Why
God?
Let's
start from the beginning: you are a human being. You have a sense of
self:your personality, why you love what you love,etc.--this is
called a soul, without it, you'd be a toaster. Now with it, you have
a sense of right and wrong, most call this a conscience.
This
is where the debate begins, because different people in different
places define morality differently right? Not really. You see, there
is no society on the planet living without a system of morality. The
best way to think of it is that we are all attempting to fulfill the
same list of virtues but just define them differently.
For
example, two men from two different cultures could find themselves at
war with one another. Though when one is surrounded by the enemy, he
quickly takes his life, while a man from the other culture will
choose to endure imprisonment. Both men show the virtue of Courage,
neither wishing to be labeled a coward, the wrong they wish to avoid.
The
Truth About Right and Wrong
The
idea of right and wrong could be easily explained as some
evolutionary instinct if it didn't inconvenience us or endanger our
own well being. Imagine a women in her 90s, slowly pushing a shopping
cart full of groceries down the sidewalk, as you drive your sports
utility vehicle. As she struggles to push the heavy cart, she trips
over an untied shoelace. Her cart launches into the street, groceries
spilling all over the pavement, as she falls directly into the path
of your vehicle. Do you brake or drive on? Do you stop to help or
take a detour, with the fallen woman in your rear view? Regardless of
your choice, there is an inner confirmation that you did right or
wrong. Stopping to help, provides you zero benefit, in actuality, it
makes your life more difficult. Why is that want to do good there?
The
same reason, the universe exists, it was put there. The best science
we have confirms that our universe began in a great explosion,
emphasis on the word began. You know, the same sort of thing happens
when a car starts, a mysterious explosion brings the engine to life
but there must be a key and a hand behind it. God is the reason the
universe (and you) exist.
So
what's the problem?
The
problem is that humans can't do good all the time...its utterly
impossible. Don't agree? Sure you do. When's the last time you felt
safe walking the city streets alone or going to sleep with the front
door unlocked? Unless you live on some family farm compound in the
middle of utopia, probably never.. Anyone who's attempted to follow a
fad infomercial diet, realizes there is a gap between what we want to
do and what we actually do.
See,
God created the world perfect but,where things go well, you can
always expect haters. Satan, God's jealous ex-employee, decided he
would devote the rest of his life to corrupting everything God
created, and that includes all of us. By tricking us into thinking
that rebelling against God would be to our benefit, we did, and now
rebel instinctively. Even the good we want to do gets corrupted by
selfish motives. That stuff we do against God both knowingly and
without knowing is called sin.
But
God is a personal God. He talked to men and women for thousands of
years, trying to develop relationships with them so He could set them
straight. God even came down to Earth as the person of Jesus Christ,
to complete the deprogramming process.
Jesus
is God.
Why
Should You Care?
Because
as we've discussed, Jesus opened this establishment called Earth. Its
full of folks that try to listen to what he says and those that
refuse. Any store or business owner that finds visitors behaving
inappropriately: wrecking their stuff, cursing them out and hurting
others, has the right to take action when necessary. God has
refrained Himself for years, sending multiple representatives to warn
the rabble-rousers to listen up before they get in trouble. He has
been kind in handing out warnings for centuries, but soon, He'll
close shop and oppose them to their faces. God will reward the ones
that changed their ways with a paradise called Heaven, however,
sentence those that thought he was 'full of it', to an eternal pit of
torture called Hell. He would rather not send folks there, but their
abuse will no longer be tolerated.
As
a part of God's current grace, He provides us a handbook for living
called The Holy Bible.
Why
Study the Bible or the New Testament?
Because
God Wants To Love You: God
doesn't just want you to obey Him, but to know Him. The Old
Testament was God's way of introducing or revealing Himself to
humanity, and the New Testament is the story of the crazy lengths to
which God will go to save humanity from sin, death and themselves.
Because
of its historical accuracy: Of
course Christians would back up the Bible as true, but what about
those that have not accepted Christ's message? For the last two millenia, much of the Bible's historical data has been proven true by
non-Christians: atheist archaeologists like Sir William Ramsay who
spent 25 years investigating the book of Luke and Acts, the ancient
Jewish work the Talmud and ancient historians Josephus, Tacitus and
Pliny the Younger (Ramsey became a believer by the way).
For
the New Testament alone, there are over 5,000 manuscripts in Greek,
8,000 to 10,000 in Latin and 8,000 more in other languages such as
Slavic and Armenian, totaling to about 24,000 nearly identical
manuscripts. When compared to ancient works like Homer's Iliad, with
650 manuscripts or the writings of Plato with 30, the New Testament
remains the best attested writing of antiquity.
Because
folks couldn't make this up: The
Bible has some good things in it, though often relates some messed up
stories. Why? Simple: God knows people are messed up, and He wants to
show humans that messed up people change when they follow Jesus . No
one has to stay God's enemy, we can now choose to be His friends.
"No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his
master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have
heard from my Father I have made known to you."
-John 15:15
In Him,