”And this sad little figure in a remote corner of the Roman Empire becomes the leader of the most popular religion in the history of the world – which means it’s the most popular explanation for everything ever in human history. Now, that’s just really strange. We’re just used to it, but it’s a pretty weird story.”
84 percent of the world’s population is affiliated with a religion – but Canadian scholar John G. Stackhouse Jr would say that 100 percent of us are religious. His latest book, Can I Believe? Christianity for the Hesitant, invites us all to consider what we believe and why – and explains how he thinks the weirdness of Christianity fits the weirdness of the world as it really is.
“If you think, for instance, of atomic and sub-atomic physics, think of certain forms of cosmology – there are all sorts of theories that I barely can even articulate, let alone understand, but I’m told by smart people that this is the best way to construe the data even though it’s in many cases counter-intuitive. But they’ve tried the obvious explanations and they don’t work as well as this really strange one. And that’s what I think is the case with Christianity.”
