Why I could be a Christian
Please note: This is the kind of thing that I'm very likely to change my mind on later. As I grow and change - or as I decay and change - or whatever it is that goes on with me, I often look back on parts of my web site and cringe. But I try to leave them there for completeness anyway. Today is March 5th, 2006.
From what the scientists tell us - and I'm not in any position to verify it for myself but it sounds pretty believable - our DNA is comprised of a number of amino acids that store information and permit it to be replicated. To use a computer metaphor, it's a hard disk. A fairly small one - 3 gigs, apparently - but considering it's physical size it's storage density is out of this world - way better than anything humans have done to date.
So, basically, from my viewpoint, God is many things - if S/He created the heavens and the earth, as the bible says, then He is a engineer beyond human comprehension, and a artist supreme. But, when it comes to life, He's more of a software engineer - writing out that 3-billion-byte code that can, given energy and the right conditions, become *us*.
From that standpoint, we're all the sons and daughters of God. I mean, if I wrote a sentient computer program, I would be it's father. I'm pretty clear on that.
So, I believe Jesus was the son of God. That's step one.
I believe that God does have the root password to reality. You create a system, you generally keep some way of keeping tabs on the system. And let's just say I've seen little hints sprinkled all over the place. It's kind of a chicken and the egg problem - I didn't really start to see these hints until I believed in God. So it may just be my mind, built to be a pattern filter, seeing patterns because it expects to see them. Or it may really be that God is such a good guy that he designed the system so that it wouldn't force you to believe in Him, because that would be abuse of His power.
Died on the cross? Well, it was 2000 years ago. It's hard to tell what happened 2000 years ago - we weren't there. Or at least, if I was, I don't remember it. But Jesus's story is beleivable. At the very least, God doesn't mind it, or he would have found some way to remove it from reality by now. Certainly the story rings true on all fronts. I guess my inclination is to say that yes, Jesus died - at least for some value of died - on the cross.
For my sins? I'm not clear on what my sins have to do with anyone or anything else. I'm waiting to understand this. However, if the death of Jesus makes some large powerful entity inclined to forgive me and not punish me horribly, I'm all in favor. When I'll manage to stop punishing myself, now that's another horse of a color.
This brings us to the Bible. Is it the word of God? Well, quite possibly kind of. I think it's probably the words of God's children, birthed by binary ('good-and-evil','there-and-not-there') meets prime numbers in a universe where division by zero is illegal. I'll try to explain that last bit more properly just as soon as I understand it more properly myself.
Then again, it's possible that I was permanently unhinged by a acid trip many, many years ago and all of this world I live in is just in my head, and I'm sitting in a hospital room twitching.
The ressurection.. whether his literal ressurection is a fact or not, he does live on in his memes. That's a unarguable fact. Jesus is not dead - he's very much alive in that book over there on the shelf. Every time I open eSword to wade through the message in various incarnations and try to understand which ideas were lost in translation and why I'm evil, sinful, bad, and a whole host of negative words [not that I really need more negative energy in my own direction] Jesus lives again. Just as every time I open Arthur Conan Doyle, the fog rolls down Baker street.
I guess the one basic bit that Christianity seems to have that seems to fit with who I am, that really appeals to me, is forgiveness. Jesus preached it even until they emptied his body of lifeblood. I think that everyone needs forgiven from time to time - that until we have four-dimensional vision, mistakes are inevitable, but that a mistake should not be a reason to die or to give up.
I'll toss more ideas in here as they come to me.. just one seeker after truth and knowledge, looking for answers he can work with.
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