Why I am a Christian.
By
Ben Begley
Presented to
Christopher Gornold-Smith
Christian Apologetics
THE 3213-00
November 19, 2002
It is eleven O’clock; the moon is shining brightly down on me. I find myself
standing on a soccer field in Waxahachie of all places, a blip of a town in Texas.
Thoughts abruptly hit me and my mind begins down a road it has never ventured before.
It’s a little odd, I’m standing on the same earth that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob stood on
thousands of years ago. I remember the story of each of these guys, the least likely to be
chosen from among their peers, yet they interacted with an eternal God. My feet rest on
the same firmament that Jesus’ did two thousand years ago. A man who claimed to be
God, a man who possesses the power to save my soul or something to that effect.
Again I ask myself why I believe this foolishness, there has to be something out
there that makes more sense than this gospel. But the stars are to brilliant to lie; the
moon shines far to bright to ignore what I know to be the truth. There is a God that can
be found in history, whose Son has changed my life. I look around at the glory of the
earth, there has to be a beginning to it all. I have a beginning and I know eventually I
will have an end. By all means the earth looks like it will eventually have an end also,
what with global warming and deforestation. I can’t claim to be eternal, the earth
definitely isn’t eternal, things have a beginning and an end, that is the way of it.
What if something had neither a beginning nor an end, something that is
contingent on nothing. It needed no outside force acting on it to exist, it just existed.
What if this “entity” has a name, God. A rock sitting on top of a hill does not just simply
begin to roll on its own accord, there has to be an outside force pushing it. This universe
did not just come about, there had to be an outside force causing it “to be.” I don’t know,
these are just a few simple thoughts that cross a college students mind.
My name is Ben Begley. I’m from Paia, which is a small surfer town on the island
of Maui. I’ve lived in the Hawaiian Islands my whole life, you can take the boy from the
islands, but you can’t take the islands from the boy. Hawaii is teaming with beauty of
every sort. There is something about beauty though, everyone wants to be around it.
Needless to say, Hawaii attracts all sorts of people, and along with people it brings all
sorts of religions and philosophies.
Paia has a population of about six thousand people. With in the limits of the town
there are three Buddhist temples and several Hindu places of worship. Scattered
throughout the storefronts you will find yoga studios, not to mention tattoo parlors and
bars. It’s definitely an eclectic place, a great place to people watch. I have encountered:
Rastafarians, Buddhists, New-Agers, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Hindus, Muslims,
Jehovah witnesses, Atheist, Agnostics, Hawaiian Animists, not to mention Christian
syncretists. However this was all experienced through a Christian grid having been
raised in a Christian household.
My father is a pastor with the Assembly of God and my Pentecostal mother
teaches in a private Lutheran school, she has some funny stories. Although having been
surrounded all my life with various types of religion I managed for a long time to avoid it
all for the most part. I wasn’t a terribly spiritual person growing up. I was forced to go
to church, but that was about the extent of my religious duties. My parents wanted me to
experience the theist God on my own, I deeply respect them for this. You will not die for
something, let alone live for something you don’t own as yours personally. They wanted
me to own my Christianity, not borrow theirs.
My religious exercises took up Sunday morning, what would I do for the rest of
the week? I guess I would get high. Smoking weed was my spiritual side, well that’s not
very spiritual…precisely. If I just avoid my spiritual side than my conscience wouldn’t
bother me. I remember sitting on a bench at my high school when my mind began to
wander as they sometimes do. There I was thinking about Jesus for some reason, this
annoyed me. I pushed the thought away and again wrapped myself in the mundane.
Why the Creator of the universe wants to interact with people, I don’t know. I knew deep
down in my heart that day he wanted to interact with me, however the feeling was not
mutual.
I write all this to paint for you a picture of a genuine person. I am not an
unthinking fool, who can be cajoled to believe anything. I am not a programmed robot
who must believe in the God of the Bible, I believe because I choose to. And as a
thinking person I will gladly pay the consequence of and for my faith.
July 29, 1997 I had a brush with the eternal that changed my life. If ever you
have visited a church and happened upon a sour looking young man sitting in the back of
the sanctuary, that would have been me. Church was pointless to me. However one
summer evening my parents felt the necessity to drag me to yet another Christian
program, something called “Heaven’s gates and Hell’s flames.” I reluctantly agreed to
attend. The lights went out in the auditorium and actors filled the stage. Scenario after
scenario was acted out before my eyes, I was bored as could be. I was well aware of the
consequences of my sin, I knew I was going to hell and frankly I could care less.
Again the lights went out, a demonic cackle filled the air followed by what
appeared to be the devil himself on the stage. This quickly got my attention. He began to
rant of his ingenuity, he had finally foiled God’s ridiculous plan. He had finally won the
fight. All of a sudden out of nowhere a spot of light appeared toward the back of the
church, people turned in their seats to see what was going on. It was a man carrying a
cross, it was Jesus walking down the aisle. My heart jumped up into my throat, I could
barely breathe. Tears filled my eyes as I saw the Devil dancing around on stage and
Jesus struggling under the weight of the cross. It was horrible, the injustice of it all. I
was consumed with what was going on, I couldn’t pull my eyes away, my head was
spinning, it was so real. For the first time in my life, the story was real.
Half an hour later the preacher asked if anybody would like to repent of his or her
sins and accept the free gift of eternal life given by Jesus Christ. I really didn’t want my
parents to see me stand up, but I knew there was no other option for me. I stood to my
feet and walked forward to the altar. I knew my parents would be smiling, a thought that
kind of annoyed me. It has been five and a half years since that day…life has been good.
The Christian life was definitely a new experience. I found myself accepting
thoughts of God instead of shoving them out of my head like I once did. I also began to
read the Bible, it was kind of weird at first, but I found myself learning a lot. The more I
read, a picture of who God really was began to take shape in my head. Sometimes I
would find myself sitting in a room talking to something that I had never seen before, it
took awhile for me to get used to that.
If I’m going to claim to believe in a personal Creator, than I must believe that he
interacts with his creation somehow. That’s where the Bible comes in. For the majority
of my twenty-one years on this planet though, I viewed the Bible as a collection of
nonsensical stories. How could people wittingly believe this stuff, it’s ridiculous. Of
course, I will admit that was an uneducated opinion, I was much too lazy to study up on
the validity of the Bible. That all changed though when Jesus came into my life. Lately I
have been presented with evidence so persuasive that the Bible is the word of God it
demands a decision. This has always been my big qualm, how do I know the Bible is the
word of God? There are two big historical pillars that give credibility to the Bible:
Authenticity of modern copies and Reliability of the originals.
The first question is how many copies of the manuscripts do we know of. Well,
here is the thing about ancient literature, very few manuscripts still exist. Homer’s Iliad
for instance has 643 copies, this is the most extensive of nearly all ancient writings.
Caesar’s The Gallic War has about 9 or 10 usable copies, while Plato’s Tetralogies has
seven. There are two copies of Tacitus’ The Annals of Imperial Rome, and 20 of Livy’s
History of Rome. There is obviously very little to work with.
How many though do we have for the books in the New Testament? In the
original Greek language we have 5,366 reliable copies. On top of that there are more
than 19,000 New Testament manuscripts in Latin, Syriac, Armenian and a few other
languages. That means there are more than 24,000 handwritten copies of the New
Testament manuscripts that have survived through the ages. A very impressive number
as far as ancient writings go.
Another good way to determine accuracy is to determine the date it was originally
written. The closer the copy was written to the original, the more likely it was not
changed. Likewise the further it is dated the more suspect it would be to change. The
earliest copies of Julius Caesar’s Gallic War date roughly 900 years after the original
autograph. Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome copies are dated 800 years after the
original. The New Testament was completed in the first century. There is a complete
copy that is dated somewhere in the fourth century, 250 years after the original. That’s
not it though, there are portions of manuscripts that are dated about 150 years after the
original autograph.
Okay, but how well do the manuscripts agree with each other? After compiling
the manuscripts of the Iliad about 5% of it was distorted, that’s about 1 in 20 lines that
had been changed. The New Testament had less than 1/5 of 1% distorted, that’s 40 lines
out of 20,000.
The Apostles letters spread very quickly through out the early church, through
Europe and even Northern Africa. If one copy was altered in Alexandria, that doesn’t
mean all the copies were altered. The Galatians might have been producing copy after
copy, staying true to the original autograph. But a question you must ask yourself is, why
would they change the text at all? It wouldn’t make sense for them to change it. The
early Christian church was highly persecuted, they stood up for what they knew to be
truth, they were willing to die for the message. They were many times burned alive, fed
to wild animals, whipped, beaten, stoned and often executed for the message contained in
the Apostles letters. There is no valid reason for them to alter what was contained in the
manuscripts.
The authority of the Bible is one pillar of my faith, there are many more. I know
if you would be willing to seriously investigate the claims Christianity makes, you would
walk away with at least a new respect, but most likely you would have a new faith.