What we Christians believe

One thing you do not need to believe, if you are a Christian, that all the other religions are simply wrong all the time.

If you are an atheist, you do need to believe, that all the religions, through all the time, everywhere, have always been wrong.

And that all the faith people profess and have professed through the history has been simple one huge mistake.

In C. S. Lewis’s word “If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth”.

But being Christian means thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong.

We, the Christians, can see how people around the world have always sought the truth.

There is something in people that makes them to look for something higher and bigger than themselves.

Something that cannot be calmed down, that tells us that there is something more, that we are missing an integral part of who we are.

“These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in”.

C. S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

Do you think there is a Natural law that we all can feel in our hearts?

And, as Christians, we believe that the men, and women, were made to be in communion with God.

We were made to need God and seek the truth.

As Christians, we can see that the religions stem from this need to find God.

And we can see that some of them are closer to finding the truth than others.

But at the same time, like in mathematics, there can be only one right answer.

Even though some wrong answers are closer to the truth than others.

Do you believe in a Moral law?

"When you say there's too much evil in this world you assume there's good. When you assume there's good, you assume there's such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But if you assume a moral law, you must posit a moral Law Giver, but that's Who you're trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there's no moral Law Giver, there's no moral law. If there's no moral law, there's no good. If there's no good, there's no evil. What is your question?"

—Ravi Zacharias

The first big division

The first big division of humanity comes from believing or not in some kind of deity.

Here Christianity goes with the vast majority of people throughout the history.

Christians stand together with ancient Greeks and Romans, modern savages, Muslims, Hindus, New Age, and every other religion, in the belief that there is some kind of God or gods.

Against all these religions stand the modern Western European materialists who have come to believe that all religion is a myth, a non-true myth, and a lie.

And thus deny the existence of God.

They believe that people have developed enough to grow up and leave religion behind.

But are people really that different from what we were five hundreds, or a thousand, or even two or three thousand years ago?

People were inventing, living, thriving or suffering, and all the time seeking the truth, trying to fill the hole in their being.

Trying to fill the void with religion and gods.

Trying to find out the truth.

Just like we do today.

“When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most”, C. S. Lewis.

Which moral law should we choose?

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back the soonest is the most progressive man”.

C. S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

The second big division

Being a Christian means believing in God, believing in existence of a god.

But it also means thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong.

Being a Christian means that you believe that you have found the Truth, and that truth is Jesus.

That is what being a Christian is about.

People who believe in a kind of god can be divided according to the sort of god or gods they believe in.

Do you think We needGod?

“It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right -that it's an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn't exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that. Who is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity instead of God. Well, only an idiot can maintain that. I can't understand it. Life's easy for Rakitin. 'You'd better think about the extension of civic rights, or of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.' I answered him: 'Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat if it suits you, and make a rouble on every penny.' He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer that, Alyosha. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it's relative. Or isn't it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won't laugh if I tell you it's kept me awake for two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

There are people, called Pantheist, like most modern Hindus, that believe that god is beyond good and evil.

They believe that god animates the universe, the universe is, in a way, god, and we are all part of god.

Christianity, Jews and Islam, have a quite different view on things.

The three religions are also called religions of a book.

For Christians this book is the Bible, for Islam the Koran and for the Jews, the Tanakh, where Christian Old Testament stems from.

All these three religions believe that “God invented and made the universe – like a man making a picture or composing a tune. A painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed. You may say, “He’s put a lot of himself into it”, but you only mean that all its beauty and interest has come out of his head. His skill is not in the picture in the same way that it is in his head, or even in his hand”, C. S. Lewis.

Pantheism believes that everything you find in this world is a part of God.

But if you think that God is really good, that God is goodness, nothing that is evil can be part of Him.

To believe that God is good, to believe in Christian God, you need to believe that God is separate from the world.

That some of the things we see in the world, what we perceive as unjust and evil, are contrary to His will.

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back the soonest is the most progressive man”.

C. S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

What is sin?

“For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world – that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God “made up out of His head” as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again”, C. S. Lewis.

This is part of on-going series that I write every Sunday.

The links in the text are to previous posts.

We need God

“For the trouble is that one part of you is on His (God’s) side and really agrees with his disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let you off this one time; but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behavior, then He cannot be good. On the other hand, we know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again”.

C. S. Lewis – Mere Christianity

Now if you have come to honestly believe that there must be a moral law Giver for a moral law to exist, what is the next thing to do?

How can you proceed?

As I said before, if you believe in relativism, there is a huge amount of religions to choose. You can make any of them your own and decide that that particular faith is your moral giver.

Or you can believe that Christianity is the real thing.

You can choose Christian God.

You can accept that Christians offer you an answer to why there is evil in the world and also how we can overcome the evil.

As C. S. Lewis says “When you have realized your position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer an explanation how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this law, which you and I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God”.

This means doing some radical thinking. Changing your worldview and accepting that you may not always be right.

It also means accepting that there is someone far greater and more magnificent you could ever imagine.

The problem is that, even though this is a very comforting idea of a great loving person behind everything. It is also a very dangerous and terrifying idea of a great perfect being behind everything.

Just like C. S. Lewis says “God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from”.

But what are you looking for?

The truth?

Or something to take away your fears and comfort you during the lonely nights?

Again a quote from C. S. Lewis: “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort of truth – only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair”.

Or a thought from a great Russian literary masterpiece:

“It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right -that it's an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn't exist, man is the king of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that. Who is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity instead of God. Well, only an idiot can maintain that. I can't understand it. Life's easy for Rakitin. 'You'd better think about the extension of civic rights, or of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.' I answered him: 'Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat if it suits you, and make a rouble on every penny.' He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer that, Alyosha. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it's relative. Or isn't it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won't laugh if I tell you it's kept me awake for two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov


To begin, read Natural law. A post about the law we all have in our hearts.

If you would like to know what comes after read the post about Moral law.

Having read that, you'll need to know Which moral law to choose. 

If you agree that you need God, read to find out What is sin.