Does God exist? The question may be an obstacle to your quest to become a Christian. My scientific career was one that engaged with what connects polymer molecules giving them their cohesion and non-stick properties. I saw the rationality of the material world and the connections I explored as evidence for a Creator who organised beforehand the connections I discovered in my research. God by definition is not a hypothesis that you can prove or disprove by knock down argument. How can we ever prove or disprove someone outside the observable? If you could observe God you would be above God and he would no longer be God! Blaming God, for example, for the existence of evil is trying to have it both ways. Believing in God who is greater than us can’t exclude allowing him to have reasons for allowing suffering beyond our understanding.
Did Jesus exist? There are hundreds of references to Jesus in the New Testament which is the key source for his existence. In comparison with other documentation in ancient history, such copious records, written just decades after the alleged death of the personage, present very strong proof of his existence. Alexander the Great lived three centuries or so before Jesus and there is much less historical evidence for him dating close to his lifetime. Outside the Bible the Annals of Tacitus from the turn of the first century provide an unfavourable report of ‘superstitious Christians’ from the hand of one of the ancient world’s most famous historians. A little later another historian, Suetonius, mentions the impact of Christ writing ‘since the Jews were making disturbances at the instigation of [the so-called] Chrestus’ the emperor expelled them from Rome. If Jesus did not exist, it makes Christianity more incredible than if he did. The story of Jesus has an extraordinary and consistent force about it that is hard to consign to mere invention.
Did Jesus rise from the dead? His teachings brought him rejection and crucifixion yet Jesus Christ is the only founder of a world religion without a grave. His resurrection is as well attested as many an event in history. The enigmatic tone of the accounts of Easter in the four gospels would be absent in any made-up tale. The role of women as witnesses – controversial at the time – would not have been included in any fabricated story. The new confidence found among frightened disciples confirms the resurrection as the founding truth of Christianity, because the transformation of a dejected, defeated group to a band of powerful witnesses to the resurrection would be inexplicable in human terms. It requires what they proclaimed (namely that Jesus had risen from the dead) to be true. Christ’s resurrection is further evidenced in history by the newly formed Christian Church changing its weekly holy day from the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday, the day of Christ’s rising. What a change that would have been for devout Jewish believers! The experience of meeting with Jesus as risen Lord is at the heart of Christianity’s survival over 2000 years.
What about other faiths? Right from the beginning, holding loyalty to Jesus as the truth has not prevented Christians recognising what is true in other creeds as being also of him, since truth ultimately comes from the same divine source. Saying ‘yes’ to Jesus in becoming a Christian does not mean saying ‘no’ to everything about other faiths. Quite the opposite – it can mean saying ‘yes, and…’ to other faiths, which is a far more engaging and reasonable attitude. I say ‘yes’ to what Buddhists teach about detachment because Jesus teaches it and Christians often forget it. At the same time I must respectfully question Buddhists about the lack of a personal vision of God since I believe that Jesus is God’s Son. I say ‘yes’ to what Muslims say about God’s majesty, because sometimes Christians seem to domesticate God and forget his awesome nature. At the same time I differ with Muslims about how you gain salvation because I believe that Jesus is God’s salvation gift and more than a prophet. The Christian faith points not to its own truth so much as to Jesus – whose truth is bigger than any religion. Being a Christian is about being in a relationship with Jesus more than about holding to a set of beliefs.
Lord, thank you for the gift of reason by which I have examined objections to Christianity. See me through these, clear the pathway to you, as I prepare to welcome your search for me which balances mine for you. Amen.
