Essay by Mark Bateman: "Why I Am a Christian"

Why I Am a Christian
by Mark Bateman
(January 31, 2000)

This essay is very important to me. I present here my credo. My Christian beliefs form the basis of everything I do in this life, everything, that is, which is the result of deliberation. I do not say that impulse or emotion do not motivate many of my acts. What I say is that if you will allow me to explain my direction in life, every deliberate act of mine now has its origin in my Christian faith.

What does it mean to be a "Christian"? The word itself derives from the Greek word used to translate the Hebrew word "messiah", meaning "anointed one". It is applied by Christians to Jesus of Nazareth, who lived approximately 2000 years ago. It conveys the Christian belief that this Jesus is the deliverer of the Jewish people, although the Jewish people maintain that messiah has not yet come. This is basically what separates Christians and Jews. Apart from that, their dogma and morality are similar. The Jewish scriptures comprise the lion's share of canonical Christian scriptures. However, the so-called New Testament, which treats of Jesus of Nazareth and his life and teachings, is not accepted by Jews. The New Testament is relatively short compared to the bulk of the so-called "Old Testament", accepted as canonical by both Jews and Christians.

This background I know from years of scripture study at church, at college, and in self-study motivated by a childhood in which the scripture was raised to the status of the only sure and unerring guide to things religious. I do not want, however, to devote further space to scripture. After all, my secular readers do not believe any of it, my Jewish readers reject much of it, and scripture is not the essence of what I want to write about.

I should also point out that there are many who call themselves Christians who would deny that I am a Christian. Many think that my creed fails in some respect or another to fulfill all the necessary criteria for the designation "Christian". I do not deny the right nor even the necessity of this kind of discrimination. Christian communities must always be vigilant that those with whom they associate share the essential aspects of their faith. For each community, those essential aspects are differently defined, but equally worthy of respect. I only hope that my explanation of my faith in this essay will be sufficiently clear for each community to decide exactly how much I share in common with them.

Now let me say, faith is the essence of religion. What can be known of a certainty is not a matter of faith, but rather of science. So I expound my faith in a man about whom I am not certain, in a man whom I have never met, and in a man who has never spoken directly to me. The man of whom I write is Jesus of Nazareth. I believe him to have been God incarnate. That is, around 2000 years ago, God incarnated himself by taking on a human body, by becoming a human being. I believe in that God whose reality and uniqueness was first announced to humankind by the Jews. I believe that this Jewish God took on a human body and walked this earth in the company of other human beings for approximately 33 years. For those 33 years, that God in human flesh went by the name Jesus.

The paragraph above is the essence of my faith. In enunciating that faith, I assert that I am a Christian, let others call me what they may. How fundamental and profound a step it is to believe what I profess in the paragraph above. The basic premises of such a belief are so radical as to allow the non-believer, with all the weight of intelligence, wisdom, common sense, and practicality on his or her side, to declare them preposterous and absurd. I accept the non-believer's assertion that the basic tenets of Christian faith are unreasonable, impossible to be proved, conducive to fantasy, paranoia, and mental laziness, destructive of invention and curiosity, and likely to lead to a stultification of the intellect and of human energy, so much so as to demonstrate the truth of Karl Marx's assertion that "religion is the opiate of the people"

My easy-going acceptance of the non-believer's judgement of Christianity is what makes me an uncomfortable companion for my fellow Christians, for whom various elements of faith are self-evident and beyond challenge. Yet equally, my whole-hearted belief that God exists, and that Jesus is God incarnate, these make me an uncomfortable companion for those non-believers with whom I agree on a great many issues, yet whom I cannot join in their rejection of religion.

And so at the end of this introductory essay, I appeal to both camps. What I offer to you both is a sensibility indelibly stamped by my Christianity, and a sensibility stamped also by a respect for the scientific method and the dignity of man. I believe that science is a way of finding truth, and that God is a god of truth. As a consequence, there can be no real contradiction between a proper faith and a proper science. If there is a contradiction, one or both are guilty of a fallacy. But the challenge is not to ferret out the fallacies. The challenge which faces believer and non-believer alike is the challenge of forging, from common values and recognized differences, a community founded on respect for the individual, tolerance for differences of opinion, and dedication to achieving the common welfare by the structured mechanism of law. In law is found the moral consensus of the community, the norms which govern behavior, and the proper business of government.