 Do you find yourself looking for something? Are you wondering if there's more to life than the job, more the social scene? Do you wonder "why am I here"? We think that Christianity can help answer these questions and meet these needs.
Who are we?
We are a group of people who
- Believe in a God who has unlimited power and unlimited love for us.
- Believe that the Bible came from Him because he knows us and cares enough about us to tell us how to get the best out of life we can on this earth.
- Believe that each person has an immortal soul.
- Believe that God wants us to be with him forever in heaven, if we live how he wants us to live as Christians
- Believe that each individual chooses whether or not to accept those terms and both decisions have consequences.
- Believe that Christianity is not a list of don'ts, it's a way of looking at life.
 The following borrows generously from the book Prepare to Answer by Rubel Shelly (Nashville, TN: 20th Century Christian, 1990), with his gracious permission.
Why we believe in God
We look around and see the beauty and order in this world and universe and ask how could it possible have arisen without conscious effort? "Suppose you are walking in a forest and come to a clearing. There is a tent, hot coffee over the fire, and other evidence of human presence. As you look around, however, no one is in view. You call loudly, and no one seems to hear." Clearly, you'd think, "This is amazing! This site is perfect for camping and since I see no one around who could have built it, it must have just happened by chance". Or would you? And curious that the scientific community requires a cause for each effect, but offer no cause for a "big bang" or evolution.
Those who don't believe in a Creator are bewildered that anyone could, and scoff at the "faith" that such beliefs require. Quite frankly, we think that it takes far more faith to believe that the human brain, a sense of beauty, reproduction and the laws of physics came from a random explosion fueled by nothing with no identifiable cause.
Why we believe the Bible
The Christian religion claims that God has reached out ot man through both the written Word and the incarnate Word (that is, the Word as a person, also known as Jesus).
We as humans need a revelation from God in an understandable human language. Nature reveals God's wisdom, power and personality, but it does not reveal his will for the men and women created in his image. Nature does not answer the questions in our minds about our relationship with God. The Christian religion sais that God has spoken to us through Scripture.
If God has revealed himself in words and statements, it's reasonable to assume that this revelation would have certain properties. For one thing, the infinite knowledge and moral perfection of the deity would mean that any revelation from him would be entirely true in all its particular; his all-knowing nature would prevent errors from a lack of knowledge, and his truthfulness would keep him from lies and deceptions. Also, it's reasonable to expect any revelation from God to be coherent and thus consistent and not self-contradictory. We could reasonably assume that it would contain his will for his creatures so as to instruct them in how to be fit for a relationship with him. Finally, we could expect it to provide motivation for faith in and obedience to its content.
Internal Evidence
It would be presumptuous to claim that the Bible is a divine revelation if the book itself makes no such claim. On the other hand, making that claim is not enough to make it true. The Bible indeed says that it is from God, starting with the Old Testament, the part of the Bible written before the time of Jesus:
- "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and Israel'" (Exodus Chapter 34, verse 27).
- In the first five books of the Old Testament, all of which scholars say Moses wrote, we find 420 instances references to the fact that express words of God are being recounted.
- In the Old Testament book of Isaiah, the introduction "Thus says the Lord" or its equivalent appears nearly eighty times.
- Old Testament prophets claim that they spoke only when God revealed his word to them (Hosea chapter 1, verse 1; Amos chapter 1, verse 3; Micah chapter 1, verse 1; Malachi chapter 1, verse 1, and so on).
In the New Testament, Jesus and his apostles affirmed their conviction that the Old Testament documents were from God. Jesus' attitude toward the divine orgin of Scripture is clear:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the (Old Testament) Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear fro the Law until everything is accomplished" (Matthew chapter 5, verses 17-18).
Jesus read the Old Testament. He quoted it. He lived by its commandments.
What about the New Testament itself?
- Jesus told his disciples "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you". Thus, Jesus promised that they would be provided with the words to defend themselves and that they would be able to recall accurately the things Jesus had siad while living among them.
- The apostle Paul claimed neither "eloquence or superior wisdom" in his teaching, saying "However, it is written: 'No eye has seen, nor ear heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him' - but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit ... we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit ..." (First Corinthians chapter 2, verses 9 - 13).
- The apostle Peter encouraged Christians to give attention to certain exhortations that "our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him" (Second Peter chapter 3, verse 15).
External Evidence
Several years ago, Time magazine featured the following question on its front cover: "How True is the Bible?" The magazine's cover story article offered its answer to the question by saying that "the Bible is often surprisingly accurate in historical particulars, more so than than earlier generations of scholars ever suspected" ("The Bible: The Believers Gain," Time, 30 December 1974, page 34). On the final page of an eight-page article, the piece concluded:
After more than two centuries of facing the heaviest scientific guns that could be brought to bear, the Bible has survived - and is perhaps the better for the siege.
Even on the critics' own terms - historical fact - the Scriptures seem more acceptable now than they did when the rationalists began the attack. Noting one example among many, New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger observes that The Book of Acts was once accused of historical errors for details that have since been proved by archaeologists and historians to be correct. (from the same article cited above).`
External Evidence for the Old Testament
Archaeology has discovered people, events and whole civilizations that were previously known to us only from the Bible. Based on the silence of records other than Scripture, critics were quick to allege that the Bible was in error. Yet with the passing of time and by the unearthing for more data, the Bible has been vindicated repeatedly. Nelson Glueck, a respected Jewish archaeologist, has claimed "It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference." (Nelson Glueck, Rivers in the Desert: History of Negev (Philadelphia: Jewish Publications Society of America, 1969), page 31).
Just a single specific example. Critics of the Bible once pointed to the several Old Testament references to a nation of people called the Hittites, and expressed the opinion that they were the mythical creation of late Hebrew writers. In 1906, a German archaeologist named Winckler unearthed the capital city of the Hittite empire and found huge written archives. The entire body of Hittite history learned from those records confirmed the biblical record of their place in Hebrew history.
How do we interpret the Bible?
Some say we in the Church of Christ interpret the Bible literally. It's more accurate to say that we interpret the Bible rationally. The 66 books of the Bible are not all the same type of literature. Some is history, some poetry, some prophecy, some letters and one is an allegory. You don't interpet all of them the same, whether or not they're books of the Bible. We certainly don't apply the same rules of interpretation to The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and the poems of Robert Frost. We also interpret the Bible from the vantage point that it is the complete Word of God, without error or inconsistency.
What is the Essense of Christianity?
In summary:
- It's not living by a list of "do's" and "don'ts".
- It's putting your life on a specific path, one guided by your love for God and desire to please him.
- It's a life of learning.
- It's a life focused on imitating Christ.
Being a Christian does not mean subjecting yourself to a strict list of "do's" and "don'ts". It's based on your relationship with God. Think of it as a relationship of two people in love. When you are in in love with someone, you aren't thinking about what you are supposed to do and what you're not allowed to do. Rather, you are trying to please that person as much as possible, to be the man or woman that person wants you to be. That leads you to choose what you do and what you do not do.
What if you are not sure which is which? That's where the learning comes in ... learning what God expects, which he provides by example, by command and by principle, in the Bible. There are many ways to boil it all down; here is one way:
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