THE CASE FOR CHRISTIANITY: WHY BELIEVE?

IN DISCUSSIONS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, I HAVE ASKED VARIOUS FOLKS WHY THEY BELIEVE AS THEY DO. I HAVE HEARD ANSWERS SUCH AS "BECAUSE I PREFER TO BELIEVE IN A GOD WHO IS KIND" OR "BECAUSE (INSERT NAME OF RELIGION) PROMOTES (INSERT IDEAL OR IDEALS). I SCARCE EVER HEAR SOMEONE GIVE THE ONLY VALID REASON FOR BELIEVING ANYTHING, Which is "because it is true".

Now, Christianity consists of the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is Jehovah God; that He became a human being born of a virgin and the Holy Spirit; that He lived and died as the perfect Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world; and that he was raised from the dead on the third day, and lives forever and will soon return.

So the question must be "why do I believe this is true?"

Since today is Easter, I think it a fine time to answer that. The linchpin of Christian belief being that of the Resurrectiion. Without the Resurrection the rest is mostly just twaddle and adages. With it, you have the Truth. To arrive at the Truth, you must have evidence. Here it is.

EXHIBIT A: JESUS TOLD EVERYONE HE WOULD DIE AND RISE FROM THE DEAD. This was as well known in that day as Barack Obama's election is in ours. People were looking for this event.
EXHIBIT B: JESUS'S ENEMIES PLOTTED TO KEEP THE RESURRECTION FROM HAPPENING. They did this by sealing the tomb and posting a guard of Roman soldiers on it, in case Jesus' disciples tried to steal the body and point to the empty tomb. What chance would a collection of unarmed fishermen, townspeople and women have against Roman Legionnaires?
EXHIBIT C: IF JESUS'S ENEMIES WANTED TO DISCREDIT HIM - WHICH THEY VEHEMENTLY DID - ALL THEY NEEDED TO DO WAS PRODUCE HIS CORPSE AFTER THE THIRD DAY. They could not, because He had risen.
EXHIBIT D: JESUS SHOWED HIMSELF ALIVE AFTER HIS DEATH. The evidence for this is in the next Exhibit:
EXHIBIT E: ("E" stands, of course, for "Easter"). Jesus's Disciples went far and wide telling everyone of having seen, first hand, His Resurrected Self. This did not sit well with those who hated the new religion, Notable among these was the Roman Emperor Nero. Nero offered St. Peter and St. Paul a choice: Either renounce their belief that Jesus had risen from the dead; and in that case go free as wealthy men; or else maintain that they had seen Jesus alive after the Crucifixion, in which case they would die horribly by torture. Now if you had been confronted on a lie and given the choice of sticking to the lie and dying slowly and painfully OR publicly admitting that you had been putting everyone on, well, if you say you would die under torture for a frivolous con game, you are either lying or you are nuts. Peter and Paul were not the only ones, either.

So that is why I believe in Christianity. The evidence that it is true is absolutely irrefuteable.

A QUESTION ABOUT PASSOVER FOR OUR JEWISH BRETHEREN

Being Christian, we worship a Jew as Lord Jehovah God. And we believe that hatred of the Jewish people is hatred of Jesus Himself. We are reallly chagrined at so-called "Christians" who call Jews "Christ-killers"; as it was a Roman judge who gave the sentence and Roman soldiers that carried it out. So this post is not meant in an offensive way.

What we would like to know is this: The whole point of matzoh is that the Hebrews ate unleavened bread because there was no time to let the dough rise; seeing as how they were going to have to get the hell out of Egypt fast, before Pharoah changed his mind. We rather doubt that they spent a week scrubbing down the house to make sure there was no yeast around, they just roasted that lamb fast and slapped that dough down on the oven. Let alone have a Rabbi supervise the harvesting of the wheat and the milling.

Oh, we are sure that the cleaning rituals bring family and community together, and that is a good thing. But it seems to run contrary to the commandment given to the Hebrew slaves to hurry the heck up. Wouldn't it be just as according to Moses to just mix the dough and immediately bake it?

We understand most of the origins of Kosher laws. For instance, no cheeseburgers. This stems from the Commandment "thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk". To make absolutely certain that the milk or cheese used in a meat/dairy dish did not come from the meat animal's mother, you use separate sets of crockery and dishes. But it seems to us a long way between "don't wait for the bread to rise" and "make absolutely certain there is no yeast within five miles of you".

We are not asking you to cease and desist, far from it. According to our St. Paul "Unto them (the Jews) were entrusted the Oracles of God".

Just curious. You may respond in "comments".