How do I get over my resistance as a rational thinker to the profound contradictions in the Bible and become a Christian?

Home - Quora Link

Shaking my head at the atheists who want to weigh in despite clearly not having any insight into the stated goal of the questioner.

The first thing you should realize is that, while the Bible might not be a work of history up to the standards of the modern day, it is very very deep, steeped in allegory that remains relevant to this day, a veritable gold mine of fascinating insight into human nature, right there on par with Shakespeare.

Also, it’s unclear exactly how seriously the ancient Hebrews took those stories even back then. Certainly they weren’t scientists although they held the Greeks, who were, in high regard. So to expect their religion to be fully free of hokey voodoo aspects is asking too much of it.

The second thing to realize is that religions of necessity have to change over time in order to fulfill the needs of the people they serve. The various books of the Old Testament are a fascinating window into the lives of peoples that lived thousands of years ago. If you went back in time and told an ancient Hebrew that, no, the world’s actually round, he wouldn’t have crucified you for the grave heresy. He’d have listened closely, and possibly worked that new detail into his stories.

The stories were originally told because people liked to hear them. No more and no less. They filled the same need that today’s people go to the movies or watch television have. They wanted entertainment and enlightenment, the opportunity, however brief, to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves.

To ask perfect coherence and historical observance from these stories is to profoundly miss the point. It’s a culture, a set of traditions, a way of thinking about society and how to live, that’s been passed down for thousands of years in a long, unbroken chain.

In short, it’s bigger than you are.

But don’t start with the Bible. The Bible is advanced reading, you need to work up to the Bible. I think the best intro point to Christianity these days is A Christmas Carol. Read it, or watch one of the many film adaptations, I happen to like the most recent animated version.

If you really follow that story, it’s impossible to not relate to Ebenezer Scrooge. He’s a poignant symbol for how easy and seductive it is for us to lose our way, how easy it is to fall asleep and wake up one day and find our vitality has slipped away. And the long, painstaking way in which he gets shown what happened to his life, and why, man it brings tears to my eyes just to think about it. It’s a great thing to re-watch once a year or so just to get reminded of how easy it is to lose our way in life.

You don’t want your connection to these stories, these deep, profound stories, to get taken for granted, to become trite, meaningless. You want the traditions to stay fresh. But how? The very second after you finish reading a story, you go do something else, and the profundity of the story you just experienced is going to fade. How do you keep engaging when life and your very mind conspire to cause you to disengage and let deep truth get distant and cold?

That’s the problem belief solves. The actual details of the theological wriggles don’t really matter until you want them to matter. What matters is your personal relationship with the profound depth that stories have to offer us. How are you constantly engaging with and wrestling with and making sense of these truths? Do you just want to pretend you know it all already once you’ve heard a story once?

The Christians created this person, this character, this larger-than-life hero, that can live with us and teach us and guide us always. He doesn’t have to be any realer than Hercules was in order to inspire and guide us. But Jesus’s truths aren’t really easy to comprehend, their size and weight. And A Christmas Carol really only scratches the surface with just one aspect, redemption.

You choose your own level of engagement with the stories. You don’t have to let lack of historical evidence stop you from believing in Jesus. He very well could have existed, and the epistles may well contain nuggets of truth. Jesus might well have been executed by the Romans.

But realize this. The first ecumenical council happened, 325 years after Jesus was held to have been killed. At that council, 1800 bishops of the new Christian religion were present. And soon after that council, Christianity replaced the warmed-over Greek myths of Jupiter / Zeus and friends as the official religion of the Roman empire. That history is indisputable. Something happened to cause the cult of Jesus to spread like absolute wildfire. Sure, you can attribute Christianity’s later success to just being in the right place at the right time in history, but how it got there in the first place is truly remarkable.

And you can pick up any Bible to gain insight into that how.