Why are You a Christian?

A very good question, indeed and one with a very simple answer, but Christians will rattle off any number of reasons, from wanting to follow in Jesus Christ's footsteps, to wanting to spend an eternity with their god. The truth is, you are a Christian because you were born in the Americas, which is predominantly Christian, and because you were most likely indoctrinated into Christianity at a very young age. I know I will get all kinds of comments and arguments against this claim, but I intend to show just how solid my claim is.

I propose, first of all, a suggestion. I suggest that a Christian is almost as much of an atheist as myself. You just believe in one more god than I do, but you agree with me on the rest of the world's religions and their gods. You agree with me that they are utter nonsense, and that any mythological claims of gods are not founded on facts or the truth. Well, this will be easier than I thought.

That's right. The main reason why you are a Christian is that, as you can see from the map, you were born in a country where Christianity is king. That's not too hard to do, by the way. Look at the map. If you were born anywhere in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Greenland, a huge chunk of Africa and even the Pacific Islands, chances are you are Christian. Now, Christians argue with me all of the time and say, Well, that should prove that Christianity is true! Hmm...not so, my friends. All that proves is that there is something wrong with you for not having any doubt in your mind because it isn't the only religion in the world. The fact that there are countries that have nearly zero percent Christians, and have never even heard of your Christian god should raise some serious questions about your god's supposed power. Apparently, he hasn't been able to reach Madagascar, and he's had more than two thousand years to do it.

No human is born knowing anything at all about any religion. We are all born atheists. That is a fact. If you know anything at all about the Christian god it is because at some point someone told you about him. How can this be possible if Christianity is the perfect religion? Isn't your god strong enough to implant all the knowledge of his awesomeness within us upon conception? Shouldn't we all be born knowing about his mighty and powerful awesome might? What kind of god relies on mere mortals to pass on his story, and hopefully get it right? That just doesn't make any sense. The very fact that as a Christian you had to be taught how to think about this particular topic, and you had to be scared into accepting it as reality, should be a red flag. Why would anyone have to tell you anything? If you as a Christian can feel god's love right now because you know of him and his story, why couldn't someone who has never heard of him feel his love, too? Why aren't there ancient Chinese texts with references to this Christian god? That would indeed be persuasive evidence to support your claim that your god is truly "the one." But there isn't. The god of the bible is exclusive to the area and people that the bible came from. Two thousand years later those stories made it to your ears and for whatever reasons, you bought into them. You had to be told about them, though.

What if you were born in China? Could you still be as smug as you are right now in your confidence about your faith? If you were born in China, chances are high that you would either be Buddhist or atheist. With only a 1% Christian population, how likely is it that you would even know about your Christian god? You would certainly know about the Buddha, though, and if you ever did hear about the god of the bible, you would most likely be disgusted because, having the Buddha as your model of ultimate morality, the Christian god fails miserably. He fails anyway, even without a superior moral god to compare him to, simply because we have a thing called empathy that can guide our feelings and actions towards other humans. But if you were born in China, you most likely wouldn't even know about that biblical monster, and you might be better off in the morality department.

If you were born in America, depending on what ethnicity, race, or nationality you are, Christianity was probably forced onto your ancestors. If you are black, for instance, your ancestors came from Africa, and it is almost certain that they were not Christian. There's a wonderful chance that they were your rival religion, Islam, or a number of other polytheistic religions. Even after being caught--because that's what good European Christians did back then, they "caught" people with darker skin than them to sell as slaves, just like the bible sanctions--and introduced to Christianity, your ancestors kept their previous gods, they just added the Christian gods to their pantheon. There was no enlightening moment where your ancestors realized they had been fools for having "false" gods all those centuries. You understand that they were forced to accept Christianity, or in many cases, it was beneficial to them to do it for better treatment. So why are you, their descendants, Christian?

If your ancestors were natives here--Native Americans--which can imply a multitude of things--they, too, were forced to accept Christianity. They had never even heard of your Christian god. With what pride, then, can you happily profess your faith when history shows how brutal and degrading it was for Natives and Africans. Even if you are sure you come from European stock, chances are somewhere on your family tree there is either an African or Native ancestor that had Christianity forced upon them, and their culture stripped away from them. How proud are you of that?

You can claim faith or a personal relationship with Jesus is why you are Christian, but that just puts a big bow on the truth. The truth is you are a Christian because you were born in a predominantly Christian country, your family is perhaps Christian and force fed it to you as a child, or you are just a mindless sheep that will believe whatever you are told. The truth is not pretty. In fact, you should be highly ashamed. The fact that you can claim this abomination of a religion with such certainty, claim that you can know the mind of your god so well as to assure me or anyone of his true intentions, is beyond immoral. It is down right hypocritical. That you can with such smugness guarantee that you are saved from some imaginary hell because of the love your god has for you, but that same god can let the other two thirds of the world perish in eternal flames because they do not even know of him, is utterly and impossibly immoral. The madness this implies cannot even begin to be understood. And the fact that you know this! You know this yet, still, you will deny it and argue that this is all wrong. That I can't possibly know what I am talking about because I must not know god's love, and therefore I am the evil one, is utterly irredeemable. If you are honest, moral people at all, you will raise serious inquiry into your god and your religion. It goes against even your own supposed morals to perpetuate this lie.