On Proving Christianity

A foray into epistemology with practical results. The argument builds on each prior point from start to finish:

(i) How is anything proven?

(ii) How is Christianity proven to ourselves?

(iii) How is Christianity proven to others?

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When René Descartes, often said to be the father of modern philosophy, penned the words, “I think, therefore I am,” he articulated what I like to think of as the “speed limit” of logic. With “I think, therefore I am,” he was observing what logic can essentially never do: prove something. This famous line is actually meant to state the one thing we can prove, though only to ourselves: as the one doing the thinking, you can prove to yourself that you think and therefore exist since it’s impossible to think without existing. If you attempt to prove your existence to anyone else, however, you will find that equally impossible. There’s always some alternate, technically possible explanation for you seeming to exist.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, said to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th Century, took the limitations further with his philosophy of language. While not precisely his model, what I took from it was that language can only ever be a symbol of some reality. English speakers have assigned the word “horse” to those hooved, four-legged mammals that were once people’s primary means of transportation, just as they’ve assigned the word “anxiety” to feelings of fear, worry, and unease. The challenge with language arises in that the meaning I attach to some word will often be different than the meaning you attach to it. Perhaps you tell me you rode a horse to work, and I envision a Thoroughbred when you, in fact, rode a Clydesdale. The horse you rode in my imagination wasn’t the horse you actually rode, so our language has left a gap between your reality and my understanding. And even if I had imagined a Clydesdale, I still may not have imagined your Clydesdale with his sassy personality and that scar behind his left ear. Yet again, there’s a gap. Of course, the gap seems small, so we don’t worry much about it; our language got the job done for the most part. But fill a sentence, paragraph, or book with such gaps, and one is bound to misunderstand the intended meaning in some more crucial way.

So, now, we’ve run against a serious problem. If nothing can be logically proven, and language leaves such gaps, what hope have any of us for discovering the truth? Herein lies the grand challenge of Postmodernism. The Postmodernists built from these points toward the belief that all truth claims are relative. This idea, relativism, is obviously self-defeating (itself founded on a truth claim), and the source of its shortcoming goes beyond the simple fact of its incoherence. Many say Postmodernism went down in flames and gave way to “Post-postmodernism” on September 11, 2001 when 2,977 real people really were killed in a terrorist attack that really was wrong. What the Postmodernists had failed to see is that it’s the communication of truth, and not the truth itself, that’s relative. A very real 9/11 tragedy clarified this for them.

Even so, the Postmodernists did raise some interesting questions.

Shall I communicate the truth via logic? Logic can prove so little! If you want know—and I mean really know—that something is true, logic can’t get you there.

Shall I communicate the truth via language? How can you be sure my words conveyed the reality I was aiming for? A gap concerning horses is one thing, but what happens when the gap concerns, say, the rules of justice and fair dealing? How can we ever fill those gaps? Moral laws are a lot more abstract than Clydesdales, and unlike Clydesdales, we can’t see them.

Then again, perhaps we can see them—or rather, perceive them. School shootings are an unfortunate feature of day-to-day life in the U.S., and when I learn that yet another group of children was killed, I don’t need anyone to tell me the event was “wrong” or “tragic” or “punishable.” Once I know what happened, I experience the event as wrong and tragic to my very core, and my instincts urge punishment upon the shooter. Only afterward does language show up to try and convey my experience to someone else; and if they were to ask me to prove that the shooting was wrong, I couldn’t do it. I can’t see it or prove it, yet every sane person I know would agree that it was wrong. Its wrongness is experienced firsthand, and that seems to be proof enough.

With that in mind, here is the thesis I’ll set out to establish from this point forward: Truth can be proven only by experience.

The role of experience in the search for truth

Before René Descartes ever tried to prove anything, he was a child experiencing the world—crying when he fell, laughing when he was tickled, and running to his mother when he needed comfort. There was no notion of proving anything in those experiences; there was only the experiences themselves. You didn’t have to prove to him that his mother made him feel better; he simply knew it. His extraordinary capacity for language and logic came later, and—importantly—came with significant limitations that he did a brilliant job of explaining. Were his childhood experiences less real because they predated his capacity to explain them? Surely not.

Now, let me be clear that in noting the limitations of language and logic, I’m not trying to invalidate them. They are wonderful tools. I’m using them right now. Just last week, I caught myself looking at my wife while she slept and admiring how beautiful she was; and when she woke up, I used language to tell her about it. There was a gap between my experience and her understanding since I couldn’t simply transplant the love from my heart into hers; but language got me close enough. I can’t prove to my wife that I love her. There are always other possible explanations for my behavior. I know that I love her because I’m experiencing it, and she trusts that I love her because of what I’ve managed to convey to her via language and even logic. Even so, with language and logic there remain gaps and never proof.

A two-part framework has thus emerged. First, one has an experience. I experience love for my wife, moral outrage at a school shooting, or the sweetness of an orange, and no language is required to have these experiences. They simply happen. Second, the experience can be translated into language for others to understand.

One well-known language for translating physical realities is mathematics. Mathematical models (geometry, calculus, algebra, etc.) aren’t created; they’re discovered—meaning, the math isn’t a real thing at all but rather a language to describe something real. So, for instance, when the math used to construct some machine is wrong, the machine doesn’t work. Reality wins; the math must be amended.

Logic, closely related to math, is a means of translating reality into language. Take the following logical statement:

If I’m in my bedroom, then I’m in my house. Therefore, if I’m not in my house, then I’m not in my bedroom.

Using the language of logic, we see a similar pattern to the more mathematical relationship between squares and rectangles:

If the shape is a square, then it’s a rectangle. Therefore, if the shape isn’t a rectangle, then it’s not a square.

As math allows us to predict and even manipulate the real world, so logic allows us to describe and navigate the real world. Importantly, some preexisting reality is required for any of this to work. Math, logic, and language are used only to describe realities. Describe—not prove.

“But wait,” you protest. “What about mathematical proofs? Isn’t that how mathematicians prove things?” Actually, no. Only when baseline assumptions have been granted can one proceed into a mathematical proof; and even then, contradictions tend to emerge. (See Gödel's incompleteness theorems.) But even if there were no contradictions, assumptions would still have to be established at the forefront. Think of it like chess. The game has certain rules, and if one tactic I use in my next chess match is to drop-kick my opponent, I may beat him, but not at chess. I broke the rules of that game. That said, the rules of chess are not absolute. They could just as easily have been something else. Math proofs are like that. We have to accept certain unprovables to even begin the game. Ideally, those unprovables are true—as in, they correspond to reality—but even when they do correspond to reality, they remain logically unprovable. They are granted only as assumptions. If we firmly trust that some baseline assumption corresponds to reality, we call it an “axiom.”

“But aren’t some things self-evident? Isn’t it obvious that two plus two equals four?” Again, sort of, but I can’t see that this proves anything. We’ve assigned the word “two” to a certain number of entities (be it eggs, trees, or llamas), and when you add two more, you get to a number of entities we call “four.” Saying two plus two equals four is simply describing parts of a whole, like saying, “Cows have horns and muscles.” What our language calls a cow has subparts that our language calls horns and muscles. We’re not proving anything here; we’re just describing a whole and some of its parts. We can all see that when two llamas walk into a pen that already had two llamas in it, there are now four llamas in the pen. It’s self-evident because we can experience it firsthand. Proof is unnecessary; we’re looking right at the drooling things, and we would be perceiving all four of them even if we had no words for how many there were. The language of numbers and math just helps us describe what we’re seeing.

Thus, I stand by my assertion that math, logic, and language are used only to describe realities. We first experience, then describe. The descriptions of math, logic, or language may be powerful and even predictive of what you have yet to experience firsthand (one assumption widely accepted in the scientific community being the uniformity of natural laws), but if you separate those descriptions from some underlying reality, they cease to mean anything. The moment you say two plus two equals ten, you have divorced your description from reality and really said nothing at all.

Proving Christianity to ourselves

When I first put Christianity on trial, the impossibility of logical proof deeply troubled me. In fact, it was probably my greatest barrier to belief. “How can I believe in a non-physical being whose existence I can’t prove?” I wondered. When I used logic to evaluate the evidence, I found that the evidence overpoweringly favored Christianity, and the counterarguments struck me as weak and obviously biased. Perhaps that’s why so many of history’s most rigorous thinkers have been devout Christians, including Descartes and Wittgenstein, the very two who got us into this skeptical mess. If they are any hint, then once we’ve observed the limitations of logic and language, we need to keep going.

So, here’s what troubled me for the longest time, even after concluding that Christianity was rational: If I can’t logically prove it, and if there’s always this gap between language and experience, then what if somewhere along the way some feature of reality got lost in translation? What if, in such a gap, I’ve been misled?

The problem was that I, like many atheists and agnostics, was glorifying logic and demanding that it exceed its universal speed limit—in other words, demanding that it prove something. Logic never proves anything. It is only descriptive. Divorce it from reality—i.e., from describing something real—and it ceases to mean anything. Our experience of reality always preexists whatever translation (math, language, or logic) we use to describe it.

This was one of the first and most obvious biases I saw in atheists when I began to investigate the philosophy of religion. Anytime Christians had a stronger argument, which was often, the atheists fell back on, “Yeah, well, you can’t prove it. You can keep your ‘God of the gaps’”—meaning, “the God you can’t prove.” Christians point out the science showing that our universe had a beginning (the “Big Bang”) and couldn’t have sprung out of nothing. Atheists reply, “Yeah, but you can’t prove there isn’t a multiverse the scientists just haven’t observed yet.” At every stage of the debate, the atheists relied on these thin “technically possible” arguments. Given that proof is impossible in all circumstances, I found a classic instance of bias in these demands for proof—inventing an impossible standard to avoid what they were determined never to believe. This demand for proof and worship of logic is itself illogical, for it asks logic to do what it can never do, even for claims that are true. Never has logic been anything more than a description of reality. Never has it proved anything. That’s what experience is for.

Consider your day-to-day rational decision-making process. Many times, for instance, I’ve picked up a bottle of Tylenol from the store and ingested it or even had my children ingest it, trusting all along that it won’t kill us. I’m not even nervous about it. But why? I certainly can’t prove that it’s safe. I see the label, but what if the label is wrong? I don’t understand half the medical-sounding words on a typical pill bottle anyway, and even if I did, I wasn’t there when this particular bottle was prepared. Perhaps someone slipped poison into it while I wasn’t looking. And yet, I trust it. Is my trust irrational? Of course not. We could do nothing if proof were our standard for action. We use math, logic, and language as maps for rationally navigating our experiences, but the map is not the trail. Math, logic, and language are excellent tools—but never proofs.

We ingest the pill because in our experience the store gives us products that won’t kill us, and in our experience the bottles labeled “Tylenol” contain pills that alleviate certain pains. Most of us understand nothing of the chemical processes that go into this reality, nor can we prove that it will work the next time around; but we trust it. This trust, though perfectly rational, is still merely trust, i.e., “faith.” Everything we do, we do on faith. If we’re wise, our faith is rational, and we proceed on assumptions that, although not provable, correspond to reality.

Here, we arrive at a crucial question. If logic is insufficient to prove the Christian claims, then how can anyone believe them (or anything else, for that matter)? It’s a crucial question because it’s common, but I think it’s actually the wrong question. It’s a question concerning belief, but there is something truer than belief—and that is experience. Belief is what happens when we trust something and put our faith in it. I believe the bottle labeled “Tylenol” won’t contain poison and will help me feel better. By faith, I ingest it. I experience relief. I don’t believe relief, mind you—I experience it. Belief is no longer necessary. Do you see the order of operations? I begin with beliefs and end with experience. And when some belief corresponds to reality, the experience not merely proves but actually replaces the belief. The belief was only ever a map to something real, and once I’m standing at my destination, my map has done its job and can be discarded. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “Where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.”

When logic took me as far as it could and I saw that Christianity was rational, I had to endure an excruciating delay during which I still had yet to experience the Spirit of God. The Psalmist once wrote, “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” and does anyone have to prove to me that oranges are sweet once I’ve tasted one? Upon experiencing their sweetness, what need for proof? The experience, yet again, is the proof. Further, consider these words from Jesus: “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” Can it really be that how we relate to Jesus reflects how He relates to His eternal Father? What an extraordinary concept. Do you think any language is necessary for the eternal Father and Son to relate to each other? One would think they simply know each other from the deepest parts of themselves, and what need for logic or language when they can have such direct experience? Could we, too, have this kind of bond, where “deep calls to deep”?

Standing at the limits of logic and in search of the real and living God, I prayed the words that one biblical character cried out to Jesus: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” After that, God came near and grew personal, and belief in Him became no more difficult than believing that I have arms and legs—none of which I can prove with logic. But I’ve tasted Him, experienced Him, known Him, and I have my proof. In the words of Jesus, His Spirit flows in me “like rivers of living water.” In the words of Paul, God has “put his seal on me and given me his Spirit in my heart as a guarantee.”

The details of my logical and experiential journey toward Christ and much of the evidence and arguments I evaluated along the way comprise the first half of my book, A Path to Heaven; so, if you want a fuller account of it, I would point you there. Here, I will proceed with the present argument and note that this pattern—searching for Christ until you believe and then experience Him—holds for everyone. Jesus made the promise, “Seek and you will find,” and I believe Him. When you know Him, you believe everything He says. I therefore entrust to Him all who genuinely seek Him, even when they don’t know how to translate what they’re seeking into language. I believe with all my heart that they will find Him, for He promised that they would.

Proving Christianity to others

On that note, there remains one final question. If it’s impossible to prove Christianity to anyone logically, how can we promote it? Or, put differently, if we can’t directly translate our experiences with Christ to anyone, how do we persuade them toward Him?

Well, what are some ways we can prove to someone that an orange is sweet and energizing? One option would be to explain the science of oranges. We could explain that people with strong credentials told us that oranges have an abundance of sugar, fiber, and vitamin C and therefore have all the components of a food that tastes sweet and boosts a person’s energy. Alternatively, I could just hand them an orange. If they eat it, they will know its sweetness and feel its energy. The experience will prove the claim.

Or how do I prove that Bach’s cello suites are beautiful? Perhaps I can rely on the testimonies of others who’ve listened to his music. If I’ve studied music theory, perhaps I could walk through the musical notes on paper and explain why they’re brilliantly placed. A far stronger argument would be to simply play the music. When someone experiences the beauty of Bach firsthand, you don’t have to persuade them of its beauty. It simply is beautiful—beautiful in a way that transcends and defies all language.

“Fair enough,” you say, “but this is Jesus we’re talking about. You can’t just hand Him to someone for them to experience firsthand.”

You may find it surprising that this is only partially true; and where it is wrong, it touches on a defining feature of the Christian life: To be truly Christian is to embody Jesus. Jesus told His followers to “abide” in Him and promised that He would, in turn, abide in them. Building on this concept, the Apostle John wrote, “Whoever says he abides in Jesus ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” Building further, consider Ephesians 1:17-23:

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Here, we have Paul praying over the Ephesian church, asking that God would enlighten them with the Spirit so they would know God, invoking the same Spirit that indwelled Jesus and raised Him from the dead—Jesus whose body is now the Church. Paul elsewhere wrote that a Christian’s body and the Church as a whole are “temples of the Holy Spirit” and that every Christian is a part of this body, each part with a different function. Jesus himself prayed in John 17 that His followers would spread His love so that the world would know Him in the same way His apostles did—“with certainty” (v.8)—and all be united with each other by the same bond that unites Him and God.

So, how do we prove Jesus to others? The same way we prove anything. We offer them the “Jesus experience.” We act with the same selfless compassion He acted with; we speak with the same wisdom He spoke with; we pray the same prayers he prayed; we become temples of the same Spirit that indwelled Him; we play our role in the Church, His body. In short, we let those around us “taste and see” that He is good. We can take a lesson from Jesus in that while He walked the Earth, He invited His followers not just to listen to his speeches but to live with Him and follow Him everywhere He went, witnessing His power, love, and entire lifestyle firsthand.

Note, then, that to isolate and rely on any specific part of Jesus to the exclusion of the rest is to sacrifice the beautiful whole for one of its lesser parts. Logic, for instance, will never be enough. Use it, certainly; but know its limits. Many of the greatest, most logical thinkers from history through today—philosophers, scientists, historians, etc.—have been Christian, and their intellect is a gift to the Church. Christianity makes far more rational sense than the alternatives, and the great Christian thinkers have done an exceptional job of showing it—a nice reflection of the Jesus who routinely baffled the elites of His day and became a permanent problem for all anti-religious scholars who followed. Even so, showing Christianity to be rational will not prove the truth of it any more than the rationality of my Tylenol purchase proves that it will work. Only by experience is anything proven.

We must reflect the logic of Christ to others, yes, but then go on to reflect His power and, above all, His love. We must go yet further and pray that God will meet them face-to-face, Spirit-to-spirit, that He will enlighten their hearts firsthand and prove Himself to them. Those who directly taste the goodness of Christ no longer need anything so limited as logic to prove Him. When your headache recedes, you know the Tylenol worked. The purchase was rational, but when you experience relief, your map has outdated itself and brought you to a real location. Likewise, when someone has the “fruits of the Spirit” (love, joy, peace, etc.) blooming in them, when they experience Jesus abiding in them, when they know His voice to the core of their being—what need for proof? They’ve gone beyond the map and into experience. His seal is stamped on their spirit. Since only God can do this, we pray that He will.

Given this high Christian mission to reflect Jesus to the world, my heart burns with sorrow and anger when I see people who claim to be Christians openly defying everything He is. Many hear the word “Christian” and imagine an intellectually lazy, angry, racist, gun-waving Westerner raging on about his rights and everything he believes the world owes him, even if it means oppressing the poor and powerless to get it. How confusing for those who go looking for Jesus only to see this all-too-common person wearing His name. The gap between the true Jesus and these people’s grotesque translation would be almost funny if it weren’t such an insult to the King of Heaven. May the Lord grant that those who’ve stumbled on such obstacles while seeking Him eventually find their way to Him.

Many, of course, will hate Christians precisely because they look like Jesus. Jesus himself promised as much. Satan and his devils stood face-to-face with God and hated Him, just as many stood face-to-face with Jesus on Earth and hated Him; and what can be done for those who hate the very essence of goodness? When your very taste buds go sour, what sweetness can there be for you? I must entrust such people to God’s perfect love and justice. He loves them more than I ever could, and He will do what’s right.

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Logic, language, and math can point us toward what is true, but once they’ve reached their limits, we must proceed beyond these maps and onto the trail itself. Only by experience is anything proven.

And as for those living in Christ—who called himself “the way, the truth, and the life”—if His body, the Church, is to advance His truth and show others the way into His life, then we must offer the full “Jesus experience.” It will take His whole body to do it, empowered by His Spirit; but in this world that sorely needs Him, we have been called to nothing less—for nothing less will prove Him.