作者 | Kenny Pierce
翻译 | 舒舒
播音 | 舒舒
前言：
在美国，有很多人出生于基督徒家庭，甚至刚出生就受了“婴儿洗”，所以我们遇到的“所谓的”基督徒有一大批。他们跟着父母去教堂礼拜，守圣餐，也把圣经里的教导当“规条”一样来遵守，可是，他们缺乏对这个信仰的主动追求，也缺乏和这位有位格的上帝之间的沟通互动。说白了，其实那是“父母的信仰”，他们顺其自然拿来用用。
听上去很可惜吧？更糟糕的是，他们偏偏又自认为是虔诚的信徒，不管你问他什么都是已经了然于胸的模样，根本不要听别人在讲些什么。
所以，身为美国人的先生（也就是本文的作者）曾经跟我说：“其实在中国或者其它从来没有听说过上帝和圣经的地方，人们更容易对这个信仰产生新奇感，接触了之后也更容易被它所体现出来的爱所感动，因为这种无条件的爱、不求回报的爱、甚至是“傻傻的爱”是他们的文化中不多见的，他们更容易耐心倾听，认真了解。而西方人呢，他们的自以为从小到大耳濡目染的东西是他们最了解的了，有时候这种自以为是反而会让他们成了顽固不化的石头。”
前些天我有一个中国朋友提问：我看身边的人不管是信佛还是信耶稣或者其它什么宗教，都是有所求啊，求健康，求平安，求发财，或者像基督教所说求永生，那也是个“求”字啊。像我这种人一直是自力更生的，我一辈子都靠自己活得很好，我对人没所求，对上帝（或任何的神灵）也没所求，我还需要了解信仰干什么呢？没必要呀？
我与先生讨论，他说：“总之，在认识上帝的旅途上，中国人有中国人的阻碍，美国人有美国人的阻碍，圣经说去天国的门很窄，这是千真万确的。不过，还真有一些共通的阻碍，比如你这个朋友提出的问题，我以前也想过——我不需要某个信仰来满足我今生的任何需求，我到底还要不要去研究它们、认识它们、或者接受其中的哪一个作为我自己的信仰？”
既然如此，我就请他用文字将自己的心路历程分享出来，让我们来了解一位美国普通的基督徒的信仰之路吧 ：-）
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English Version
One thing I have learned over the years is that a lot of people find it hard to understand why I am a Christian for a very simple reason: to them, a religion isn’t something you choose because it’s true. A very large number of people, when they ask, “Why are you a Christian?” are really asking, “What do you get out of being a Christian? Why do you like being a Christian?” And that is a natural thing to ask…if you are someone who thinks of religion as being a way to get something – to get peace of mind, or to find comfort after your divorce, or to find a god who can cure your cancer. If you think of religion as being useful, rather than as being true, then naturally you want to know what I use religion for, and why Christianity suits my purposes better than any other religion, including the religion of atheism.
Now that has always seemed like an odd mindset to me. It is very obvious, for example, that in most areas of life, mistakenly believing something that is false can get you into huge trouble, no matter how sincere your belief is. Let us say, for example, that you believe the brakes in your car are in good working condition, and you are coming up to a train crossing where a freight train is roaring past at fifty miles per hour. When you push the brake, the sincerity of your belief that you have good brakes will have no effect whatsoever on whether you live or die; if your brakes have in fact failed then you will be dead ten seconds from now. The sincerity of your belief will not affect your fate; it will only affect how surprised you are as you die.
Or again, imagine that you have fallen head-over-heels in love with a woman that everybody around you can see is a manipulative sociopath. It does not matter how seriously you believe that she is the second coming of Mother Theresa; if you marry her, you are hosed.
In other words, in life in general, believing things that are false is a great way to get in really bad trouble, and life doesn’t care about your sincerity. Yet an astonishing number of people think that when you get to religion, suddenly something magical happens and it becomes impossible to harm yourself by believing false things. Religion is just a way to get what you want – to make yourself feel happier, or to have a backup strategy in case the doctor can’t cure you, or whatever. (There are also people who think of religion primarily as Tradition, and they see religion as being about Family rather than about Fact; so if you follow a different religion from your parents you are a bad son, even if you sincerely believe your parents’ beliefs are incorrect. And atheism attracts a lot of people who think religion is Superstition and whose subculture has carefully programmed them to react to any person of sincere religious belief with contempt and scorn. But most people, I think, think of religion as being about Getting What I Want Out of Life – it’s like therapy, and whatever works for you is fine. And most of those people find my attitude toward religion both incomprehensible and disturbing.)
But I have never been able to see any reason to think that religion is any different from the rest of life. Why should we think religion comes with some sort of special pass where there are no consequences for being wrong in your religious beliefs? And besides that…well, I was raised to be honest. Quite frankly, if something is false, I don’t WANT to believe it, even if it makes me feel better, because I do not wish to be either a liar or a fool. If there is no life after death I would rather mourn my parents’ passing bitterly but honestly than comfort myself with a false fantasy of seeing them again in Heaven. I recognize that that is a matter of personal taste – certainly American popular culture is completely dominated by people who don’t think it matters at all whether what they say is true or false, on any subject whatsoever – but it is who I am and I don’t suppose I could change that about myself even if I wished to.
Beyond that, I don’t see how it is possible to read the New Testament and not see that to all of the people who sat at Jesus’ feet and learned from Him, what mattered overwhelmingly about Christianity was that it was true. They are constantly appealing to eyewitness testimony, constantly harking back to the Resurrection and saying, “This really happened,” and there is not the slightest hint that any of the earliest Christians would have countenanced for a moment a statement like, “Look, even if Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, still you’ll be so much happier if you just believe that He did so why not just believe it and be happy?”
So I have always believed that, while a great many positive things could be said about the effects of Christian belief on those who believed it and practiced it, still there was only one reason, at least for me, that could justify being a Christian. And that was, that it was true.
“You should become a Christian because it gives you hope to get through the difficult times.” Okay, but is it true?
“You should become a Christian because it gives strength to people who are too weak to make it on their own.” Congratulations to those people…but is it true?
“You should become a Christian because people who follow the principles of living taught in the Bible are far happier and more joyful than those who do not.” Sounds like a good reason to follow the ethical principles…but are the Christian religious doctrines actually true?
And here’s the thing: Christianity – from its very earliest days – has always said that the following statements are true:
1 There is a God, who is much more like a person than like anything else we know, who created the universe.
2 This God has VERY strong views on what sort of behavior is good and what is bad, and his views are non-negotiable.
3 The life that we see is a highly short-term training ground in which we make choices that determine an eternal fate, in which we are either eternally happy with a joy and bliss that we can’t even begin to imagine, or else eternally wretched with an equally unimaginable degree of wretchedness.
4 Without help from God, the choices we make would without exception cause us to end in eternal wretchedness rather than eternal joy.
5 God has chosen to help, but in a very specific way, through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and “no one comes to the Father except through me” (that is, Jesus, who is the one who said that).
6 Jesus proved His claims were true by rising from the dead – not being reincarnated in anything even remotely like the Hindu/Buddhist sense, but by coming back as Himself, in the flesh.
Now if these things are true, then literally what you decide to do about Jesus is the most important decision you will make, whether you want it to be the most important or not. And if they are NOT true, then Christianity is a lie and no honest person should believe it.
That, at least, is the point I reached long ago, and I have never seen any reason to think I was wrong about the importance of the question.
My testimony, then, is really very simple. I grew up in a Christian family and could see that Christianity “worked,” in the sense that families that truly followed the principles of the Bible were joy- and love-filled families, even in the face of tragedies; and also in the sense that when people violated the principles of Christianity it practically never turned out well for them. But of course I also knew that one of the things Christianity taught was that everything about Christianity that worked, worked only for those who had “faith.”
Now there are some very silly ideas about what “faith” is. (It does not surprise me that some people are silly enough and ignorant enough to think that “faith” is believing things not just without evidence, but in the face of evidence; but what is truly gob-smacking to me is the number of CHRISTIANS who seem to think that “faith” means trying really really hard to believe things that all the evidence says is untrue – have they even read the New Testament??) It is not “believing things that aren’t really true,” or “believing things without evidence;” it is not even strictly speaking “belief” at all, being instead a kind of relationship rather than a mental state. But while “faith” is not the same thing as belief, still belief is at the very least part of faith, or one could say a prerequisite of faith. If you don’t think Christianity is true then Christianity itself warns you that lots of things Christians are supposed to do won’t do you any good, because it is faith that makes them work, and if you don’t believe that what Christianity teaches about Jesus is true, then you can’t have Christian faith.
So when I was fairly young – about eight or so – I started wondering whether I had any reason to believe that Christianity was actually true, other than my parents said so…which I could see wasn’t a very good reason to think something was true. After all, Indian childrens’ parents told them Hinduism was true, and Arabian childrens’ parents told them Islam was true, and Chinese childrens’ parents told them some mix of Buddhism and Daoism and Confucianism and atheism was true. And somebody’s parents had to be wrong; so how did I know my parents weren’t the wrong ones?
I had no answer to that question. So I set out on a journey that took many years, involving exploration to some degree of atheism and agnosticism and Hinduism/Buddhism and Islam as well as the many different varieties of Christianity. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that the evidence surrounding the death of Jesus and the birth of Christianity was very easily explained if you accepted that he rose from the dead, and completely impossible to explain on any other hypothesis. In other words, I reached the point of deciding that there were only two reasons not to believe that Jesus rose from the dead: either you were ignorant about the evidence, or else you were already convinced on other grounds that Jesus could not possibly have risen from the dead and therefore no amount of evidence whatsoever could convince you. And I think I have heard all the arguments that purport to show that there cannot possibly be a God or at least that if there is a God He can’t possibly be the Christian one – and, not to put too fine a point on it, they are pretty stupid arguments.
So by the time I got out of Princeton, I had gone back to being a Christian. (I didn’t wind up back where I started, exactly, because while I wound up believing that the core teachings of Christianity were true – that Jesus was God incarnate, that He died in order to reconcile us to Himself, that He rose from the dead, that He offers eternal salvation to everyone who is willing to accept it, and that our eternal fate depends on whether we accept His offer – still on the whole some of the particular beliefs of the particular type of Christianity I grew up in turned out not, so far as I could tell, to be true. )So I started out Baptist, then turned into an agnostic, then came back to Christianity through Anglicanism. But the important thing is that in the end, after investigating all of the main alternatives, the evidence led me back to the Cross and the Resurrection.
I have never regretted coming back to Jesus, nor have I come across any new evidence or any new arguments to change my opinion that Christianity is true. I have learned a lot more about what Christianity means over the last thirty years; that is certainly true. But from those fundamental convictions – the conviction that the evidence says Jesus rose from the dead, and the conviction that if a man is going to look in the mirror and see an honest man then he has to follow wherever the evidence leads – I have never since seen any reason to wander. Because of the empirical evidence, I can say in absolute honesty:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day He rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting.
Amen.
And because I can say in all honesty that all those things are to the best of my knowledge true, and because I choose to do my best (which isn’t very good but is still my best) to live out those truths in my life by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, I can say, and do say, that I am a Christian and a follower of Jesus, so help me God.
Ken Pierce
中文翻译：
这些年来，我了解到一件事：有很多人（译者按：这里意指他的美国朋友）不明白我为什么会成为一个基督徒。原因很简单——对他们来说，选择一个信仰不需要看它的真实性。当很多人问起“你为什么会成为基督徒”这样的问题时，他们的真正意思是“你从你的信仰里面到底得到了什么？你为什么会挺享受做一个基督徒的？”
如果你觉得信仰只是被你用来得到某些东西的一种途径，比如你觉得通过信仰会得到内心的平安、会找到离婚后的安慰、或在生癌症时能求神医治，你问这样的问题也很自然。如果信仰对你来说只是关于“有没有用”，而不是关于“是不是真理”，那么你就会问我信仰对我来说有什么用，为什么基督信仰符合了我的需求，而其它信仰则不能满足我的需求（包括无神论这个信仰）。
不过我觉得这样的思维方式是蛮奇怪的。很明显，在日常生活中的许多方面，如果一样事物是假的、错的、有问题的，你却相信它没问题，不管你多么真诚地相信，它都会给你带来大麻烦。比如说，你坚信你的汽车刹车状况良好，可当你面前有一列火车正以每小时50英里的速度呼啸行驶，无论你怎样真诚地相信刹车良好，对你的生死都没有半点影响，事实是：如果刹车实际上是不灵的，你10秒钟以内就会命丧黄泉。所以，你对你所信的不管有多么真心、多么虔诚，这跟你的命运无关，只跟你在临终那一刻的惊讶程度相关。
又或者，你正为一个女人神魂颠倒，可你身边所有的人都能看出她特善于操控利用别人得到她想要的一切。就算你相信她是特蕾莎修女二世，你若娶了她，就必完蛋。
换言之，在生活中，错误地相信某人某事会让你轻易地惹祸上身，管你信得有多真诚，生活才不买你的账。
然而，当话题切到信仰，就像变魔术一样，突然之间，人们就认为信错了对自己是不会有任何害处的。信仰就是被利用来满足你的需求的——或者让你更快乐，或者万一医生不能治好你的病还能有个求援的地方，等等等等。
也有人把信仰只当作传统，他们更多地认为信仰与“家庭”有关，与“事实”无关。所以，如果你选择的信仰与父母所信的不同，那你就是个坏孩子，哪怕你真心认为父母所信的是错的。
另外，无神论也吸引了不少人，他们将信仰等同于迷信，蔑视和嘲笑任何有虔诚信仰的人。
不过我还是觉得，对绝大多数人来说，信仰就是“取我所需”——就好像什么疗法似的，只要对你“有用”那就是好的。这样一来，我对信仰所持的态度就让他们无法理解了，而且也让他们不舒服。
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我向来认为，对待“信仰”和生活里其他的事物应该一视同仁。我们为什么会觉得在信仰方面的错误就不需要承担后果？仿佛拿着一张“赦免牌”？
从小我就被教育要诚实，所以，如果是假的东西，我一定不愿意相信，就算它让我感觉很好。我不想撒谎，也不要做蠢人。
如果根本没有死后生命，那么当我的父母去世，我宁愿真心实意地、痛彻心扉地哀悼他们，也不愿用假想的、虚幻的天堂来自我安慰。我知道这也只与个人的取舍有关，而如今，无论在什么事情上，在美国流行文化中占主导地位的人们都已经不在乎虚实真假了。不过我就是喜欢诚实面对一切，想改也改不了。
另外，我不明白，一个认真阅读圣经新约的人怎么可能会看不出：对那些坐在耶稣脚前听他教导的人来说，基督教最重要的一点就是它的“真实性”。
他们不停讲述亲眼目击的事实，不停回想耶稣的复活，不停地说：“这事真的发生了！”
反过来，“你看吧，就算耶稣没从死里复活，你佯装相信也能让你快乐很多，为什么你不干脆相信了，让自己快乐一些呢？”类似这样的说法，早期信徒中没有任何人会表示赞同，你在圣经里也找不到这样的蛛丝马迹。
所以，我一直认为，尽管你可以看到基督信仰在那些笃信、并认真实践的人身上有正面积极的影响，但，最起码对我而言，成为一个基督徒不是为了这些好处，只为了一点：那就是，它是真实的。
“你应该成为基督徒，因为这会在艰难中给你支撑下去的希望。”
嗯，好吧，但这个信仰是真实的吗？
“你应该成为基督徒，因为这会让软弱的人刚强，帮助他们站起来。”
恭喜那些人…但是，这个信仰是真实的吗?
“你应该成为基督徒，因为按照圣经中的教导去做的人会过得更加幸福快乐。”
听上去像是要做一个遵守道德律法的好人…但是，基督教所教导的都是真的吗？
基督教从最初就一直表明以下的陈述是真实的：
1.有一位上帝，祂创造了宇宙万物。
2.这位上帝是非界限绝对清晰，跟祂不可讨价还价。
3.我们这短暂的人生只是一个超短期的训练场，我们的选择决定我们在永恒里的命运：要么永远拥有无法想象的极大喜乐，要么永远落到同样无法想象的凄惨境地。
4.若没有上帝的帮助，我们自己所做的选择毫无例外地会将我们带入永恒的凄惨境地。
5.上帝选择用很特殊的方式来帮助我们，就是道成肉身，通过耶稣的死里复活来拯救我们。“若不籍着我，没有人能到父那里去。”——耶稣这样宣告。
6.耶稣果真从死里复活，证实了他的宣告。完全与印度教或佛教里的投胎转世不同，耶稣复活后仍保持自己的模样，还是有血有肉的人。
如果以上所述都是真实的，那么，不管你愿不愿意，这一生当中你要做的最重要的决定就是：你要和耶稣有怎样的关系。如果这些不是真实的，那么，基督教就纯粹是个谎言，任何一个诚实的人都不应该相信它。
起码，这是我很久以前就已形成了的观点。至今为止，我不觉得自己对这个问题的“重要性”的判断有什么错。
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我的个人见证则非常简单：
我从小在一个基督教家庭长大，我观察到遵守圣经教导的家庭一般都很快乐，家里充满爱，就算是面对悲剧的时候也是这样；而那些违反教导的几乎都没有什么好结果。
但是，我知道基督教也教导：这个信仰对那些“对上帝有信心的人”才会奏效。关于什么是“信心”，存在一些傻傻的观点。很多人无知又骄傲，他们竟认为没有任何证据凭空相信一些事情叫做“信心”，而凭着确凿的证据去相信也叫做“信心”。让我很惊讶的是，很多基督徒也认为他们的“信心”意味着很努力地去相信一些完全没有证据的东西——嘿，请问好好读新约了吗？
“相信并不真实的”，或“毫无证据地去相信”，这些都不能从严格意义上代表“相信”这两个字。“相信”是一种关系，而不是一种精神状态。尽管“信心”和“相信”并非同一回事，但“相信”起码可以算是“信心”的一部分，或者说是“信心”的先决条件。
如果你不觉得基督信仰是真实的，那么它教导基督徒要做的事情对你也就没什么意义了，因为得有信心才管用。你如果不觉得有关耶稣的事是真实的，那你就不可能拥有基督徒的信心。
所以当我很小的时候，大概八岁吧，我就开始怀疑：我自己是否有理由相信基督教所说的一切是千真万确的，而不只是我爸妈这么说的…如果只是相信爸妈所说的，那就不是一个确认事实真相的好方法。毕竟，印度的爸妈肯定告诉孩子印度教是真的，阿拉伯的父母就会跟孩子说伊斯兰教才是对的，中国的父母大概会告诉孩子一些佛教和儒家、道家以及无神论综合在一起的思想，说它们是正确的……那么，势必有些父母说错了，我又怎么知道我父母说的没错呢？我无法回答这个问题。
所以，在之后的很多年里，我学习探索了无神论、不可知论、印度教、佛教、伊斯兰教，还有基督教里很多不同的教派。最终，我得到的结论是：如果你接受耶稣死里复活，那么耶稣的死和基督教的诞生所拥有的铁证都是很容易被解释的了；而其它所有的假设都无法解释这两点。
换句话说，到了那个时候，让我不相信耶稣从死里复活的只有两种情况：
1）要么直接无视证据；
2）要么已经因为其它的原因打心底认定“耶稣死里复活”是胡扯，这样，无论证据 多么充分也绝不会相信这件事。
那些宣称“不可能有上帝，或者即使有，也不是基督教所说的那位上帝”的争论我差不多也都听过了，它们真的都挺站不住脚。所以，我从普林斯顿大学毕业以后，又做回了基督徒。
总之我从基督教浸信会会友转为不可知论者，最后又回归到了基督教。最重要的是，在调查过几大宗教之后，最终，实证将我带回“十字架”和“死里复活”。
我从来不曾后悔我回转到耶稣的怀抱，也没有再看到新的证据或论点足以改变我对基督教真实性的确信。过去三十年中我对基督教的理解又加深了很多，这是毋庸置疑的。
既然所有证据表明耶稣确实从死里复活，而一个诚实的人又必须跟从实证所指引的方向，所以我的信仰再未动摇过。因着这些证据的存在，我可以绝对诚实地说：
我信上帝，全能的父，创造天地的主。
我信我主耶稣基督，上帝的独生子；
因圣灵感孕，由童贞女玛利亚所生；
在本丢-彼拉多手下受难，
被钉在十字架，受死，埋葬；
降在阴间；第三天从死人中复活；
升天；坐在全能父上帝的右边；
将来必从那里降临，审判活人死人。
我信圣灵；我信圣而公之教会；
我信圣徒相通；我信罪得赦免；
我信身体复活；我信永生。
阿们！
因为以上所述（在我的知识所及范围内）完全真实，也因为在上帝的恩典和圣灵的大能之下我一直尽己所能（尽管还不是很好，但却是我的最好）活出这些真理，所以，在此我能说，我也郑重地说：
我是一个基督徒，
我是耶稣的追随者，
愿上帝帮助我。
译后记：先生写完他的见证是在4月16号，复活节那天，去纽约出差的时乘着候机的空档完成的。翻译的时候心里一直被感动着，想想上帝安排的回归道路真是很奇妙：
有人不想从上帝那里得到任何东西，一心只寻求真理，若是找到了，为真理牺牲一切都是在所不惜，比如我的先生，和许多非常理性的人，知识分子居多。
也有人，在人生的尽头，完全绝望的时候，上帝主动赐下安慰和盼望，是在没有想得到什么的时候意外蒙了恩典，从此再也无法离开，比如我，和许多非常感性的人，女人居多，男人也有。
又有人，因着物质的匮乏、精神的虚空、恼人的病痛等等，向上帝发出呼求，被应允之后带着感激之情开始信仰之旅……
在许多不同的情形下，上帝永远就是那位等着浪子归家的慈父，只要我们回家，祂就欣慰、欢喜。所以，曾经或者现在，你对上帝有所求，千万也不要羞愧，其实上帝也是喜欢听我们祷告，乐于赐下我们所求的——如果我们所求的是在祂的心意中。我们要注意的是如果暂时没有得到回应，不要对天上的这位父亲生气发脾气、甚至和祂断绝关系！因为祂可能采用“延缓满足”的方式来操练我们的耐心和信心，也有可能我们不晓得自己所求的其实是对自己有害的，但是祂什么都知道，所以祂选择不满足我们。
不要让我们与上帝之间只停留于一种“交换关系”，祂深深爱着我们，祂期盼的也是我们的爱。若我们信只是因为对祂有所求，甚至说“若祂不给我这个或那个，那我就不信了”，那么这样的信仰就像房子建立在沙子上，经不住风吹雨打，或任何环境的考验。我们当然可以对上帝陈明我们的需求（其实我们未开口之先，祂已经知道）。祂既是我们天上的父亲，我们什么话都可以跟祂说，但是不要让需求成为信仰的核心。
总之，无论是从什么门进入院子的，进了之后还是得好好学习，天天向上，配合上帝纠正我们的动机，早日认识真理，让我们的信仰逐渐纯正起来。不管从哪里出发，最终我们都应该站上这一台阶：即，我们信仰的基石是耶稣基督死里复活的事实，祂就是道路、真理和生命。