(For purposes of clarity, I’m choosing to refer to the writer with the questions as the “author.”)

So, let’s get going.

The author begins his line of questions with asking for evidence that Christianity “works.” This immediately presents two issues. The first is to arrive at a reasonable definition of Christianity and the second is to determine what “works” means. While the author implies at the end of his questions that complex answers somehow make Christianity unavailable to most people, there is no way to get around defining our terms if we are to make sense of the whole thing. It does no one any good to just skirt over very deep topics with simplistic answers.

The author quickly provides his own assumption of how to calculate whether Christianity works and that is by using the “metric” (measurement) of people being good.

I will be accused of splitting hairs here but these are really big hairs. And here’s what I mean. We can ask, on the one hand, is it the primary purpose of Christianity that people be good? Or, we can ask, if it’s not the primary purpose, is it certainly an expected outcome? These are related but different.

Either way, we need to pause for a minute to consider a fair definition of Christianity before moving on.

Christianity is a religion, which means it’s a way that people have organized their beliefs and created all sorts of structures in order for that organization to exist. This is true for all religions and also such things as governments that organize around such beliefs as the importance of freedom or equality.

So, Christianity is mankind’s attempt to create structure around a core set of beliefs. It’s important to give at least a brief summary of what those beliefs are in order to determine if the belief system “works” or not. You might be surprised to know how different groups claiming they are Christian will both agree and disagree as to what those are. But, for the purpose of brevity, I’m going to exclude some of the ones on the fringes because they don’t have that many adherents, so the author’s questions won’t really apply.

Fundamentally, Christians agree that there is one God and he is all powerful, all knowing and has no beginning and end (Alpha and Omega). This God is the single greatest creative force behind all things and created man “in his image,” (however we interpret that). God loves all people unconditionally, however he is also a God of justice and will ultimately judge all people. God is actually three “persons” in one: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (This gets dicey and is the source of more than a little puzzlement.) For our purpose here, I’m not going to get into that other than to say that the Son part of the Trinity came to life (was incarnated) here on earth as a man named Jesus in the person of a 1^st century Palestinian Jew. Christians believe he was completely God and completely man. They believe that he was born of a virgin, lived without sin, was baptized as a grown man by his first cousin John (not the apostle John) and went into a three year public ministry, during which time he taught about what he called the Kingdom of God and all sorts of related things. This teaching and his life led him to be accused by the powerful religious leaders of the day as a blatant blasphemer and threat to the order of things, for which he was arrested, tried and sentenced to death by crucifixion. His followers believed he was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah or Savior of the people of Israel. They were shocked when this Savior died. Christians believe he was entombed but on the third day the body disappeared. They believe he was actually resurrected, meaning that he “survived” death and was present to his immediate followers in bodily form. This was beyond astonishing. They believe he died to take away the sins of the world (a gigantic topic in itself), which is what he told them, and that belief in him was the key to eternal life. Christians believe that evil exists and has its roots in the supernatural world. Christians believe in a thing called Free Will, which means we have many choices in this life and God will not get in the way should we choose to ignore or reject him. We have to willingly submit to him. Christians believe that there are consequences for our choices. Protestant Christians basically believe that the only way to be saved is by God’s grace through Jesus, the Christ. Roman Catholics have a mixed history on this. There is, of course, a whole lot more but that’s some of the basics.

So, what does any of this have to do with being good?

For starters, Jesus never explicitly said or even implied that he was there so that people would be good. He said he was there to show them who God was and to advise them on what to do about that. He said he was there to usher in a new age and that the long-promised kingdom of God had fully arrived. His ministry was structured around demonstrating this fundamental reality, of which there had been signs throughout the history of the Hebrew people but which he needed to clarify. This kingdom of God thing is not an easy thing to understand, primarily because it rejects the fundamental standards by which mankind has organized our collective lives. Which is why the Gospel record is full of Jesus trying to explain concepts from many directions (via parables, stories and riddles), thereby breaking down old perceptions so his reality could blossom.

All of this being said, let’s jump over to the core principles that underlay all of Jesus’ life and teaching. It is only here that we can begin to grasp what “good” actually means.

Jesus boldly said we need to pay attention to two things with everything we have. Two things. With everything we have. That’s it. All the rest is secondary. They are to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind” and to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Pause. Nothing like setting a high bar.

I surmise that if someone were to ask him then point blank, “How do I know that I’m doing good?”, he’d say with a caring smile, “Didn’t I just answer that?”

A very telling story highlights this issue. It’s found in the Gospels of both Matthew and Luke and recounts an exchange between Jesus and a very rich man. The man asks, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Now, before we go further, we should relate this to our author’s question. The implication is that the objective of Christianity is for people to be good. The corollary to that is that God will reward good people by granting them eternal life. But, let’s listen in on the rest of the exchange.

Jesus replies, “Why do you call me good? No one is good – except God alone.” Jesus went on to advise the man to keep the commandments, to which the rich man replied, “All these I have kept since I was a boy.”

Let’s hit the pause button again. The commandments, purportedly passed by God to Moses, were a prescription for the most important things God wanted his people to live by. In other words, this was a way for them to be good, among other things. The rich man was saying, “I’ve been as good as it’s possible to be, does that mean I’m in?”

To which Jesus replied, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Wow. Talk about cognitive dissonance!

Let’s return to the Gospel record and the continuation of the story.

“When he heard this, he (the rich man) became very sad because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’

 “Those who heard asked, ‘Who then can be saved?’ Jesus replied, ‘What is impossible with man is possible with God.’ Peter said to him, ‘We have left all we had to follow you!’ ‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus said to them, ‘no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come in eternal life.”

There is so much here to unpack that I’m going to have to let go. However, here’s the thing. Jesus is clearly being asked the key to eternal life … the measurement by which we will be judged. And, just as clearly, it is not just being good. We can be perfectly good (follow all of the rules, act morally, help the poor, etc..) and that’s still not good enough.

Now, it would be a big mistake to think Jesus told this story to convince us to enter a life of complete poverty. Nor, is this a message that we should literally leave our families. Instead, this is a story about what Jesus believes is the most important thing and it’s not our level of personal wealth, nor is it about commitment to our families. Not by a long shot.  Jesus is a master story teller and offers us layers and layers of things to consider.

The key to this story and its relevance to the line of questions we’re considering is the importance assigned to surrendering everything to God. If we are to believe Jesus, we are called to put nothing higher than God, to let nothing get a hold of our hearts and minds more strongly than God. If there’s anything like that, we need to lay it aside, to pull it back as a priority. No thing and no one is to come before God. Jesus then promises that all of those who listen to him “with ears to hear” and who will choose to follow him, will learn what he means by the Kingdom of God and the kind of life we should lead. He counsels that many will hear him but not understand truly what he is asking. Hopefully, we will come back to that later when I try to respond to the author’s final point.

At this point, I will briefly return to the question of whether being good is an objective of being a Christian. And, to that I’ll give an unequivocal yes.

While our purpose is to love God with all we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves, we all know that this is virtually impossible. I mean, come on. Love God more powerfully (times 100 for sake of argument) than we dearly love our spouses and children, for instance? Love everyone else, even our enemies … that awful foul guy living down the street or that back-biting co-worker or politician we think is horrendous? What is Jesus getting at? Is he just a glassy-eyed idealist selling snake oil? Of course, some would say yes. On the other hand …

So, yes, the standard is impossibly high which draws the Christian to two conclusions. First, Jesus provides us an example of how to live and as we draw closer to him through continual surrender, we are able to grow in both our desire and ability to love God and others. Secondly, we can only do this with his help, a thing that is supernatural and not in accordance with the regular laws of this world. Once again, the key is surrender. It requires an act of will that many, many people are not willing to make. It is obvious that even people who profess to be Christians do not do what is being asked of them, making it clear that both their desire and ability to love withers. This fact raises a series of other concerns that skeptics are rightfully able to raise but that I’ll not address right here. Maybe later.

My friend Tony told me the other day that all love comes from God because he is Love and is the font of all love. He would argue (as many Christians do) that this is a fact whether people believe it or not. In other words, true love is a sign that points to God’s existence and character. We will need to explore how this love should be manifest in our lives in order to come to grips with the question of whether or not Christianity is working.

But before we go there, let’s dive more deeply into some of the common reasons why these questions are being raised in the first place. That’s where we’ll begin the next segment.