5 What Is the Case for Christianity?

Jennie loved her children’s Christian school. She and her husband were delighted that their children had the love, care, and education of the school’s devoted staff members. Jennier and her husband also loved the school’s high expectations, sound behavioral standards, family culture and feel, and warmly supportive parent community. The odd thing for Jennie, though, was that she hadn’t yet openly professed her Christian faith, at least not in a way that she felt gave her a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Her husband had grown up in the church, while Jennie had not. She hadn’t read the Bible deeply, nor had she been baptized or attended church regularly. Yet when her children began bringing their Bible stories and lessons home from school, something stirred in Jennie’s heart, wanting her to learn more about her family’s Christian faith. For the first time in her life, Jennie could feel and maybe also hear the call of Jesus.

Faith

The case for Christian education begins with The Case for Christianity. In a book by that title, celebrated literary critic and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis argued that Christianity fosters not only a moral society and individual virtues but also a new human. Christianity does not merely improve its practitioners but also transforms them into individuals with divine character. We might add with eternal life, for as the gospel according to John tells us, God gave his only Son that humankind might have eternal life. Christ came into the world not to condemn the world but to save it through him. If you cannot justify Christian faith in your own mind and soul, then you may have a hard time justifying Christian education for your children, even though the sound qualities of Christian education may alone, without your having embraced a saving faith, warrant your children’s attendance. Above all, value Christian education for the value of the Christian faith it preserves and conveys.

Divinity

The central Christian claim is indeed that embracing the sacrificial atonement of Jesus opens the way to the heavenly realm in all eternity. The construct of parallel heavenly and earthly realms can be a sticking point for those unfamiliar with the depth and nature of that cosmological claim. A higher realm of design, pattern, principle, purpose, and meaning unquestionably exists. Our own consciousness and ability to observe and think, which are so far beyond the material conditions that we examine, are the obvious evidence of that higher realm’s existence. Psyche, soul, and spirit, imbued in us by the breath and life of God, transcend material conditions. With our unique ability to consciously examine ourselves and our material circumstances, out of our peculiar higher consciousness, we live out our role as mediators of heaven and earth, of meaning and material. Without material explanations for our thoroughly inexplicable transcendence, we rely wholeheartedly and with deepest appreciation on the full Christian revelation of God with us. 

Truth

A measure of truth is how well it accords with objective reality. That the world is home to billions of Christians is evidence of the verifiability, soundness, and reliability of Christian faith. Christianity is a religion of faith and peace. The many individuals who profess Jesus as their Lord and Savior do so not by coercion or compulsion. They do not even do so primarily by custom and tradition. Instead, Christians profess love of the Lord Jesus out of his love for us. Christ wins souls not by trick or treat but by quiet, persistent, loving, guiding, comforting, and uplifting presence. Christianity is not primarily a doctrine or theology. Christianity is instead primarily a relationship. And relationships depend on proximity, trust, presence, and confidence. Christ didn’t merely enter his world, save it, and redeem it or set it right through his sacrificial love. Christ also sent his Spirit to dwell within us, comfort us, heal us, and guide us. The truth that Christians learn isn’t so much propositional as instead personal. Christ is the truth. When one opens one’s spiritual eyes to Christ, one sees truth more clearly than any proposition. 

Meaning

The Latin root of the word religion means to bind or to hold together, with connotations of awe, conscientiousness, and reverence. What we need more than anything in a challenging, confusing, and hard world is to have something trustworthy, reverential, and awe-inspiring to hold things together. Christianity is that religion that brings all things together in the most-reverential manner possible. Christianity lends meaning to one’s life, greater meaning than any ethic, myth, philosophy, or fable can provide. Christianity tells us that our life and being have infinite worth, so much so that our creator God gave his Son so that we could return to God in perfect peace and purity eternally. Christianity makes the world make sense, without which the world might well be a lonely, pointless, and frightening place. Yet Christianity doesn’t just lend grand meaning to an otherwise ordinary life. The life and mind of Christ lends meaning to everything, big and small, in the greatest scope and smallest particular. Not a hair falls from your head without Christ knowing and caring. 

Purpose

Christian faith also gives one ultimate purpose in life. The purpose of a Christian’s life is to honor God by embracing his Son and the Christ-like identity he offers. We are God’s representatives on earth, growing in faith while revealing the abiding love and servant character of Christ, to bring others into the great family of faith. God’s great commandment is to love him with all your heart and accordingly to love others as you love yourself. While Christians enjoy God’s creation, our purpose each day isn’t to seek our own greatest pleasure but instead to pursue the desires of God, to see his kingdom come on earth. Through blessing God while showing others God’s forgiveness and generosity, we receive our own blessing, not simply on earth but eternally in heaven. Our purpose isn’t to amass fame and fortune or to wield ever-greater power but instead to entrust everything to God’s purpose. By doing so, we allow his infinitely greater wisdom to guide us into all good, even good that we cannot imagine. A Christian centers life on God, obeys his commands, grows in righteousness, and pursues his desire, knowing that by doing so we ensure our own peace, strength, and security. Christian faith supplies endless heartening purpose. 

Way

Christian faith is indeed the way, the sole path to God. When Jesus said I am the way, he confirmed that his sacrifice and resurrection opened again the arms of God, to embrace a humanity fallen from grace and to redeem a world previously corrupted. Jesus as the way to God, though, isn’t a verbal formula or magic potion. Jesus’ way of mercy and grace is instead a special journey and adventure through life, with his Spirit as the guide. That journey draws one gradually closer to Christ and deeper into one’s Christ-like character, not so much by profound intellectual study or strict spiritual disciplines as by trusting in God past life’s ordinary temptations and through life’s special hardships. The Christian way is crucible refinement, just as life’s challenges test one’s character and refine one’s mettle. Life following Christ isn’t adding spiritual practices as impressive adornments but instead removing spiritual dross in sifting shifts and humbling transformations. The Christian way isn’t chasing the spirit of the times but heeding the Spirit of the depths in the Christ identity hidden within you. 

Life

Christian faith is also life, as Jesus said I am the life. Jesus is the divine creator and sustainer of all life, as well as the author and vitalizer of every individual life. Life of any kind depends on an immense degree of internal and external design. Life also depends on an immense quantity of information, embedded in a perfectly arranged code that has the entirely peculiar capacity not only to replicate itself but to divide and join in perfect union with the code of another to produce a third. Life constantly transcends its material conditions, sustained, drawn, and informed by the mind, desire, and breath of God. Jesus draws all things together into himself to give them their own creative capacity as an expression of himself, both material and spiritual. Christians form the body of Christ, with Christ as the body’s head, so that the body’s members carry out Christ’s wishes, drawing their life from Christ. And Christ’s life isn’t just for a lifetime but is instead eternal. To live and die in Christ is to live eternally in his divine kingdom, in a resurrected and transformed body, gloriously and without end. 

Historical

Christian faith is also soundly and wonderfully historical. Christian faith is not a philosophical system formed in the great minds of the ancients. Christian faith is instead a witness to startlingly miraculous but genuinely historical events. Those historical events involved hundreds of real places and thousands of real people, stretching across millenia. God sent his divine Son into human history only after having long arranged and foretold that coming, through a unique people whom God himself called and formed for that purpose. Christ’s advent, so fabulously heralded, then became the hinge of history, out of his extraordinary teaching, profoundly revealing miracles, voluntary submission to an excruciating death, and singular resurrection witnessed by hundreds, just as foretold. No other ancient or modern history approaches the veracity, humility, grandeur, scope, impact, and profundity of Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection. To be Christian is to open one’s eyes, ears, mind, and heart to the greatest historical account ever recorded, as the true purpose of all history. 

Scriptural

Christian faith is also peculiarly scriptural. Christian faith relies on holy writings that witnesses recorded, assembled, preserved, conveyed, reproduced, and shared across millennia. The Christian scriptures, composed of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament and the New Testament, are a fabulous compendium of histories, writings, poems, prophecy, and song. The Christian scriptures are actually dozens of books with dozens of authors writing across more than a millennium, assembled into a single voluminous work, unique in literary, world, and religious history. The Christian scriptures also have several audiences and take several forms. Yet the Christian scriptures have tens of thousands of subtle cross-references, making the scriptures themselves a miraculous and plainly divine work. No other book even approaches the Christian Bible in publication, readership, or impact. That Christian faith grounds itself on such a unique and extraordinary collection of writings would alone make it worthy of intense study, as scholars across the ages have indeed filled libraries with its interpretation, without beginning to exhaust its wonders. 

Principled

Another aspect to recommend Christianity is its principled nature. Although Christianity depends upon a relationship with Jesus Christ rather than a principled system of behavior or set of doctrinal beliefs, Christ’s teaching is so sound, reasonable, and rational that it lends itself gorgeously to systematic theology. You may, if you wish, make a thorough set of rules, rationales, commands, recommendations, and principles out of Christ’s teaching. Putting Christian doctrine and principles to work in your life will shape your character for the best and encourage you toward a better disposition, more stable psyche, more confident outlook, and more peaceful soul. Devoted Christian practice will make you honest and reliable, and give you integrity. If those attributes are things that you wish your children to acquire as well, then confirm their Christian faith with Christian education in a private Christian school. 

Familial

Another aspect to recommend Christian faith is how it promotes family life. Christian faith teaches how a husband should give himself for his wife as Christ gave himself for us. Christian faith also teaches how a wife should relate to and respect her husband. Christian faith instructs how spouses should treat one another and their marriage in good times and bad, even in faithlessness and infidelity. Christian faith also teaches how a father and mother should provide and care for, guide and raise up, and not exasperate their children. Christian faith also teaches how children, whether when young or as adults, should honor and care for parents. In spiritual terms, Christian faith portrays the family as a microcosm of God’s family, into which God adopts us through the gift of his Son. Christian faith treats marriage as sacramental, not just a practical and procreative union but also a divine union, representative of Christ and his bride the church. Embrace Christianity, if you want the best family life. Educate your children in Christian schools if you want them to have the best family life, too. 

Communal

Another aspect to recommend Christianity is that it is not just an individual belief system but also a collective and highly relational faith. When you become Christian, you join the body of Christ and a community of faith. Christian community seeks to exhibit the loving and servant character of Christ. Christians celebrate and grieve together. They share meals, childcare, and household and transportation help through illness, injury, and other loss, while celebrating births, graduations, marriages, anniversaries, and other special life events together. Christians also pray, worship, fast, and study together in heartening, sacred, informative, and shaping rituals, with hearts drawing as close and reaching as deep together as human spirituality and existence permits. The joyful, generous, and servant-like righteousness of Christians also undergirds friendly, stable, safe, secure, and economically thriving communities. Appreciate the communal aspects of Christianity, beyond the Christian’s individual spiritual life.

Reflection

Are you a professing follower of the Lord Jesus Christ? If so, who or what moved you to accept his grace? Does Christ’s promise of eternal life improve your outlook on life? What do you see as the primary value of Christianity, for yourself, your family, and your community? Do you see life through a Christian lens? Does Christianity help explain things for you? Do you rise each morning with a sense of purpose, informed by your Christian faith? Do you want that same sense of meaning and purpose for your children? Do you know and value the Christian scriptures? Do you know and value Christian doctrine? Do you know and value church history? Are you a disciple of Christ, living out his commands, principles, and patterns? Do you both contribute to and draw from a vital community of Christians, in heartening corporate life? Can you rely on your Christian brothers and sisters in times of need? And are you reliable for other Christians in their times of need?

Key Points

• Value Christian education for the Christian faith it conveys.

• Embracing Christ’s rescue opens heaven’s door to eternal life.

• Christian faith conveys the most sound, reliable, and genuine truth.

• Christian faith lends meaning to every dimension of one’s life.

• Christian faith gives one a guiding and inspiring purpose in life.

• Christ opens the way to God, offering the necessary grace for salvation.

• Christ supplies and sustains the Christian with deep and eternal life. 

• Christian faith is brilliantly historical, its history spanning millennia.

• Christian faith is uniquely scriptural, relying on unparalleled writings.

• Christian faith is also highly principled, generating sound doctrine.

• Christian faith is also familial, promoting best family relationships. 

• Christian faith is also satisfyingly communal, promoting relational life.

Read Chapter 6.