Why I Believe

"I do it [believe] because the thing [Christianity] has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true." - G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy, 166)

When the truth of Christianity began to dawn on me, it wasn't the result of emotionalism. It wasn't the result of soul-wrenching guilt. Nor was it the result of mounting evidence that my rationality couldn't counter.

It was an ever-growing heap of claims that were simultaneously too bad to be true and too good to be true. A set of ideas that made me say, "That's unbelievable . . . but I believe it."

Christianity is exactly the type of thing that no one would make up.

It's a theistic philosophy . . . where the deity dies.

It's a philosophy where humanity is solely to blame for all the world's ills, problems, and injustices . . . yet the deity chooses to love, redeem, restore, and rescue that humanity.

That's incomprehensible.

Yet, as Chesterton puts it, I believe it because it has "revealed itself as a truth-telling thing."

No system, no government, no brain chemistry, no philosophy can give a better explanation for why the world is the way it is. Why injustice persists? Why my own heart plots unjustly? Why I have a mental concept of "justice"?

No system, no government, no brain chemistry, no philosophy can give a better explanation for my desires. Why do I long for a "different" world? Why do I hope for a future where wrongs will be made right? Why do I have a concept of "right"?

I could go on for days. But, to the point, the more I look at the world and at myself the more the story of Christianity becomes not just plausible, but likely.

* * *

A long time ago, in a garden, God gave a man a command about a tree and the man disobeyed.

Two thousand years ago, in a garden, God gave a Man a command about a tree, but the Man, obeyed, hung on a Tree and died.

The Second Man's obedience has righted the first man's failure. It's the type of thing that does not seem to be true.

But it is.