Since today is Maundy Thursday, the first day of the three days of the Holy Triduum ending on Easter, which ends this very difficult Lent, I thought I’d feature the book, Basic Christianity by John Stott, that converted me to Christianity from an agnostic or atheistic point of view, decades after an initial Lutheran elementary school level of catechesis.

Two sentences sold me on reading the book: the first sentence of the Preface, 1) “Hostile to the Church, friendly to Jesus Christ,” and also from the Preface, 2) “But there is evidence for the deity of Jesus – good, strong, historical, cumulative evidence; evidence to which an honest person can subscribe without committing intellectual suicide.”

Basic Christianity was given to me by my best friend in college. She invited me for the first (and last, at least to that particular group) time to a bible study, where I was so offended by the dismissive responses to my questions about the conflicts between Christianity and science, that I told her I’d never go again. On the question of faith, I always asked her, “Why? I can’t believe something for no reason”. And she couldn’t answer to my satisfaction. So, she gave me this book, fully doubting I’d ever change my mind.

These two sentences intrigued me because first, because I felt the author correctly understood how the secular world perceived the church and second, this was the first time I’d been promised a logical argument for the truths of Christianity.

I learned a lot of historical facts about biblical times that I didn’t know about (I hadn’t even considered Jesus a real, historical person, existing in time and space, as a Jew born and raised in actual earthly locations like Bethlehem and Nazareth) but that isn’t what really hit me to the core.

Rather, it was his discussion of the Ten Commandments. Stott writes:

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“[Many people] are aware of certain character defects. But they are not particularly worried by them, and think of themselves as no worse than anyone else. All this is understandable enough, until we remember two things. First, our sense of success or failure depends on how high our standards are. We’d find it quite easy to consider ourselves good at high-jumping if the bar were never raised more than a few inches! Second, God is interested in the thought behind the deed and the motive behind the action.”

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Wow. Wasn’t that the truth? Wasn’t it true that my standards for my own behavior were ridiculously low? And that maybe the vast majority of people (especially in affluent, first-world countries) feel we are all generally good and mean well, since the people we generally agree are beyond the pale are serial killers and such?

What if the standard by which we measured ourselves were perfection? What if there had existed such a perfect person, against whom we would be measured? How could anyone possibly meet that standard?

In short, those questions, and the answers that I found through the bible and then through the Catholic Church, were what caused me to come to Christ, humbled and contrite, in recognition of the fact that there was nothing, in myself, that could possibly meet that perfect standard.

I could write a longer post, but in the interests of brevity and getting this post written, I will end it here. I hope this very short introduction will be of help to those curious about Christianity. Please comment and let me know what you think!