My Condensed Witness

I haven't been writing on this blog lately.  Maybe you have noticed.  If so, thanks for your appreciation and encouragement.  I really enjoy writing on here, and the feedback that I get gives me more joy than I can describe.  But I have a lot going on right now, so the blog has been put aside in favor of other pursuits.  I hope to relaunch sometime in the coming months, possibly with a redesign and a whole new slant on the work God has called me to here.

This is a relatively unorthodox post, but since I had something written down, I wanted to share it with a wider audience.  I have remained active on an apologetics community on Google+, and there I have become acquainted with several people, among whom are a few atheists.  One guy in particular is a very genuine, respectful, and thoughtful atheist who has given me cause to seriously consider some of my beliefs and to hone my discourse.

Yesterday, this acquaintance asked me to give my personal reasons for adhering to Christianity.  It is a reasonable demand, and one which I think every Christian should be ready to answer (especially given 1 Peter 3:15).  Below is the answer I gave to him, which is a very condensed version of my personal faith journey.  I left quite a bit out since it was off-topic for the thread at hand, but I thought it might still be encouraging or useful for others to see, so I am posting it below.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to get back to writing more regularly soon.

Hey [person's name]. Thanks for the kind words. I'm going to try and sum up a lot of different thoughts I have about religion in a very short space (since it's sort of off-topic for this thread). Feel free to send me a message (I think I have chat open to anyone on my profile, you can check) if you have more questions. 

First, I know I'm not 100% neutral when coming into this topic since I grew up in a Christian home and have been going to church my whole life. I had some serious skepticism in high school about the existence of God and about Christianity in particular. To be honest, even though I would have called myself a Christian then, it was really just a way of making myself feel morally superior to the people around me. 

Senior year of high school, I decided that I either needed to be in or out for real. So I started reading the Bible every day, and to be honest, I was astounded how much difference it made in the way I thought and, necessarily, acted. Since I started taking Christianity seriously, I have had a huge increase in the amount of peace and joy that I feel in my life, as well as a decrease in the amount of stress I put on myself, envy, and pride in general. I realize that some people would say that there are other explanations for this, and I would grant them that possibility, but I know what I was like before I decided to take God seriously, and I am certain that I couldn't have changed like this on my own. There hasn't been a single "in my face" moment that cemented my faith permanently (even though I have been part of some pretty cool things). For me, it's the slow, gradual process of what I can only describe as God working in me over the past six years. 

As to why I am a theist in general: in my humble opinion, theism affords me a great deal that I just don't see in atheism. I have a ton of respect for you, [name], since you see beauty in nature without God and you still uphold morality without a preter-human source. I have been racking my brain for years trying to see how these and other constructs which I feel are unique to the theistic worldview could be feasible in atheism. But I haven't gotten there yet. Maybe it takes a person more intelligent than me, but I can't connect the dots. 

Do I admit that Christianity could be wrong? Yeah, I'll grant that. But the question of which religion is true (if any) is not a question without an answer. Assuming an afterlife, we are going to find out someday which religion is true, so I am picking one and sticking with it until it is proven obviously false. (This is more of a Pascal's Wager type answer for me.) There are certain criteria which I need before I can follow a religion, and Christianity meets all of those. For example, it includes a personal God who gave a direct message to His people. Also, it has been around for a very, very long time (I don't think if God were real He would have waited until now to reveal Himself, so I am leery of relatively "young" religions). It also gives me an objective morality (I know we've debated this some here, but I still hold to the objectivity). It also has an answer for what happens after death. And to be honest, the more I read the Bible, the more it just makes sense. The cohesiveness of Scripture and the beautiful picture that it paints keeps drawing me in further. 

So, in short: I'm a Christian because I'll never know everything, and therefore I'm willing to give God the benefit of the doubt. I'm a Christian because I gave it a shot and it changed my life. I'm a Christian because to me the world makes more sense with this philosophy. I'm a Christian because it gives my life purpose and direction. And I'm a Christian because the message of the Bible is beautiful to me.