It's starting to get hard for me to believe Jesus Christ is real a little help here?

Question

I mean where did you get the idea that Jesus is real just off a book?
sorry for arrgrevating my contacts for asking so many religious questions and especially the ones that have been helping out so much trying to help me understand their word of God but I just don't get it. If you believe that Jesus is real off a book; what makes it any different from believing Allah is real just from reading the Quran? It's like..ok there's no proof or anything..sorry for being a pain but it's really not sinking in. I mean; it seems to make just as much sense as a Pagan belief you know? Of course I don't want to go to hell eternally but other religons teach things like..reincarnation?...how do you know for sure that reincarnation isn't real? For sure for sure? You say 'yay God made a miracle for me he died for my sins'. That's great but um..other people of other religons believe that their religon makes miracles too. I just don't get it anymore. Someone please enlighten me..thanks

buddhism is making so much sense...
again sorry contacts that have answered countless questions such as this

thanks homegirl but HOW do you know JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS? In BUDDHISM we are not all SINNERS LIKE THE BIBLE TALKS ABOUT US TO BE IN THE FIRST PLACE....please explain

okay if Jesus was a real person then how do you know if he is part of God? The Quran teaches that he was just a prophet

Answer 1

No reasonably intelligent person denies the existence of Jesus. There are writings by individuals outside the Church, who were not His followers, that attest to His existence. Since we know He did actually walk the earth, you have to deal with His words, His miracles and the empty tomb. The tomb was empty, and no one has come up with an adequate explanation besides resurrection. He was seen by over a 100 people after His death, mass hallucination is not a reasonable explanation.
The Bible is the final revealed revelation of God, a book that was written by many people, in various places, over thousands of years, yet it flows together as one seamless document. A person once said that if there is no God, then I must worship those who wrote the Bible, it is so beautifully and wonderfully written.
The main difference between Christianity and all other belief systems is this, all others say do, do, do, to appease God and hope for a pleasant afterlife. Christianity says it is done, you don't have to do anything to appease God, Christ did it for you, if you are a believer, All you have to do is believe.
The good news is that salvation isn't in your hands, it is all from God. If you are His, He will give you the faith to believe, He will indwell you with the Spirit, He will justify, redeem and save you. If you are of the elect, one of His children, you will be saved, guaranteed. I pray you are one of His.

Answer 2

Your questions are mostly true, logical and make a good deal of sense.
With anything spiritual there is only so much that can be proven. Some part does have to be accepted on belief or faith.
However, there is a difference between a reasonable belief and an unreasonable belief. It is reasonable for me to believe Hilary Clinton is running for president even though I have never personal met her and heard her say so. I've seen enough newscasts, read enough newspapers, and seen enough media reproductions of her that it would be unreasonable of me not to believe it.
If tomorrow three different people told me the world was flat, it would be unreasonable of me to believe that, even though it was confirmed by other independent sources. The reason is that a great many of other reliable sources contradict them. I've never personally verified that the world is round. I haven’t flown all the way around it or been to space. But enough people have and reported on it, so that it would be foolish of me to believe the three.
This same logic can, and should, be applied to religious and spiritual beliefs. Through my own studies of early church history, the language and cultural settings the Bible and gospels were written in, and study of religions in general, I have concluded that it is reasonable to accept the Bible and the gospels of Jesus as a pretty good representation of what happened. Therefore, I would say it's a reasonable belief. I'd lay out some reasons here but they get pretty technical and overly academic. So do some research yourself and decide if it's reasonable.

Answer 3

You aren't going to hear any good reasons to believe in this particular god or any god. The answers will boil down to a few basic patterns:
1) "The Bible says it so it is true." As you point out, many holy texts say different things, all claim to be true. Circular reasoning such as "The Bible says it's true, the Bible is the word of God, God wouldn't lie so the Bible is true" is laughable to the rest of us, but some take it seriously;
2) Subjective feelings. Miracle stories, conversations with God in dreams, deep personal feelings. But again- all religions have the same sort of arguments. Christianity is no different here. And there's no reason to believe that any of these feelings are accurate.
3) What you want to be true/avoiding threats. Is a religion true just because you like its description of heaven the most or because you fear its version of hell the most? That's just wishful or fearful thinking, not evidence.

Personally I'm agnostic. Since none of the religions actually provide real evidence I see no reason to believe any. If there are some teachings I like in a religion then I might include them in my personal philosophy, but there's no reason to buy into a whole supernatural belief just because some of the religion's tenets aren't bad.

[Some have suggested Stroebel's book. It's laughable. The guy claims to have been an atheist who applied the tools of journalism and reached the conclusion that right wing religious views are true. But it's a charade. Among other things, he didn't interview everyone the way a journalist would. He interviewed primarily right wing christians, a clear sign of pre-existing bias. It's made him a lot of money, but the reasoning in the book is poor and only convinces people who already believe or want to believe fundamentalist christianity.]

Answer 4

You will not find proof of Christ's existence unless the "proof" is based on feelings. Many Christians say they know for certain that Jesus is real because they feel it... because they have dreams... because they talk to him... because their prayers are answered. But you quickly come to realize that anyone can say the same things about their own religion.

Throughout recorded history mankind has dreamed up thousands of gods. Quite literally thousands. Each, in turn, was at one point fervently believed in and followed. The devotees "knew" the god was real.

It comes down to a human need to believe -- it's been brought to us from an earlier age. Religion, while always profitable for priests and prophets, did once bring a sort of unity and a sense of shared values that were important. They aren't important anymore... in fact they are detrimental. What once brought people together (though it's also always been good at tearing people apart) is now a matter of global exclusivity.

Religion is the single largest hurtle mankind has to leap in order to survive the next hundred years and beyond. It is based on irrationality and it leads to exponentially greater irrationality. Ever noticed how a flaw in a mathematical calculation can lead to a massive error in the final product? So it is with such a text as the Bible (or the Qu'ran, the Talmud, etc.)... the mythological elements of the texts are the flaws in the equation. "God Hates Fags" posters and suicide bombers are the massive errors that result from such ignorance.

Jesus, like Marduk, Thor, Zeus, Krishna, Amen-Ra, Quetzalcoatl, Great Grandfather, or any of the thousands of deities still believed in or long forgotten... is not divine. Jesus may have walked the earth and preached as the leader of a small Jewish sect. But that's about it. No virgin birth. No wine to water. No raising Lazarus. No connection to an invisible sky god.

Many many Josephus or Pliny or Tacitus... but those arguments are weak on either side of an argument. Certainy Christianity existed. We know that. Reporting that it existed and what the basic tenets of the faith were doesn't make the claims real... it just makes the religion real. And religion, for all its flaws, is certainly real. But the supernaturally divine is not a reality. We are dealing with an age that is almost pre-history... myth and reality blend. Many claims are unverifiable. Even Nazareth is in question... we don't even know that Jesus was born there. Archaelogical findings show Nazareth as a city no older than perhaps 90 A.D... that is, a city that only dates back to 90 years after Jesus was supposedly born there. And that's the most generous estimate. It may well have been founded many years after that.

What do we -know-, really, about Jesus? We know that people believed and still believe. But believing doesn't make something real. Many people used to think the world was flat, after all.

Enlightenment is cold. But we need it to move forward... life is fascinating and amazing, and its mysteries are still many and hidden. We owe the great mysteries more respect than passing them off under the guise of deities created by ancient peoples to explain the world.

Answer 5

I am not Christian, but I know that Jesus lived. There is a secret book that tells about how Jesus went to India before and after the crucifiction. People investigated this and went to many different temples where the priests keep a record of all unusual histories that are witnessed.

The priests witnessed a "sadhu" with bleeding hands or scarred hands. He had a fallowing. He even went to the famous Jagannath Puri were the priests did not allow him to enter because of not being a brahmin cast. This upset him.

I have to run so I couldn't put much time into this answer.
Anyways, you don't have to be called Christian to love respect, and believe in Jesus.

Answer 6

Okay I am not sure if you are trying to deny that Jesus ever lived or if you are having trouble believing in his teachings. I find this interesting because many people who are not religious respect the teachings of Jesus .Christianity is the only religion that makes complete true sense but it takes a great deal of time to reach the awareness of this.

If you are curious I would recommend reading some works of the early Christian Church and it will explain a lot of questions or uncertainties of Christian teachings such as God, suffering , hell etc. Any more personal questions simply email me [e-mail]. I would be happy to answer any.

Answer 7

you aren't going to hell just because you don't buy what you are being told, Jesus allah ,Krishna all the same , that was a different and much purer time , we live in a web of illusion , when we can't belive anything , it is well known that these are dark times , its all part of the perfect circle . You should just watch the sun rise one day you will realise that first comes time , then sight and then sound. It sound heady but there is nothing greater than time , and before time comes god . We can't see god he's on the otherside of the looking glass, religion to suit your needs, take your pick you can be anything you want to be , religion is good but it doesnt have to be you , jesus is good but you dont owe jesus anything, think for yourself.

Answer 8

Jesus is real because even Jewish and Roman writers have noted about him.

Jesus is real because it is just right that at least there has been one man, only one man, capable or virtue, love and devotion.

I think that you have gone into doubts because of getting too deep into analysis without getting also deep into your research.

The reason He died for your sins is:
The devil had brought man to believe that God asked for sacrifices, animal, (Jewish culture) even human (other cultures) God had seen all this in the world, so Jesus came to be an offer that the devil could not handle, because he killed the only human who was pure and devoted. Today we have light in the world and even through wars those sacrifices are to be extinct.

Jesus is doing that, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
He will bring humanity into the light. While the devil and the evil man are trying to destroy the Earth.

Answer 9

Can't add too much to what the great gazoo and thatguyjoe wrote, but i'll try:

The Josephus passages are forgeries, and we know exactly who did it (Eusebius the "historian"). Even if they weren't forgeries, though, they would still be just hearsay.

Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, and the rest wrote of Christians, not of Jesus. But no one disputes the existence of Christians.

The gospels are oral traditions written down at least 2 generations after the alleged fact. Have you ever played the telephone game?

None of the accounts of Jesus are by witnesses, nor do they source to verifiable witnesses. (The names attached to the gospels are 2nd century guesses.) No witnesses left any confirming writings. The writings of plausible (though far from certain) witnesses--James, John, and Jude--say nothing of Jesus's life. If Jesus's existence were tried in an (objective) court of law, *all* the evidence would be thrown out as "hearsay."

Hope this helps.

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@conundrum - Why should anyone take you seriously when you don't even know what "A.D." stands for? (Look it up. See that what you thought you knew ain't so.) For example, the B.C./A.D. calender wasn't proposed until centuries after the start of Christianity. How can you possibly consider this evidence?

Answer 10

some people like believing. if you don't, then don't do it. :)

right. one can say jesus is real with no more certainty than allah. however, we can vouch for some of the bible's historical figures, and the entire book wasn't concocted (divine or otherwise) by one guy.

pagan beliefs do make just as much sense. if not more. new age philosophy is fascinating.

don't accept jesus from fear of hell. accept jesus because you want to develop a better relationship with him. if you don't want to, then don't. :)

i dont know for sure reincarnation isn't real. i also don't know for sure jesus is. but i believe jesus existed. son of god? i dunno.

the bottom line is: all religions have equal probabilities of being accurate. just pick one. or none. :)