Why am I a Christian?
This is a question that plagued for several years. When I first saw the question my initial gut reaction was to think of it as being an easily answered question. But as I went to write my answer, I was never quite satisfied with the answers I was giving.
I was raised by Christian parents in a Christian home. Am I only a Christian because I was raised in a Christian culture? I think this is part of it, but it is not satisfactory to me. As powerful as cultural influence is, it is not the standard for whether or not something is true. Besides, plenty of people convert to new faiths from what they were raised as. So, that just doesn’t seem like a good enough answer.
Would I still be a Christian if I were raised by atheists? I don’t want to get bogged down in a discussion of predestination vs free will. My simple understanding of the matter is that God wants everyone to be saved but is not going to forceful His will on people because that would be unloving. He knows who is willing to be saved and provides for those people so that they would be saved. If I had been raised by atheists, then I think God would have still worked my life out in a way that I would have opened my eyes to Him. But that is still not an answer for why I am a Christian, only that I am willing to be one.
I can give various apologetic arguments as for why I am a Christian. I could give the cosmological argument or the design argument or the moral law argument or how the Bible is historically accurate or how life simply doesn’t make sense apart from a Chrisitan worldview. My personal favorite is that something had to have always existed. One of the most fundamental laws of our universe is that something cannot come from nothing. So, in order for something to currently exist, something had to have always existed. That something is either God, or some description of a physical reality, whether that be our universe or a multiverse, or something else. Regardless of what it is, something had to have always existed and I think that God having always existed is a much more satisfactory explanation. But all of that is beside the point.
My trouble with purely reason-based answers is that if you can be reasoned into something then it makes sense that you can be reasoned out of something. That seems rational but it also seems incomplete. Because all the reason in the world eventually breaks down and at a certain point you just need to have faith. Everything we do requires faith in something, even science requires faith. Not even atheists can avoid this fundamental aspect of reality. At the end of the day every single person operates by faith.
My faith is in God. I think I am a naturally pessimistic person. If I try to see my life without God, there is so much wrong with this world, it’s a dark world. A hopeless world. If I wasn’t a Christian, if I didn’t have faith in God, then by this point I think I would either be a monster of a person, or I would have killed myself. The world is dark and hopeless, but God’s light gives me hope. My faith in God is what gets me through the day. God gives me the strength to stand and the ability to smile and enjoy life. Admittedly there are times that are quite the struggle, but at the end of the day I rest in God’s hands.
Christianity uses a marriage metaphor describing Jesus as the groom and the church, us believers, as the bride. For better or worse, in sickness or in health, I am on Jesus’ team.
So why am I a Christian? Because I recognize my need for God to be in my life.