Christianity is actually "true Truth," as Francis Schaeffer used to put it. God really does exist, Heaven actually is real (along with Hell), Jesus really did live and He did the things the historical records - the Gospels - say He did, the resurrection of Christ really happened, and there really is hope each of us can count on for "the kind of perfect world our hearts have always longed for."

Trouble, hardship, difficulty, pain, suffering, conflict, tragedy, evil - they're all part of the [Christian] Story. Indeed, the problem of evil is the reason there's any Story at all.

Why so many mentions regarding Jesus from such a wide variety of sources (Pliny, Tacitus, Lucian, Josephus, to name a few)? Because Jesus of Nazareth was a man of history, who made a profound impact on history. There's no good reason to doubt that Jesus existed, or to think the real Jesus was completely different from the one depicted in the Story.

Almost everyone agrees the world is not the way it ought to be. It's called the problem of evil.

According to "matter-ism," matter is all that exists. The only things that are real are physical things in motion governed by natural law. That story starts, "In the beginning were the particles," or, as one famous person put it, "The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." No God. No souls. No Heaven or Hell. No miracles. No transcendent morality. Just molecules in motion following the patterns of natural law. This is the story that most atheists, most "skeptics," most humanists, and most Marxists believe is true.

When we encounter new details of our world we fill in more of the spaces. When we discover details that don't seem to fit with our view of the world, we have a kind of "crisis of faith," even if our worldview is not especially religious. We're forced to redraw our "map" a bit.

Some say Christianity is just a crutch. But let's turn the question on its edge for a moment. Is atheism an emotional crutch, wishful thinking? The ax cuts both ways. Perhaps atheists are rejecting God because they've had a bad relationship with their father. Instead of inventing God, have atheists invented non-God? Have they invented atheism to escape some of the frightening implications of God's existence? Think about it.