Given All The Options, Why Jesus?

An Easter Special From Andy Bannister

Listen very carefully: I’ve an amazing money-saving secret that I’m willing to share with you. Are you ready? You’re going to thank me for this one. Here goes: every single book is identical.

Every. Single. One.

Anybody who tells you otherwise is either a bookseller trying to sell you something, or a librarian trying to justify their job. So: save yourself time and money and just buy any book you like and just read that one.

You’ll be pleased to know I don’t actually believe this. But suppose I did. Imagine you realised I wasn’t just making a joke, or had quaffed too many pints of Old Peculier, but that I actually, genuinely believed that every book was identical. I suspect you’d conclude a number of things quite quickly: first, that I probably need professional help. And second, that I clearly hadn’t read more than a single book; because when you do, you quickly discover that every book is not the same.

But here’s the thing: I have a similar reaction whenever I hear somebody say “they’re pretty much all the same” when it comes to world religions. The moment somebody opines that “all religions lead to God” or “all the world’s faith traditions say the same thing” you can immediately conclude they haven’t really examined any of them. For the moment you do, the differences pile up rapidly.

These differences especially mount up around the person of Jesus. Whatever you think of him, Jesus is a remarkable figure. It’s been said that if you removed the founder of any other religion from history, that religion could still stand. You see, somebody else could have taught the Four Noble Truths and started Buddhism—perhaps Richard Dawkins could have done so and it’d be called Dawkinism and there’d be fat little statues of Richard in green jade on mantelpieces all across Asia.

Likewise, the Qur’an, the founding text of Islam, could have been preached by somebody other than Muhammad—Islamic theology is very clear that Muhammad was just a conduit for the message.

But Christianity is not a set of ideas or practices taught by Jesus; Christianity is Jesus. indeed, as a wit remarked, take ‘Christ’ out of ‘Christian’ and you’re left with three letters: I, A, and N—and Ian cannot help you.

Jesus made some astounding claims, especially about his own identity. For example, he claimed to be able to forgive people’s sins (something only God could do). He put his own words on the same level as the words of sacred scripture. Jesus claimed to be a replacement for the Temple, he claimed to be God’s son, he taught his followers to pray in his name, and many more outrageous claims that ultimately got him executed on charges of blasphemy.

If Jesus had stayed dead, we would be dealing with a dead blasphemer: one who had gotten a bit carried away with his own self-importance, overreached in his claims, and paid the price when the authorities crushed him.

But Christians don’t believe Jesus stayed dead: at the heart of the Christian faith lies the resurrection. We don’t have time here to explore in detail the immense amount of historical evidence for the resurrection. But briefly, there are several pieces of evidence—agreed upon by virtually all critical historians—that, taken together, make the resurrection look awfully likely:

1. Jesus’ death by crucifixion (a deeply embarrassing detail to the first Christians, not something one would make up).

2. The empty tomb (discovered by women, who were viewed as unreliable witnesses in the ancient world. If the disciples were trying to sound credible, it is very unlikely they would have written female witnesses into their story. Unless, of course, it’s true).

3. The many resurrection appearances (which if you deny, it becomes impossible to explain why Jesus’ followers went from hiding out in fear to a group who turned the world upside down).

4. The conversion of sceptics (for example, Jesus’ own brother, James, went from being a doubter to being willing to die for his belief in Jesus’ resurrection).

5. The demographic of the early church (most of the early Christians were Jews who had a perfectly good religion: something unprecedented caused them to upend their entire belief system).

When you take these pieces of evidence together, the resurrection of Jesus is the best explanation.

“But hang on!” I can hear some readers cry, “what about miracles?” Surely this is the twenty-first century and all that; this is the age of science, we can’t believe in miracles. Well, if that’s your reaction, here are two thoughts to consider:

1. The idea that science explains everything isn’t actually science. Instead, it’s a rather tired and dusty idea called “scientism” that ignores something crucial: science does some things well and other things rather badly. Should we, for instance, poison all politicians with arsenic? Well, we could conduct an experiment to see what happens if you lace the beer in the House of Commons Strangers’ Bar with nefarious substances; but that won’t tell us whether we should go ahead and wipe out the political class. That’s a moral question, not a scientific one. Science is a tool primarily designed to answer just one question: how stuff behaves if just the forces of physics, chemistry, and biology act on it. It can’t answer questions like “Is there a God?” and “What would happen if God did X?”

2. Everybody believes in miracles—by which I mean “things beyond the reach of science”. Many atheists I know are committed to the idea that the universe ultimately came from nothing (atheist astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss wrote a whole book with that very title). Which leads to the wry observation, first made by my friend Michael Green, that you have a choice: the virgin birth of the universe or the virgin birth of Jesus; pick your miracle.

If the resurrection of Jesus happened, historically, then that validates all of his incredible claims—and means that we need to take very seriously the Bible’s teaching that if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.

Increasing numbers of people are thinking this through more carefully. For some years now, there’s been a reawakening of belief in God—of people taking Christian faith more seriously. Public intellectuals are talking positively about Christianity again—partly because of the evidence, and partly because movements like the New Atheism (which briefly made atheism cool) have so spectacularly failed. As one of those intellectuals, historian Tom Holland remarked:

People in the West, even those who may imagine that they have emancipated themselves from Christian belief, in fact, are shot through with Christian assumptions about almost everything. All of us in the West are goldfish, and the water that we swim in is Christianity, by which I don’t necessarily mean the confessional form of the faith, but, rather, considered as an entire civilisation.[1]

All that is true, in so far as it goes. Only it doesn’t go far enough, because the power of Christianity—what has given it two thousand years of longevity—lies in what has happened in the billions of lives of those who have discovered that the heart of Christianity is found not in its culture-building value, but in Jesus Christ, the one who said: ‘I have come that they might have life and have it to the full’.[2]

This Easter, if you haven’t thought about Christianity before (or for a while) why not give church a go? You might be surprised by who else is there. And if you’re already a follower of Jesus, then why not take a friend to church with you, go for lunch or a coffee afterwards, and ask them how they found it.

As a young friend of mine who recently became a Christian from a very atheistic family background recently wrote to me: “I have been a Christian for six weeks now, and I’m amazed how much my life has already changed! I no longer feel despair for the future but I now feel optimism and hope. I’m excited to keep learning more about Jesus!”

Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, I hope and pray you’ll discover more about Jesus this Easter.

Does atheism really explain everything?
Can reasonable people take Christianity seriously?

During the early twenty-first century, New Atheism was busy producing best-selling books and plastering adverts on the sides of buses. Its loud scepticism is not as popular these days, but many of its arguments live on.

Yet, what if some of its common claims like, "science has buried God" and "religion is the cause of most wars" are not just incorrect, but demonstrably wrong? What if Richard Dawkins and the other New Atheists were not merely barking up the wrong tree, but were in the wrong forest entirely?

Andy Bannister brings you this fully updated and revised book, with new chapters, new resources and new comedy. The Atheist Who Didn't Exist is designed for curious people to tug at the loose threads of atheism and see if it unravels.

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[1] Andrew Brown, ‘Tom Holland Interview: ‘We Swim in Christian Waters’’, The Church Times, 27 September 2019, https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/27-september/features/features/tom-holland-interview-we-swim-in-christian-waters.

[2] John 10:10.