Christians, Tough Questions & the Dead Man Walking

There are a lot of tough questions about Christianity. Like, why is the Bible’s view on sex so different to the world’s? Or, why does God allow suffering? There are so many, and they’re all really important to think about and discuss, but something Andrew said to me last week changed the way I think about them. I asked him a tough question, and his response was yes, it is difficult to understand, but does that mean Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead?

The answer of course was no. I know that Jesus was resurrected, because there is so much evidence to prove that he was! Take, for example, the fact that the tomb where his body was laid was empty, a dead body simply disappeared, even Jesus’ enemies acknowledged that this was true, although they accused the disciples of stealing it. But the majority of the disciples died horrific deaths in the name of the resurrected Jesus, people around the world die for their beliefs every day, but would the disciples have been willing to meet such terrible ends if they knew they were spreading a lie?

Okay, so on its own the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty might not be enough to prove he was resurrected, but thankfully that isn’t the only proof we’ve got. Because Jesus didn’t just disappear from his tomb, he came back and revealed himself to loads of people, at one point he even appeared to over 500 people at once! Now I can’t believe that many people could all have hallucinated or imagined it, in our court system if one or two people give a testimony it’s counted as good evidence, but 500! Maybe all of those people wanted everyone to believe that Jesus is alive, but we know he appeared to people who hated him too, take Paul for example, he was the last person anyone would’ve expected to say he’d seen the resurrected Jesus, because at the time he was so against the spread of Christianity that he was going around persecuting Christians, but after seeing Jesus risen from the dead he did a complete turn around and proclaiming the gospel became his main mission in life!

So for me, the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead proves he is God. Science shows us that it can’t happen naturally, it takes some pretty awesome power, and that’s what Jesus has. Yeah, sometimes I don’t understand everything the Bible says, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is God, or that he died and rose again for me. I’m still gonna worship him even if I don’t have all the answers, and with his help I’ll work my questions through.

If you’ve got any questions about this please come and talk to me or one of the other youth leaders at True, we’d love to chat with you about it!