Why I am a Christian

Introduction: For those few actually wondering what I’ve been doing of late, other than Great and Holy Week, Pascha, and Bright Monday, in my spare time I have been infesting the web pages of Dan Simmons. In the course of that infestation, I’ve written several things which have apparently aroused the curiosity of the readers there. One of the readers there happened to ask how and I why I became a Christian. This letter followed (with some minor alterations and additions). The name and identity of my correspondent will remain concealed, in order to protect the noncombatants.

Dear Mr. X:

Thank you for your well-wishes for my birthday yesterday. It was a good one: I had a two-hour walk along the beach (Hermosa and Manhattan Beaches) near my home, I began reading Richard Feynman's "QED" (his elegant explanation of Quantum ElectroDynamics), and I cooked for my wife and myself a nice beef rib steak with baked potato, butter and sour cream. All and all, it was one of my better birthdays.

Thank you also for your request to learn more about why I chose to become a Christian. As I find distasteful the current tendency among Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals to "witness" to their faith (I believe that J. D. Salinger quite wittily referred to it as “the worst form of name-dropping”), I thought it best to answer your request in a private letter, rather than to parade my story about in a public posting in the Forum.

It would probably be good to give some background: while I was raised as a Roman Catholic for my first seven or so years in Tulsa, Oklahoma (an interesting story in itself), I was fortunate enough to escape childhood persecution by the baby Baptists and Fundamentalists there when my family moved to Southern California. I continued to go to Catholic school there, but, being a voracious reader and an occasional thinker, I decided at the age of 13 to become an atheist. I did so because, on a diet of Philip Wylie, Montague Summers, and Ayn Rand, I decided that an uncritical faith was not for a critical thinker.

For a couple of years, I espoused the Objectivism of Ayn Rand, and, unfortunately, I was an arrogant little prig in those days. To quote from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", though: "I got better."

Basically, I noticed that a lot of atheists adhered to their atheism as a matter of faith, just as much as theists held their beliefs. As I did not have much respect for faith at the time, I decided to become an agnostic.

It was just a couple of months after I had done so that I realized that there were two types of agnostic: those who were not sure whether or not there was a God, and those who believed that it was impossible to know whether or not there was a God. I came to the conclusion that the latter course was one that I could not take: not only did it involve a rather uncritical faith, but it closed off any sort of inquiry on the subject. I thus decided that I was an agnostic in the first sense, and was uncertain whether or not there was a God. I also decided that it would be worthwhile to examine that question further, and to prove, one way or another, whether there was such a thing as God.

During this time, the philosophy of Existentialism was becoming popular in the United States. I read Sartre and Camus, and found them both wanting. Basically, I found that their philosophy was entirely self-consistent, and the death of any inquiry for truth. If one believes that there is no rational order to the universe, and that there is no meaning in it, other than a meaning which one makes for one's self, then one can become an atheist, or whatever else one wishes. But without meaning, without an underlying order to the universe, there is no possibility of science or of knowledge, and life was absurd.

I also was in the process of learning formal logic, and studying rational systems. I found that such systems did not go into infinite regress, but began with axioms; in other words, with ideas or things worthy of belief. As a result of this study, I came to several conclusions: 1) that it could be consistent with reason for one to start with self-evident beliefs, and to build rational systems of though from these; 2) that the only alternative to the belief that life and that the universe were absurd would be that the universe, and the life which began in that universe, was an ordered, or rational system, and 3) that if the universe was a rational system, then it was a necessary consequence that in its origins, it would not go from effect to cause in an infinite regress, but that ultimately, there would have to be a First Cause.

In examining aspects of the universe, I found that there was great beauty, order, and (for want of a better word) wisdom in it. As manifestations of the effect had (to my mind) to be present in the cause, I came to the conclusion that in the First Cause was Order, Beauty, and Wisdom. Basically, rather than the wheel, I had reinvented the lines of reasoning of Plato and Aristotle.

From this conclusion, I came to two others: the first was that the more that I examined it, this First Cause seemed to be indistinguishable from God. But the second was not so much a conclusion, as an emotional response: at some point, I asked myself what was the appropriate response of a rational being to the possibility of the existence of God, and my immediate response was: gratitude, love, and the desire to learn more of this Being. At this point, I became a Theist.

I also had to deal with the unsettling possibility that not only did God exist, but that this God may have in some way communicated with humankind. I decided to start reading the world's religions, including Greco-Roman and world pagan mythologies, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Taoism, the teachings of Confucius, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. From this study, I came to several conclusions:

1. That many of the pagan mythologies appear to be compilations of stories told to attempt to explain things to the people of the time (rather like the modern tendency towards science fiction and fantasy), and that mixed in with a fair amount of nonsense is some truth, and some measure of inspiration;

2. That many of the world's religions (e.g., Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc.) appear to be attempts by their respective authors to sift through their indigenous mythologies and to find in them a human wisdom through which humankind might find peace and happiness. In the cases of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, the authors of those religions have specifically stated, one way or another, that the search for an "almighty God" or an "almighty Spirit" was irrelevant to their studies;

3. The only world religions I know of which specifically claim inspiration from or communication with a transcendent being are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism;

4. From a simple study of the texts of those religions, it appears that only Judaism and Christianity develop unique doctrines. A textual study of the basic texts of Islam and Mormonism reveals a certain derivativeness: Islam from Judaism and Mormonism from 18th Century Protestant Christianity. While both of the latter religions have strengths in that they maintain the high moral code of Judaism and Christianity, they also have admixtures of a peculiar mythology (in the case of Mormonism), and of a barbarism (in the case of Islam: that is, its martial aspect, its subjugation of non-Islamic religions in the basic texts, and in some of the moral aspects of its leader, Muhammad) which I found to be personally repugnant.

I also started examining the religions from another angle: from their creation myths, from the Aborigines to the Zulus, and just about everything in between. With but one exception, all the other creation myths were of the fanciful sort found in the Firesign Theatre's "I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus". That one exception, which followed in large part just about all that we have learned from modern cosmology, biology, phylogeny, and anthropology, was the creation myth to be found in the first chapter of Genesis. That was my first clue.

Other clues that I found as I started reading Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings (e.g., Psalms) was the odd conjunction of a particularly barbarous people, and some of the highest wisdom that I had found in any of the religious writings that I had read. I also started seeing that this people was gradually transformed into one of the most intelligent, cultured, and simply civilized people on the face of the Earth. I personally came to the conclusion that there might be something to this God thing, at least as far as Torah was concerned.

I also started reading the New Testament, and as I was learning Greek at the time, also got into what was originally being said. I also started reading the apologetic writings of C.S. Lewis (together with similar writings as well as the fantasy literature of J.R.R. Tolkein, Charles Williams, and Dorothy Sayers). As a result of that reading, the objections which I had originally had to the possibility of supernaturalism (e.g., miracles), divine inspiration, of sin, and of resurrection, began to fade. I began to accept the possibility that the transcendent God might not only have communicated with us, but have actually become present as a human being.

Finally, at the age of 24, and on the Great and Holy Thursday before Easter, I accepted Christ, both in my heart and through the Eucharist, in the church of two friends who had helped me take the final steps, after an absence of more than ten years.

You have only asked me how I became a Christian, and so I will spare you the details of how I became a Russian Catholic, or why I decided that Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy were both at the center of Christendom. I would, however, like to point out several things before I close this letter:

1. This is only an attempt to show the lines of reasoning by which I became first a Theist, and then a Christian: it is not an attempt to convert you. As Robert A. Heinlein put in the mouth of one of his characters, faith, like trust, is like a lifejacket: it can only help or cover the one who uses it;

2. This is not an attempt at religious chauvinism, or to attempt to say (as with so many religious believers) that "my religion is the one True Faith--everything else is totally wrong and damned. I find (as do many Catholics and Orthodox) the "philosophia perennis" of the pagan Plato and Aristotle and their later followers to have much wisdom quite compatible with both Judaism and Christianity. I also find much of the wisdom which I have found in Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism to be of great value to me, and each of these religions have given me great insights into human nature in general and my own happiness in particular. I must point out though, that the best of all of the virtuous pagans (including the Gautama Buddha, Lao Tze, Kung Fu Tze, Plato, and Aristotle) ask different questions, and point in different directions, than do Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, the Prophets, and Jesus of Nazareth. If it comes down to it, I prefer to follow the latter rather than the former line of teachers;

3. The possibility exists that I am entirely wrong: that there may be no sentient God, no Resurrection, no Heaven or Hell, and that when I die, that will be the end of my consciousness, forever. (Alternatively, I may wake up to hear the angels proclaiming “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” in Hebrew, or “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet” in Arabic). I got used to that concept when I was in the middle of my atheism at the age of 13. I do not believe as I now do because I find such faith “comforting”, or “an escape”, or “a consolation in my later years.” I believe as I do because I believe it to be true. If it were adequately shown to me that it was not, then my immediate response would be to say: “To Hell with it!”

4. It is likely that one reading this long and tedious tirade would say: “How can one believe in Christianity, when so many atrocities have been committed in its name?” It is a reasonable question, and one which is the primary reason why it took me more than eleven years to accept Christ. I will note, however, two conclusions that I have come to after many years of reading World History and Religion, which I have come to term “Brandt’s First and Second Laws of Human Behavior”:

“First, there is no concept, idea, belief or creed so noble or holy that human beings cannot somehow manage to screw it up.

“Second, the fact that humans can screw up any concept, idea, belief, or creed does not by itself undermine the validity of the underlying idea, etc.”

Hoping that all of this rather tedious drivel might in some way answer the question which you asked, I am

Very truly yours,

Bernard Brandt