Why am I Christian?

Why am I Christian? I have quite a few reasons. I’m starting with a bit of life story, and ending with some arguments: because we are all, in some ways, formed by our lives. Why not grab a coffee, and join me for a decent read? 🙂

I was born in the seventies, in Wellington, New Zealand. My father was a tall man: with a brilliant mind, and a struggling heart. He lost it, from time to time – and when he did, our house became profoundly unsafe. I love my father deeply – I lost him, at ten: he died. It took me twenty years to begin to grieve; it has taken me thirty years to come to terms with his abuse. He would never have harmed me – would have been horrified at the thought – but he did harm those I love.

My mother had a difficult life: more difficult than mine. She was born into World War Two: it was scary for her, as a child. She was given many challenges, of many kinds – too many. They showed themselves: sometimes they got the better of her. But she also had a keen mind, and used it well.

My brother is a genius. That’s about all I have to say about that. 🙂

I was raised Anglican – but, unlike others, I was not forced to go regularly to church. There were many things I did have to do: church was not one of them. I’m grateful to my mother for that: for me, it was the right approach. The traditional setting didn’t connect with me as a child: it was boring sitting in church. To have been made to do it weekly would have been a problem.

My mother gave me a white New Testament, when I was eight: I think she gave it to me on the way to the Easter Show, in Auckland. 🙂 I read through it, with interest: though I couldn’t understand why there was so much repetition between the four gospels. Why write the same story four times? 🙂  The words were connecting with my mind – I read of this man, Jesus, and what he did, and I believed in God in my mind, as I was raised – but the Bible did not connect with my heart.

When I was fifteen, I felt spiritually up in the air. I prayed to God, and I began to search for him. I went with Mum to buy my own Bible – I read it, cover to cover. But, in the words of U2, I still hadn’t found what I was looking for – I hadn’t found God.

When I was seventeen, I came top equal in New Zealand in Bursary with the top boy. My Mum, in my childhood, had implored my father not to extend me: she had wanted me to be an ordinary child. I guess she failed, at multiple levels. 🙂 But the reasons for the academic success were wrong. I had emerged as an academic perfectionist, going over and over the same material thoroughly, getting control over this expression of my life: yet in truth, this didn’t really represent who I was – or at least who I was going to be.

I decided to become a doctor: that was a good call. I went to med-school, in Auckland – I fully immersed myself in more academic pursuit. My mind was thoroughly occupied, but my heart had been neglected. I had been going out with a boyfriend I should never have been with – all respect to him, but we were too similar. (I think he was rather like my father, come to think…) He broke up with me – also a good call. But it cost me. And watching him with someone else brought out the worst in me.

My heart was broken open: raw, with many years of neglect. I sat in a med-school lecture theatre in a lot of pain: withdrew to the toilets, with my good friends trying to comfort me.

During Easter I watched the same TV mini-series I had watched for maybe eight years, Easter after Easter, but had never really grasped: Jesus of Nazareth. I saw the scene, the ‘Last Supper,’ the beginnings of ‘Communion,’ in which Jesus is sitting at the table with his friends, passing out bread and wine, and saying, with tears in his eyes: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ I stared at him, and suddenly a door opened within me. ‘It’s true!’ I ran downstairs, wept, and my life was changed forever.

That’s what they call being ‘born again’.

That moment, I now know, saved my life: not only in a spiritual sense, for a life to come, but in this life – that moment gave me what I needed to live.

Now I read the Bible, and it was alive: every verse was real – every verse was true.

‘Build your house on the rock, don’t built it on the sand.

Build it on the rock, so when the floods come, you will be able to stand.’ (Paraphrased.)

I built my life on Christ: proactively, systematically. I moved away from the Anglican Church, which didn’t connect culturally – I moved into a Pentecostal Church. For a season I connected, spiritually, culturally – and then I encountered the weakness of church leadership, in a deeply damaging way. I left – looked for another church: that church collapsed, through false accusation of a leader. I looked for another church: that church collapsed, due to finances and internal conflict. I looked for another church: we disagreed with the leader, and moved on. I went to another church: my childhood realities hit the fan, and church leadership added to the damage through lack of understanding.

If my faith had been built on the church, it would have been crucified by now. But my faith was never built on the church: it was built on Christ. Christianity isn’t defined by the Church: Christianity is defined by Christ.

Eventually, I returned to the Anglican Church. Now, with faith, and with an older mind, I could connect deeply with the traditions that had bored me as a child: there was a profound depth to the spirituality there, though it was being expressed over two or three hundred years with the same culture – there was spiritual truth. I joined in their culture, the church culture of my childhood: I healed. I found a church leader able to handle my independent and vigorous expression: even willing to open the door wide to my outworking.

I emerged, deeply Christian.

More floods came: I wrestled with God, in my suppressed and emerging adolescence – through my writing, I metaphorically threw chalices of wine at the face of Christ. ‘That’s for all the bullshit!’ I tend to call a spade a spade – but do you know the beauty of it? So does Christ.

Our human wrestling isn’t new to God: the Bible is full of it.

Mine was never going to be a simple black and white faith. I had to go through hell, to take the bull by the horns, to face death, to test Christ, in the midst of my own profound suffering. But I always knew, through it all, that Christ would win. And I’m glad he did.

Why am I Christian? Because Christ saved my life, and my soul.

He was bigger than me: in my rage, in my intensity, in my thinking, in my testing of justice, in my testing of character – he had already sorted it, two thousand years before I was born.

He had already offered all the answers: the Master of all things good.

In my life, Medicine was not enough. Psychology was not enough. Philosophy would not have been enough. Science was not enough. Academic success was not enough. And money? Well, that doesn’t even reach the list. There’s a place for all these things – they are all important. But none of them were capable of saving me.

‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ That was what saved me.

He was right.

Why am I Christian? Because the testimony was passed on to me, for two thousand years, from those who lived with Jesus: those who ate with him, slept with him (and I’m not talking Mary Magdalene here 🙂 ), who watched what he was doing, who listened to what he was saying – who ran away when he was accused, who mostly couldn’t bear to watch him being crucified (though John did), who buried him, who saw him alive again after death, and who spread the great significance of this person, who was one with God, all around, even though, for many, it killed them.

Why am I Christian? That testimony reached me, two thousand years later. I trusted it, as I was raised – I tested the reliability of it, later, and was satisfied that my trust, and the trust of others in the church, for two thousand years, had been well placed.

Why am I Christian? Because I found the writing in the Bible to be true, and powerful. It brought the solution. So we’re fallible? Oh, yeah! So there’s a way to fix it? Bring it on! This person Jesus is offering to carry our darkness? Wow. He’s going to die, doing it? Shiver up the spine. What do I have to do? Agree to it? And that moment, right there, is at the heart of Christianity.

Do I agree, to this person dying on my behalf, to carry my own darkness? I might have said ‘no’ – in my writing, I do say say, ‘no’. I love this person: he’s profound. And yet, there is a response beyond trying to save the one you love: there’s the need to save everyone else, including me.

So, yeah: I agree. Faith. Trust. He’s carrying it. And I’m being changed to be more like him, through that trust.

Corruption isn’t fixed: it can be undone. Wow. There is hope for humanity: even a broken, beaten, corrupted humanity. Sure, humanity has good as well as bad: it ain’t all bad. But what is our inspiration? What is our goal: to simply be us? Even define ourselves as God, or a part of God, in our current state? No: my goal is to reach higher than this – to aspire toward someone greater than I am, God, who is greater than humanity.

Why am I Christian? Because Christianity works. Through all of my scientific training, Christianity stands. Through all of my profound emotional and spiritual testing, Christianity stands. I may fall: I may be overwhelmed, in mind and heart, and unable to feel God, or be unable to see anything, in my human vulnerability – but Christianity still stands. God isn’t me: he sees beyond what I can see.

Why am I Christian? Because the arguments against Christianity are failing to see Christianity for what it actually is. I can have compassion for a person who has been abused by Christianity: but abuse is not Christianity. A black and white representation of God, looking only at certain parts of the Old Testament, without looking at the whole, also is not Christianity: there is more to understand than this. A personal lack of encounter of God can’t, in itself, define whether or not God exists: especially if others are testifying that they have seen him. A focus on corruption in the church, or the outworking of Christianity, also doesn’t get to the nitty gritty of what Christianity is: anyone can point out the corruption in any worldview – the corruption is the entire reason why Christ came. The Theory of Evolution doesn’t exclude God: science doesn’t exclude, or fight against God in any way (I used to be a theistic Evolutionist, believing God to have used Evolution to create life). And assumptions don’t begin to test actual truth.

Why am I Christian? Because the alternatives, to my mind and heart, are not as true, or as helpful. Atheism says nothing of why we are here, or where we are going: it is a stand against another answer. Agnosticism says nothing, knowingly. Anti-theism is reacting against another person’s view. Humanism overlaps significantly, in the humanitarian considerations, but assumes, sometimes, a superiority over religion that does not apply: religion is not inferior – it is different in outlook. Humanism has the consideration of humanity, as Christ had, but without the empowerment of God. Pantheism, or Eastern spirituality, is claiming that we already are a part of an impersonal God: which defines the status quo differently, but doesn’t change it. Eastern spirituality is different from Middle Eastern spirituality (Jesus was a Jew). As to Judaism and Islam: there is a huge overlap there, both being theistic, as with many expressions of spirituality and religion, which see an overarching Creator God as transcending humanity, and yet able to be known. I consider this perspective vital for our future, both here and in the life to come.

Why am I Christian? In summary, because I consider Christianity is true, and it works. I consider that Jesus was actually as he is described in the New Testament: he lived, giving food to the hungry, healing the sick, and showing us how we could connect with God. He died, crucified, because the religious leaders of the day couldn’t tolerate him. And he rose again – physically, not only spiritually. He actually overcame death, in order that we also could overcome death, and be with God.

Wow.

Imagine meeting someone like this: the disciples actually did. That realization, there, that I had, at seventeen: that understanding that this stuff, written, passed on, is actually true – that is Christianity.

Why not join me? 🙂 I’d love to see you here.