![\"\"](\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-I_O3eLd6qcc\/Thps9t8iwDI\/AAAAAAAABgU\/ULhOPu61KT8\/s1600\/turing+mask+christian.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\nThis post is part of the Ideological Turing Test Challenge<\/a>. Go to the tab above for an overview and remind yourself of the voting<\/a> and commenting guidelines<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n What is your best reason for being a Christian?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Right now, it\u2019s honestly through Jesus to God. The teachings of Christ resonate to me in a way little else does. When I was 17, my school gave me an Al Franken book as part of a book award where he relates his Rabbi\u2019s words, \u201cJesus had a lot of good ideas, none of them new.\u201d I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true. I think Jesus\u2019s particularly teachings on self-sacrifice, forgiveness, universal brotherhood, purity of mind as well as obedience to law, et al were uniquely powerful then and still are now. (In some ways, using those words as summary doesn\u2019t do their uniqueness in expression justice\u2013Jesus was selling an active faith, not Eastern asceticism). In addition, even if I don\u2019t understand the mystery fully, there seems to be something right and empathetic about a God who sacrifices as a Father would and experiences all the sufferings and limitation of his own creation, all the way to death and brief descent into Hell. At the least, that\u2019s a God I wish to worship but it\u2019s also a God that rings true. (Of course some of this is cultural context, but there are many Christian understandings of God\u2019s nature that do not ring as true for me, including some by my co-religionists.) I actually think that the Trilemma (crazy, charlatan, or messiah) isn\u2019t unreasonable\u2013provided the Gospels are mostly accurate in presentation, which I think they likely<\/em> are. Christ is fairly explicit about his nature and place in the context of his moral teachings (I like the \u201conly God can forgive sins committed against someone other than Himself (not least because all sins are against Him\u201d point on Christ.)<\/p>\n In my childhood, my reasoning was a bit different. God seemed to be very directly involved in the lives of my friends and family\u2013apparitions, healings, what have you. While atheists might scoff and say these were merely correlated with, not caused by, prayer and worship, I try to use the analogy of a light switch. Someone tells you that when you flip the light switch, the light will turn on. You do, and it does, you do it a couple more times, and then you feel no need to question. It\u2019s not quite that we\u2019d flip the switch of prayer and we\u2019d have what we needed, but it was close enough that I\u2019ll leave that as the parallel. I moved away from this line of thinking as I left my Christian community and didn\u2019t see such active work in the lives of all\u2013I\u2019m still hesitant to say \u201cextent of faith\u201d matters for prayer efficacy, even though Christ seems to reinforce it\u2013but those memories often draw me back in when I have serious questions.<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s hard to come to the divine abstractly. Obviously, many different beings\/things\/ideas could be called divine in nature, and it\u2019s hard to lock down without a framework to explore the divine. Roman Catholic Christianity has been a lens that has seemed to clarify.<\/p>\n What evidence or experience (if any) would cause you to stop believing in God?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I studied \u201cJesus myth theory\u201d for a while, which had the potential to seriously shake my faith, but I ended up rejecting it wholesale at 16; I\u2019m happy to engage with anyone on the point, but I think there\u2019s a reason most serious scholarship has rejected it (the competing explanations seem far more implausible). So attacks on the historicity of Christ are up there. Science progressing to the point that basically all the mystery of the world is gone wouldn\u2019t necessarily deconvert me\u2013I\u2019m not really a God of the Gaps kind of guy\u2013but it would certainly crowd out some of the hearkening for the divine.<\/p>\n This is circular in terms of actual deconversion, but I think if I could live a very happy, fulfilled life that was not basically in accordance with Christianity, that would reinforce whatever unbelief has led me to that point.<\/p>\n