That's something of a loaded question, but I suppose anyone eccentric enough to start a blog with a title like mine owes the readers an explanation of how he came to be a Christian thinker. It's probably not wise to try and formulate a sophisticated model of one's personal belief system in a few paragraphs, but I'll try.

I'll start with the short answer to the question: I believe because God has created belief in me. In other words, when I examine exactly why I am a Christian, I am sooner or later faced with the fact that my beliefs come from an outside source. I did not simply wake up one day and decide to become a Christian. Something happened to me. I encountered an immaterial being that changed the very constitution of my mind. And it wasn't something that I particularly wanted to happen. In fact I was completely surprised by it.

The common (somewhat justified) conception of an evangelical is someone who holds Christian beliefs because (1) he or she was raised in a Christian home or a Christian subculture or (2) he or she read the Bible or encountered some other form of the Christian message and simply decided to believe it. And while these things may be true in a sense, the classical Christian model says that God is the originator of Christian beliefs. For brevity's sake, let's call this proposition c:

c = Christian belief is formed in an individual by the external influence of God Himself.

Now I want to point out that I am not simply saying that God originates belief as God originates everything. I am pointing to an actual mystical experience of God doing this to me. So it might be said that c is true not only logically but experientially. It is the conscious, often dramatic and otherworldy experience of the power of God reaching into the very soul and changing what is constituted there, resulting in classical Christian belief.

Notice that c is not actually a defense of Christian belief. It's really only a description of how it comes about. I am not saying that, "God affected my mind, therefore Christianity must be true." If that were the case, then all sorts of religious beliefs might be justified. Rather, the person who experiences God in this way has the responsibility to investigate the beliefs that are formed to find out whether they are reasonable to hold or not. If I have (1) an experience of God that creates Christian belief and (2) good reasons for the actual truth of those beliefs, then I think I am justified in holding classical Christian belief, frenzied hand-wringing of the modern secularist notwithstanding.

Let's also make an important distinction here between Christian belief and biblical belief. Suppose we define Christian belief as I already have (that body of beliefs conforming to the great creeds) and biblical belief as the belief that the Bible is true, trustworthy, inspired, inerrant, etc. The fact is that I hold biblical belief for the same reason I hold Christian belief. I believe the biblical story because I have had an encounter with the main character of that story, the Christian God. When I read biblical narrative, or poetry, or prophecy, or whatever, I recognize the God who speaks and acts there. This is why when one of those pesky Bible-haters brings up some paradox or apparent contradiction in the Bible (some discrepancy about troop numbers between Kings and Chronicles, for example), it doesn't really bother me, even if there isn't an easy solution to the problem. I don't hold that the Bible is true because it proves itself to me. Believing the Bible for that reason alone doesn't seem to be very reasonable. Unless one encounters the God that is printed on the pages of the Bible, it would seem very foolish to take Scripture as the authoritative measuring rod for Christian faith and practice.

Now if someone objects to my model on the basis that it does not give the highest epistemic status to reason, I respond: Why should reason be given the highest priority in how I form beliefs? Who made that rule? In fact it seems that using reason alone to form belief is something of a hopeless project. That's because human reason by its very nature is finite. It can never find answers about the infinite or the eternal. In other words, it's impossible to think your way to eternal life. Reason and its handmaidens, logic and science, do very well at finding those truths that apply to our finite sphere of material existence. But the most important questions about human life - the questions of ultimate purpose, ultimate meaning, ultimate morality and destiny - are questions that can never be fully answered by reason. Answers to those questions, since they are by nature questions about eternity, can only come from an outside source. The mind of eternity must reach down and show us the way to the kingdom of heaven. I believe this has happened to me, and that is why I believe.