Why I am a Christian?
A paper by Elvis Plaku
Skeptics and general opposers of the Christian faith are my audience for the paper.
Even though Christianity is a faith of reason and truth, it seems as if the rejection of it,
despite of a supposed logical basis, is more one of personal feelings of incompliance and
rejection, then pure logical reason.
Many people, especially in America, are aware of the many truths and principles that
Christianity embodies, because of traditions and Christian influences in this culture. However,
the sad reality is that many of them have turned into open rejecters and oposers of those same
truths and principles that this country claims to be based on.
The central message of Christianity centers around One individual and is forever
transformed and changed by the claims that He made about Himself and God! The noted
Christian writer C. S. Lewis presented his arguments about the validity of Jesus’ claims by
simplifying the issue into three basic options that would help us qualify the truth of His claims
by the category that we put Him in. Lewis first, and later others including the noted author and
speaker Josh McDowell, proposed the ‘Liar, Lunatic, Lord trilemma’ as the possible categories
and options, that would help us decide about the truth of Jesus in a more logical way.
First, it is important for us to understand what kinds of claims Jesus made about Himself
that made Him different from all other claims and people! He taught about a wide array of issues,
for example; marriage, divorce, food, sexuality, and also hell which was not one of those He
mentioned many times, but more controversial His teachings and claims about issues, was His
personal claim. He claimed to be God!
It is this claim that I believe is the most important one, and also the most controversial.
People can say many things about Him. They can call Him a teacher, a prophet of God, a priest
and many more titles that can honor Him and that can tell us something about Him, but His claim
to divinity is the highest and hardest of them all to understand and except, since if it is true that
He is God, than what He said bears the same weight, truth and authority, as anything else that we
know God has said!
Now, let’s consider the first option in the trilemma. Let’s consider His claim if He would
have been a liar.
If, when Jesus made His claims, He knew that He was not God, then He was lying and
deliberately deceiving His followers. And if He was a liar, then He was also a hypocrite because
He told others to be honest whatever the cost, while He Himself taught and lived a colossal lie.
This view of Jesus, however, doesn't coincide with what we know either of Him or of the
results of His life and teachings. Whenever Jesus has been proclaimed, lives have been changed
for the good, nations have been changed for the better. Thieves have been made honest,
alcoholics have been cured, hateful individuals have become channels of love, unjust persons
have become just.
Someone who lived as Jesus lived, taught as Jesus taught and died as Jesus died could not
have been a liar. What other alternatives are there? Let’s consider the second option; Lunatic!
If it is inconceivable for Jesus to be a bar, then couldn't He actually have thought Himself
to be God but been mistaken? After all, it's possible to be sincere and wrong.
Someone who believes he is God sounds like someone today believing himself to be
Napoleon. He would be deluded and self-deceived and probably would be locked up so he
wouldn't hurt himself or anyone else. Yet in Jesus we don't observe the abnormalities and
imbalance that usually go along with being deranged. His poise and composure when confronted
by His enemies would certainly be amazing if He were insane. Here is a man who spoke some of
the most profound sayings ever recorded. His instructions have liberated many individuals in
mental bondage.
What then, was He really the Lord? I cannot personally conclude that Jesus was a Liar or
a Lunatic. The only other alternative is that He is the Christ-the Son of God-as He claimed to be.
I am convinced that His claims are true.
Another evidence to consider about the claim of Jesus to being God, is that of His
resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is writing to the Corinthians about the importance and
truth of the gospel that was preached to them. He explains to them that Jesus had to die
according to the Scriptures and that He was buried according to the Scripture, and also that He
was resurrected according the Scriptures, appearing to many people on different occasions, even
up to five hundred at one time. Then later in the same chapter Paul says: And if Christ has not
been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. 1 Cor 15:14 (NASU)
This statement is important, because if Christ didn’t really resurrect, than all of
Christianity should fall, and our story is the greatest joke and deceit that the world has ever
heard. So, let’s consider the facts, what about the people of that time, what was their reaction to
all of this.
First, it is important for us to understand that the New Testament accounts of the
Resurrection were being circulated within the lifetimes of men and women alive at the time of
the event. Those people could certainly have confirmed or denied the accuracy of such accounts.
The writers of the four Gospels either had themselves been witnesses or else were relating the
accounts of eyewitnesses of the actual events. The facts and details of what Christ had said and
done were presented in the very presence of antagonistic eyewitnesses of Christ who knew the
events surrounding Christ’s life and ministry.
The New Testament witnesses were fully aware of the background against which the
Resurrection took place. The body of Jesus, in accordance with Jewish burial customs, was
wrapped in a linen cloth. About 100 pounds of aromatic spices, mixed together to form a gummy
or cement-like substance, were applied to the wrappings of cloth about the body to form an
encasement weighing about 120 pounds.
After the body was placed in a solid rock tomb, the historical accounts point out that an
extremely large stone closed the entrance of the tomb. The large stone weighed approximately
one-and-a-half to two tons and was rolled (by means of levers) against the tomb's entrance.
A Roman guard unit of sixteen strictly disciplined fighting men was stationed to guard
the tomb. This guard unit affixed on the tomb the Roman seal, which was meant to prevent any
attempt at vandalizing the sepulcher. Anyone trying to move the stone from the tomb's entrance
would have broken the seal and incurred the wrath of Roman law.
But three days later the tomb was empty. The followers of Jesus said He had risen from
the dead. They reported that He appeared to them during a period of forty days, showing Himself
to them by many "infallible proofs." Paul the apostle recounted that Jesus appeared to more than
500 of His followers at one time, the majority of whom were still alive and could confirm what
Paul wrote. No one acquainted with the facts can accurately say that Jesus appeared to just "an
insignificant few."
As Christians we believe that Jesus was bodily resurrected in time and space by the
supernatural power of God. The difficulties of belief may be great but the problems inherent in
unbelief present even greater difficulties. To put it another way, when it comes to the
Resurrection, the burden of unbelief is greater than the burden of belief.
The theories advanced to explain the Resurrection by "natural causes" are weak; they
actually help to build confidence in the truth of the Resurrection.
The first theory (The Worg Tomb Theory), assumes that the women who reported the
body was missing had mistakenly gone to the wrong tomb. If so, then the disciples who went to
check up on the women's statement must have also gone to the wrong tomb. We may be certain,
however, that the Jewish authorities, who asked for a Roman guard to be stationed at the tomb to
prevent Jesus' body from being stolen, would not have been mistaken about the location. Nor
would the Roman guards, for they were there!
Also, if the Resurrection claim was merely because of a geographical mistake, the Jewish
authorities would have lost no time in producing the body from the proper tomb, thus effectively
squelching for all time any rumor of resurrection.
Another theory, is that of the Discpiles stilling the body while the guards slept, which is
one of the theories that people used and was recorded in the Scriptures. However, the depression
and cowardice of the disciples provide a hard-hitting argument against their suddenly becoming
so brave and daring as to face a detachment of soldiers at the tomb and steal the body. They were
in no mood to attempt something like that. And neither could it be reasonable that the Jewish or
Roman authorities stole it, since this would have been completely agianst what they had been
trying to do up to now. And, what is more remarkable, is that they could not say where the body
was, since they didn’t have it in the first place.
One of the most desperate appeals to explain away the Resurrection is the appeal to
Hallucinations. In no way can one say that Jesus' appearances were stereotyped or that His
followers were hallucinating what happened to them according to some trumped-up formula
intended to convince people of what was actually not so. However, it is a proven psychological
fact that hallucinations can happen to a single individual, and it would be impossible for that to
have happened to as many as 500 people at one time.
Let’s look at another theory that was popularized several centuries ago and is often
quoted today. The swoon theory, which says that Jesus didn't die; he merely fainted from
exhaustion and loss of blood. And everyone thought He was dead, but later He resuscitated and
the disciples thought it to be a resurrection.
Skeptic David Friedrich Strauss --- certainly no believer in the Resurrection--- gave the
deathblow to any thought that Jesus revived from a swoon:
It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the
sepulcher, who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical
treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening and indulgence,
and who still at last yielded to His sufferings, could have given to
the disciples the impression that He was a Conqueror over death
and the grave, the Prince of Life, an impression which lay at the
bottom of their future ministry. Such a resuscitation could only
have weakened the impression which He had made upon them in
fife and in death, at the most could only have given it an elegiac
voice, but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into
enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.1
The last theory that will be considered, is the one where the disciples lied about the whole
resurrection story. Then my answer to that would be: Did they then die for a lie, as history tells
us they did?
Good historical tradition shows us twelve Jewish men, eleven of whom died martyrs'
deaths as a tribute to one thing: an empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus of Nazareth alive
after His death by crucifixion.
Remember that at first the disciples didn't believe it either-not until they saw Him with
their own eyes. For forty days after His resurrection, these men walked with Jesus, lived with
Him, ate with Him. His resurrection was accompanied by many "convincing proofs" (Acts 1:3).
While if it is true that thousands of people throughout history have died for a lie, they did
so only if they thought it to be the truth.
Another option has been suggested about Jesus’ claims, is the option that His words have
been altered. Some of the major proponents of this view are the Muslims, however, this is an
issue that has been around before they came around. The only way that we can prove that is by
looking at the reliability of the records about Jesus during His time.
So, how reliable are the records that contain the words and His claims about Himself –
the Gospels and the New Testament in general? First, of all we need to recognize that we are not
talking about the different translations that we use and are made available to us in our language,
but more specifically the language that the New Testament records were written in originally –
the ancient Greek.
The New Testament is what we consider ancient literature, and as such it can be studied
and compared with other types of literature. In this respect, the New Testament surpasses all the
other literature of antiquity in more that a few ways and has an incredible support for its
reliability and accuracy of transmission more then ten of them put together.
The first important factor or reliability, has to do with the number of manuscripts in
existence, because the more the better. It may be possible to change one document, or maybe
several, but not hundreds of them in different parts of the world. And even if mistakes are made
in copying, other manuscripts written in other places are not likely to have the same mistakes.
The logic is simple, if you have only one manuscript how can you know if it has been changed?
But if you have several you can compare them. So the more copies there are, the easier it is to
make comparisons to determine the original content of the record.
The New Testament has over 24,000 copies and copies of copies of the original
manuscripts, including translations, and patristic quotations. However, it has over 5,000
manuscripts, which are primary copies of the original manuscripts.
There is a lot more proofs and convincing evidences that I could bring about the reliablity
of the Bible and truth about Jesus, however, I believe that now it’s up to you to deciede what you
will do with these claims for your life!
1
David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus for the People, 2d ed. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1879),1:412.
Taken from Josh McDowell’s book Christianity: Hoax of History?