Why Be A Chrisitan?
Sometimes we're more interested in seeking the truth than
in finding it.
by Ralph Martin
"Be a Christian so you can serve the poor."
"Christians are more peaceful and joyful."
"You should be a Christian because your parents
want you to be."
"Your life will work better if you're a Christian."
"Being a Christian helps you be moral."
These are some of the answers you're likely to get if ever you start asking people why you should be a Christian. I know, because there was a period in my life when I asked that question and heard those responses.
To a certain extent, those answers are legitimate. But I think there's another, more fundamental, reason for being a Christian. I'd like to tell you how I arrived at it.
I was raised in a Christian home and really knew the Lord as a boy. Every night I knelt down and said my prayers, and every day I tried to do good and avoid evil. I loved God and had a relationship with him. As I got into high school though, I became more and more critical of the church and the Christians I saw around me. I started challenging my religion teachers: "How do you know that's true?", I'd ask. "Why be a Christian?"
Over time, that critical spirit grew, mixed in with a little intellectual pride. I became ever more skeptical until finally, I concluded that Christianity didn't necessarily have the answers I was looking for. I began to seek elsewhere for truth and meaning.
As a university student, I decided to study Russian and major in international relations. I wanted to be a diplomat and keep wars from breaking out. As I pursued my studies though, I began to feel a certain futility. Despite the skills and attempts of politicians, I realized, wars do break out and nations rise and fall. Something gets patched up over here while something falls apart over there. There's treachery, duplicity, lying.
"There's got to be something deeper," I thought. "Maybe I need to look into the great books of the Western world." So I became an English major and studied the timeless themes of literature -- life and death, love and hate. I liked it but again, it didn't seem fundamental enough. I began to ask qustions like: "How do you know anything anyway? And how do you know you know? How do you know the essence of things?"
"Oh, you belong in philosophy," someone told me. "Those are the kind of questions philosophers ask." So I switched over to the the philosophy department, graduated from it, and eventualy went on to graduate school in philosophy at Princeton University.
Meanwhile, during these yearrs, people were saying, "Ralph, you ought to be a Christian." And I'd ask, "Why?" Some said, "Because it helps you be good." But then my question was, "Why be good?" Besides, as I looked around it seemed to me that there were a lot of non-Christians who were leading basically good lives. And what about Muslims and Buddhists, whose moral codes seemed similar to Christianity's? My conclusion was: it looks like you don't have to be Christian to be moral. So why be a Christian?
"You need to be a Christian so you can serve the poor and help people," others said. But again, I noted that many non-Christians are involved in helping others. That didn't seem a substantial enough reason either. Or sometimes I heard that I should be a Christian in order to have a meaningful religious experience. "I prefer to encounter the Absolute in other ways, " I would say. "I can have a deeper religious experience in a field than in a church." So why be a Christian?
Then, three months before I graduated, a friend invited me to a weekend retreat. I put him off with a vague, "I might go sometime." But Phil took that casual remark and followed up on it.
"It's all set. They've reserved a place for you," he anounced a week before the retreat. "Oh I can't possibly go now," I protested. But as I spoke, Phil's eyes filled with tears and I had a sudden sense of his love and concern for me. I did a quick about face. "Hey, I'll go," I said.
But I warned Phil that I wasn't going to compromise my integrity. I knew just what this retreat would be like. "People are going to have a great time singing songs and hugging one anohter; they'll have a warm feeling and call it God. I'll go," I told him, "but I'm not going to fall for this group dynamics."
Sure enough, on the first night there were discussion groups and singing and linking arms. "Ah, just what I thought," I said to myself. But then we heard talks on the gospel message. "Gee, those are pretty interesting concepts," I reflected. "Whoever thought them up had a pretty good mind." In my philosphy studies, I had encountered some great minds, but I began to get a sense that the mind behind Christianity was greater than any of them. Perhaps, I felt uneasily, it might even be the mind of God!
I got more uncomfortable as a number of people spoke about Jesus and their relationship with him. They talked as if they knew him personally and had contact with him all the time. "Either these people are crazy," I thought, "or they've come into a dimension of life with God that I've never experienced."
Then the speakers began talking about sin. That touched off a tremendous crisis in me because what they were calling sin, I called "learning experiences." I prided myself on being an honest person, someone who was authentically living and searching for the truth. But here these people were telling me that some things in my life weren't right, authentic, loving, or true; that some things weren't helpful for me or for anyone and were displeasing to God. And I began to see they were right.
Something had gotten into what I professed to be my search for truth that wasn't really a search at all. I had to admit that I like the searching but not the finding. I wanted things vague and blurry. If I discovered an objective reality outside myself, I'd have to submit to it, and I didn't want that. I liked deciding what was right and wrong. I liked being God!
Under the guise of searching, I was really fleeing. But on that weekend, by the grace of God, I was able to repent. I knelt down and told the Lord, "I've been wrong. I've been proud, arrogant, self-seeking. I've turned away from you. Forgive me." And then I went through all the specific ways I could remember in which I had offended him or other people. "Give me another chance, a new start," I prayed. "I want to do it your way."
In that moment of conversion, I accepted that
I was the creature, not the Creator; that Jesus Christ was Lord of my life, not me.
I had discovered that what's unique to Christianity isn't the morality, nor the religious
experience, nor serving the poor: it's the living person of Jesus, the only path to the
Father.
JESUS, THE ONLY REALITY
Why be a Christian? As I've reflected
on that question during the 20 years that have passed since that retreat, I've come to see
more and more clearly, with more and more conviction, that the first and best reason for
being a Christian is because it's true. Christianity isn't a literary theme or a
good idea. It's a revelation of the structure of reality through the person of
Jesus. Listen to what scripture says about who he is:
"In times past, God spoke in fragmentary and
varied ways to our fathers through the prophets; in this, the final age, he has spoken to
us through his Son, whom he has made heir of all things and through whom he first created
the universe. This Son is the reflection of the Father's glory, the exact
representation of the Father's being, and he sustains all things by his powerful
word." (Heb. 1:1-3)
Mental health professionals tell us that mental health is based on facing reality. Well, I believe we can't be really mentally healthy unless we're Christians! How can we be well-adjusted unless we know what reality is? How can we face reality unless we know that Jesus is at the center -- that he's the source through whom everything came to be, that he keeps us and everything in existence?
We can't. Nor can we ever be at rest outside of Jesus. Apart from him, we'll never know true peace or joy. We'll never be fulfilled or happy, or find the answer to our search fro truth and meaning. Why? Because we were created for God. And we just don't work right unless we're in relationship to him!
Jesus Christ died and was raised from the dead for us. Now he sits at the right hand of the Father, pouring out his Holy Spirit. Through his messengers of the gospel, he's giving men and women everywhere the chance to turn away from their sins and to know the truth.
Now the question is: do we want the truth or not? I think that many people today are doing what I did -- saying they want the truth while doing everything they can to escape it. But there's nothing more important for them and for us than coming to know the truth.
And Jesus Christ said, "I am the truth." Let's open our lives fully to him. Let's be true disciples of Christ, true Christians.
Why be a Christian? Because it's true.
Ralph Martin is President of Renewal Ministries, www.renewalministries.net . This essay is reprinted by permission from the July, 1986, newsletter.