Think Eternity

View Original

What Makes You Believe That Christianity Is the Right Religion?

That is a very great question.  

A worldview is not build on one line of argument but a connected series of arguments.  A worldview is the framework from which we view our reality and makes sense of life.  This is made up of our ideology, philosophy, theology, psychology, etc.  

For example, my 6-year-old son believed he was the center of his world, lego’s are everything, and that Christmas and his birthday are the two greatest days of the year .  Because it’s all he knows.   A Buddhist believes he can be free from suffering.  A secular humanist believes that the material world is all that exists.  A Christian’s worldview believes his primary reason for existence is to love and serve God.  

Whether you believe it or not, every person has a worldview.  Your worldview is that driving force behind every decision, emotion and action of what you believe to be true affecting every response you make in life: from philosophy to science, theology and anthropology, political and social, spiritual and relational, etc.  

 You have to look at the construct of the Christian Worldview of each person..  The construction of the worldview of Christianity is built on the life and death of Jesus.  If Jesus is who He says He is, then the goal is to pursue the truth of understanding who Jesus truly was.  When you look at the life of Christ (the years before, how He was going to be born, how He lived, His death and resurrection), you have to look at the multiple authors, multiple books written (66 to be exact), the reaction of the people involved, etc. 

You have Thomas who meets Jesus and grows with him, experiences the Cross and was present with Him in resurrection form. This changed his life forever compelling him to give his life to serve the people of India (where there is 33 million deities) and giving his life for Jesus. Saul (who becomes Paul who wrote most of the New Testament) discover’s Jesus in reverse of Thomas. He was present with Christ in resurrected form, gives himself to understanding the cross and spends his life understanding Jesus.


Each coming from a different worldview but coming to the same conclusion…Jesus is alive.

Every person has a worldview. A world view has four qualifiers which was made popular by Dr. Ravi Zacharias, a Christian philosopher and writer.  These four specific areas of our worldview are defined as follows:

Origin – How does your worldview explain the origins of humanity? 

Meaning – How is meaning described within your worldview?

Morality – What is the moral basis of your worldview?

Destiny – What is the future of your worldview? 
 

Let’s put this worldview in context to atheism. Let’s look at the origin of worldview.   For the atheist, the first cause is a vacuum, an unanswered question: Where did energy come from?  For the Christian, the first cause is a loving architect of the universe, a necessary first cause who over 10,000 years or 7 billion years, crafted the universe into existence.

Next let’s look at the meaning of worldview.  The question of meaning in Christianity is simple: We are children of the loving biologist, chemist, artist, writer, and architect, the designer of the human soul, who we call Father God.  In that context, every human being has value, incredible value, so much that God would come, Jesus Christ, to offer himself as a path of redemption.  Atheists may believe, for example, that humanity is special because we are sort of ‘happy accidents’ born with a certain, undesignated, amount of time to live and to create our own meaning competing us to strive to create a life around it. 



The morality part to a person’s worldview is believing in love, hope, honor, loyalty, honesty, trust, respect, etc. These attributes don’t have to come from God. They come from within and from human interaction. The Christian Worldview believes the life of Jesus is the perfection of morality.  Jesus lived His life in powerfully simple terms: Love God and love others, as you love yourself leading to peace and a paradise that is highly anticipated.



Finally, what future destiny does an atheist have, after 100 years have passed?  After 1000 years have gone by?  The atheist passes out of existence into the natural and biological cycles of the environment.  What destiny does the Christian Worldview have?  Unending life, in community with a loving God and fellow believers who have chosen to fly in the face of everything the world says, and do it the way God says.  Jesus Christ is the way. 

So much of the life exclusivity of Christianity is pointed in the life lived exclusively in opposition to the world as Jesus Christ.  And Jesus offers us all an invitation to join His life and life from Him and for Him.  Jesus makes his claims in John 14:6 claiming, 



“I am the way the truth and the life.  No one can come to the Father except through Me.”  

-John 14:6

 

History and Scripture points towards the birth, purity of life, the death on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus.   The fundamental difference in Jesus compared to other religions is in the uniqueness and exclusivity of his claim while embracing ALL of humanity and inviting EVERYONE to believe and embrace this claim.  When collectively understand and intentionally build the coherence of His answers, he is who he claimed to be.  Jesus proved these claims by His birth, His life and His resurrection.  Those verifications along with my own verifications of who Jesus is to me personally in my own life, make His claims and His life undeniable.  

The question you have to ask is “why didn’t this movement of Christianity simply die?”

It comes down to the resurrection.  It’s been said that the resurrection is a Christian myth.  It’s been said that “that person told that person and they told that person” and now we have a myth.  No.  It’s been verified by a number of people who saw Him including the verifiable author of the books of Corinthians.  See 1 Corinthians 15,

 

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.  After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”  

- 1 Corinthians 15 

 

Many convinced they saw him.  What can account for the "gap" of a movement that should have ended and been “dying out” because the leader died but instead exploded and became a movement lasting thousands of years?  



Nonbelievers of Christianity fill this “gap” with the explanation of a mass hallucination or an ignoring/disqualifying of the historical evidence for Jesus Christ resurrection.  The reality is you can look into the facts and evidence surrounding the resurrection and it’s becomes harder and harder to deny the resurrection was an event in history.  This is yet another reason that the exclusivity of Jesus being the Savior of the world is not only true but available to anyone!  All you have to do is pray to Jesus and watch your life “come to life!"


The New Young Christian is a discipleship platform that focuses on personal inspiration and spiritual formation. We believe that discovering your faith, developing meaningful friendships and encouraging you forward provide substantial meaning for the next generation and are critical for your future as The New Young Christian.