What is Christianity?
Christianity is a fairy tale come true. Christianity is a story. It isn’t only an abstract idea, but it’s also a tale of a living God who did actual stuff; and who does actual stuff still. It claims that life is a fairy tale, claims to accurately record the key parts of the fairy tale – and claims you are still living in the fairy tale yourself.
What is that tale like? Consider the Christian Creed. To be a Christian, you have to believe this Creed. Essentially every Christian Church has endorsed this Creed in some form for 1700 years explicitly, and it represents more or less what Christians have always believed since Jesus was on the earth. Here it is:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
The first thing I’d like to note about this Creed is that it is not a list of rules. In fact, far from being a list of rules, it actually doesn’t contain a single rule at all. (Though Christianity, like virtually every belief system, does teach moral rules – more on that in a moment).
The second thing I’d like to note is that it actually isn’t all that much to believe, in terms of volume. Broken into component parts, you basically have to believe 9 things: (1) God the Father made everything there is, (2) Jesus is God’s Son, (3) The Holy Spirit is God and Jesus was conceived by Him, (4) God became human in Jesus’ body, (5) Jesus died for us, (6) Jesus was physically raised from the dead, (7) we are saved by the forgiveness offered through Him, (8) He will come again to judge us, and (9) we will live forever.
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And, really, the heart of Christianity is even simpler: Before the Creed was formalized in any way, Christianity basically thrived and spread on the idea that is imbedded in all Christian creeds: That God took on the form of man in the body of Jesus, and that out of love for us He died for our sins, and that for our life He rose again.
To the overall point, this list is not particularly heavy on philosophical, abstract truths. Rather, instead, it is a story – a story of a perfect God who, in love for us His creation, took on human form in order to die on our behalf. It is just like some kind of fairy tale, like Eugene giving his life for the lost Princess in Tangled or the Beast giving his life for Belle in Beauty and the Beast. A distant King offers everything he has to save a lost bride; that is Christianity.
Only: Christianity says it isn’t just a beautiful love story; it’s a real love story. Jesus isn’t just some god of ancient mythology. He is a real person documented in Jewish history. He lived and did real things. That’s the Christian Creed. That’s what you have to believe to be a Christian.
That’s not all you have to believe to be a Christian, of course. But most of the other things are things that most everyone else believes anyway. You have to believe that murder is wrong. So does almost everyone. You have to believe that cheating on your spouse is wrong. So do most people. You have to believe that you should give to those less fortunate than yourselves. But pretty much every belief system in the world worth its salt teaches the same thing.
Why is that? I mean, why do Christians focus less on abstract principles and rules and laws and more on what can only be described as a story? The answer is simple: Because God isn’t a set of abstract principles, but a…Person. God isn’t a What but a Who. God didn’t make you as a concept of abstract mathematics or theology. He made you for a relationship. He wants to know you and have you know Him. You can’t be known in a mathematical equation, because you aren’t a number. Well, neither is God, if Christianity is true. That is why the Bible doesn’t read like a textbook, why Jesus didn’t teach in mathematical formulas but in stories. Because any description of a relationship between two people will not read like a biology textbook…it will read like a fairy tale.
I commend your willingness to label Christianity a fairy tale (albeit a true one), thus pre-empting one of the typical objections that atheists like to make. And I also commend your honesty in pointing out that most people of whatever creed, or even of no creed at all, believe in roughly the same moral precepts; you’d almost think that “Judeo-Christian morality” is pretty much what you could expect any society to evolve, over time, in order that people could live together in relative peace. Aside from that, I guess the truth of the Christian fairy tale can only be known beyond this world and this life. I would point out, for what it’s worth, that you have, in a different post, expressed your distrust of history, on the grounds that you can’t see it; but of course the Christian claim is that its particular fairy tale is actually grounded in history and that the gospels accurately record (more or less) that history, which is how we know it’s true. I assume, then, that your faith in the gospels and the history they relate proceeds (logically, if not chronologically) from your sense, as you say, that the Christian narrative makes sense of the world and of your life; and I don’t mean to denigrate or diminish that at all. Finally: my ex-wife (well, one of them) is now an Episcopal priest, and she likes to talk about “living in a miracle,” which I guess is another way of saying “living in a fairy tale that happens to be true.” I do think that (some) atheists are (sometimes) a bit envious of that: the disenchanted world can be an unlovely and even indifferent place–unless you live in western Montana, in which case it’s enchanted and beautiful and welcoming, even to an atheist like me.
Thanks, Jack, for your thoughtful commentary. I enjoyed it thoroughly. And you are right in guessing the psychology of Luke Conway (a very dangerous pasttime, haha): My reason for trusting in the truth of this fairy tale has much more to do with my own direct experience than to do with a Josh McDowell-like argument from history. Though I respect that approach and of course it does matter to me — I mean, if there were no historical evidence that Jesus was a real person, etc., then I obviously would not believe in that. I guess the historical fairy tale seems to have at least some external validity as a real story, and it also matches the things that I do see in my life. I feel like I’ve actually met Christ, in my real world. That’s the simplest way I can describe it.
Now I know that’s a maddening way for me to discuss the issue, because you can’t directly argue with my personal experience in any meaningful way. And I know lots of very good and honest atheists (including some of my best friends and most beloved colleagues) would say their own experience does not match mine. There have been many days in my own life, especially my younger life, when I looked out and saw the same empty and (as you poetically put it) disenchanted universe. I don’t know how to fully explain the discrepancies, but all the same, I can’t deny my own experiences.
And I’m with you about western Montana: Enchanting from any worldview! (Maybe we should market that as the regional slogan).
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