The Rational Road to Becoming a Christian

1. If I am just the result of mindless forces operating on matter-energy in space-time, then I have no real explanation for why I exist as a person with a mind.

2. But I clearly exist as a person with a mind capable of observing and understanding the material world around me (including my own physical body, which includes my brain), as well as knowing other people who have bodies and minds.

3. Therefore, the first part of point #1 can’t be true.

4. Then how can it be that I exist as a person with a mind that can do what point #2 describes?

5. If there is a reasonable explanation for how this came to be, then I should accept that it’s true.

6. Christianity says that both I as a person with a mind and the universe around me were created by and are continually sustained by an Almighty Personal God. It also says that this God seeks to have a relationship with me. I also have an innate sense that these things are true. But I have been discouraged from considering that these ideas could be true until now.

7. Why shouldn’t I consider that this is true?

8. Having been told by others that I shouldn’t consider this or not wanting to consider it because I may not like the consequences if it’s true are not valid reasons for not considering it. Doing the first means I have given up my freedom to decide for myself. Doing the second makes no sense because, if it’s true that God is real and that He made me, then there are consequences of this, whether I like it or not.

9. So I ought to consider that this is true.

10. If Almighty God exists and if He made me and continually sustains my life and seeks to have a relationship with me, then I should want to have a relationship with Him.

11. If Almighty God could create me and the entire universe, He could certainly reveal Himself to the world in a written form.

12. If the Christian Bible is the only book in which God does this, then it is the most important book of all.

13. Is the Christian Bible the only book that does this?

14. The Christian Bible frequently presents God as revealing Himself, unlike other supposed holy books which don’t claim this.

15. The Christian Bible says that God is both the Almighty King of Kings and that He wants to have a personal relationship with us, unlike Islam’s Qu’ran (which only claims the first is true).

16. This agrees with my innate ideas of who God is (point #6).

17. So it is reasonable to believe that the Bible is God’s Self-revelation or Word and that I should base my life on what it says.

18. The Gospel or “Good News” of the Bible (which was foreshadowed in the Old Testament and fulfilled in the New Testament) is that God, our Eternal Father, sent His Eternal Son, Jesus Christ into the world to save us from our sins and that He sent His Eternal Holy Spirit to dwell inside of us in order to transform us to be like His Son so that we will be worthy to dwell with Him forever in Heaven.

Bottom-line: That all of this is true won’t make anyone consider and accept it. Each of us must be willing to do so. But everyone should be and is therefore culpable before God for refusing to do so. (New Testament Book of Romans, chapter 1, verses 18-20)