Thinking Christian

First posted on February 1, but made for Easter, for He is Risen!

Jesus Christ lived on Earth and displayed a life of perfect love, trust, and worship. His example is incomparably great–and it’s unreachable. Part of the validation of the message of Christ is in its unique combination of reality and perfection in the character He displayed. The standard He set is strongly desirable–if being a person who lives for the sake of God and others, and in great joy is attractive to you–and yet it is impossible.

The Example Was Not Enough
This takes us back to the predicament we all started in. God created us for relationship with Him, dependence on Him, and rich, full relationships with each other in an environment that didn’t constantly fight back. We haven’t lost the sense of how things ought to be, but we’ve certainly lost the experience of it. We’re told that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Sin is defined in the original context (and also in the original language) as a falling short, a failure to hit the mark.

In other words, if Jesus came just to teach and set an example, we might as well say, “A lot of good that did us! We can’t live up to that!”

But that’s not all he did. Again, going back to earlier in this series, recall that the penalty for rebelling against God was death. Jesus Christ lived to show us how to live, and then He died on the cross for us. We could speak of at least fifty reasons He suffered and died, as John Piper has done (skim the Table of Contents here), but most Christians put this one at the top of the list: he paid the death penalty on our behalf. Because He is God, and because He joined with us as a man Himself, he could do that on behalf of us all.

Rescue From Something Bigger Than We Are
The story is told of a drowning man, whom two men went to help. The first threw him a book on how to swim. The second pulled him out of the water. This is the difference between teaching and rescue. The analogy, like all others, is imperfect; this one understates the real value of teaching. But it does remind us that there are situations where teaching is not what we really need, and one of them is when we’re dying and cannot help ourselves. Most of the passengers on the Titanic were in that situation: even the best and strongest of them needed rescue. The water was too cold, the shore too far.

We can too easily fool ourselves about our need. Once I was chatting with a seatmate on an airplane. He said it was his first flight in over 10 years, but he was okay with that; he seemed quite at home and comfortable. I sensed he was the type who would feel quite at home and comfortable anywhere. Somehow we got to talking about Jesus Christ. He said, “I don’t need that. I’m in control of my life.” I said, “Well, I don’t see you flying this aircraft.” He responded, “Well, I could!”

I don’t know where my remark to him about flying the aircraft came from, but I do know that he had a vastly overrated sense of himself. A friend of mine who flew F-116s and A-10s for the Air Force said even he wouldn’t try to fly a commercial aircraft–not unless the flight attendant came back and said, “The cabin crew have both just had heart attacks, so could somebody please land the plane for us?” Then, he said, he might volunteer, but never otherwise. Every aircraft is different: too different to permit even a fighter pilot to think, “I can fly one, I can fly them all!”

So I told my over-confident seatmate that day, “I understand you don’t feel a need for this right now, and in that case I wouldn’t expect you to respond to what I’m saying about Christ. But I predict someday you’re going to run into something bigger than yourself. I urge you to keep this in the back of your mind until then.” I offered, and he accepted, a written summary of the message of Christ, similar to this.

We’re all going to run into something bigger than ourselves. (Some of us are looking it down the throat today.) The one most certain example is death. That’s why we need rescue and not just good teaching. Jesus’ death for us accomplished a rescue: not that we will never physically die, but that it will not be the end of the story.

A New Life
It certainly wasn’t the end of the story for Jesus! On the third day, He rose from the dead. He appeared first to several women, then to others of His followers, and on one occasion to more than 500 people at once. (Evidences for this abound, here, for example; though in this series my primary purpose has been to explain more than to prove. ) He defeated death for us! The rescue He accomplished was not just to pull us out of the water and into the ICU on life support, but to give us everlasting life with a full experience of love, joy, worship, and yes, also very significant challenge.

We need His example, but beyond that, we need His life in us.

By the way, that life is not just for someday in heaven. What Christ does for us also includes giving us a whole new quality of life on Earth.

Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us

• Part 1: Our Roots In God’s Plan
• Part 2: Broken Roots
• Part 3: The Extent of Brokenness
• Part 4: Restorations
• Part 5: Who Christ Is
• Part 6: Among Us, Loving Us
• Part 7: Showing How to Live
• Part 8: Death and Resurrection
• Part 9: The Cross, Again
• Part 10: The Resurrection, Again
• Part 11: Life in Christ

Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.

The religious and political leaders thought they had Jesus all figured out. I doubt there’s anything in history or literature to match the irony of that.

They expected was the kind of thing they usually saw during a trial and execution: fear, self-protection, defensiveness; or possibly something like guilt, regret, or remorse. They thought they were in control. They thought it was about a political power struggle, in which Jesus was, to some of them, a nuisance, and to others a pawn. They thought they were taking care of themselves.

They had it all wrong.

It started a few days before Jesus’ arrest, when the high priest, no friend of Jesus, was tapped by God to utter an inadvertent prophecy:

“You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. (John 11:49-52)

The context of the whole begins many months earlier, though, when Jesus made it known that he had come for an unexpected purpose:

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. (Matthew 16:21)

When they arrested him they were on his agenda. It was not that he had a death wish; he dreaded his coming ordeal. But he knew his purpose, to stand in through his death for the deaths of many others. The crowd had it in for him; they did not realize they were setting up a perfect illustration of what Jesus’ death was all about: he died so that others might live:

Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.” Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” (Matthew 27:15-23)

And Pilate let Barabbas go free, while Jesus was executed in his place.

They mocked the king by pretending he was a king:

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. (Matthew 27:27-31)

While he was on the cross, others mocked him further:

And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” (Matthew 27:39-43)

They derided him for not saving himself; they did not know he was saving them. They thought his claim to be the Son of God was dying along with him; they did not know it was about to be proved with unparalleled power.

Pilate and the Jewish leaders got into a squabble about the charge under which he was to be executed.

Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” (John 19:19-22)

This was all political: Pilate was trying to embarrass them, to show that Rome had power over anyone among them who seemed to be someone, and especially over their Establishment. In the process, he got it right: Jesus is king of the Jews and of all creation.

The ultimate irony was revealed on Sunday morning. On Friday, Jesus looked like the weak, despicable loser. He died an agonizing and humiliating death. He was wrapped in thick grave clothes and interred behind a heavy stone in a tomb. He lay there lifeless for two nights.

Then he stood up.

He stood up, and the stone rolled away, and he appeared in his true power and glory as the conqueror of all humiliation and the master over suffering and death.

There’s a lesson for us in all this. Jesus had a plan all along. They thought they were dealing him on their terms, when all along he was dealing with them on his terms. But he was obviously not perpetrating a power play; he was sacrificing himself for their good, and for ours. The lesson for us, then, is that God will deal with us on his terms, too; not for the sake of power but for the sake of our good, and to submit to his terms is very, very good. Or, the next time you think you have God figured out and you can set the terms for him, remember he doesn’t work that way–his way is better.

You see, we live in irony, too: the greatest freedom and life come by submitting to the one who died for us.

(Scripture quotations from the English Standard Version)

It doesn’t matter what you think about Intelligent Design or ID, and you don’t have to agree with all the comments and commentary here. Still, the punch line on this story really is hilarious:

Expelled! - The Panda’s Thumb

From a blog post a few weeks ago:

Make no mistake, the cross of Jesus Christ is a drastic solution to a serious problem, and the problem is our fundamental distance, because of rebellion, from the God who created and loves us. He loves us enough that He was willing (”for the joy set before him” Christ did this) to sacrifice Himself to solve our problem. There is no other solution for such a deep difficulty as we are in. It was a very costly solution. Do we trivialize our own faults? Do we recognize the sacrifice by which we are freed from them?

As my friend Jimmy Fauntleroy sings:

Three crosses on a hill, I had forgotten now I never will
Three crosses on a hill; there’s yours and mine and there’s another still….

This is the medicine that goes deep within your veins
Kills the cancer [but] has a tendency to intensify the pain
This is the marriage of purity and shame
This is a bloody war–it ain’t no game!

Life was won for us by direct confrontation. Purity and shame met on the cross, and purity defeated shame. Life met death, and life won. The result: the cancer is cured! But what is this “tendency to intensify the pain” about? Unfortunately I can’t bring the full context of Jimmy’s overall message here. He would also say, and he exemplifies, how greatly it intensifies joy and life. The pain, I take it, is what we feel when facing our fallenness, the big and little ways we need the “medicine that goes deep within your veins.” It is one of the ways we all participate in that mighty confrontation.

This is the paradox of Christianity and of Jesus. His death led to our life. We die to self, to live the fullest life. The deepest joy comes from overcoming the deepest pains. This is Good Friday, the day of remembering the deepest pains. But God is an overcomer, and Sunday’s coming!

The responses to my question last week include the following.

From SteveK:

I’d say a religion that confirmed, or aligned with, what we are most striving for…. What has humanity been striving for throughout history? At the top of the list: love, truth, joy, contentment, justice, peace, understanding, relationship, significance, hope, etc.

Leslie explained that followers’ devotion is not a true test of a religion, then added,

Personally, the historical authenticity and reliability of the religion’s writings seems to me to be one of the few ways to take an unbiased look at the validity of what the religion teaches. I’m not sure it’s the whole test, but for me it’s definitely part of it.

Paul wrote:

I’d need to be able to communicate with the God of the religion in a normal fashion. I’d need a being that I could communicate with directly, as easily as I do my friends.

doctor(logic)’s answer seemed to be that there is no test. Does that imply there’s no way to know what is not a true religion?

Medicine Man said he believes a true religion must display internal consistency of its beliefs and ideas. Then he linked to a page on his blog where he adds these tests:

1. It has to provide meaningful impacts on one’s daily life
2. It must correlate to reality
3. It must be internally consistent
4. The worldview must be supported by rational, real-world supporting evidence
5. These tests must be objective

He expands these five items with commentary there.

wf3 offered a surprising suggestion:

Since truth, by necessity, excludes error, I would look for a religion that claims to be the sole truth.

Fabio picked up an earlier theme on the adherents to a religion and suggested,

at if you want to judge a religion by its adherents you would not measure the adherents by some set bar, but rather you would measure each adherent by the changes, positive or negative, in that person.

This follow-on was amusing:

Obviously that’s difficult to do and subject to interpretation (would a relativist agree that a liar who became honest is a better man?).

Further, he added,

this religion should not contradict scientific fact…. [and] he religion should account for the origin of the entire universe, not just earth or mankind, and the religions god should be external to the universe. If a religion claims that its god is part of and contained in the universe, then it can hardly be true.

Havok pointed to the internal consistency test that was raised more than once, and suggested that those commenters were holding to an internal coherence theory of truth. That’s not necessarily the case. Internal coherence theories typically say that a system of beliefs is true just if it is internally coherent. Internal coherence is the sole test. We saw among these comments, though, that there ought also to be a correspondence with reality. Correspondence theories include coherence as one test, but not the only test of truth.

Since I’ve already moved from recapitulating into analyzing, I’ll continue. No one pretended these comments would make an exhaustive list of tests, but there are some good ones here. wf3’s is the most unexpected: A religion that claims to be the sole truth. I think this is on the right track. If religions disagree with each other, and one of them is true, then the others must be false (where they disagree with it). Moreover it seems that the one true religion quite plausibly would have the self-awareness to know that its truth excludes all conflicting truth claims.

In The Reason for God, which I’ll be reviewing soon, Timothy Keller makes an interesting related point. If there is one true religion, then your culture and mine, as well as all other cultures, are going to think it’s wrong on some significant point. Why? Because ultimate spiritual reality is not culturally conditioned. Every religion teaches that humans have a problem with knowing or doing the truth. A problem like this is bound to appear in cultures as well as individuals. Every culture will have a problem with knowing or doing the truth.

Because of cultural conditioning, though, we are likely to see it the other way around. We tend to think of our cultures as having “arrived,” but this, too is culturally conditioned. Westerners typically think it’s illiberal and unethical, for example, to judge another culture, but other cultures disagree with that. Are we going to judge them and say they are wrong? That’s contradictory and can even become comical. Mark Steyn wrote of Lady Kennedy’s apparent belief that

our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable.

Paul’s test, to be able to communicate with God as a friend, raises all kinds of interesting thoughts. I’ll outline a much-too-short Christian response. First, God calls us into a very personal relationship with Him, where there is true communication. Second, it cannot be as a friend to a friend, because God is God and we are not (nor are our friends). God is worthy of worship, not casual hanging out together. Third, human rebellion from God creates a barrier which God overcomes in Jesus Christ’s death on the cross (it’s Good Friday today, when we commemorate that). Real relationship is possible for those who enter it on God’s terms, but not for those who refuse the terms for which He lovingly gave His life. And the real relationship we can experience now is nothing compared to the intimacy we’ll experience in heaven with God.

To summarize, we have several tests on the table here:

• Internal consistency
• Meeting the desires/strivings of humans, including love, meaning, forgiveness, joy, relationship, …
• Life change of adherents
• Correspondence with extra-religious fact, including science and history
• Transcendence
• A claim of unique truth
• Challenging individuals’ and cultures’ beliefs and actions

That’s not a bad list. We can work with it.

There have been a bewildering 170 comments so far in response to a post published here a week ago. The bewilderment, for me, has been that much of the discussion has been a debate on the Law of Noncontradiction. It’s hard for me to see how that could be controversial–or how controversy is even possible if the LNC is not an agreed principle–but it has been.

It started with the question whether there is such a thing as nonempirical knowledge. One commenter proposed this test:

“If you can’t check it (ie. test it), then even if it is true, you can never know that.”

This alone doesn’t assert that the test must be empirical (based on observation), but that’s the direction the discussion went. One example:

“I showed you a specific example of how logic is verified by observation. I’ll repeat: if the observations I laid out didn’t verify the logic, we wouldn’t believe in the logic, so the logic is directly dependent on those observations.”

All this time I’ve had a relevant resource in my list of waiting web pages–pages I saw when I did not have time study them, and bookmarked to return to later. A few weeks ago J.P. Moreland published a short article on Christianity and Non-Empirical Knowledge. Here’s a taste of it (he is using “see” as shorthand for “testing something with the five senses”):

First, truth (the relation of matching or correspondence between a thought/proposition and reality) is not something we can see, so if we are limited to our five senses, we can have no grasp of it. If I believe that a book I ordered is at the bookstore, and then go to the bookstore and see the book, I know that my belief about the book is true. I can see the book there, but I cannot see my belief that the book was there, nor can I see the correspondence relationship between the book’s being there and my belief that it was there.

(Emphasis added)

What does this have specifically to do with Christianity? I don’t know where Moreland is planning to go with it in his next article in this series. There is, though, a common belief that the only reliable form of knowledge is scientific knowledge, which is further believed to be all empirical. If this is true, then faith is excluded. Moreland shows that this is a false assumption.

Christian Carnival!

At Crossroads: Where Faith and Inquiry Meet: Christian Carnival CCXVI

Abortion harms women. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is taking a very strong stand on this, saying it’s time to reverse positions and overturn policies on abortions. According to today’s [London] Times Online,

Women may be at risk of mental health breakdowns if they have abortions, a medical royal college has warned. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says women should not be allowed to have an abortion until they are counselled on the possible risk to their mental health. This overturns the consensus that has stood for decades that the risk to mental health of continuing with an unwanted pregnancy outweighs the risks of living with the possible regrets of having an abortion.

(Emphasis added.)

When I first looked at this article on the Times website, the first comment there read almost like a punch line:

“No one should ever counsel a woman….she should trust her feelings.”
Charles, Vancouver, Washington

(This comment has now moved off the front page. Click “read all comments” to find it. The ellipsis was in the original.)

We’ll come back to Charles in a moment.

Douglas Groothuis has predicted this report will not see the light of day in U.S. media, except on pro-life websites. That would be consistent with the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) response to earlier studies with similar findings. More than two years ago researchers in New Zealand, using gold-standard study methods, found that women who had undergone abortions suffer significantly increased levels of mental health troubles, including depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and substance abuse. These results were contrary to the researchers’ expectations.

A few months later 15 experts put their signatures under this statement in the Times of London:

“Research published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry in January has shown that even women without past mental health problems are at risk of psychological ill-effects after abortion. Women who had had abortions had twice the level of mental health problems and three times the risk of major depressive illness as those who had given birth or never been pregnant.”

Research into these issues is ongoing, and there have been studies in which no negative mental health effects on women were revealed. The very real likelihood of such effects, however, has either been understated or ignored. Now the Royal College is quite responsibly recognizing that large-scale, high-quality studies are indicating that abortion can be harmful to women’s mental health.

The APA’s response to this has been to edit their “Briefing Sheet on the Impact of Abortion on Women.” On October 31, 2006, it very helpfully read,

“This fact sheet is currently being updated. For other information, please visit our homepage at www.apa.org/ppo.”

How informative. I wondered at the time if and when they would be have the courage to tell the whole story. Today, over one year and four months later, it reads,

“This fact sheet is currently being updated. For other information, please visit our homepage at www.apa.org/ppo.”

… which sounds vaguely similar to the last time. (I wonder if my Psych professors would have granted me my degree if I’d taken that long to “update” my thesis.) The APA certainly isn’t leading the charge in promoting mental health (never mind the “health effects” on the unborn child who gets killed). The Washington Times reported in 2006:

Dr. Russo pointed out that in 1969 the APA adopted the position that abortion should be a civil right. She added, “To pro-choice advocates, mental health effects are not relevant to the legal context of arguments to restrict access to abortion.”

According to Dr. Russo, pro-choice researchers have a different agenda. “To someone who believes that the decision to have a child is a personal decision, protected by a right of privacy, evidence about negative effects of abortion is important, but for a different policy goal — to provide women accurate information so they can make informed choices in their pregnancy decisionmaking process.”

The APA is a mental health organization except when it’s a civil rights organization. Try this thought experiment to see how consistent that position is. Remove the word “abortion” from that quote, and enter “using heroin” in its place. Both have advocates for and against their legalization, on civil rights grounds; both have documented mental health effects….

Which brings us back to the “punch line” we opened with here. Charles thinks it’s wrong to counsel a woman regarding abortion. “She should trust her own feelings,” he said. Do you suppose any boyfriend, husband, or one-night-stand-jerk has ever “counseled” a woman that if she didn’t get an abortion he was going to drop her right then and there–or worse? That’s the kind of “counseling” a woman doesn’t need, but I’ll wager women get more information about their future health risks from that kind of discussion than they get from Planned Parenthood.

What if a trained and qualified psychologist told a woman an abortion would likely double her risk of mental health problems, and even triple her risk of depression? Charles thinks that would be bad. “She should trust her feelings” instead. He probably views abortion as a very personal issue and a civil right. He also appears to represent an abortion-protection position that’s extreme to the point of silliness. Let’s let him go, then; we need not consider him representative of the pro-abortion position. What about the APA, though? What about the media in America? What do you suppose they’re thinking about this? Don’t ever say anything bad about abortion! You’ll give the anti-choice wackos more ammunition!

In fact, by their silence the APA and the U.S. media have been saying, for at least 16 months, Protect abortion at all costs. They’re saying that protecting abortion is far, far more important than protecting babies. That’s okay, they say; babies aren’t really persons. Now, I think that’s a really lousy argument, but I’ll grant that it’s at least an argument. By their continuing silence, though, they are also saying that protecting abortion is far more important than protecting women.

The parallel is striking. Does it mean they believe women aren’t really persons? If not, why the silence?

One further important point: changing abortion policy is not the only value at issue here. Some readers of this article have probably had abortions, others have probably encouraged someone to have an abortion, and many others have been otherwise been close to issue in a very personal way. I don’t want the policy side of the issue to blind us to the actual effects many have experienced. The research cited by the Royal College of Psychiatrists is very statistical and abstract, but it represents real women. I deplore the APA’s public disregard of these very real persons. I do not want to be guilty of the same. An article like this calls for a follow-up addressing their real-life situations.

Guilt is one likely issue, addressed very sensitively here. I’m not sure I’m qualified to go far beyond that. Every woman’s (and every family’s) experience is too different. I don’t know how to speak to it. I would welcome others’ suggestions for good articles and resources to help.

More information at Magic Statistics.

[Original links to some of the 2006 news stories have been closed by the respective newspapers. I'll vouch for the quotes, though, which were live in the news sources when I first blogged on them, as linked here. They can also be confirmed by Google searches.]

I just came across this Modern Age article by Bryce Christensen: The cosmos as memento mori: the ultimate significance of modern science. He has a concern to express regarding science:

Prometheus, it would appear, has stumbled into a very dark and dreary place!

It’s not science’s successes that Christensen bemoans. He expresses a very deep appreciation for its

contact with “external permanency” [by which] science thus overthrows the fantasies of intellectuals who suppose that hermeneutic communities are entirely free to construct their own realities through imagination, interpretation, and dialogue.

He celebrates science’s objectivity, a challenge to “the solipsism and cultural relativism now widely prevalent in a truth-averse world.” You’ll find no complaint here in regard to technology, medicine, or deepening understanding of nature’s fundamentals. You will, however, find a condensed catalogue of ways in which science fails to fulfill anyone’s hope of it leading us to an empirical, objective, and complete encounter with every important truth:

The problem with taking science as a guide to hope, meaning, and morality is that the objective truths of modern science are utterly lacking in metaphysical content. Indeed, on its own terms, science cannot even give a satisfying account of human beings as seekers of truth.

That last sentence opens the first of several ways in which Christensen says science falls short on metaphysical issues, meanwhile showing that this really matters (as Deuce also said here this morning). Humans’ truth-seeking, morality, language, art, emotion, free will, meaning and purpose, consciousness: all of these “disappear in an exclusively scientific world view,” so that

A rigorous and probing investigation of science thus thoroughly dispels the optimism surrounding the scientific enterprise.

This article is not that “rigorous and probing investigation;” it is too brief for that purpose. Strong arguments in favor of these ideas can easily be found elsewhere (beginning in his footnotes), and Christensen does not attempt here to make those arguments. Rather, he is leading toward his central thesis:

One of the benefits of investigating science thoroughly and rigorously is thus the discovery of the profound human need for non-scientific truths.

This need is not just psychological or emotional; it is an ultimate kind of need, for if science cannot explain the human search for truth, or even language, then science cannot even explain itself. Yet as Christensen goes on to re-affirm the great value of science’s objectivity, he takes it in a direction many will not expect (emphasis added):

Nothing in all of religion–not the Enlightenment of Gautama Buddha, not the visions of Mohammed, not the hymns in the Hindu Samhitas, not the creation myths of Shinto–resonates with empirical expectations like the instruction the risen Jesus gives his perplexed disciples in order to verify the truth of his Resurrection: “Handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39).

Judaism’s roots are in history, Christianity’s even more so, for God walked incarnate on real roads in a real place in real time. (I turn now from Christensen’s thoughts to share my own.) Jesus’ disciples, seeing Him resurrected from the dead, did not say, “This is great! But I still wonder if this is the one true religion.” No, they did the sensible thing and followed Him, their questions (and ours) having been answered.

We cannot relive that experience, for history has a stubborn way of happening just once. (”History repeats itself,” they say, but they’re talking about trends and principles, not events.) Thus there are frequent disputes over the Christianity’s historical truth. Compare our problem, though, with that of every other religion. Are there disputes over the historical truth of Hinduism? What could that possibly mean? Hinduism makes no historical claims to speak of. Buddhism? The claim is that Gautauma lived a holy life and left important teachings behind, but Buddhism is about its teachings, not its teacher, and as far as I know, nobody claims his life was proof of his teachings. They point to the teachings themselves. Islam centers about a person, but its revelation is not a revelation-within-history like Judaism’s or Christianity’s. There’s a world of difference between God revealing Himself in the flesh and God dictating revelation to a prophet, as the Qur’an is said to have been delivered. Is there any historical test that could prove or disprove Islam, even in principle?

Christianity, quite uniquely, lives both in heaven and on earth. Hinduism and Buddhism would prefer to have nothing to do with the earth; they are anxious to be rid of it. Islam’s “72 virgins” takes the earth too much into eternity–especially from the virgins’ perspective! The sexual inequality expressed there has its obvious reflection in Islamic cultures today. That other major world faith system, scientific naturalism, will have nothing to do with heaven, or indeed with transcendence of any kind.

Only the Jewish and Christian Scriptures–the Old Testament, as known by Christians–teach that God is good, and creation can be too. Only Christianity teaches that creation continues to be good (even if marred for a time by evil): Jesus Christ was resurrected in a body. The physical reality endures. Physical creativity is good and valuable. Science is transcended, yes, but never made irrelevant; and the earliest leaders of scientific Europe considered themselves to be studying God’s mind as they studied His work in creation.

Promethean optimism fails those who hope just in science. But that is not science failing: it is just what happens if we depend on that which is limited, to be the explanation for all.

Commenter Havok has been asking for evidences that could convince him that Christianity is true. He has been asking for the answer to one type of question in particular, as here:

But there are many different Gods experienced. Some claim Yahweh, others Jesus, others Allah, others Ganesh etc. With all of these conflicting experiences, how can you trust that any one experience is accurate? To me, they all seem to be based on the same evidence, that is personal testimony of an internal revelation.

Given that there are many different religions, how can we have confidence that one of them is true? That’s a big question, and I’m relaxing on a Friday evening, I’m going to ask you for help with it. If you’re willing to do this with me, we’re going to define the question more clearly. I’d like your answers to this:

Assume for the sake of discussion that there is one true religion, that it can be known to be true, and that its truth means that contrary beliefs are false. How could its truth be known? What might be some indicators of its being more trustworthy and reliable than other beliefs?

I’m not asking for answers in the form “here is the test and this is why Christianity passes,” or conversely “this is why Christianity fails.” I’m just asking for the first part of it: what would you consider to be the kind of thing that might indicate the truth of a religion? If you want to tell us you think Christianity does or does not measure up to your test, that’s fine, but you need not go into how it succeeds or falls short. We’ll come back to that very soon. For now, I’d be interested just to know what readers think would constitute a useful truth test for a religion.

Please think in terms of real-world tests. I’m not asking for signs like, “If God wrote Jesus’ name on every brick in the world, then I’d know.” Even those of you who are skeptics or atheists might be able to think of tests like that. You could think about how you might fill in X here: “If I were to find out that X, then I might believe that Y was the one true religion.”

I hope this is clear. Thanks for participating!