{"id":3478,"date":"2017-11-08T01:53:35","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T22:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/?p=3478"},"modified":"2017-11-08T01:53:35","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T22:53:35","slug":"a-foretaste-of-eternity-how-christianity-can-change-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/3478\/a-foretaste-of-eternity-how-christianity-can-change-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"A Foretaste Of Eternity: How Christianity Can Change Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity<\/a>, at Amazon<\/p>\n

“Finally it is not a matter of obedience. Finally it is a matter of love.” <\/em>\u2014Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons<\/em><\/p>\n

N<\/strong>OW THAT WE KNOW WHAT MAKES CHRISTIANITY UNIQUE, <\/strong>we need to ask ourselves whether we should adopt it. In this book I have tried to meet the strongest critiques and objections to Christianity, but that is not always enough. Scholar and preacher John Stott tells the story of a man who was full of questions. Every time Stott answered his question, he had another question. One day Stott asked him, “If I were to answer your problems to your complete intellectual satisfaction, would you be willing to alter your manner of life?” The man blushed and smiled slightly, and Stott realized that his resistance to Christianity was not intellectual. The man didn’t want Christianity because he feared it would mess up his plans and disrupt his life.’ For many people, the reluctance to embrace Christianity is as practical as it is intellectual. They want to know what Christianity’s benefits are, and how their lives will change if they become Christians. I conclude this book by addressing these concerns.<\/p>\n

Christianity is an embrace not merely of a teaching but also of a person. So let’s look at Christianity’s central figure, Jesus Christ. Our secular culture cannot get enough of Christ. Two thousand years after his death, he continues to be a big story, as well as the focus of never- ending controversies. The Da Vinci Code <\/em>seems to have inspired a whole host of spinoffs, all alleging in some way that the Christ of the Gospels was not the real Christ. Oscar-winning director James Cameron released a documentary denying Christ’s resurrection on the basis that the tomb containing his remains has now been located. Cameron’s film also suggests that Christ married Mary Magdalene and had a son. On a trip to India I encountered the headline “Jesus Faked Death on Cross:’ According to the story, Jesus staged the whole thing to escape from his enemies. Christopher Hitchens goes further, suggesting that Christ may be a mythical rather than a historical figure, alluding to the “highly questionable existence of Jesus.”<\/p>\n

Even some biblical scholars\u2014a group that can be quite hostile to Christianity\u2014engage in massive attempts at revisionism. Among their conclusions: the real Christ did not claim to be divine, he didn’t want to found a church, and his simple message of love was subsequently distorted by Christians into an elaborate theology. Typical of this debunking theology is the Jesus Seminar, a group whose members vote on whether central events in the Bible actually happened. So far, the group has decided that Christ’s divinity is a myth, the virgin birth is a myth, Christ’s resurrection is a myth, and that fewer than 20 percent of the sayings attributed to Christ were really said by him. These “discoveries” are regularly trumpeted in the media.<\/p>\n

Put aside the credibility of these claims for a minute and ask a different question: Why are these issues such a big deal? If you are not a Christian, why would you care? There are three important reasons.
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\nThe first answer is that Christ remains the most influential figure in history. Any list of world-transforming individuals would no doubt include Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad. Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad, however, occupy totally different places in Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam than Christ occupies in Christianity. Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad never professed to perform miracles; indeed, they never claimed to be anything more than men. They viewed themselves simply as God’s messengers. Christ is the only person in history who has defined a whole religion around his person.<\/p>\n

Even people who are not Christian or even religious are influenced in big and small ways by Christ. They divide history into the time before and after his birth, BC and AD. Sunday is a worldwide holiday, not, as many believe, because it is the day of the Sabbath (which is Saturday) but because it was traditionally held to be the day of Christ’s resurrection. The history of the West, indeed of the world, is incomprehensible without Christ, and would be unimaginably different had he not lived.<\/p>\n

The Christ we encounter in the New Testament is so extraordinary that it’s hard to imagine the Gospel writers inventing such a person. C. S. Lewis once noted that, along with Socrates and Samuel Johnson, Christ is one of the few historical figures we would recognize instantly if he walked into the room. Yet we know Christ, as we know Socrates, through the reports of others. Neither ever wrote a single word. The Bible gives a single instance where Christ wrote with his finger on the ground, but we don’t know what he wrote. But when we hear Christ’s voice in the four Gospels, it is unmistakable.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare is our greatest dramatist, but there is no single character in Shakespeare who can match Christ’s eloquence. “By their fruits you shall know them.” “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also:’ “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” “Turn the other cheek.” “Man does not live by bread alone.” “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”<\/p>\n

While there is much about his early life that we don’t know, we do know that Christ existed. This is the second reason Christ is such a big deal. He’s a historical figure, and the great events that defined his life really happened. Historians debate whether some other figures of ancient times, like Homer, existed at all, but there is general unanimity among historians that Christ was a real person. Do you believe in the existence of Socrates? Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? If historicity is established by written records in multiple copies that date originally from near contemporaneous sources, there is far more proof for Christ’s existence than for any of theirs. The historicity of Christ is attested not only by Christian but also by Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources. Apart from the Gospels, we find references to him in Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and Josephus. Tacitus in his Annals <\/em>deplores “the detestable superstition” of “Christus,” the founder of a new sect called Christianity. These sources testify not only that Christ lived but also that he had a big following, that he alienated the Jewish and Roman authorities, and that he died by crucifixion.<\/p>\n

While the Gospel accounts individually provide different angles and emphases, together they offer a remarkably coherent account of Christ’s life. The earliest Gospels were composed only thirty or so years after Christ’s death, and the last was written before 100 AD. Moreover, historians have innumerable early manuscripts of scripture, a vastly greater body of material than they possess of many ancient and classical texts, and so they are in a good position to confirm that the biblical writings are authentic. Finally, in recent decades archaeologists have been compelled to reconsider people and events long regarded as legendary. They have located the tomb of Caiaphas, the high priest who interrogated Jesus, and have unearthed an ancient plaque honoring Pilate, the Roman prefect who decreed Christ’s crucifixion. Skeletal remains exist showing that Roman crucifixions were performed in precisely the manner outlined in the Bible. Summarizing the evidence, writer Jeff Sheler notes that “the picture that has emerged overall closely matches the historical backdrop of the Gospels.”
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\nLet us now consider the historicity of Christ’s resurrection. “If Christ had not been raised,” Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “our preaching is useless and so is your faith:’ The resurrection is the most important event in Christianity. Since the nineteenth century, some biblical scholars have refused to accept the biblical account of the resurrection because it was produced by people obviously biased in Christ’s favor. Interestingly, Christ’s followers, by their own admission, did not expect his resurrection. Arriving three days after his death, some of them brought spices to the tomb to anoint his body. Only then did they observe that the stone had been rolled away and the tomb was empty. The fact of the empty tomb was admitted by the Roman guards and also by the Jewish magistrates, who told the Roman authorities that Christ’s followers must have stolen the body.<\/p>\n

The apostles were deeply skeptical about reports of a resurrection, and the Bible tells us that Christ had to appear before them several times before these doubts were dispelled. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:6 that Christ “appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” Paul here appeals to direct historical evidence: the testimony of multiple witnesses who actually saw Jesus alive after his execution. Of this group, Paul says that some are dead but most are alive; in other words, many were in a position to confirm or refute him. In the history of hallucinations, is there a single instance in which five hundred people all saw the same person and were all equally mistaken?<\/p>\n

Still, we must ask whether these early Christians were serious about Christ’s resurrection, whether they were being truthful about what they saw, and whether it mattered to them. These questions are not difficult to answer. The disciples became soconvinced of what they had seen that their dirges of lamentation were replaced with cries of joy. Proclaiming Christ crucified and Christ risen, they launched the greatest wave of religious conversion in history. The number of Christians increased from around one hundred at the time of Christ’s death to around thirty million by the early fourth century, when the Roman emperor Constantine himself converted to Christianity. These conversions occurred in the teeth of fierce opposition and the persecution of the greatest empire in the ancient world, the empire of Rome. The early Christians did not hesitate to identify themselves with a man who had been branded a traitor and a criminal. They endured impris- onment, torture, exile, and death rather than renounce their commitment to a resurrected Christ. Even from a secular point of view, the evidence for the resurrection is surprisingly strong. Indeed, coming from so many witnesses with so much to lose, it might even be sufficient to convince an impartial jury in a court of law.<\/p>\n

A third reason Christ continues to play a central role in our culture is that he makes claims on our lives that we can reject but not ignore. Christ is the most divisive figure who has ever lived. This is strange because he was a man who never hurt anyone, who lived a blameless life, and whose teachings about love and peace are universally praised. Yet whenever I write about Christ, I receive hate mail. Some of it is directed to me, but most of it seems to be provoked by antagonism toward my subject. If you doubt this, start talking at your next picnic or dinner party in a serious way about Christ. The reaction you get will either be gushingly enthusiastic or coldly hostile. Christ’s teachings are so challenging that if we accept them they change our lives. If we reject them, they provoke in us either seething animosity or a willful desire to exclude Christ from our lives, or at least to amend him so that he doesn’t make us feel uncomfortable.
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\nThroughout history, people have tried to twist and trim Christ’s words to suit their predispositions. This strategy of evasion and sly revisionism is quite common today. We hear from the Jesus Seminar and other sources that Christ didn’t concern himself with the afterlife, when in reality he concerned himself with that as much as with anything else. We hear from milque-toast Christians and many others that Christ spoke only about divine love, when in reality he also frequently spoke about divine condemnation. (Hell is mentioned at least three times in the Sermon on the Mount.) We hear from those who wish to avoid conflict at all costs that Christ was a peacemaker, but he said in Matthew 10:34, “I come not to bring peace but the sword.”<\/p>\n

This strategy of “cutting Christ down to size” is best illustrated by the example of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson agreed with many of Christ’s moral precepts but was offended by Christ’s claim to be divine, to perform miracles, and to secure for men a path to heaven. So Jefferson compiled his own private bible in which he, quite literally, took scissors and cut out all Christ’s teachings that he didn’t like. The virgin birth? Gone. Miracles? Snip, snip. The resurrection? Out. Hell? Ancient history. The “gospel according to Jefferson” was not published until long after his death, but it illustrates the lengths to which people will go to avoid confronting Christ as he really was.<\/p>\n

Continuing in this tradition, Richard Dawkins writes that “the historical evidence that Jesus claimed any sort of divine status is minimal.” Yet in the Gospel of John 8:58, Christ says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Not only does Christ claim to have existed before Abraham, but in using the term “I am” he is also invoking God’s own self-description as revealed to Moses at the burning bush. Christ also says “I and the Father are one” and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father:’ The disciples seem to have gotten the message.They routinely referred to him as Ruler, Messiah, Son of David, King of the Jews, King of Israel, and Lord and Savior. On several occasions, Christ corrects and updates the Jewish scriptures, thus claiming for himself the authority of divine revelation. Christ also purports to forgive sins. Ordinarily an offense can be forgiven only by the person who has been wronged. It requires divine power to forgive sins perpetrated against others, and Christ claims precisely this kind of authority. He also insists, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and “I am the resurrection and the life.” The Jewish leaders of the time understood Christ to be assuming the traits of divinity, and in the Jewish monotheistic tradition, it is blasphemous for a man to claim to be God. That was the basis on which the Sanhedrin issued their death sentence against Christ.<\/p>\n

It is impossible to remain neutral about these things. This is the message I have been trying to convey in this book. What can be said about Christ can also be said about Christianity. It matters. It is the very core and center of Western civilization. Many of the best things about our world are the result of Christianity, and some of the worst things are the result of its absence, or of moving away from it. Christianity’s central claims about God and the nature of reality are supported by the greatest discoveries of modern science and modern scholarship. There are good intellectual and moral reasons to embrace Christianity. For all its eloquence and vehemence, the atheist attack fails. Despite all this, there remains an all too human resistance on the part of many people to becoming Christians. They want to know what’s in it for them. This question may shock some Christians, but it is not a bad one. In a low sense, it can be taken to mean: how will Christianity give me financial success and a problem-free life? Christianity offers no such formula. The lives of Christians, far from being problem free, are often infused with struggle and sacrifice. In a higher sense, the undecided person is quite right to wonder how Christianity will make his life better. After all, he is considering not only whether to believe something but whether to base his life on it. Addressing myself specifically to unbelievers who possess an open mind, I conclude this book by enumerating some concrete ways in which Christianity can improve our lives.
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\nFirst, Christianity makes sense of who we are in the world. All of us need a framework in which to understand reality, and part of Christianity’s appeal is that it is a worldview that makes things fit together. Science and reason are seamlessly integrated in a Christian framework, because modern science emerged from a Christian framework. Christianity has always embraced both reason and faith. While reason helps us to discover things about experience, faith helps us discover things that transcend experience. For limited, fallible humans like us, Christianity provides a comprehensive and believable account of who we are and why we are here.<\/p>\n

Christianity also infuses life with a powerful and exhilarating sense of purpose. While atheism in most of its current forms posits a universe without meaning, Christianity makes of life a moral drama in which we play a starring role and in which the most ordinary events take on a grand significance. Modern life is typically characterized by gray disillusionment. Christianity gives us a world that is enchanted once again. This is not a return to the past or a denial of modern reality; rather, it is a reinterpretation of modern reality that makes it more vivid and more meaningful. We now see in color what we previously saw in black and white.<\/p>\n

What produces this change of orientation? Christians live sub specie aeternitatis, <\/em>“in the shadow of eternity.” Life can be terribly unfair, and this is for many people a natural sourceof cynicism and frustration. In the Gorgias <\/em>and in other Platonic dialogues, Socrates strives to prove that “it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.” The proof is a failure because there are bad people in the world who prosper and there are good people who undeservedly come to grief. But Christianity produces an enlargement of perspective that prevents us from being jaded by this realization. Christianity teaches that this life is not the only life, and there is a final judgment in which all earthly accounts are settled. The Christian knows that sub specie aeternitatis it <\/em>is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.<\/p>\n

The business tycoon or law partner who cheats people and runs out on his wife may be viewed as a successful man of the world, but the Christian perceives him, sub specie aeternitatis, <\/em>as a truly lamentable figure. By contrast, the poor peasant who crawls to the altar on his knees\u2014a failure by all the world’s standards\u2014is one who is preparing to receive his heavenly reward. Sub specie aeternitatis, <\/em>he is the truly fortunate one. Here we have the meaning of the phrase “the last shall be first.” It simply means that the standards of worldly success and divine reward are quite different. Without the perspective of eternity, this necessary inversion of values would be lost to us. Seeing things in a new light, the Christian can face life and whatever it brings with a sense of peace and hopefulness that are rare in today’s world.<\/p>\n

Contrary to what secular critics say, the Christian does not and cannot hold our life on earth to be unimportant. Indeed, it is of the highest importance. The reason is startlingly obvious, and yet often goes completely unnoticed: it is this life that determines our status in the next life. Our fate for eternity hinges on how we live now So living sub specie aeternitatis, <\/em>far from being a way to escape the responsibilities of life in this world, is actually a way to imbue life with a meaning that will outlast it. It is to give life much greater depth and significance because it is part of a larger narrative of purpose and truth.
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\nChristianity also offers a solution to the cosmic loneliness we all feel. However successful the secular life, there comes to every thinking person the recognition that, in the end, we are alone. Christianity removes this existential loneliness and links our destiny with God. Our deepest relationship is with Him, and it is a relationship that is never- ending and always faithful. The secular person may wonder what this relationship feels like. It is an enduring experience of the sublime. Have you ever had a moment with someone you love in which you are transported into a transcendent realm that seems somehow outside space and time? Ordinarily, such experiences are rare and never last for long. For the Christian, the sublime is a part of everyday life. Milton terms this a joy surpassing Eden, “a paradise within thee, happier far.” Another benefit of Christianity is that it helps us to cope well with suffering and death. Time <\/em>magazine reported on the case of a woman who suffered a series of tragedies. Her husband was laid off. She had a miscarriage. A month later her first cousin was diagnosed with cancer. Then two hurricanes struck her hometown. Finally, one of her best friends died from a brain tumor. Here is the woman’s reaction: “We’re putting our lives in God’s hands and trusting He has our best interests at heart. I’ve clung to my faith more than ever this year. As a consequence, I haven’t lost my joy” Joy under these conditions simply isn’t natural, and that is this woman’s point\u2014only the supernatural can produce enduring joy in the face of life’s tragedies. When we are in pain and feeling hopeless, Christianity raises our spirits. We don’t know why we are in this situation, but we have faith that there is a reason, even if only God knows what that is. Perhaps God is trying to teach us something, or to draw us closer to Him by intimating to us our mortality. Christianity also gives us the hope that when someone dies,we will see that person again.<\/p>\n

Then there is the matter of our own death. Ordinarily we do our best to avoid thinking about mortality, and many of us resist going to funerals. Funerals remind us of our own extinction, and the notion that we will one day cease to exist is a source of anxiety and terror. But Paul writes, “Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?” For Christians, death is a temporal end but not a final end. The secular person thinks there are two stages: life and death. For the Christian, there are three: life, death, and the life to come. This is why, for the Christian, death is not so terrifying.<\/p>\n

Finally, Christianity enables us to become the better persons we want to be. The decent and honorable things we do are no longer a matter of thankless routine. This isn’t just a morality we made up for ourselves. Rather, we are pursuing our higher destiny as human beings. We are becoming what we were meant to be.<\/p>\n

Christianity not only makes us aspire to be better, but it also shows us how to be better. In marriage, for example, Christianity teaches that marriage is not merely a contract. If we treat it that way and use it for our own benefit, it doesn’t work very well. For Christians, marriage is a covenant not merely between the two parties but also between them and God. The operating principle of Christian marriage is agape <\/em>or sacrificial love. This means that marriage functions best when each partner focuses primarily on the happiness of the other. This can be attempted as a secular proposition but human selfishness makes it very difficult. Christian marriage is much easier, because God is now a central part of the relationship. So when there are hardships in marriage, we pray to God and He gives us grace. Agape is not so much human love as it is God’s love shining through us. This is a bountiful resource that is available for the asking, and when we make agape the ground of our marriages and relationships, we find that the whole system works and we are much happier as a result.
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\nWe want to be better parents, and what better examples can we provide for our children than the Christian dad and mom practicing the sacrificial love of agape? We want to be good citizens, and can we find a more inspiring model of genuine compassion and charity than Mother Teresa? A man who saw her embrace a leper told her he wouldn’t do that for all the money in the world. She replied that she wouldn’t either; she was doing it for the love of Christ. This is the same motive that seems to have propelled humanity’s greatest acts of heroism and sacrifice.<\/p>\n

We want to raise the level of our personal lives, bringing conscience into harmony with the way we live. Christianity gives us a reason to follow this interior guide; it is not simply our innermost desire but the voice of God speaking through us. We want to be good because virtue is God’s stamp in our hearts, and one way we relate to Him is by following His ways. As Thomas More said, in the final analysis we are good not because we have to be but because we want to be. Seemingly incorrigible criminals, alcoholics, and drug addicts have reformed their lives by becoming Christians. Earlier in this book I quoted Steven Weinberg’s claim that “for good people to do bad things\u2014that takes religion.” Actually, the exact opposite is true: for bad people to do good things\u2014that takes religion.<\/p>\n

Ultimately we are called not only to happiness and goodness but also to holiness. Christ says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God:’ What counts for God is not only our external conduct but also our inward disposition. Holiness does not mean merely performing the obligatory rituals on the out- side; it means staying pure on the inside. Yet holiness is not something we do for God. It issomething we do with God. We couldn’t do it without Him. In order for us to be more like Christ, we need Christ within us. In the words of that disheveled prophet John the Baptist, standing waist-deep in the river, “He must increase and I must decrease.” Paul says the same thing in Galatians 2:20: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” This is Christ’s countercultural challenge to us. In a society based on self-fulfillment and self- esteem, on looking after yourself and advancing yourself, Christ calls us to a heroic task of self-emptying. He must increase and we must decrease. This we do by allowing his empire an ever greater domain in our hearts. Goodness and happiness flow from this.<\/p>\n

For the Christian, human joys are a small foreshadowing of the joys that are in store. Terrestrial happiness is only a foretaste of eternity. As the book of Revelation 21:4 puts it, “God will wipe away every tear, and there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away:’ It is in this spirit that the Christian awaits this final moment of destiny, relishing the gift of life while every day proclaiming, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus. We are ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dinesh D Souza, The Greatness of Christianity: Table of Contents Cf. Dinesh D’souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, at Amazon “Finally it is not a matter of obedience. Finally it is a matter of love.” \u2014Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons NOW THAT WE KNOW WHAT MAKES CHRISTIANITY UNIQUE, we need to ask ourselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[6702,6707],"tags":[166,3414,7518,7284,3203,7519,7520,1782,7521,7522,7523,7524,7525],"class_list":["post-3478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thechrist","category-studies-thechristcontents","tag-christianity","tag-controversies","tag-da-vinci-code","tag-dinesh-d-souza","tag-gospels","tag-intellectual-satisfaction","tag-james-cameron","tag-jesus-christ","tag-john-stott","tag-mary-magdalene","tag-reluctance","tag-s-central","tag-secular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}