"Like cramming a watermelon into a Coke bottle."
As I prepare to get into the second MIQ, "Why am I Christian?", I have to say that I'm excited and a little intimidated. I can't wait to get this part of my mind into written form. I sort of did it once before, as I developed the answer in the first place but it was a mess. My biggest challenge will be to present my thoughts in a coagulated, organized way that someone else has a chance of following, and do it thoroughly and concisely at the same time.
I was raised Christian. I could quote bible verses and stories long before I could read. As an adult, I wanted to know why I believe what I believe, and whether there is any substance to it, or whether I just had it crammed down my throat as a little kid and never considered any other options. The cool part is that Christianity passed my test - at least to my satisfaction. Now I make a humble effort to explain it to everyone else.
In no way do I intend to write a comprehensive, one size fits all, apologetic dissertation. That is work for others who are much more educated and intelligent than I am. (And nobody has come up with a good one yet that I know of.) My intent is much more simplistic. I want to explain why I believe, not necessarily why everyone else should. As I have said, I'm nobody's judge. I'm also nobody's brain.
Another challenge involves the circular nature of any worldview. If you think about it, it has to be this way. A worldview is a working theory of everything. By definition, a worldview cannot have a reference point outside of itself. If it could, it wouldn't be a worldview at all. Christianity, atheism, humanism, all other religions and all non-religious worldviews are circular. Even high school geometry is circular. The first thing we learn about geometry is to postulate the existence of a point and a line, and a concept that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. There is no proof that these postulates are valid. Yet all higher math depends on them being true. So it is with worldviews in general.
This is one reason we cannot prove the existence of God. If God exists, by definition there is no point of reference outside of God that can be used to independently validate His existence. Since logic offers no possibility of proving a negative, there is no way to prove that God does not exist. We're stuck with reason for better or worse when discussing a worldview, a theory of everything.
Ultimately, acceptance of any worldview is a matter of choice - A matter of decision. This much, I should be able to prove to everyone over the next several dozen (hopefully not) posts. But there also has to be a basis for believing in something other than my opinion of it. I don't want to believe a lie just because it says what I want to hear.
So, here we go. Hopefully I get this done this year. (Just kidding.) But it is a little like trying to cram a watermelon into a coke bottle. Before we can start, we have to define a few terms.