Why are you a Christian?

I am not a Christian because I grew up in a Christian home located in white suburbia in the belt buckle of the Bible belt. Although that is certainly true. No, I am a Christian because I believe the evidence supports it, and unless I am convinced by overwhelming evidence to counter my belief I cannot change. However, I have not always stood on such assurance. In fact my Christian journey has been a progression of spiritual ignorance to intellectual agnosticism to resting on theistic certainty.

“Why am I a Christian” is a question that everybody should ask themselves. Now, I am not suggesting a “question everything” or “the only thing you need to know is that you know nothing” mentality. However, I am suggesting that if we make some audacious claims like there is a God who created all things and that only through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ can you be saved; we better have reasonable evidence to support those claims rather than the traditional “the Bible says, I believe it, and that settles it” creed. And you know what, this kind of thought has invaded the church today. We have forgotten Romans 12:2 that says, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Instead we are being transformed by the renewing of our emotions. That spiritual transformation for us is experience and if I can just get my emotional fix then I can be a better Christian.

We share the gospel now by appealing to the senses, that if we can guilt somebody of their actions, or if we play the right music and use the right voice fluxation, then we can move somebody into this ethereal state and then they will believe. In other words if we can create some sort of burning in their bosom then they will receive the Gospel. And if we look how the gospel was spread, particularly how Paul preached, Paul did not once resort to emotion for belief in Jesus Christ. No you see as in Acts 17:2 tells us, “As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he REASONED with them from the Scriptures, explaining and PROVING, that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.”

Some Reason, we live in a day where the blinder the faith that a person has the more spiritual that they are. The phrase that fills our congregations is “Ask me how I know he lives he lives in me.”

I spend my summers working with teenagers at a Christian summer camp called Kanakuk out in Shell Knob, Missouri (Yes it does exist, Google map it if you don’t believe me). I was talking to some of our oldest guy campers about the importance of developing the Christian mind and I asked them a simple question. “How many of you believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?” Of course, as good Christian boys, they answered that they did. We then discussed why the resurrection was so essential in Christian theology and without the assurance of it we have no hope in what Christ said was true, that our sins truly are forgiven, and we have no hope for our very own resurrection. After developing the case for the doctrinal necessity of the resurrection I asked them a question I don’t think they ever heard before. “Why do you believe the Resurrection is a true historical event?” You ever seen 50 teenage boys silent? Me either up to that point.

The truth is they never asked themselves that question. They have been spoon fed their Christian beliefs their entire life by their parents and their churches and they haven’t learn to think for themselves. These were the answers that some of them gave me.
“I know he leaves because I have experienced him.”
“It’s a matter of blind faith. God cares about faith more than evidence.”
“I just have a gut feeling in my heart that it’s true.”
“It’s essential for salvation so it has to be true.”
You can see from these answers that their foundation for the reality of the resurrection rests on feelings, emotions, and hypothesis. This is crazy to me, because if the corner stone of Christianity is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the most popular apologetic is, “Ask me how I know he lives he lives in me.” The truth is that they might believe that in their heart for a season but the heart cannot truly accept what the mind rejects. It’s time that we fix this dichotomy that we have created between the heart and the mind.

What happens to these kids when they go to college and they walk into a philosophy, biology, or an ethics class and they are confronted with a professor whose ideology believes that if we get rid of religion then we get rid of all the world’s problems and he attacks them on their beliefs? I tell you what would happen, you would have kids who have never thought critically about their faith begin to question everything they have ever been taught about their faith and you would have 80% (stat varies from 70% to 90%) of incoming freshman leave the Christian faith by the end of their freshman year, just like we do now.

That good news is that as Christians we have answers. I love this quote by J.P. Moreland that says, “faith is not belief against the evidence but according to the evidence.” We need to learn to reclaim the mind for Christ in our youth. We need to teach them to love their Lord the God the way Jesus commanded us too and that is with our “heart, soul and mind” (Mathew 22:37). That is the purpose of Tulsa K-Life and the Tulsa K-Life blog. To be an online community that is dedicated in the developing of the Christian mind in our youth so that when they are asked the tough questions that they can stand firm on the evidence.