Many people in the UK have been led to believe that Christianity is a deception. Secular society and its institutions, which are often dominated by unbelievers and antitheists, have broadcast propaganda that suggests that the Gospels are fairy stories, that science has disproved God’s existence and that the Christian experience of God is a delusion.

This is a 64 page fully referenced booklet, which provides support for the truth and reliability of the Christian faith. It counters the secularist’s distortions by detailing evidence and logic that defends the historical reliability and plausibility of the faith in four main areas.

This means that the essentials of the faith, as outlined in the NT (New Testament), are trustworthy and hence act as evidence for the truth of the teachings and the events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. We can claim this because: -

Christianity insists that God is other than us. That He is beyond His creation (space, time, matter), unapproachable and with a power that is immeasurably greater than ours. As we discover more about our origins, we find that this is exactly what a creator and sustainer of the Cosmos would need to be.

But Christians also maintain that this transcendent God seeks to restore a relationship He once had with us and claim that He achieves this in a most extraordinary, yet entirely logical way, by becoming one of us as the man Jesus: Immanuel, God with us.

Finally, Christians assert that God is both our redeemer and judge. This too is plausible and rational for our broken relationship with God and the resulting separation means that we have fallen far below His standards and adopted our own. So either judgement or redemption is needed or our resultant wrongdoing (sin if you prefer) that goes unpunished now would pass unaddressed into eternity. So the Christian God, who is both loving and righteous, would first seek to offer redemption, but then to judge: the choice is ours.

If an almighty and transcendent God has presenced Himself amongst us it would be rational and expected that extraordinary things would happen. This is exactly what is recorded as witnesses testify to the miraculous nature of the faith, Christians report remarkable experiences of the presence of God in their lives and history attests to the amazing growth of the early Church, against all the odds. No one has ever suggested a plausible explanation for these things other than that God is really present with His people in the power of His Spirit.

There have been intense and persistent attempts to discredit scripture and to dismiss the Christian experience of the presence of God as a delusion. There have also been attacks against the nature of the faith. These, in their varied forms, have argued that Christianity: causes conflict; follows an unpleasant God; takes the focus off this life; is irrational; has followers who are naïve and can’t agree; has been discredited by science; is a social invention. If the faith were untrue it would have been expected that one or more of these challenges would have nailed Christianity by now. Yet none have been able to sustain their attack. In no case have attempts at dismissing Christianity been upheld.

We can be confident that, overall, evidence and logic are in support of Christianity. If there is a rational chink in our armour, it’s that Christians down the ages have not been as sound or as reliable as their faith. With some notable exceptions, many of us have only been willing to accept Jesus as saviour and have not allowed Him to be the Lord of all parts of our lives. This failure of the Church of Christendom to be the body of Christ on Earth has been the best excuse people have found for declining to follow Jesus; much better than the other challenges that have been brought against the faith. Yet, if Christians were really willing to be infused by Jesus and committed to His call, the Church of Christ would become the most powerful piece of evidence for the Christian faith that anyone could wish to see.

Explore the evidence for and investigate the plausibility of these arguments further in ‘ Christianity: the Evidence’ available for £4 (including postage costs) by emailing info@elmspring.co.uk or contacting Chris Schorah, 30 Gascoigne Ave. Leeds LS15 4LW.