Jesus Showed Love for All
Jesus taught us to love all people. Not just family, friends, “our kind of people,” and fellow citizens, but everyone. The Samaritans were outcasts in His day, but He taught the Jews to love them. The poor and oppressed proved as worthy of His love as the rich and mighty. Even our enemies were to be loved, prayed for, and done good unto—a sentiment outrageously alien to our innate instincts. Those who have committed the most flagrant offenses must be forgiven if the people repent or have sinned unwittingly: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).*
To the rich He urged unstinting generosity and compassion. To all He declared that those who minister to the hungry, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, the stranger were doing God’s will. He reminded us in word and deed that serving others was more honorable than exercising authority over them.
He was the first prominent religious figure to accord women the same respect as men. Despite His cultural heritage, He treated women and men as of equal importance. He treated Mary Magdalene and the woman at the well with as much dignity, courtesy, and concern as men received.
2. Jesus’ Teachings Encompass Our Lives
There is a balance, breadth, and fullness to Jesus’ teachings that no other religion has offered. He consistently regarded the needs of both body (Mark 6:31) and soul (Mark 8:36). He stressed faith (John 3:16) and works (Matt. 7:21). He attached significance to our relations with others (Luke 6:31) and with God (Luke 10:27).
No religious teacher ever encouraged humility or discouraged pride so effectively as He. From His admonitions to the Pharisees down to the washing of the disciples’ feet during the Last Supper, He emphasized one of the most essential moral messages ever given to humans. He showed that pride, in all its myriad shapes and disguises, is the source of most of the evils for which humanity is responsible, not only in public affairs but in private as well.
No wonder His words have appealed to all people—rich and poor, educated and unschooled, Jew and Gentile—throughout the centuries! There’s something for everyone to learn from.
3. His Death Inspires Our Lives
Jesus demonstrated matchless moral courage in facing persecution and death with dignity, steadfastness, and a forgiving spirit. That someone with His character, His pattern of life, and His heavenly background should accept ridicule, misrepresentation, and the supreme humiliation of the cross in the spirit He manifested has been the most inspirational event in human history.
Christianity has transformed those who have taken it seriously. For centuries, Christians have found the courage to face many hardships—including death itself. I’m inspired by German Christians who refused to yield to Hitler, Russian Christians who steadfastly resisted Communist pressures and propaganda, and African Christians who withstood tyranny and native terror. And these are only the latest of a historic succession of believers who found their faith equal to whatever befell them. No other belief retains such continued power to change people century after century.
Jesus gave us an example for living and believing that can bring out the best in us. No other faith has caused millions to give up their homeland, their comforts, their friends to devote their lives to helping people mired in poverty, ignorance, disease, and hopelessness. While Christianity has inspired some of the greatest art, literature, and music in history, no human achievement is as significant as the willingness of so many to sacrifice so much of what we normally cherish in order to help the less fortunate.
But it is not only those whose lives quite dramatically attest to the power of the Christian faith that merit our attention. For 2,000 years a host of people—ordinary, unsung, anonymous people in every walk of life—have been strengthened and elevated by the Christian faith. Their lives have been given a meaning and purpose sorely lacking in secular modern people. Mere church-going never produces this, of course, but those who take Christianity seriously—attempting, with God’s help, to apply Jesus’ teachings each day to all aspects of their lives—are different people because of it.
4. The Resurrection Provides a Reason to Believe
I believe in Christianity because of the Resurrection.
This crucial event, on which my faith must ultimately rest, is powerfully sustained. We read that Jesus appeared to Cephas, then to the disciples, then to more than 500 at once (most of whom were still alive when Corinthians was written), then to James, to all the apostles again, and finally to Paul (see
1 Cor. 15:5-8). Earlier, He had appeared to Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Salome, and the men on the road to Emmaus (see Mark 16:1; Luke 24:13ff.).
This evidence is not easily shrugged off. After all, Jesus’ followers had been completely stunned by His death, their hopes dashed, their faith crushed. When women brought word of His resurrection, “their words seemed [to the apostles] as idle tales and they believed them not” (Luke 24:11). The men on the road to Emmaus were incredulous. And Thomas needed to inspect the marks of the cross for himself.
These were not people determined to see what they wanted to see—psychologically prepared to experience a mystical event confirming what they desperately yearned to believe. True, Jesus had said He would rise from the dead, but that had seemed too much to hope for after personally witnessing His death in anguish on the cross and seeing
Him carried to a cold tomb. Their belief wavered before the compelling reality and seeming finality of Jesus’ death.
If one or two persons, even one massed gathering, had claimed to see Him after His death, we could more readily explain away the evidence. But when so many persons, on so many different occasions, experienced the shock of His appearance, it’s harder to discredit them all. Then we remember that in the wake of His crucifixion, His chagrined and disheartened followers were galvanized into organizing a movement that eventually changed the course of history, transforming the lives of millions in the process. Such events make belief in a risen Jesus all the more credible to me.
5. Jesus Claimed Divinity
The final point, like the others, has often been stated before. Because Jesus repeatedly claimed that He came from God, was performing a mission given by God, and would eventually return to God, He must be viewed either as a prime candidate for psychotherapy, an impostor of unprecedented dimensions, or indeed the Son of God.
The claim of Jesus’ divinity takes on special gravity when we remember how deeply attached the Jews were to the concept of monotheism. This was central to their entire system of religious thought. It was an unchallengeable premise; to deviate from it was supreme blasphemy. To question it was to cut oneself off from the community and receive permanent ostracism.
Yet the early Christians—themselves primarily Jews—did squarely confess to the deity of Jesus Christ, knowing full well what this would mean to them. They would hardly have fabricated a belief, when they knew it would mean immediate and final excommunication from their friends and their people, if it could not be substantiated in Jesus’ teachings. The price was too high—unless the belief in Jesus as Son of God was inescapably derived from His own words. Nothing else could lead them to so drastic a step.
Like them, I believe. And, believing, I find that which is indeed a “pearl of great price.” The Christian faith serves as a center to my life, giving it meaning, direction, hope, and peace that nothing else can offer. It is a faith worthy of belief.
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*All references are taken from the King James Version.
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Reo M. Christenson is a retired professor of political science, now residing in Sycamore Glen Retirement Center, Miamisburg, Ohio.