If you’re not a Christian, you might not be interested in the questions asked by this website, let alone their answers. If you don’t think the subject matters, you will hardly want to read any of it. Let me give you four simple reasons why you should care enough to consider Christianity.¹The purpose of this post is to demonstrate to the skeptic why Christianity is worth investigating using fairly modest, well-accepted facts. This post is not discussing why Christianity is true or why Christians love Jesus or why I believe in God. Those are all good questions, but for another time.

First, Jesus is reported to have said and done extraordinary things. For example, he claimed to be the only way to God, the embodiment of truth, and the giver of life. Anyone can see that those are pretty bold statements, even if you’re not sure what they’re supposed to mean or doubt their authenticity. Moreover, he is recorded to be a miraculous healer, making lifetime cripples walk, giving sight to the blind, curing all kinds of diseases, and even raising folks who had died. Finally, after being publicly executed, he apparently rose from the dead. If you’re skeptical, that’s fine; I’m just motivating you to look into this further because of the extreme nature of these claims.

Second, Christianity is an evidential faith, meaning that the justification for its beliefs ultimately rests on evidence²In fancy language, I am claiming that Christian belief is epistemically justified regardless of pragmatic encroachment, without overly broad definitions of evidence, and apart from cultural influences. I accept that inner spiritual witness can have epistemic weight in some cases, but (unlike the Mormons) I will not appeal to it for my apologetic.. Some people think that “faith” means “belief in the absence of evidence”, which would make the phrase “evidential faith” absurd. Despite being widespread, this idea is naive and goes against the Biblical usage of “faith”. The Bible actually uses “faith” to describe (1) trust in God because he is trustworthy, and (2) belief in the authority of Jesus because he rose from the dead. Now, you may wonder how God is trustworthy and how we can claim Jesus rose from the dead, but we will return to those questions later. For now, my point is simply that Christian belief is (or claims to be) based on evidence.

Third, the people who closely knew Jesus reacted to him in incredible ways, even giving their lives in order to spread his message. Moreover, as a Christian living today, I can assure you of my own sincerity and strong desire for you to know God. Thus, even if you don’t understand why Christians care so much, you can be sure that we do care a lot and at least some of us must have powerful reasons. Not every religion cares about “outsiders”, but Christians have a prime directive to love both our neighbors and enemies, to give our time and resources in service of them, and to share Jesus’ good news of life and freedom.

Fourth, Christianity claims to know the solution to the world’s greatest problems, namely suffering and death. Now, plenty of world-views believe they can solve suffering, although arguably none have been as successful as Christianity.³I admit, this claim is pretty vague and I’m not backing it up right now, so it’s not really modest to write it. However, just consider it my personal testimony for the time being. Plus, even death is claimed to be defeated by Jesus through the resurrection of the dead. You may ask me to explain how Jesus can do these things, but those are questions for later. For now, it’s sufficient to say that we all wish suffering and death weren’t such big problems, and Christians claim to have the answer and would love to share it with you.

End-notes

• 1
  The purpose of this post is to demonstrate to the skeptic why Christianity is worth investigating using fairly modest, well-accepted facts. This post is not discussing why Christianity is true or why Christians love Jesus or why I believe in God. Those are all good questions, but for another time.
• 2
  In fancy language, I am claiming that Christian belief is epistemically justified regardless of pragmatic encroachment, without overly broad definitions of evidence, and apart from cultural influences. I accept that inner spiritual witness can have epistemic weight in some cases, but (unlike the Mormons) I will not appeal to it for my apologetic.
• 3
  I admit, this claim is pretty vague and I’m not backing it up right now, so it’s not really modest to write it. However, just consider it my personal testimony for the time being.