The Case For Christ

ounce back and forth between Christianity and New Age beliefs.
They dabble in Buddhism, they mix and match and create their own
spirituality. For them, making the kind of changes you mentioned
wouldn't seem like a big deal."
Moreland nodded. He had apparently heard this objection before.
"I'd ask a person like that, 'What's your most cherished belief?
That your parents were good people? That murder is immoral? Think
about how radical something must be to get you to change or give
up that belief you treasure so much. Now we're starting to get
close.' "Keep in mind that this is an entire community of people
who are abandoning treasured beliefs that have been passed on for
centuries and that they believed were from God himself. They were
doing it even though they were jeopardizing their own well-being,
and they also believed they were risking the damnation of their
souls to hell if they were wrong.
What's more, they were not doing this because they had come upon
better ideas. They were very content with the old traditions.
They gave them up because they had seen miracles that they could
not explain and that forced them to see the world another way." -
We're Western individualists who like technological and
sociological change," I observed. "Traditions don't mean as much
to us." "I'll grant that," Moreland replied. "But these people
did value tradition. They lived in a period in which the older
something was, the better. In fact, for them the farther back
they could trace an idea, the more likely it was to be true. So
to come up with new ideas was opposite of the way we are today.
"Believe me," he concluded, "these changes to the Jewish social
structures were not just minor adjustments that were casually
made - they were absolutely monumental. This was nothing short
of a social earthquake! And earthquakes don't happen without a
cause."
EXHIBIT 4: COMMUNION AND BAPTISM
Moreland pointed to the emergence of the sacraments of Communion
and baptism in the early church as more circumstantial evidence
that the Resurrection is true. But I had some doubts.
"Isn't it only natural that religions would create their own
rituals and practices?" I asked. "All religions have them. So how
does that prove anything about the Resurrection?"
"Ah, but let's consider Communion for a moment," he replied.
"What's odd is that these early followers of Jesus didn't get