Christianity And Conscience

Some common claims about Christianity are that it is stupid, that it is nonsense and that people who follow it are brainwashed fools. I used to believe some of these things, but I do not now.

Brainwashing can happen under any ideology. We see brainwashed Communists, brainwashed Muslims, brainwashed feminists. They understand how something is transmitted; they do not understand why it happened in the first place. Why are so many people around the world claiming Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? It cannot be because they are brainwashed. Many of them believed different other things before they came to Christ.

The early Christians were not brainwashed at all. They were radicals fighting a very powerful and very cruel empire. They were persecuted. They had no selfish reason to believe what they did. Many of them died violent and painful deaths while affirming Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And yet they ended up outlasting the Roman Empire. This could not be the case if they were brainwashed, and this could not be the case if Christianity is stupid. Something else must be going on.

The Romans were not ignorant. They had advanced knowledge of many things, from engineering to medicine. So why did Christianity outlast the Roman Empire?

Once again, this could not be the case if Chistianity were stupid.

Now there are many people who think that spiritual experience is mental illness. That is wrong. It is mental illness if it exists in your head and nowhere else. It is not mental illness if someone can walk on water or turn water into wine. It is not mental illness if it corresponds with events outside of your own head. Sometimes I wish that the experiences that I had were mental illness, as some of them are quite scary. However I do not have the luxury of such beliefs.

One claim in favor of Christ has been that he died for us. There have of course been many people who died for what they loved or for what they believed in. Spartacus died on the cross as well – for doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing. The difference is that Jesus did not just die on the cross. He also extends loving and generous guidance to people who seek Him. He did not just die for us. He is also helping us and teaching us how to live.

How does Jesus save us? Jesus saves us by delivering us from our sins and teaching us rightful thought and rightful behavior. Jesus saves us by showing us what is the rightful way to be. And then we use our own choice and our own action to do the right thing, however we may have behaved in the past.

When I was younger I was a troublemaker. Many people thought that the problem was with my psychology or with my personality. They were wrong. The problem was with the beliefs that I had. I was at that time a nihilist. Coming from the former Soviet Union, I once had a very strong conscience that was constituted of Communism. When I came to America, it got deconstructed, so I was left without a conscience; and people without a conscience do wrong things. I have found a much better conscience in Christ. So now I hold myself to a much higher standard of conduct. And I am completely convinced that anyone – including people whom some call “sociopaths,” “narcissists” or “perverts” - are capable of making the same choice.

Christianity is not stupid or anything close to being stupid. There is nothing at all stupid about Jesus. There is nothing at all stupid about Paul or Augustine. And if this can be conveyed to someone like me, who for a long time have been a militant atheist, then it also can be conveyed to everyone else.