Christianity Today: Why I Am Still a Christian, by Russell Moore:

[P]eople ask me, as a non-Christian friend did recently, “Why, after all that you have seen, are you still a Christian?” The implication is that because I’ve seen “how the sausage is made,” as they say in the realm of politics, that I would be disillusioned enough. And it’s surprising to some of them when I say that I am not only still a Christian but that I am a more convinced Christian than ever in my life.

Part of that is intellectual. I still think a materialist view of the cosmos cannot make sense of the mystery and awe that the cosmos itself evokes. I still think that a view of humanity as an organism in an environment cannot make sense of our dignity and our predicament. I still think the only honest conclusion I can come to is that this crucified Rabbi actually, as Luke put it, “presented himself alive” (Acts 1:3, ESV) to people who maintained that witness all the way, often, to their own torturous executions. …

Every year that I grow older, even without a single one of the objective aspects diminishing, the subjective is rushing in like a returning tide. The objective biblical literacy kindled in me causes me to notice how much Jesus is described as leading with his voice. When he speaks, spirits flee, storms still, graves open, and people—sometimes who cannot believe they are doing so—get up and walk out into a future they cannot imagine, just because he said, “Come, follow me.” Jesus describes this in agricultural terms as sheep who follow a shepherd because they recognize his voice (John 10:16). …

I’m no longer embarrassed to articulate the feeling I get when I marvel at the night sky, longing for a universe that feels more personal and beautiful than death and entropy and dead-matter can explain. I feel I am not just discerning data but am hearing a familiar call from Someone who eerily and invisibly has been with me all of my life—almost always unnoticed, but who has given me a few unpredictable glimpses behind the veil.

Still a Christian? Oh, yes. And I’m a Christian now who is kind of back where I [was as an adolescent boy] … I can talk and write about transcendence and moral foundations and canonical coherence, but what really kept me Christian most is learning how to say, “I Love Jesus.”

Again.

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