by Munin

Created on: June 09, 2008

The only challenge to accepting Christianity is an intellectual one.

Christianity is a religion, and as such is not so much subject to moral judgement as the judge of morality. Morality (for a Christian or for one who may wish to become Christian) is defined by the tenets of Christianity, just as morality for a Jew is defined by the tenets of Judaism; the same situation applies for all religions. Hence, there can be no real moral comparison between religions-since each religion defines what is moral and immoral, any comparison would be an "apples and oranges" situation.

Instead, the hypothetical Christian or hypothetical potential convert must examine his own mind, and decide for himself whether he is capable of living according to the tenets of Christianity. Certainly, the morals defined by the Christian faith play a part in this decision-making process, but ultimately the person deciding must defer to his intellect to make his choice.

The argument could be brought that any judgements of morality by the church are divinely inspired, and that it is God who will guide the choice of the person who finds himself in the position of deciding to accept or reject Christianity. This argument is not valid, however: in the hypothetical decision between two faiths, each faith will claim that their moral structures are given to them by God. As God is not likely to take sides in any particular instance of this choice, the decision devolves down to the mortal members of the church and their decisions-and hence, as they are the ones interpreting what they claim is their divine mandate of morality, it becomes a problem of human intellect, both to interpret and to decide whose morality is more correct.

The argument could be made that God will guide the choice of any hypothetical Christian or hypothetical convert to Christianity. He may inspire in that person a desire to join or break from Christianity, but it is ultimately the person's choice whether to pay heed to that message or to ignore it, as (at least by most Christian faiths' tenets) the person has the free will to accept or reject the word of God. This means that even in the case of direct divine correspondence, it is the intellect that will guide the Christian or the convert to their decision.

It is this self-same free will that ensures that any choice about accepting or rejecting any religion-not just Christianity-will always be a matter of the intellect. The intellect is, in a way, the very means by which free will was granted to humanity: one can only make a choice if one has the means to decide upon the correct choice to make. As most sects of Christianity believe that they were granted the free will to decide upon the correct path to choose, the only challenge that could possibly arise as to whether to accept Christianity would be one of free will, and hence the intellect.

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