Why I am a Christian

Simply put Christianity is the fullest expression of our being. A guide to behavior. The most sublime mythical path and a road to mystical reality. It's a way of life and love. It's love and life. I'm a Christian because I've never been so content in its bosom. I've fallen in love with the Creator and Redeemer of the Universe. It provides exquisite meaning to my life like the most sublime play or work of Art. Can I say it's happiness? I struggle to express how beautiful and touching my life is when the universe makes sense through a lens of Christianity. That life makes sense. I am led to love. But it's not silly romantic love. Who hasn't been in love? Eventually however the object of your love disappoints. Did they leave you? Not meet your expectations? But the beloved all eventually fail. They die and leave and change and reveal unattractive traits and behavior. Yet God in His Truths never fails. It's almost like we're made to worship. Yes, trials come but God never fails us. It's more than silly power of positive thinking. Its the power of love lived out. It's fulfillment. It seems some are so enamoured with their intellect or their way of life to ignore it. It is at the very least the most sublime story ever told. Love that becomes creature and conquers even death and reconciles the finite and physical with the infinite and the spiritual.


Listen! something of us lives on after this. Right this second we can experience the soul just through reflection. We are the "reflector" and its more real than anything we can observe or feel or taste or whatever. Our soul inhabits a brain and a body and is not simply a product of them. Amazingly this has been demonstrated most recently in the last 30 some years with people being brought back from clinical death: no brain waves or heart beat. Over and over again we have testimony of these experiencing their surroundings ofttimes out of their body. There is a spiritual reality. So I believe as well based on demonstrated evidence of an unseen reality. This reality has been spoken of and written about by countless others in the past. It has been revealed in the Holy Scriptures and through the fullness of the Holy Orthodox Church.

Another support to belief is that the universe demonstrates a miraculous design and order. Apparently to many philosophers this is not so apparent, but the philosophes if you will do speak to a merely metaphorical counting the angels on pinheads. There are numerous factors to the proper functioning of the universe the adjustment of which would not permit the universe to exist. Take some quick examples. If the relation of electrons to protons or for that matter neutrons to protons or the force of gravity were ever so slightly off even to the billionth. These include the values of the relative strength of nuclear forces, the attraction between sub atomic particles as well as the ratios of masses of such particles which if they were off ever so slightly we'd have no universe. The rate of expansion of the universe after the big bang is a balancing act much like balancing a broom on the palm of your hand for 100 years. The balance is between the universe continuing to expand or begins to collapse once again after the Big Bang; the odds of which are infinitesimally high this hasn't resolved itself yet or at least are so close. It's like some intelligence designed it. Truly a miracle one could say.

In addition I think science fails in many ways. Science purports to be ultimate truth to which all other truths bow. It is able to predict events in the observable universe. Yet even current science itself in the Big Bang posits a situation in which time and space are limited and finite. The term Big Bang when first purposed was a term of derision. And as far back as Aristotle some 24 centuries ago it was argued that the universe that was eternal. This idea was accepted by scientists for the most part until recently. Thus formulations about the observable universe are indeed limited no matter how well they predict events in them. That is the knowledge that science uncovers is limited to a finite observable universe.

Science purports itself as the servant of mankind, which its innovations truly have done a service to mankind. However, science has devised weapons of mass destruction that threaten the very existence of the life on the earth in the hydrogen bombs. Only by dumb luck or the Grace of God have we not exterminated ourselves. It has put us under the threat of annihilation as well. Where was the truth of science to deter the development of such destruction?

Science tells us nothing of moral truth. How should I behave? Both Nazism and Communism had roots in science. Nazism was greatly influenced by the idea of the Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest and how the success or failure of "Folks" or peoples were part of this struggle. This is what was meant that the Germans were said to the master race. That is to say they in the survival of the fittest would rightfully enslave other peoples. This was demonstrated by their barbarian treatment of the Russians in the World War II. Orders were given that Russian Captives need not be treated under any guise of humanity. Less that half of the Russian soldiers captured survived. Russia was raped in all manner of ways. This gives no mention of fate of the Jewish peoples of course who under that same philosophy were systematically exterminated. It was no mere prejudice or bigotry as its commonly accepted but an ideology. Where was science to guide us away from such atrocities? Science falls silent in the face of such things, doesn't it?

As for the Communists, they were to have established a society based on social science, the study of the struggle of classes of people. The Proletariat, they found, were subject to exploitation under capitalism. Without moral constraints they began to build this society or rather terrorize large elements of the society opposed to them, the reactionary forces so to speak. Even the rise of Stalin in such an environment was nearly inevitable. The struggle for power knew no moral constraints and had no moral defenses against Stalin's grab for power. OK, enough of these bad guys acting without moral guidance .

Science has no explanation for love or self sacrifice or conscience; this is the truth that science can't test or predict. A pure act of human kindness makes no sense. OK they try to explain it in terms of some survival advantage whose explanations are lame at best. Scientific explanations resort to some evolutionary determinism. Some of us act this way because we are compelled to so under survival of the group... but remember survival of the fittest refers to individuals acquiring characteristics that allow it to better survive. Falling on the grenade to save the group does little for that individual. Fewer and fewer of those individuals willing to sacrifice would be around. Where's the advantage to that?

Evolution fails to explain the origins of virtually all of biological organisms. Evolution is meant here to be Darwinian Evolution, the process of demonstrated common descent by minute changes by random mutations to the advantage of a species in the struggle for survival. In reality this is a process that is virtually always destructive and can't explain the incredibly complex mechanisms and processes in biology from the smallest cell to larger organisms. The processes inside the cell are mind bogglingly complex as pointed out in Michael Behe's books, Darwin's Black Box, and the latest is The Edge of Evolution. It remains true you don't make the jet airliner putting all the pieces in a bag or container and shaking it. In addition Random mutations are far too slow to accomplish much as Mr. Behe demonstrates with the Malaria virus that over hundred millions times ten millions of lives of the virus over something like 50 years, stumbled on a variety that was immune to quinine. The programmers of complex programs know the adage: GIGO... that is garbage in garbage out. Or rather one could say Randomness in Garbage out. So science and evolution fails us, why Christianity?

The kernel of truth of Christianity is revealed in the incarnation of Christ, Our Lord and in the Holy Scripture and in the Holy Church, meant to be the oral and liturgical traditions. As I mentioned above this is the greatest story ever told. But it's also historically authentic. The Holy Scriptures are the most numerous and authenticated writings by far in the ancient world. There are thousands of copies of manuscripts of the scriptures extant. We know of Alexander the Great by extant writings several hundred years after his life for example. Bhudda is literally pre-historic with no contemporary writings; written history only tells of him some a couple hundred years later. Note that St. Luke the author of the Gospel and the book of Acts writes as an historian and St. John in his epistles pronouncing "as we have seen and heard" in regards to the Christ. Throughout the New Testament the authors claim to be witnesses of an event, the incarnation of Christ. Contrast to this to Hesiod, the ancient Greek writer, composing mythologies of the earthy Greek gods or Mohommad who wrote of things in the Koran from tablets recieved from an angel. Every apostle died a martyrs death. Strange to think they died for a lie, isn't it? Rather they lived for the Absolute Truth.

Read the New Testament. What do you find? Admonissions to act out in love and acts of Love, Christ's sacrifice of His own life to reconcile us to God. I pray you open yourself up to this charitable love. Yes, there are miracles present in the NT but we find out that the universe itself is a miracle.

It's commonly held today that we don't need a savior and almost universally held we certainly can't be perfected. And in addition there are no absolute truths. I hold that we are dependent on divers diversions and distractions (TV, movies, hobbies, shopping .... drugs and sex if you will) and are subject to fits of passions, anger, selfishness. Socrates, the 5th century phiosopher said as much about this dependency or slavery to his Greek comtemporaries. He gave the diagnosis, Christ gave the cure.

We have God's image in us albeit despoiled and corrupted and yet we are meant to be perfected. We begin to perfect ourselves by worshiping our Creator, that is accepting His soveriengty and acknowledging our sinful condition and attempt to act in love by the Grace of God.
Christianity teaches this and that's why I'm a Christian.