But some of you just tell me that you believe, not WHY. For example:
Q: Why are you a Christian (why do you believe in Christianity)?
A: Because I believe Christianity.
What?
I'm asking WHY do you believe? Why do you have faith in Christ and the Bible and not something like Allah and the Quran?
I'm pretty sure being born and growing up in a Christian home played a large role, at least insofar as it established a basic foundation for my ultimate quest to discover what exactly I believe and why I believe it.
That quest started a little over a decade ago while I was still in high school, and it went through some interesting phases initially (at various points I flirted with Modalism and Messianic Judaism).
Before that however I had an experience which I found personally profound on many levels, something I could only describe then--as I would describe it now--as an encounter with Christ. I've had lots of experiences which I would describe as spiritual and/or mystical, moments of "aha!", moments of unexpected euphoria. Some of these I would probably chalk up to emotionalism or something of that nature, others I think probably were something more divine in nature. But none of these were like the experience I had when I was 16. It caught me completely off guard, there was very little emotionality about it, or that is, there was no specific "feeling" about it, there weren't any visions or voices or anything of that nature. The only way I can really describe it is as an encounter, and that it was Christ. It was the same who I had addressed prayers to since childhood, read about in my Bible, heard preached to me at church and my school.
That experience made Jesus real to me, and in many ways that experience still leaves me struggling for words to try and describe it--it's still in a big sense completely ineffable to me.
Up until that moment my Christianity had been something I took for granted, it was just who I was, what I had been raised with. I believed it because it's what I just happened to believe. But after that I wanted something more, a lot more, I wanted to follow that Jesus. I wanted to dedicate myself to following Him no matter what.
Years later and my want to follow Him has never lessened.
For all the hypocrisy, for all the irritating hateful, un-Christlike people in the Christian Church I am always, and totally, and completely compelled by Jesus--the Jesus I meet when I read the four Gospels.
I want to follow that Jesus, I want to believe what He said, I want to trust that He is true and real and so to that I am willing to fling myself in faith to trust in that Jesus and that this Christianity thing, as carried by Christians throughout history, is ultimately worth it. Not for heaven's reward or fear of hellfire; but for the sake of Jesus Christ Himself, because He's the treasure I long for.
It's not particularly rational why I follow Jesus, and I'm okay with that. Much of the absurdity, mystery and paradox of the Christian faith is what makes the whole thing exciting.
-CryptoLutheran
