More Than Facts: Is Christianity True, Good, and Meaningful?

How do you make a good argument for Christianity? I am wired for apologetics. I love digging into the meat of a matter, sorting out fact from fiction, and discovering the place where two competing points of view, using the same set of facts, diverge from each other--and then determining which philosophical fork in the road is the most reasonable path to take given the fact-finding journey that led up to it. However, as a former championship-level debater, I also know that there is a limit to what arguments and fact-sorting can accomplish. The line of someone's argumentation can get lost, and sometimes the most convincing person can simply be whoever was the last to speak because theirs is the most recent impression made. As an apologetically-minded pastor who has seen some pretty discerning thinkers come to faith in my own ministry, I think that contrasting worldviews and showing the reasonableness of the Christian faith is incredibly important.  But I think that when we talk about the Christian faith, we should start with how most people make their decisions -based on impressions- and work from there to make the case that Christianity is not only true, but also good and meaningful.

ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY: IS CHRISTIANITY TRUE?

For the most part, it's true that most people won't be argued into the Kingdom of Heaven. Some especially discerning or logic-oriented people might; after all, that's the story of some famous apologists like Lee Strobel, whose own faith journey began with an exploration of the evidence for the resurrection. But facts and arguments still have a role to play in establishing credibility. My goal in arguing for the truth of Christianity isn't necessarily to convince someone that Christianity is true; it's to show that a reasonable person could believe that Christianity is true. It's to demonstrate credibility. This shows that Christianity is at least worth consideration.

I won't lay out a case for the trustworthiness of Christianity here. That will come next week (I'll come back and link to it here once it is written). But people are not going to give the Christian faith a second thought if they don't even see how it could be true. There are a lot of hard-hearted skeptics out there, but my experience is that most people are open to seeing things a different way if they don't feel that they're being pushed into an immediate response. For those people, I often find that they are interested and surprised to hear that there is archaeological evidence for events depicted in the Bible. I've also never had a bad response to asking someone what they think came before the Big Bang, and before that, etc. which opens up all kinds of discussion about whether there is a God and what he must be like. The more confident that someone is about some statement of their disbelief, the more constructive I find it is to "put a rock in their shoe" by throwing in something that might disturb their confident unbelief: for example, when someone confidently states that Jesus never existed, I like to mention Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist? as an example of a non-Christian scholar who confidently writes about Jesus' existence and all the ways the Gospels can be good sources about his life (even though Ehrman doesn't believe in the truths of Christianity or the inspiration of the Bible). My goal here isn't to push them into Christianity--it's to make them question their own unbelief.

ESTABLISHING BENEFIT TO HUMANITY: IS CHRISTIANITY GOOD?

It's not enough to show someone that Christianity is credible, though. This is where I think that a lot of apologetics falls short. Most Christian apologetics seeks to show that Christianity is true, but not that it is good. We live in a world where people come from having grown up or been exposed to really bad church experiences. People are aware of historical atrocities committed in Christ's name. Recent revelations in Canada regarding First Nations Residential Schools have left a bad taste in many people's mouths. The perceived anti-scientific views of many Christians, or anti-progress attitudes, may convince many that they don't want Christianity to be true because it is not good and its continuing role in society is holding everyone else back. This is where a modern apologetic for Christianity's societal goodness needs a bigger role. Even if you are not a Christian, we might say, you should want Christianity to have a role in the public sphere. A lot of interesting work has been done here in recent years. For example the historian Tom Holland has shown that Christianity has created the basis for modern concepts of justice, equality, and fairness in his book on the subject. The role of Christianity in establishing the foundation for modern healthcare, education, charities, orphanages, and care for the impoverished has been described by normally anti-Christian thinkers as a Christian innovation. Even in the case of missionaries, often seen as a colonialist enterprise, some of the best research available demonstrates the incredible social and physical benefits that have come to the countries that have received the most Christian missionaries. The role of churches in North America has also been shown to have a sort of "halo effect" in providing goods and services for North American communities more effectively and at lower cost than what can be provided by publicly-funded care. Where harm has been done in Christ's name, it can be reliably shown that those actions were not in line with the teachings of Christ. However, the basis for calling out that harm as evil is itself Christian: As Tom Holland writes in his book Dominion, “[It is true that] Many [Christians], over the course of time, have themselves become agents of terror. They have put the weak in their shadow; they have brought suffering, and persecution, and slavery in their wake. Yet the standards by which they stand condemned for this are themselves Christian.” We need to make a bigger case that Christianity has something meaningful, or even foundational, to bring into the public sphere. We should leave people saying, not only that Christianity is credible, but that even non-Christians would want for there to be more Christians and more Christianity in the world for all the good that it does.

ESTABLISHING DESIRABILITY: IS CHRISTIANITY MEANINGFUL?

All of this won't be enough to make people want to become Christians themselves, though. There are a lot of people who find themselves persuaded of the truth of Christianity, but they view it as something like the general principles of accounting: true perhaps, and good in terms of keeping everything in order, but not something that they want to be personally involved with unless they have to. One more famous, recent example of this is Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams who is battling cancer. He recently announced that he will convert to Christianity: "I still have time. My understanding is you're never too late." Many people approach Christianity this way. Believing that it is true or reasonable, and that it is good for people to believe it, they still find themselves personally pushing the decision to convert off until they are certain they are near death, because they're convinced that Christianity isn't very fulfilling or meaningful. This is something we can spend a little more time on making a case for. For example, Christianity gives us an incredible foundation for our relationship with ourselves. The exemplary life of Jesus gives us some standard for what "normal" human behavior looks like, cutting against both the idea that health looks like unemotional, detached stoicism, or that it looks like a constant boundary-less response to the demands of the moment. Christian teachings on sex and its purpose are an incredibly freeing answer to both sexual repression and our modern cultural hypersexuality. Assumptions that reflect Christian teachings have been adopted by organizations that have achieved significantly higher-than-normal improvements in finding freedom from alcohol and drug addiction. And these are only the beginnings of the personal benefits of a life that is firmly rooted in our identity in Jesus.

Christianity also gives us an incredible foundation for our relationships with others. The teachings of Christianity both support the family structure, while establishing a clear boundary where one may "leave their mother and father, and cleave to [their spouse]" (Gen. 2:24). This is an important guideline which helps both with the harmony of existing families and the successful creation of new ones. Christian teachings about marriage support the respectful treatment of a husband by his wife, but it is also unique (especially for its time) in insisting on a standard of treatment and care that a husband owes to his wife. And the church, far from being a burden to those considering the truths of Christianity, has been shown to be a gift (even with the messiness that is involved any time that human beings gather together). The Harvard School of Public Health has even studied, and listed the many personal benefits, of those who regularly attend church services. In our relationship with the wider world around us. Christianity gives us a unique respect for the world as a gift of God which leads to a belief that it should be cared for and conservated. Politically, many of the beliefs of Christianity cut across or "diagonalize" across positions that are often held to be either Left or Right. But most importantly, Christianity gives us a foundation for a daily, ongoing and meaningful relationship with God. When the news cycle shows us the latest war or invasion or protest or pandemic, it is incredibly reassuring to know that we can rely on God who has a plan to take the evil that human beings commit or create, and that he will use it ultimately for good. When we feel stuck in the constant churn of waking up, going to work, dealing with bills, taking care of laundry and cooking and unending responsibilities, falling asleep, and repeating the same thing over again--worship draws us up into an experience of being part of something more enduring and wonderful and meaningful. And prayer is an incredibly helpful part of all of this: God absolutely does answer prayer. Prayer is not a magical ritual whereby we can move the hand of God to do our will and not his own, but in praying we are often transformed or given greater awareness or assurance, and besides all that, significant evidence does exist to support the effectiveness of prayer (though I'll write more about this in a couple of weeks). There are all kinds of reasons why we would not want to put that off until the moment of death. The reality is, Christianity gives a foundation for a much better life here and now than anything else.

So, this serves as an introduction to the next few weeks of writing where I'll dive into more detail on each of these topics. While I don't think that arguments can bring most people into a personal, saving belief in Jesus, I think that they do play an important role. But the argument needs to do more than just establish credibility: it needs to help someone understand why they would want other people to be Christians; and why they personally would want to receive that hope for themselves.

Cheers,

-Pastor Sean