Christianity offers hope and meaning

[Mary Naeem]

Christianity offers hope and meaning

As you’ve seen, our view of Christianity is in no sense driven by “wishful thinking.” We firmly believe that reason, logic, and evidence are important aspects of a vibrant faith. At the same time, we acknowledge that intellect and reason are not the complete picture of human experience.

Every person has his own reasons for his beliefs or lack thereof. Often, these reasons are more emotionally driven than we’d like to admit. The message of the gospel is not one human beings instinctively prefer. But, once a person truly understands the biblical Christian worldview, the caricatures and myths fall away, and what’s left is compelling and powerful.

To you, the atheist, we’d respectfully like to summarize that biblical message as follows:

God loves you so much that He made a way to be forgiven for every sin, so you can spend eternity with Him. The Bible says that each person needs to be saved (Romans 3:23), each person can be saved (Romans 1:16), and God wants each person to be saved (2 Peter 3:9).

What separates us from God is sin. No matter how good we think we are, we are all guilty of sin (1 John 1:10). Since God is absolutely perfect, everyone deserves to be separated from Him forever (Romans 5:16). No amount of effort, good deeds, money, talent, or achievement is enough to take away this guilt (Isaiah 64:6). Fortunately, God doesn’t want us to be separated from Him, so He made a way to fix what’s broken (John 3:16–17).

That one and only way is through faith in Jesus Christ (John 14:6). God Himself came to earth as a human, living a perfect and sinless life (Hebrews 4:15). He willingly died as a sacrifice to pay the debt for our sins (2 Corinthians 5:21). According to the Scriptures, anyone can be “saved”—forgiven by God and guaranteed heaven—through faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 10:13). This isn’t a call for blind, ignorant belief (Acts 17:11; 1 John 4:1). It’s an invitation from God to submission and trust (James 4:7). It’s a choice to let go of everything else in order to rely entirely on God.