How to Become a Christian

How to Become a Christian

As we listen to the people in the world around us, once in a while we realize that there are more important things than the daily grind of work, sleep, television, Facebook. Perhaps the most important thing we will deal with is to answer the question “what will happen to us when we die?” Will we be with God in Heaven? Will we be alone eternally? Will we simply cease to exist? Is there a real Hell with fire reserved for us? Almost all people have a time when these questions become important to be answered and settled.

But our popular culture has strayed far from the traditional teachings of Christianity when it comes to the question: How do I become a Christian? Let’s take a look at what our culture, largely driven by Hollywood, teaches, and what the traditional teachings of Christianity truly are.

Our culture asks the question: Do you believe in God? By this question, most people think that this means, “Do I think that a Supreme Being exists?” And polls tell us that 85 to 90% of Americans do indeed think that a Supreme Being exists. But believing in a god is not the same as being a Christian.

Christianity has a bit higher bar than most religions. To become a Buddhist, one simply says, “I am a Buddhist” and you are. Being a Buddhist is simple, because there are so many different types of Buddhism.

To become a Moslem, all you need to do is to state sincerely “There is one god and Mohammed is his prophet.” Simple, short, and sweet.

But to become a Christian requires more than simply stating that you are a Christian. It requires that you accept a few, a very few basic principles in this world, and take a simple action.

First, you will need to accept the existence of a Supreme Being. In English, this Supreme Being is generally called “God”, but may be referred to using other names from the Bible, such as Jehovah, Yahweh, etc. Yet, while necessary that you accept the existence of God to be a Christian, it is clear from Biblical texts that this is not sufficient, for it is written that even the devils believe in God and tremble.

And so, believing requires a bit more. After all, where does Jesus Christ come into the picture?

While our dominant culture looks at Jesus Christ as one of the greatest moral teachers of history, on a par with Buddha, Socrates, Moses, Plato, etc., we have to deal with one uncomfortable claim that Jesus made which is ignored by our popular culture. In several places, Jesus took actions which indicated that He was God, or made very clear and obvious claims to be God. In the Gospel of John, it is recorded that Jesus even said, “I and the Father are one.” (10:30). And there was no mistaking these claims – in almost every case when Jesus made such a claim, the crowds around Him decided that He was claiming to be God and tried to kill Him for blasphemy, which was a capital crime in those days. In fact, Jesus’ famous death upon the cross was for the crime of claiming to be God. And so we must deal with this claim and the ramifications of this claim.

Since the earliest days of Christianity, the standard orthodox belief of Christian leaders and teachers has been that Jesus Christ was indeed God walking upon the earth. Thus, we have the formula, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit”, a three-in-one unity. When a mature Christian talks about Jesus being the Son of God, he or she means that Jesus was indeed divine. This is the principle difference between Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal and Baptist Christianity, and similar non-Christian groups such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Unitarians.

And so, Christian believers will need to accept that Jesus was and is God. Explaining this in detail is beyond the scope of this short essay, but is something that most ministers, pastors, and priests are ready to answer.

Helping us to believe in Jesus’ divinity was one purpose of the Resurrection. It was a way of assuring us that Jesus’ claim to be God was true, and thus Jesus’ teachings are not just the teachings of a wise man, but are the direct teachings of God.

And what were those teachings? They are written down in the first part of the New Testament, in the four books known as the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. At the very least, you should find a readable translation of the Bible or the New Testament, flip to the Gospel of John, and read this short report about Jesus’ life, teachings, death, and Resurrection.

(If you visit any Christian bookstore, or for that matter, any Wal-Mart or other bookstore, you will find bibles for sale. My suggestion is that you purchase a “New International Version” (NIV), which is currently the version used in more American churches today than any other. This is because the older King James Version (KJV) or Authorized version was translated around the year 1600 and reads like Shakespeare. Many of the words have changed their meaning since that time, and so the NIV, the Common English Bible (CEB), the New King James Version (NKJV) are all much easier to read, largely because they have been translated since 1960.)

Perhaps the most important teaching of Jesus (after His teaching that He was God), is that any person who chooses to follow Jesus will have eternal life. This is related to what Billy Graham meant by “believe in Jesus”. Do you believe that Jesus was divine, and thus is worthy of being trusted and followed? Do you believe that Jesus has the power to grant His followers eternal life?

It is true that jumping from “Jesus was a wise man” to “Jesus is God” is quite a difficult leap for most people. However, if you will read the Gospel of John, you will see how it was a claim made repeatedly by Jesus – and the people around Him understood this claim.

But if you would like some evidence for this, let me suggest Leo Strobel’s book The Case for Christ, or Paul D Little’s book Know Why You Believe. I’ve also written about the evidence both on my sermon blog (brianboleysermons.blogspot.com) and in my book What do Evangelical Christians Believe? All of these books are available at Amazon.com or at most bookstores.

And so, a Christian needs to believe the following:

· God exists

· Jesus was God walking upon this earth.

· Jesus is worthy to be followed.

And you must make the choice to follow Jesus.

This is the minimum needed to become a Christian. However, there is also an ancient ceremony by which people announce their desire to follow Jesus. This ceremony is baptism. In baptism, you do something which is mildly uncomfortable to show that you are truly going to follow Jesus. If you are not willing to appear in front of a few people and get wet, there is some question as to whether you are truly planning to follow Jesus, isn’t there?

Traditionally, baptism has been done in one of three ways, depending upon the tradition of the church and the physical facilities available. You may be sprinkled with water, you may have a pitcher of water poured over your head, or you may be dunked in a pool of water, a swimming pool, or a creek. Discuss the appropriate methods with your local pastor, the leader of the church you choose to attend.

The church I want to attend? Can’t I stay at home?

Not really. There is no such thing as a Christian hermit. Even the monks joined together to teach one another, to support each other in prayer, and to strengthen each other. So you will need to find a church in your community, and begin to attend it regularly. Try out a few and settle where you feel most comfortable.

And that, my friend, is how you truly become a Christian. The rest of the teachings of Jesus will come to you as you begin to read the Bible more extensively, as you listen to sermons at the church, and as you become involved in Sunday School classes or midweek study groups.

There is one final critical point to recognize:

Becoming a Christian should change you. And this is where the Holy Spirit (Remember “God the Holy Spirit”?) come into play. In most churches, when you are baptized, the pastor prays for the Holy Spirit to come upon you. The Holy Spirit is the third person of God, and acts as a still small voice to lead you to do the work God has for you. Learning to listen to the Holy Spirit, and to learn to follow the teachings of Jesus, will take you the rest of your life. But as you listen and study and practice, you should see your ability to handle the troubles of life grow. For as we learn more and more, we develop a relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit that strengthens us.



May you be blessed in your journey.

Learning About Christianity

The "Both are True" Principle

Most people in their lives appear to gravitate toward a black-and-white world. We want hard-and-fast rules for deciding things - and knowing things. We think that all things should be knowable in the same way that we know that "in 1492, Columbus said the ocean blue", or "2 + 2 = 4". Shouldn't religion, if true, follow the same rules as math or history?

Unfortunately, when we delve into religion, we discover that we are dealing with what is simultaneously the most simple subject we've ever studied, and yet it is the most complex subject. And this in itself is a characteristic of Christian thought.

Throughout Christian theology, the study of the relationship between God and people, there have been proposed as solutions to various problems Solution A - similar to "the flower is red" - and Solution B - similar to "the flower is blue". Time and again, after much debate, the wisest minds in Christianity have ended up declaring that the answer is not A, nor B, but both A and B - "the flower is purple", which is a much richer description of the true situation. 

Yet this is not a compromise, for a compromise means giving up some of A and some of B, but instead is an addition and indeed a multiplication - both A and B are true in all their glorious splendor. We would do well to keep this idea in our back pocket - the idea that both A and B are true, what I shall call the "Both are True" Principle, as we explore the remainder of Christian thought. 

The Principle of Grey Reasoning.

In a related manner, many times we would like a nice pat answer. We would like, once again, to know the rules. Is A better than B, or what? Unfortunately for those who would like simplification, the answer is often, "It depends". Instead of simple black-and-white reasoning such as we would teach a 5-year old child, we must look toward shades of grey. Should one man die so that 50 should live? As first glance, the answer is "yes." But what if the situation is that one innocent baby should die so that 50 convicted murders, all of whom are in their 80's, should live? You see, the simple black-and-white is not so simple anymore. We need to develop an ability to conduct "grey" reasoning. And that is a key difference between the philosophy found in Christianity and the philosophy found in atheism or Judaism. Christianity demands that the individual evaluate the situation and come to the correct conclusion - there are no abstract situations, devoid of people. But we will delve deeper into this later.

For now, understand that Christianity demands that the human particulars of the situation be taken into account. For us, unlike the Buddhist, there is no meaning to "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" We say - "insufficient data to come to a conclusion," and walk away from the problem without worrying about it.

The Principle of Revelation

Christianity is ultimately about a Being called (in the English language) "God", the characteristics of this Being, the character of this Being, and what this Being requires of us humans. We ultimately know something about God because God has told us. God reveals things about God to us in two ways:

First, there is "general revelation". General revelation is the process by which God designed the Universe in such a way that we can see the character of God in that Universe. We see the beauty of the mountains, rainbows, and sunsets, and conclude that our God enjoys beauty. We see that the Universe is grand, stretching over billions of light-years, and conclude that our God is powerful. We see the intricate design of a cell structure and conclude that our God pays attention to details.

There is also "special revelation". Christians maintain that God also reveals things about God to us in special situations. Foremost among this is the collection of 66 books which we call the Holy Bible, which is composed of the Hebrew Bible, or "Old Testament", and the stories and specific commentaries about Jesus and His teachings, known as the New Testament. Most Christians maintain that the Holy Bible was directly influenced in it's writing by God in a complex manner.

God also reveals things to us through "personal revelation". Subject to a principle of consistency - nothing truly revealed by God will contradict the teachings in the Holy Bible - God may reveal items to us through the action of the Holy Spirit. We will discuss this later in a chapter about the Holy Spirit.

Overall, it is a foundational principle of Christian thought that nothing about God may be known unless directly willed by God that people should know this. Because God created and sustains this Universe, and knows everything that has happened and will happen in this Universe, it stands to reason that God is by far a much more complex personality than any other we can encounter. And Christian theology is the study of this complex Being - and this Being's relationship with humans and the rest of the Universe.

Introduction to the Introduction

This collection of essays is my attempt to provide an Introduction to Christian Thought for those people who did not grow up in church - or slept through their early years in church. Gentle Reader, you should discover here the ideas that have led people as disparate as Roman senators, Russian tsars, Hindu sanitation workers, American farmers, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Washington, John F. Kennedy, Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, Larry Niven, Harper Lee, Dorthy L. Sayer, Maya Angelou, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S Lewis to declare that "this is true."

The Christianity which I will be presenting is mostly shared by 95 percent of the Christians in the world today. However, my perspective is primarily a Protestant perspective, with a strong bias in some areas toward the ideas of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Movement. Yet, this is not solely a Methodist book, since my church background includes five years of monthly Roman Catholic Mass (I taught at a Catholic High School), two years with a "Christian Church" (part of the Campbellite group of churches), a couple of years at an "Evangelical and Reformed" Lutheran-leaning church, a few months with the Southern Baptists, and a few years at a Reformed (Calvinist) independent evangelical church. I have also attended a holiness "Bible Missionary" church, and been a member or pastor in the United Methodist church for the last ten years. I hope you will agree, I have been exposed to a wide variety of influences.

But I was not always a Christian. From about age 7 to age 34, I was an atheist. I actually earned a degree in physics, with my emphasis in astrophysics, and a master's degree in business administration. I worked for many years in the factory automation business before starting my own company a month after I became a Christian. Along the way, I became teacher-certified and ended up just a few hours short of a master's degree in education, and began my third career - teaching mathematics and physics. Later, as I became a pastor, I earned a master's in divinity degree.And so I understand the need for solid answers that are not squishy, responses that don't melt like cotton candy, and real facts that haven't been made up by storytellers trying for an emotional response.

As this blog develops, I hope that you'll come to appreciate the depth and wisdom of Christian ideas.

- Rev. Brian L. Boley
Quiet Dell United Methodist Church