Faith?

I've been listening to some lectures/debates on textual criticism of the New Testament. It's very interesting learning how scholars take the manuscripts and catalog the variants. Something to think about: we don't have the original NT. We simply don't, and we never will. We have I believe a close proximity to the originals and I certainly believe we have what we need for faith and practice. But it does bring up an interesting point - we have faith that we have enough of the original scripture to base our belief in Christ off of. It's so tempting to try and justify our faith by intellectual means and historical data. And we do have both of those things, but there IS a chance - ever so small, that it's wrong. We believe that Jesus Christ was a man, we believe that he was the incarnate Son of God, and we believe that he died on a cross and was raised from the dead. The fact remains however, that we have faith in something we can not definitively prove. We have no video evidence, we can't go back in time and find Jesus and check the story out.

I like hearing about how much manuscript tradition we have to back up the history of the Christian faith - there's not to many people kicking around that deny that Jesus was a real guy. And when you look at the historical manuscripts of the NT that are available to us there is certainly evidence for the death and resurrection. But the reality is that we can't prove it any more than we can definitively prove God exists. Or any more than we can prove the big bang or evolution or anything like that. It all comes down to faith. Faith that an impossibly random sequence of events led to our existence as purposeless living beings, or faith in a creator God who sent his Son to save us from our sins.

Faith. We can sit back all we want and say "I decided that Christianity made the most sense of all the religions so I chose it." but it still comes down to faith. Are we really gonna spend our lives for Christ if all we're basing our faith on is a bunch of fragments of papyri from hundreds of years ago? I can't see it. I don't think I would.

The reason I'm a Christian is that God dragged me out of my wicked life and granted me a faith to believe in his only Son. The faith to put my trust in Him and throw my chips in with a bunch of other sinners who were dragged out of darkness too. To fight the sin day after day that I know would give me all kinds of earthly pleasure and happiness right now. Christianity is not more fun than being secular, if you want loads of pleasure and fun now - stay out of church. God did this to me. I didn't see lights, I didn't hear voices. But I believe. I didn't wake up one day, study all the evidence and come to some kind of intellectual surrender to the overwhelming flood of proof. But I believe. I'm finding more and more that there is real hard evidence that the history of Christianity is true, but that had little or nothing to do with my conversion. God opened my heart to believe the good news of Jesus Christ and so I believe.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,

Fast bound in sin and nature's night;

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray -

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

-Charles Wesley