About Christianity
and Jesus

(Download in PDF form.)

1. What is a Christian?
2. If Jesus is so important, who exactly was He?
3. How can I know the Bible is an accurate source of information about Jesus?
4. How does the number of transcripts Christians have compare to some of the other ancient writings like those of Plato or Homer?
5. Do we get all our information about Jesus' existence just from the Bible?
6. The real question is not, "Did Jesus exist?" but "Who was He?"
7. If God is so good, why doesn't He wipe out suffering?
8. If God is so good, why doesn't He wipe out all the causes of wrong?
9. Some might say, "Okay then, why doesn't God make us good?"
10. Why did God choose freedom for us?
11. What about natural disasters like floods and earthquakes? These natural disasters are not the direct result of human choice, are they? Aren't they God's responsibility?
12. Don't all roads lead to God?
13. Don't all the major world religions point to the same God?
14. What does it mean exactly, that the way to a relationship with God is through Jesus?

Other Hard Questions:

Questions about Suicide
A Case Study on Suicide
Questions about Battering
Questions about Shyness
How should we respond to an evil person?

Where can we get answers to some tough questions about Christianity and God?

The questions listed below are answered in a running dialogue. It is probably better to read the whole document to see your question in the context of other difficult questions, because many answers are built upon previous answers.

Let's take a look at each of these hard questions.

What is a Christian?

There are certainly a lot of opinions about the definition of a Christian:

• Someone who believes in God.
• Someone who is a good person.
• Someone who has been christened.
• Someone who is born in America.
• Someone who is weird.
• Someone who helps others.
• Someone who has been baptized.
• Someone who prays.
• Someone who reads his Bible a lot.
• Everyone who goes to church.

Who is right? Before we can see the right answer, we need to remind ourselves there are basically only two types of questions we are ever asked in life:

1. Those concerned with facts, and
2. Those that have to do with our opinions.

For instance, "What's your favorite color?" is a question about your opinion. You could answer blue, green, brown, red, or indigo, and each of these answers would be equally okay.

If I asked you, "How many minutes are in an hour?" however, you could come up with any number you like—5, 36, 349, or 10,132—but unless the answer you gave was 60, you would be wrong. The answer to this question about minutes in an hour has nothing to do with opinion; it is a matter of fact.

Likewise, while there is only one right answer to the question, "What is a Christian?" there are endless wrong ones to choose from.

Before I became a Christian, I had all sorts of ideas about what it was that made you one. It was all colored by weird people I had seen in church, relatives, and the media. I am thankful I had some good models of the Christian life in my immediate family, but even then, it took me a long time to realize that the definition of a Christian was a matter not of opinion, but of fact.

I was far from the only one confused about what a Christian is. If we were to take an opinion poll in any American city, we would discover that most people in this country believe in God. Many people would also say they were Christians, and we would end up with all sorts of ideas about what a Christian is. Those opinions might be interesting and genuinely held, but all of them cannot be right. Everyone cannot be correct at the same time. At the end of the day, the issue is who is right and who is wrong.

There is really only one right answer to the question,

"What is a Christian?" The word "Christian" comes from the name "Christ." Christianity is completely tied up with Jesus Christ. People might hold all sorts of interesting views about God, life, morality, church, and even the Bible, but unless those opinions reflect what Jesus actually taught, it is misguided for them to think of themselves as Christians. It is vital to grasp that the commonly held view that "Christian" is just another term for a good person isn't accurate. After all, there are all sorts of very good and honest people who do not claim to believe in God at all, let alone in Jesus' teaching.

So what did Jesus teach?

Many believe Jesus' teaching amounted to: "Love one another," "Turn the other cheek," and one or two other idealistic statements. It is surprising to many to find out that while Jesus did say these things, the center of His message was something else.

The heart of what Jesus said was, "Follow Me," not just "follow My example," or even "do the sorts of things that I do." The essence of His message was that each of us should follow Him personally—Mt. 4:19; 8:22; 9:9; 10:38; 16:24; 19:21; Mk. 1:17; 2:14; 8:34; 10:21; Lk. 5:27; 9:23,59,61; 14:27; 18:22; Jn. 1:43; 10:27; 12:26; 21:19,22.

John 10:27—"My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.

John 12:26—Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me."

Matt. 16:24—"Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.'"

So if Jesus is so important, who exactly was He?

Here are some of the options:
1. "Jesus lived, but I don't think He did all of those miracles; I mean, that is impossible."
2. "Jesus was a con man."
3. "Jesus existed, but He was not the Son of God."
4. "Jesus never claimed to be God."
5. "Jesus was just a good man."
6. "Jesus was one of the best men who ever lived."
7. "Jesus was a great teacher."

Whatever the answer, it is a fact that Jesus remains the world's all-time most influential individual:

• Every time we write the date on the top of a check, or look at a birth certificate, we see that Jesus' birth has become the reference point for the entire way we view time and history.
• Every year, more books and magazines about Jesus are sold than about any other person in history.
• About one third of the world's total population now claims to be His followers.
• The Bible still remains the number one best-selling book.

How can I know the Bible is an accurate source of information about Jesus?

Here is a typical conversation between two people about the Bible:

The Bible is a lot of made-up stories. Everyone knows it was made up hundreds of years after Jesus lived... if He ever actually lived at all. Besides, it has been altered through the ages with each new translation.

Do you honestly believe what you just said?

Of course I do.

Well, then, you should take a trip to the library and spend some time in the reference section discovering how the Bible was written and the pain that was taken to assure its accuracy.

The manner of copying the Scripture is historically unparalleled for its careful attention to detail and accuracy. No secular text has received such careful and detailed attention. The ancient copyists (sometimes called "scribes") carried out their responsibility with extreme discipline and care. They thought of their duty to copy the documents flawlessly as a ministry before God. They apparently had such a dread of failure that they took extraordinary precautions to assure the accuracy of their work. They numbered the letters, words, and sentences so that they could check and recheck their work. When they got to the end of the page, if all the numbers were not identical to the page they were copying from, they would throw the page away and start again.

The account of the transmission of Scripture is most remarkable.

Josh McDowell, in his book, Evidence that Demands A Verdict, tells of the evidence of this accuracy through the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. In 1948, what came to be known as the Dead Sea scrolls were found. One is the Isaiah scroll, e.g., the Book of Isaiah. The oldest manuscripts up to that time were from 900 A.D., and these are dated at 100 B.C.! How can we be sure of an accurate transmission since the time of Christ in 32 A.D.? We pick the time of Christ because we accept as inspired the copy of Scripture in his day, and these scrolls predate Jesus' earthly life by 100 years. How accurate was the transmission from 100 B.C. to 900 A.D.?

Of the 163 words used in Isaiah 53, there are only 17 letters in question. Ten are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more are letters of minor stylist changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word "light," which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly. Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after 1,000 years of transmission—and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage!

Gleason Archer made the observation that the Isaiah scrolls "proved to be word-for-word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text. The 5% of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling."

On to Part Two...