Our faith in Christ is not based on theories, on myths, or on fairy tales. Our faith isn’t based on stories that are told by one or a few that stand to gain from the rest of us believing in those stories. Our faith in Christ is based on events that happened in real space, in real time, real history told from real physical events.
In some religions, we are told to believe in events that the person who told us greatly gained from others believing what they would say. For example, Muhammad told us that he received messages from Gabriel while he was alone in a cave, messages that would eventually become the Qu’ran, the foundation of the Islamic faith. There were no witnesses to the Muhammad’s receiving these messages, only his word and some people that saw him afterward who would tell him that he must be a prophet.
Similarly, Joseph Smith was also alone when he says that he received two different visions from God, ultimately leading him to a series of golden plates that he would translate. Once again, like Muhammad, he would be referred to as a prophet as a result of what he recounted about himself and, similar to Islam, Mormonism would be born from these events.
Luke, however, writes a very different type of story. In addition to the Gospels written by people who were there when the actual events happened, Luke went to investigate. He spoke with eyewitnesses. He heard their stories wrote down all of the things that happened, events that were seen by multiple people.
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.
Luke 1:1-4
It is important to also note that none of these people stood to gain from the story that they told. In fact, most of the eyewitnesses were killed for the story that they told. They spoke about Jesus, and as a result, instead of recanting their stories, they were beheaded, crucified, and stoned. From a worldly perspective, they didn’t gain from the story that they told. They were sent to exile. They were persecuted. They were killed.
The important point that we should understand here is that our God came into our world and acted in real time. Our faith isn’t based on a story that came without any context, but one, instead, that had been foretold over thousands of years prior to Jesus’s arrival on the earth. It is a story that happened in real, physical space and time. It has historical backing from many other sources, many that go beyond the Biblical text. And our faith is based on a story that continues to completely change people’s lives even today, if we will surrender and give ourselves to the God who desires to change us completely, giving us a new identity and a true purpose for our lives.
I pray that we will not lose sight of these basic, fundamental facts, that the story of Jesus Christ is the story of actual, true events, retold by many people from many different perspectives, reinforced both by the blood of the martyrs and the billions of lives that have been radically changed from a life that leads to death to an eternal life in Christ. May we truly live this life, the new life in Christ that is based on true events as we begin this new year!
