Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Why Jesus?

The question for the week is, “Why Christianity? Why not some other religion, or even atheism?”  That’s a good question, really, and I will try to give you a fair, honest, and even compelling answer.
It is not my purpose to criticize other religions, however, I do intend to give a cursory examination of the other main religions.  For starters, the Hindu religion has a pantheon of different gods.  Atheism has no god at all.  There are three basic monotheistic religions:  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 
Now, again, not to knock anybody else’s belief system, but most ancient peoples believed in multiple gods:  The Greeks had Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, etc.; the Romans had Jupiter, Neptune, Mars, etc.; the Norse had Odin, Thor, Loki, etc.  It basically came down to them feeling it necessary to divide up the duties of the divine.  Just as one man was good at hunting, another at fishing, and another at building things, so, too, they felt that there must be different gods with different abilities.  The idea that God is not like man did not occur to them.  Now the Hindus have a least gotten the idea that the gods are not like men (look at their statues and images), but they still have this idea of division of labor.  They just underestimate God.
I’m not going to spend much time on atheism.  Suffice to say that there have been a large number of very improbably coincidences in order for this world to exist and support intelligent life if God hadn’t at least directed the process.
Judaism had a good start, but many Jews are still looking for their Messiah.  If they are right, then he is to come, however, if Christianity is right, then He has already come, and, for the most part, they have rejected Him.
Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet (sent by Allah), but that His teachings have been corrupted, so God had to appoint another prophet, Mohammed, with a fresh set of teachings to set things right.  Interestingly enough, the Koran talks about the virgin birth (Sura 3.45-50).  Doesn’t that at least suggest that Jesus (or Isa) was more than just a prophet?
Now Jesus claimed to be the way (John 14:6).  I’m not surprised that so many people don’t believe Him; there were a lot of people in those days that didn’t believe Him.  Still, the believers that actually knew Him, and spoke with Him, and heard His teachings never recanted.  Some of them were tortured and threatened with death if they didn’t recant, but they didn’t.  Now, granted, they may have had good reason to suspect that the promise of release if they said that Jesus wasn’t really what they had made Him out to be, but still.  It seems to me that if I and my friends made up a story about some fantastic man who did all of these wonderful things, and then we were tortured, and threatened with death if we didn’t admit that we just made the whole thing up, I suspect that I would come clean. 
So, we have this Bible, that at least appears to be an accurate account of the life of Jesus, and He certainly seems to have been a Savior, not just to the Jews, but to all mankind.  So, the question becomes, should we really believe the Bible.  I was just reading that a lot of Islamic scholars claim that the Koran reads the same in every part of the world, that there is only one Koran.  They point to the many different versions of the Bible as proof that it should not be believed.  I would like to point out that there are other Islamic scholars that admit that there are seven to ten different versions of the Koran, and there is at least one that claims that there are twenty.  Now, certainly there are a lot more different versions of the Bible than twenty; there are hundreds.  Part of the reason that the Koran has so many different versions is that Mohammed himself was illiterate—don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean that as a criticism; literacy was not nearly as widespread then as it is now.  In today’s society, if a man is found to be illiterate, the first assumption is that he is probably mentally deficient; that’s frequently a bad assumption, illiterate people have to be pretty smart to get through life without being able to read—they have to memorize an awful lot.  My point is that Mohammed was almost undoubtedly of well over average intelligence, but he couldn’t write down the Koran (or anything else).  The Koran was passed on by oral tradition for many years; people would memorize and recite the Koran.  Eventually it was written down, but not until after Mohammed’s death.  So, changes were unwittingly made.  Also, the written language was less precise then, so when it did get written down, the written words could be interpreted differently by different people.  At the same time, the differences between the different versions are relatively minor.  So why do we have so many different versions of the Bible?  Mostly because there are a lot of people who recognize what an important work it is, and want to make sure that it is translated correctly.  Partially because we have an enemy who would like very much to eradicate any correct version(s) from the face of the earth.  If he can influence people to make minor changes to Scripture, he can gradually water down the message until it no longer means anything.  Of course, God protects His Word, so Satan cannot just make the Bible go away, but if he can publish “versions” that are more to his liking, he can lead many astray.  So why is it that the Bible has so many different versions while other religious writings (the Koran, the writings of Buddha, the Sruti and Smriti, etc.) have only a few?  Because of the relative importance.  Satan is not interested in ‘corrupting’ a book that wasn’t truth when it was written, any more than an artist wouldn’t forge a painting by an unknown artist, or a counterfeiter would create duplicates of confederate currency.
Perhaps the most important thing is that Jesus came to be our sacrifice.  No other religion teaches that their god or gods made a way for their adherents to be cleansed from their sins.  Mohammed did not die for you, in fact, Islam teaches that Mohammed was received up into heaven without dying first.   Buddha did not give his life for you.  Hinduism does not have a savior.  If you think about all the mistakes that you have made in your life, then understand that there is only one redeemer; His name is Jesus.  Why go to anyone else?

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