Conversations with Angie: The one thing that matters

We exchanged a couple of emails in which I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to put her on the defensive if I gave in to the urge to respond. She gave me the go-ahead and seemed interested in what I had to say. Here was my first response (the first part of it anyway):

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Angie,

LOL It sounds like I've become predictable! Seriously, though, I'm going to try not to turn this into an ephphatha/WeirdBrake style debate. I appreciate your willingness to talk to me about this, though. It's one of my favourite things to talk about.

I started responding to part of your email last night, but it was getting so long, I decided I would save the rest for later. The last thing I'd want is for you to fall asleep while reading or to be overwhelmed and never have time to get back with me because doing so takes too much time.

I'm not really sure how much detail I should go into. I could probably write a book if I wanted to, but then you wouldn't want to read it. I guess I'll just have to be selective about which of my thoughts to mention.

The first thing I want to say is that I agree with your point when you asked, "If it [Christianity] wasn't true, what was the value of dedicating my entire life to pursuing its ideals?" I admire your attitude here, because it's been my observation that "truth" usually has little to do with why most people either accept or reject Christianity. It seems to me (and you seem to agree) that there's only one thing that's relevent to whether or not a person should be a Christian, and that's whether or not it's true. If it's true, then they should be, but if it's not true, then they shouldn't. It's as simple as that. A person has only to find out if there are any good reasons to think it's true. Everything else is irrelevent.

More often than not, though, people base their decisions on irrelevent things--things that have no bearing on whether or not Christianity is true. Some become Christians because it gives them a sense of belonging, or it gives them the warm fuzzies. Some reject Christianity because they find Christians to be hypocritical or fake. Neither the warm fuzzies nor the hypocritical Christians are at all relevent to whether or not the basic claims of the Christian worldview are true. So I can't help but respect your position since you seem to recognize this fact.

to be continued...

Conversations with Angie:  The need for certainty