Why I Am a Christian
Stephen Hawkin had to write a whole book to explain why he did not believe in God. I have been asked to explain why I believe in God in three pages! But I’ll try.
There are two reasons why I believe in God: the first is more difficult to talk about, as I have to try and describe my relationship with God. The second is that the message of the Gospel, as I understand it, is God’s answer to the enormous problems which our world faces.
My relationship with God
I’ve been blessed with a good life. I’ve enjoyed what I do, I have been, and continue to be, very happy. You cannot describe happiness, you can only experience it. But words such as deep peace, serenity, contentment, acceptance of what is (combined with a desire to change it), come to mind.
To what do I ascribe my happiness? I don’t know. But I have a strong sense of being loved, and love and happiness seem to me to be closely related.
For me, God is a being who loves me – and every human being – with an infinite and unconditional love. My whole life has been filled with gifts, gifts of family, friends, health, education, opportunities in life, and myriads of other gifts, most of them forgotten or taken for granted, gifts given freely out of love. I was created in love, am accompanied through life with love and my destiny is to live for ever in love. My relationship with God then roots me in this sense of being immersed in love, surrounded by love, like a person lost in a cloud. This gives me a sense of well-being, of being valued, a sense of dignity and self-esteem. My relationship with God gives me a hope of living in a loving relationship for ever (much as two teenagers, clasping each other in a loving embrace, and wishing this moment would never end – so they tell me, I’ve forgotten!) My belief in God gives me a sense of purpose in life – I was created in love for a purpose that only God knows – I have to search to find that purpose, it is more often than not very unclear and confused, but that there is a purpose to my life, I have no doubt. Thus my relationship with God gives me a peace, contentment and fulfilment which I value very much.
Am I fooling myself? My happiness is real, but what about my belief in God? What if there is no God? If there is no God, then it seems to me to be a meaningful purpose in life to seek to maximise our own happiness without inflicting unhappiness on others. But by believing in God, I have found a meaningful purpose in life, which gives me a peace and happiness which I value, which is precisely what I would be searching for if there was no God!
So if there is a God, it makes sense to believe in God; if there is no God, it makes sense to me to believe in God!
I believe in Jesus Christ
For me, the revelation of Jesus in the Gospels makes total sense, it is the path to peace and justice in our world.
A question that bothered me for a long time in my work with homeless young people was: ‘What is the Good News which I, as a priest, a minister of the Gospel, have to bring to homeless people?’ Is it that there will be a place for them in Heaven? Forget it, their issues are far more urgent and relate to this world – a place to live, security, stability, love and care. Unless the Good News has something to say to those pressing issues in their lives, it is irrelevant to them.
We have traditionally understood the revelation of Jesus as an individual moral code, based on the principle of ‘love one another’, which if observed, will gain us entry into the Kingdom of Heaven – a focus on the individual and the next world. However, for me, this fails to answer the question: ‘Why was Jesus crucified?’ A person is not crucified for preaching love – unless by love, you mean something so radical that it threatens the security and way of life you enjoy.
I imagine God looking down at our world today: some one billion people live in destitution while others live in obscene wealth; even in wealthy countries, some people are homeless, some live on the street, some live on the roadside. These people are God’s children, loved with the same infinite and unconditional love with which God loves me. How can God sleep soundly at night while such a world exists! This is not the Kingdom of God that Jesus envisaged.
Jesus proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God. The early Christian community understood that that Kingdom was to be found, here on earth, in their community, which Jesus had established, and it was to grow and flower until that time when Jesus returns, to hand it over, transformed and fulfilled, to God the Father. The Gospels were understood by them to explain the meaning of the words and deeds of Jesus for their community, instructions as to how they, members of this Kingdom of God, should live together.
That community was to have three characteristics:
It was to live in radical solidarity with each other, sharing everything they had together. The model for the community was the life of Jesus himself, who sacrificed everything, even what was most precious to him, namely his own life, for the sake of his brothers and sisters. The members of the community were, then, to be prepared to sacrifice everything they possessed, their resources, their time, their talents, their skills, even their own lives, for the sake of their brothers and sisters.
It was to be radically inclusive, reaching out even to the marginalised and unwanted. Again, the model for the community was the life of Jesus himself, who reached out to the tax collectors and sinners and, in so doing, left himself open to the criticism of ‘respectable’ society.
It was to be completely non-violent.
The Christian community then is meant to be the model for the way people should live together, sharing what we have so that everyone’s needs can be met, welcoming and valuing everyone, no matter who they are, and solving the inevitable problems that arise through non-violent means.
Unfortunately, the Church, human and sinful, while emphasising love, compassion and charitable giving, is a long way from living this vision of the Gospel. But this vision is the reason why I believe in the Church and the Gospel of Jesus, a vision which offers real hope to those homeless people with whom I work, and which I will try to make a reality in their lives and our world.
For a more detailed account of his understanding of the Gospels, Fr. Peter McVerry S.J., is author of Jesus: Social Revolutionary?