CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: These are the 2 reasons I’m still a Christian
My friend who is an atheist exclaimed: ‘But why are you still a Christian?’ In my recent column about the trauma I experienced in a Christian context I spoke of my continuing faith in Jesus Christ, and my enthusiasm for the Christian good news.
Why hadn’t I simply walked away, my friend wondered? Fundamentally, there are two reasons.
The first is the deep sense of longing which has run through my life, a spiritual thirst. It’s a longing for meaning, for wholeness, for love, for something more. I identify this longing as a quest for God.
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I see it this way after a lifetime of reading the Bible, listening to sermons, thinking, questioning, re-thinking. As a poet and dreamer rather than a great thinker, I’m also shaped by the faith stories of others, and by the whole gripping cosmic drama of fall, redemption and restoration, the universal Christian plotline reflected in each individual life.
My second reason for continuing belief, despite at times considering walking away, is that my longing for God has met with a response, an encounter. Those times when, in knowing myself both loved and lovely I have been set free to love others. Times when my heart sings ‘Yes!’ and God responds ‘Yes!’ and God and my spirit dance together.
Mostly, God whispers: creative ideas welling up into consciousness; a familiar line from the Bible, a phrase from the liturgy, a sentence from a book, a thought from a sermon, a loving gesture from a friend coming vividly alive.
I feel most whole, healed, happy, creative at these times of deep rootedness in God. It’s less about me drawing God down through much seeking; more that I seek because God is already seeking me.
And so I gladly take my place in the long line of Christian pilgrims stretching back 2000 years. My hope is placed not in religion as a system (how much damage has been done in the name of Christianity!) nor in religion as a framework of belief but simply in the love of Jesus Christ.
I believe Jesus is more than a great teacher: something happened that first Easter which transformed history. I believe the crucified Jesus physically rose from death.
As a sad, naïve teenager, I believed Christians should be able to say: “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart!” And this experience was utterly alien to me. In adult life I realised how subjective these words are, how open to psychological explanation.
But now in my 70s, in the new naivety lying beyond complexity I can, on my clearer-seeing days, say of Jesus, Son of God, ‘He lives within my heart’.
