Jesus and Reality

I'm willing to concede that what we call religion is probably little more than a combination of folklore, wishful thinking and outright fraud. But, it doesn't matter, I'm still a christian.

How can that be? Am I stupid? Deluded?

Thought creates reality. Jesus becomes real because I believe in Jesus.

Let's look at some other ideas that are completely imaginary, yet even atheists believe in them so they become real.

Ideas like: Justice, Equality and Freedom.

Equality? You can't show me two human beings that are equal, let alone a whole nation or a whole species. Equality is just something we made up...and yet, how many of us have died fighting for it?

The same goes for Justice. Are you kidding me? There is no justice! In the "real world", justice just isn't possible, and yet we fight for it every day and we make it a reality.

Freedom? Freedom is bullshit. We are bound every second of every day by gravity, economics, age, physics, prejudice, ignorance, lack of energy, lack of knowledge, lack of motivation, greed, lust, envy, bureaucracy, hypocrisy, genetics and stupidity, and yet there is nothing more important to us Americans than Freedom.

You simply cannot posit these things as a reality using logic and science. These things only exist if we believe they exist and work to make them exist.

Space travel wasn't a reality in 1950. Reasonable people just didn't believe in such things: yet by believing in the impossible, man walked on the moon before 1970.

If we accepted only what we could prove was real and solid and tangible then the world would never grow and improve. It's by reaching beyond reality that we create reality, otherwise we might as well just go back to making tools from stone, living in caves and killing each other over a bite of antelope flesh.

I don't know if there was actually a guy walking around first century Palestine named Jesus doing all sorts of magic and stuff. It doesn't matter, because I am not in first century Palestine.

It doesn't matter because in the here and now, I have these really astounding writings attributed to Jesus and the even more amazing concept of Jesus that I can hold and use and build a better world.

Believing in Jesus helps me make really imaginary things like love, compassion, forgiveness and grace real and tangible in a way not possible if I didn't have a Jesus to guide me--and that's why I'm a christian.