What I Believe
I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
There. I said it.
Depending on your history with Christianity, that sentence may have landed somewhere between interesting and please don't invite me to whatever church thing is about to happen.
I get it.
For some people, the word Christian doesn't immediately bring Jesus to mind. It brings to mind the guy with the sign informing everyone from the side of the road that they're going to hell. Or the person whose entire public witness seems to consist of MAGA memes, calling strangers "libtards," and treating every political disagreement like the opening battle of Revelation.
Somewhere along the way, Jesus occasionally gets buried beneath a truly impressive amount of human nonsense.
So before deciding what you think about Christianity based on Christians, including me, I'd ask you to consider something much more important:
What do you think about Christ?
I'm not writing this to recruit you into a political tribe or collect imaginary points for Team GOP. I'm writing it because I genuinely believe Christianity is true.
And if I believe that, keeping it politely to myself would be a strange way of loving people.
If I knew a bridge was out on the road you were driving down and watched you driving toward it, I wouldn't say, "Well, I certainly don't want to impose my bridge beliefs on anybody."
I'd probably wave my arms like an absolute idiot.
Because if the bridge is actually gone, your opinion of me would suddenly matter a lot less than what was about to happen to you.
That's how I think about my faith.
If Jesus really is who He claimed to be, this matters more than almost anything else I could ever tell you.
So here's why I believe He is.
Jesus Was Real
Before miracles, resurrection, heaven, judgment, or anything else likely to send a skeptical eyebrow climbing toward the ceiling, Christianity begins with a much simpler question:
Was Jesus actually a real person?
Historically, the answer is pretty overwhelmingly yes.
The Roman historian Tacitus, who wasn't exactly running the first-century Christian fan club (he wasn't a Christian), recorded that Christus, the person behind the Christian movement, had been executed under Pontius Pilate during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius.1
A Jewish historian named Josephus also mentions James as the brother of "Jesus, who was called Christ."2
Neither man was working for the church marketing department, and that's exactly why their references are useful.
Christianity doesn't begin with a mysterious figure asking humanity to accept a private divine revelation on his word alone. Jesus lived in a known place, during a known period, under a known government. He gathered followers, made extraordinary claims, and was executed in full view of history.
There was a Jesus of Nazareth.
He was crucified by Roman authority.
And then something happened that desperately needs explaining.
Because crucifixion should've ended his story.
Instead, it started something.
A Dead Messiah
Jesus wasn't the only person people hoped might be the Messiah.
But when somebody who was supposed to be God's chosen king got publicly executed by Rome, that created one fairly significant branding problem:
Your Messiah was dead.
That's difficult to spin.
Crucifixion wasn't just execution. Rome used it to humiliate people. It advertised defeat, weakness, shame, and Roman power.
Nobody watching Jesus die would've naturally thought, Well, this is certainly going according to plan.
Even one of Christianity's earliest writers admitted how ridiculous the message sounded:
"We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles."
1 Corinthians 1:23
If Jesus' followers had simply been wrong about Him, this would've been the natural point for the movement to collapse.
Go home.
Return to fishing.
Hide in shame.
Maybe start a rumor about aliens and hope everyone soon forgets the previous headline. 👀
Instead, His followers started announcing something much stranger:
Jesus was alive again.
They weren't saying His teachings lived on.
They weren't saying He remained with them in some comforting poetic sense.
They claimed that the man they'd watched die had risen from the dead and that they'd seen Him afterward.
And importantly, that claim shows up very early.
This Wasn't a Legend Added Centuries Later
One of the earliest Christian writers we have is a man named Paul.
If you've never read the Bible, here's the important part: Paul wasn't one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul began on the opposite team.
We'll get to that crazy plot twist in a minute.
Paul wrote a letter to Christians in the Greek city of Corinth. In it, he reminds them of a message he'd previously received and then passed along:
Jesus died.
Jesus was buried.
Jesus was raised.
Then people saw Him alive.3
Paul names Peter, one of Jesus' closest followers. He mentions Jesus' main group of disciples. He says Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people, then to James, and eventually to Paul himself.
Here's why that matters.
Paul doesn't introduce the resurrection as some dazzling new theory he just came up with. He specifically says he's passing along something he had received from others.
That means resurrection belief was already circulating before Paul wrote the letter.3
And Paul actually knew people who'd been there at Christianity's beginning. In another letter, he says he spent time with Peter and met James, Jesus' brother.4
So we're not dealing with a story that first appears hundreds of years later after everybody involved was safely dead.
The claim was already there near the beginning:
Jesus died, and His followers became convinced they'd seen Him alive afterward.
That doesn't automatically prove they were right.
But it does mean we need an explanation for why they believed it.
And this is where Paul becomes fascinating.
Meet Paul, Christianity's Least Likely Recruit
Calling Paul a skeptic would be underselling things.
Paul wasn't sitting quietly in the back row saying, "Eh, I'm gonna need more evidence."
Paul was trying to destroy Christianity.
That's not an accusation Christians later invented to make his conversion story more dramatic. Paul admits it himself. He wrote that he'd persecuted Christians intensely and tried to wipe out their movement.4
Then something changed.
Paul became convinced he'd encountered the risen Jesus.
And suddenly, the man trying to shut Christianity down began traveling around telling people Christianity was true.
That's one heck of a career pivot.
He didn't exactly land somewhere comfortable afterward, either.
Paul describes imprisonment, beatings, danger, hunger, exhaustion, a stoning, shipwrecks, and enough travel problems to make modern airport delays feel charming by comparison (2 Corinthians 11:23-28).
So I have to ask:
If Paul invented his conversion, what exactly was the scam?
"Congratulations, Paul. You've successfully fabricated a religion. Your grand prize includes prison, beatings, dangerous sea travel, and pretty much zero retirement benefits."
Suffering doesn't prove a belief is true. Plenty of sincere people have suffered for false beliefs.
But it can tell us something about whether someone really believes what he's saying.
Paul definitely behaved like a man convinced something extraordinary had happened to him.
His explanation was simple:
He believed he'd seen Jesus alive.
Then There's Jesus' Brother
Now meet James.
James wasn't merely another follower.
He was Jesus' brother.
And according to the Gospel of John, Jesus' own brothers didn't believe His claims during His ministry (John 7:5).
Which, frankly, feels incredibly human.
Imagine growing up with someone who eventually announces that He's the Son of God.
That's a tough sell at Thanksgiving.
I've got sisters who've known me my whole life. I could accomplish something genuinely impressive and still get reminded of something embarrassing I did when I was twelve.
So James interests me.
At some point, the skeptical brother became a leader in the Christian church at Jerusalem.
What happened?
Paul's early list of resurrection appearances specifically says Jesus appeared to James (1 Corinthians 15:7). Later, Paul personally identifies James as "the Lord's brother" and describes meeting him in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:19).
Then Josephus, writing this not in the Bible, mind you, also records James' existence and eventual execution.2
Again, this doesn't mathematically prove resurrection.
It leaves me with another person whose behavior needs explaining.
What turns Jesus' unbelieving brother into one of the people leading a movement that worships Him as Lord?
Again, the earliest Christians give us their answer::
James truly believed he'd seen Jesus alive after His death.
Did They Just Make It Up?
You've probably heard Christians say:
"Nobody would die for a lie."
I don't buy that.
People absolutely die for things that aren't true. History's given us an uncomfortable amount of examples.
The better question is whether somebody would knowingly endure suffering for something they personally made up, especially when lying offers no obvious reward.
Jesus' earliest followers weren't merely repeating something they'd heard from a distant stranger. They claimed to be the witnesses.
So if the resurrection was a conspiracy, they're the people who would've known it was a conspiracy.
What were they getting out of it?
Money doesn't appear to have been pouring in.
Political power wasn't exactly on the menu.
Personal safety was definitely unavailable.
Paul describes repeated persecution. Acts records the execution of James, the brother of John (Acts 12:1-2). An early Christian letter known as 1 Clement also remembers Peter and Paul suffering severely for their witness.5
I don't want to exaggerate this evidence. Later traditions describe dramatic deaths for nearly every apostle. Bartholomew, for example, was traditionally said to have been skinned alive rather than renounce Christ (WHAT!?!).
Okay. Maybe we're not too certain about that last one, but we don't need it.
We already have enough to establish the important point:
The earliest Christians knew that proclaiming Jesus would likely get themselves killed, and yet they did so anyways.
That's bananas, especially if they knew it was a lie!
So Why Keep Going?
This is the question I keep returning to.
If Jesus remained dead, why did the movement continue?
Why did Paul reverse course so completely?
Why did James go from unbelieving brother to church leader?
Why did people continue publicly identifying with this movement when doing so could bring serious consequences?
A conspiracy usually has an incentive.
People lie for money. They lie for power. They lie to protect themselves. They lie because admitting the truth would cost them something.
This supposed conspiracy seems to run backward.
Continuing the claim was what cost them something.
Again, sincere belief isn't proof that the belief is true.
But by this point, I find it very difficult to dismiss the earliest Christians as people knowingly pushing a story they invented.
Something convinced them.
They said it was Jesus.
Alive.
And Then the Message Exploded
Christianity didn't remain a tiny local movement around Jerusalem.
It spread across the Roman world.
Paul traveled through major cities around the Mediterranean. Christians reached Rome within the first century, something Tacitus confirms when he describes their persecution there under Nero.1
Think about how strange the message was.
These people traveled the ancient world telling strangers that a Jewish carpenter executed by Rome was actually God's chosen King and had risen from the dead.
Without airplanes.
Without the printing press.
Without the internet.
Without a particularly aggressive Instagram strategy.
They didn't even have a link in the bio.
And this wasn't the world's easiest sales pitch.
The movement spread anyway.
Growth alone doesn't prove Christianity is true. Lots of religions and ideas grow.
But when I combine the growth with the very early resurrection claim, Paul's reversal, James' reversal, and the willingness of early Christians to suffer for what they were proclaiming, I can't comfortably wave the whole thing away as a legend that slowly appeared generations later.
There's something here that needs explaining.
But Hasn't the Bible Been Changed?
This was another question that bothered me.
Maybe Jesus' followers originally said one thing, and centuries of copying turned it into something completely different.
After all, people copied the Bible by hand.
Humans are involved.
That is generally where things begin getting suspicious.
But the manuscript situation isn't what I'd imagined.
There are roughly 5,800 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, ranging from small fragments to much larger collections, along with many more ancient copies in other languages.6
One famous example is Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century manuscript containing the complete New Testament.7
Now, let's be clear about what that proves.
Having thousands of manuscripts doesn't prove Jesus rose from the dead.
You could make ten million copies of my grocery list and it still wouldn't turn Flaming Hot Cheetos into divine revelation.
What the manuscripts help us answer is a different question:
Can we know what these ancient writings originally said?
And having lots of copies is enormously useful for that.
The copies aren't identical.
Of course they aren't.
They were copied by hand. Without a carpal tunnel brace. Scribes skipped words, repeated words, misspelled things, and rearranged phrases.8
I'm a developer. I've broken an entire page while changing six characters because apparently one semicolon woke up choosing violence.
Copying mistakes don't surprise me.
But imagine you have hundreds of copies of the same document from different places and different periods.
One copy says:
Jesus went into the house.
Another says:
Jesus went into the horse.
You don't stare helplessly at the ceiling and declare ancient history unknowable.
You compare the copies.
That's essentially what textual criticism does, though actual scholars would probably object to my horse-based methodology.
Because manuscripts were copied and spread across different locations, one person couldn't simply edit a master Bible and silently push the change everywhere.
Ancient Christianity didn't have automatic updates.
If somebody altered a manuscript in one place, copies already circulating somewhere else could preserve the earlier reading.
That's one reason modern Bibles openly mark passages where manuscripts disagree. The disagreements weren't successfully erased.
The surviving manuscripts preserved them.
That makes the manuscript evidence valuable.
It doesn't tell me nobody ever changed a biblical manuscript.
We know people did.
It tells me we have a remarkable amount of evidence for spotting where changes occurred.8
So when I hear, "The Bible has been copied and translated so many times that nobody knows what it originally said," that argument no longer lands the way it once did.
We're not staring at one mysterious copy of a copy of a copy.
We've got an enormous family tree.
And families are extremely useful when you're trying to figure out who inherited Grandpa's weird typo.
Then There's the Bigger Question
History isn't the only reason I believe.
Eventually I run into a much larger question:
Why is there anything at all?
I don't mean, "Science can't explain something, therefore God."
Science is fantastic at studying how the universe behaves. I want scientists doing exactly that.
But even a complete description of how our universe developed would still leave me wondering why there's a universe capable of developing in the first place.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why are there consistent laws of nature?
Why is the universe understandable?
Why does it contain conditions under which matter can eventually become stars, planets, chemistry, living organisms, consciousness, and finally human beings using that consciousness to argue with strangers (or bots) on Reddit?
None of those questions automatically proves God.
But they make God increasingly reasonable to me.
When I encounter order, information, intelligibility, and systems that work together, I'm naturally inclined to wonder if an intelligent designer is behind them.
That's especially true with life.
The more I learn about living cells, DNA, biological machinery, consciousness, and the astonishing organization required for anything to be alive, the harder it becomes for me to wave it all away with Well, stuff happens.
Then morality makes things even more interesting.
I don't just believe some behaviors are unpopular.
I believe some things are actually wrong.
Torturing an innocent child for entertainment wouldn't become good if enough people voted for it.
A government couldn't make rape morally good by passing a law.
An entire society could approve of slavery and still be wrong.
So where does that wrongness come from?
Evolutionary history might help explain why human beings developed moral instincts and social behavior. But that's different from explaining why any moral rule is truly binding beyond what an individual or society happens to prefer.
If there's a real moral law above us, then the idea of a Moral Lawgiver makes sense to me.
Again, none of this forces somebody to believe in Christianity.
But when I combine the existence of the universe, its order, life, consciousness, and objective morality, I find belief in a Creator far more reasonable than I once did.
The Bible puts the idea beautifully:
"The heavens declare the glory of God."
Psalm 19:1
When I look at creation, that's increasingly what I see.
And Then It Became Personal
Okay.
I can talk your ear off about history, manuscripts, philosophy, Paul, James, and resurrection evidence.
At this point, I've probably established that you shouldn't casually ask me about God at a dinner party unless you and the missus already have a reasonable excuse for why you've suddenly got to duck out early.
But eventually my story leaves the library.
Because I had a stroke.
Before it happened, I'd been struggling deeply with my faith.
I felt lost. I questioned whether God was really there, and I'd begun following that question into some frightening places.
If there was no God, what did that mean for my life?
For its purpose?
For my desire to keep living it?
Then suddenly, I thought I might actually be dying.
And all that intellectual distance disappeared.
I called out to God.
I repented of my unbelief.
I begged Him to preserve my life.
I told Him that if He saved me, I'd devote the rest of my life to Jesus.
And somewhere in those moments, I realized something all my questioning had managed to bury:
Deep down, I believed.
When death felt close enough to touch, I wasn't wondering who to call.
I knew.
I didn't hear a voice. There wasn't a beam of light. Sarah McLachlan wasn't conveniently playing Angel in the background.
But I knew who I was calling out to.
And I knew He was listening.
Not Wishful Thinking
I've made difficult decisions before. I know what it's like to make a choice and then desperately search for reassurance that I chose correctly.
This wasn't that.
It wasn't me finally YOLO-ing at the buzzer:
"What is Christianity. Final answer!"
I didn't reason myself into an emotional high.
I was scared.
I called out to God.
And I felt an answer.
Not in words.
But in certainty.
It was a certainty so powerful that from that moment forward, something in me had fundamentally changed.
Not everything overnight. I didn't wake up the next morning spiritually glowing and incapable of being irritating. That would've raised entirely new theological questions.
But my priorities began changing.
Things that once controlled me started losing their grip.
Other desires grew stronger.
The direction of my life shifted.
I didn't become perfect.
Anyone who knows me can stop laughing now.
I became different.
And that caught my attention because Christianity actually has language for what I was experiencing.
Jesus tells a religious teacher named Nicodemus:
"You must be born again."
John 3:7
The New Testament describes God's Spirit living within people who belong to Christ (Romans 8:9-16).
And Paul writes:
"This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!"
2 Corinthians 5:17
That one gets me, because new is exactly how it felt.
Not smarter.
Not morally superior.
Certainly not authorized to yell at strangers on Facebook.
Just new.
Something was present in my life that hadn't been there before, and over time I could see what it was doing.
Christians Get in the Way
I need to say something here because I know some people reading this haven't rejected Jesus.
They've rejected Christians.
And sometimes Christians have given them very good reasons.
Christians have been cruel.
Christians have been arrogant.
Some have treated being needlessly abrasive like a spiritual gift.
I checked the list.
It isn't there.
Some Christians have treated political parties like extensions of the Gospel, as though Jesus is waiting patiently for people to pick up the correct yard sign.
Some have talked about other people's sins with disgust while forgetting that Christianity begins by admitting that we're sinners too.
Some have seemed almost excited about the idea of other people going to hell.
I hate that.
If I believe someone is separated from God, my response shouldn't be delight. It should be grief.
Jesus ate with people society looked down on. He touched people others avoided. He forgave. He served. He washed feet. He loved His enemies.
Then He died for them.
A Christian proclaiming the Gospel shouldn't sound like someone standing on the safe side of a fence mocking everyone outside.
It should sound like someone who discovered the gate is open and desperately wants everyone else to know.
I'm not better than you because I'm a Christian.
Christianity begins with admitting the exact opposite of that.
I needed saving.
I still need grace every day.
Christianity isn't my trophy.
It's my rescue.
Why Risk Offending Anybody?
Because I care about you.
Even if we've never met.
I know that sounds suspiciously sentimental coming from a website developer who's spent an alarming portion of this article discussing Roman executions, but I mean it.
If I'm wrong about Christianity, then I've written a very long blog post about something I sincerely misunderstood.
That's embarrassing, perhaps.
I'll survive.
But if I'm right?
Then Jesus is alive.
God is real.
Your life has purpose beyond the years you spend here.
Death isn't the end.
Sin is real.
Judgment is real.
Grace is real.
Forgiveness is available.
And the God who made you wants you reconciled to Him.
If I genuinely believe that, staying silent because somebody might think I'm weird would be a terrible reason to say nothing.
If someone's house were burning, love wouldn't whisper:
"I respect whatever decision they're making in there."
Love pounds on the door.
Not because love enjoys disturbing people.
Because the person matters more than the awkwardness.
That's how I understand evangelism.
Not conquest.
Not winning arguments.
Not humiliating somebody in a debate.
Definitely not screaming, "You're going to hell!" and walking away strangely pleased with yourself.
It's one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.
It's me saying:
I believe I've found something true, and I care too much to pretend it doesn't matter.
Why I Believe
I could keep stacking evidence, but you've already survived a surprising amount of Roman history for one blog post (sorry).
So here's where all of this lands for me.
Jesus was real.
He was crucified.
His followers began claiming very early that He'd risen from the dead.
Paul went from trying to destroy Christians to spreading Christianity.
James went from doubting his brother to helping lead His church.
The people carrying this message into the ancient world didn't appear to be rewarded with lives of comfort and prestige. In many cases, following Jesus made their lives substantially harder.
The manuscripts give us enough surviving evidence to compare copies, identify differences, and make the idea of one secret rewrite of Christianity extremely difficult to maintain.
Then I look beyond history.
The existence and order of the universe point me toward a Creator.
Life and consciousness look to me like more than meaningless chemistry getting ambitious.
Objective morality makes more sense to me if good and evil aren't merely preferences invented by human beings.
None of those things alone forces belief.
But together, Christianity became harder for me to explain away than to believe.
And then it became personal.
During my stroke, I called out to God.
I believe He answered.
Something changed in me, and I've watched that change continue ever since.
Maybe none of this convinces you.
I'm not asking you to fake belief.
I'm not asking you to borrow mine.
I'm asking you to investigate the person at the center of it.
Look at Jesus.
Not Christians first.
Not Republicans.
Not Democrats.
Not the angry guy with the sign.
Not somebody yelling at strangers online while their profile bio says Follower of Christ, which is admittedly doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Look at Jesus.
Read one of the Gospels.
Ask why His followers became convinced He'd risen.
Ask what changed Paul.
Ask what changed James.
And then talk to God.
You don't need church language.
You don't need to clean yourself up first.
You don't even need to know whether anybody's listening.
Just be honest:
"God, I don't know if You're there. But if You are, I want the truth. Show me."
If I'm wrong, I've written an awkwardly long article and developed an unusual relationship with footnotes.
But if I'm right, Jesus is alive.
Death isn't the end.
Grace is real.
Forgiveness is available.
And the God who made you is calling you home.
I believe Jesus Christ saved me.
I believe He can save you too.
So yes, I'm waving my arms like an idiot.
The bridge is out. But the way home is open.
Footnotes
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Tacitus was a Roman historian, not a Christian. In Annals 15.44, he says Christus was executed under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius and describes Christians being persecuted in Rome under Nero. The full passage is freely readable.
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Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian. In Antiquities 20.200, he describes the execution of James and identifies him as "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ." The linked page contains the passage itself without an account or paywall.
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Read 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Paul says he's passing on something he'd previously "received," then summarizes Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, and reported appearances to Peter, the disciples, James, hundreds of others, and Paul himself.
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Read Paul's own account in Galatians 1. Paul says he once persecuted the Christian church and tried to destroy it. In the same chapter, he says he later spent time with Peter and met James, Jesus' brother.
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Read 1 Clement. Chapter 5 is an early Christian account describing Peter and Paul enduring severe persecution and suffering for their witness. This is useful because it comes from outside the New Testament and much closer to their time than many later martyrdom traditions.
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The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts explains that roughly 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts are known. They range from fragments containing small portions to much larger manuscripts.
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The Codex Sinaiticus Project provides free access to one of the most important early biblical manuscripts. Written in the fourth century, Codex Sinaiticus contains the oldest surviving complete copy of the New Testament.
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The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts gives a helpful, freely accessible explanation of textual variants. Manuscripts contain both accidental and intentional differences, and scholars compare those surviving copies to determine where readings differ.