Christianity: An Introduction for the Curious and the Perplexed<\/p>\n You may be scratching your head as to why\u2013in the technologically advanced age in which we live\u2013do people still bother about invisible deities controlling things behind the scenes. You may wonder what\u2019s all the fuss over a guy who was executed in a Roman outpost, Jerusalem, in the year 33. If so, read on.<\/p>\n Many of life\u2019s most perplexing questions cannot be answered by science. I speak here of the \u201cBig Questions\u201d\u2013such as \u201cwhy are we here?\u201d, \u201care we alone?\u201d or \u201cwhat is the meaning of life?\u201d or \u201cwhy should I choose this action over that one?\u201d These are thorny questions, and try as we might we can\u2019t really think our way through to all the answers. There are facets of our lives that Science is mute to address. That has led some to denigrate the questions, and denigrate those who ask them. \u201cManliest men don\u2019t need those answers. They are weak minds who seek such things.\u201d It may well be that these questions cannot be answered. Christians believe that they can be approached, but not by techniques and methods designed to measure the physical world.<\/p>\n How can we know anything?<\/p>\n Why are we here? Where do we come from?<\/p>\n Why is there evil and injustice all around me?<\/p>\n Are we alone? Does anyone care about humanity?<\/p>\n Who was Jesus?<\/p>\n Is this life all there is? What happens when I die?<\/p>\n Does my life today have a higher purpose, or meaning?<\/em><\/p>\n I initially had the idea of introducing potential inquirers to Christianity using this questions-based approach. Sort of \u201cwelcome to Christianity\u2013we believe we have answers to some of life\u2019s toughest questions\u201d. (In fact, this is close to my earliest discarded wording).<\/p>\n Ultimately I set the material aside for the current essay <\/a>which begins with the central mystery of Christianity, namely the Resurrection accounts. I made the change for several reasons. One is that we already have a \u201cQ and A\u201d<\/a> section, and so this kind of approach seemed a bit redundant. Also, it became obvious that despite my efforts at brevity, an essay that incorporated all of this material, and did these questions any kind of justice, would by necessity have become quite long and unwieldy. Also, I felt that people would be more likely to want to read such an essay from a personal, subjective approach\u2013I thought about reworking this into a different essay called \u201cmy own path to faith\u201d. That may still come at some point. Stay tuned.<\/href=\"http:><\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In fact, before I became aware of the \u201cExplore God\u201d project, I had written the following rough draft for the section of the \u201cUnderground Church\u201d website called \u201cChristianity: An Introduction for the Curious and Perplexed\u201d: Christianity: An Introduction for the Curious and the Perplexed You may be scratching your head as to why\u2013in the technologically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[591,593,594,590,595],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-underground-church","tag-explore-god","tag-inquirers","tag-philosophy-of-religion","tag-seven-big-questions","tag-underground-church"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1300,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/1300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}