Because It's So

J. Warner Wallace is the author of Cold Case Christianity, a homicide detective's investigation of the Gospels. At his blog recently he wrote a piece titled I’m Not A Christian Because It Works for Me. In it he concludes,

I'm a Christian because it is true. I'm a Christian because I want to live in a way that reflects the truth. I'm a Christian because my high regard for the truth leaves me no alternative.

I get that. I know that Christianity has been called a "crutch", that it is populated by losers in need of salvation, that we think life is better because we're Christians (usually followed by "neener-neener" or the like). And, to be honest, life is better because I'm a Christian. But that doesn't make it easier. Like Wallace, I'm not a Christian because it works. I'm a Christian because it's true.

You see, while I may seem to go along with the biblical flow, so to speak, I'm like a lot of people -- almost everyone if I'm not mistaken. I read things like "There is none who does good; no, not one" (Rom 3:12) and think, "Really? Seems like I know lots of people that do good." Or I'll read, "Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" (1 Sam 15:3) and think, "Really? Is that God talking?" I can see the conflict of a God who "works all things after the counsel of His will" (Eph 1:11) over against the concept, "Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve" (Josh 24:15). I get it. It's ... difficult.

Difficult doesn't make it wrong. "Hard to understand" doesn't make it contradictory. Indeed, if there is a God, I would think that "hard to understand" and "difficult" would be mandatory. So I examine the evidence, consider the arguments, and conclude that, after all, the Bible makes the most sense and anything that contradicts it does not.

Having worked my way from "I don't need God; I can do this on my own" to "I have found the Bible to be completely reliable and God to be completely trustworthy", I end up in an interesting position. First, instead of determining what is real and what is true by my experience and my feelings, I am forced to examine my experience and my feelings by what the Bible says is true and realign my grasp of reality with that. But then I begin to discover that this is really a good place to be. If there is a God and if that God is Good and Omniscient and Sovereign and ... all those attributes that His Word assign to Him, suddenly life's perspective shifts. Convinced of the truth of Scripture, I do find that I'm on more stable ground in life. Not that I was seeking for it, but, lo and behold, there it is. The hard to understand gets easier. The difficult to swallow isn't so difficult. Things in and out of Scripture make more sense.

So, I'm not a Christian because it works for me, but that's not to suggest that it doesn't work for me. No, no, it works just fine. In fact, at this point it works for me so well that doing without would be incomprehensible.