Believing is Seeing

Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live."
--Gospel of John 11:25

Christianity seems rigid to some people. It's a religion with a creed that all Christians are supposed to agree with. It's a religion with a code of behavior everyone is expected to live by. But doesn't everyone have some creed and live by some code? The creed or code we live by may be very relaxed and spontaneous ("it's all good") or very rigid; it may be loose or carefully thought out and cohesive; it may be either simple or complex, old or new. But all of us have certain non-negotiables: things we are committed to at our deepest level, behaviors we're convinced are right or wrong, convictions that color the way we see everything. In that sense Christians are no different. Christians have conviction like everyone else. The difference is the Christian's convictions all center on someone else - the person of Jesus Christ. Why? Because the heart of Christianity having a relationship with the God through Jesus Christ.

If you have not yet encountered Jesus, this may seem strange. Millions around the world respect Jesus for his teachings on social justice or for teaching us to love our neighbor. But Christians do not follow Jesus because they think he is a great teacher. Profound and searching though his teaching is, Jesus did not claim to be a wise man whose teachings we can pick and choose from as we please. Jesus claimed to be the unique Son of God with power over life and death. Christians follow Jesus as Redeemer, someone uniquely qualified to remove the barrier that exists between us and God, and the barrier that exists between one another. Jesus himself made those claims, and Christians follow Jesus because we believe him.

No one person has so changed the course of world history at every level as Jesus has. Myriads of people, from cultures as diverse as can be imagined, from every conceivable socio-economic strata have followed him, and the world has changed because these women and men lived out their devotion to Christ in their art, music, business, craft, politics, and scholarship. You should at the very least ask: why? Why have so many found in Jesus what they longed for in the deepest part of themselves? C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia Chronicles, and renowned Oxford and Cambridge scholar, was a committed atheist the first half of his life. Explaining his surprising conversion to Christianity as an adult, answered the "why" this way. Lewis said:

"I believe in Christianity in the same way I believe in the sun, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

The most important question you can ask: How can I Know God?