Christianity Is Not a Religion — It's an Explanation of Reality

What I found after years of searching through atheism, stoicism, and everything else

The only reason to believe something is because it’s true.

That quote is usually credited to C.S. Lewis, and while he would approve, the attribution is uncertain.

Truth. I love that word.

Right now, I’m looking at the philosophy textbook on my bookshelf and its subtitle reads The Pursuit of Truth. That phrase sums up this new adventure with Fractal Faith.

Truth is a North Star. It reorients us when we’re overwhelmed by confusion, doubt, or deception. Back in Latin class, vocabulary was never my strength, but I remember the word veritas.

I was once an atheist, but today, I see Christianity as the truth.

Veritas.

I’m launching Fractal Faith to recount that journey and share how I now see the world. If you’re like me, you had an incorrect understanding of what Christianity is, how it works, and what it claims.

This opening essay will begin with that last bit: What does Christianity claim?

It goes deeper than “Jesus died for our sins” or “If you repent, you’ll be saved.”

The big “aha” for me was when I realized Christianity wasn’t just a religion, but an explanation of reality. Let me share an analogy that may help.

Think about the field of quantum mechanics. When people talk about that field, they use language like “we’re examining the fabric of reality.” Scientists at the CERN particle collider smash atoms together and discover subatomic particles that make up our universe.

Christianity operates at this level, but far beyond.

The Skyscraper Metaphor

Imagine you’re in New York City and you see a skyscraper being built. Workers raise the steel skeleton floor by floor. There are no windows, walls, or paint yet.

You look up and see a steel triangle pointing to the sky. The spire. A fitting image would be the Empire State Building.

That image is a good way to understand how Christianity explains reality.

The steel skeleton represents an ontological structure. Ontology is the study of reality, focusing on the truth of what exists. Going back to this article’s opening sentence, if you only want to believe in what’s true, you’ll want to know about ontology.

Back to our skyscraper, it both exists and its structure speaks to us. It really speaks to engineers. An engineer can look at a building and gauge how much weight each beam can hold, which joints are strongest, and what happens if you remove a screw.

The skyscraper exists ontologically. And its existence speaks to us.

Reality also has a structure that speaks to us. Reality gives us information about how it’s made. How it works.

Here’s one thing we learn by observing reality: things that freely give to each other while remaining distinct tend toward life.

Just think of the cells in your body…

Your cells contribute to your body's health. Right now, cells are providing the energy you need to read this article. At the same time, those cells have walls. They enjoy their privacy. They stay themselves.

Remove the cell wall and the cell dies, dissolving into its surroundings.

Going in the opposite direction, if the cell never gives and only takes, stealing from its neighboring cells, hoarding, extracting, well... that’s what a cancer cell does.

The ideal situation is the body’s cells check two boxes: they give freely, and maintain their distinct identities.

Marriage works the same way. Some husbands and wives lose themselves, giving so much that they dissolve into the family. Some men and women only take, extracting whatever they want. In either situation, dissolving or extracting, the marriage falls apart.

It can only hold when both husband and wife are giving freely while remaining themselves.

Economies, too. When both sides of a transaction give and receive freely, wealth grows. When one side just takes—like in a monopoly, exploitation, or fraud—the system hollows out.

We find examples everywhere because it’s a fundamental pattern of reality, like the mold that made the muffins.

When you have unity with distinction, life flourishes. You see it at every scale: the cell, the family, and the society.

Things that align with that pattern tend toward life and communion. Things that violate it tend toward fragmentation and death.

The beams support the skyscraper, carrying loads and transferring weight. The beams also remain distinct. Can you imagine a beam going floppy or saggy, like a Salvador Dalí clock?

The building tells you how it wants to be treated. The pattern we’ve observed, giving freely while remaining distinct, tells us how to treat anything. Including people.

Take morality. When humans take actions that align with this two-part pattern of reality, we tend toward flourishing. Actions that violate reality tend toward fragmentation and death.

The building doesn’t punish you for removing its load-bearing beam. It just falls. Reality doesn’t punish you for violating the moral law. It just breaks.

The triangle at the top of the building points to the destination. The Eastern tradition has a word for it: theosis. The Western tradition prefers the term sainthood. It’s a complete transformation of who you are, in full communion with God.

I’ll explain more of this goal in a moment.

When you participate with reality, when you give freely while remaining yourself, when you join this divine dance, you are moving toward the top.

You are moving toward God.

The Shape Already Cut Out

The shape of the building cutout tells you exactly what belongs there. You see the size and the shape and think, “That’s calling for a round window.”

If you install a square window, you’re violating a structure.

That’s how the moral law works. Reality already has the shapes cut out. A sin is using the wrong shape.

When I commit a sin, when I lie, cheat, or steal, I am trying to force in the wrong piece. And if I continue to sin, spiraling deeper down, I’ll encounter addiction, isolation, and eventually death.

Nobody forces this cycle on me as a punishment. It’s simply what happens when I violate the structure of reality. I chose it freely, even if it’s against my best interest.

I used to think that when I sinned, God sent down a disapproving lightning bolt. He does hate sin, but now I see sin more like an action that removes a load-bearing beam.

A building will hold for a while, but each violation weakens the joint. Find me the happy and healthy 80-year old who spent his life cheating, drinking, and chasing money. He doesn’t exist.

The reverse is also true. Sainthood is when a person has aligned with the pattern their entire lives, and their structure has become visibly strong.

You see it in everyday people. We’ve all had the experience of meeting the Christian who's doing it correctly. The one the town adores and calls a “good Christian man” or “good Christian woman.”

Those people are on their way to theosis. They’re becoming saints.

Sainthood is where our lives are pointing. Literally, it’s the “point” of our lives.

Our purpose.

Every beam, every load, every moral requirement... all of them orient us upward toward that point, toward sainthood, and full communion with God.

I used to think sainthood was a gold star for following the rules.

“You’ve been a good boy. Here’s your prize.”

I used to think of Moses coming down the mountain with the Ten Commandments and think, “He’s carrying arbitrary rules. Those are just God’s personal preferences.”

Today, I see the Ten Commandments as necessary. Their shape is demanded by reality’s structure. God doesn’t need to dictate them because we can read their requirements directly from the ontological fact.

Does Reality Have a Right Answer?

Back to that first sentence: “The only reason to believe something is because it’s true.”

Do you see what that assumes?

It assumes an objective reality, a singular truth. And that’s actually a good question to ask right now.

“Do I believe there is only one truth?”

People engage in all these debates about where the universe came from... did it come from the Big Bang, has it always been here, did it come from God...

But whatever the answer, do you personally believe that there is an answer? And only one answer?

Christians do. If you do, too, then you believe in objective truth.

(I do.)

Objective truth says I cannot be both myself and my brother at the same time. I cannot be both here and in Sri Lanka at the same time. It cannot be both day and night at the same time.

1 plus 1 cannot equal 3.

This is Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction, and it’s not a religious claim. It’s perhaps the most fundamental claim anyone can make about reality.

And if there is an objective reality, then there is a singular truth about where the universe came from, about what we are, and our purpose as human beings.

Once I understood this idea of objective truth, I asked, “What about morality? Is morality objective?”

For example, was what the Nazis did objectively wrong? Or just something I disagree with?

If there’s no transcendent standard, no unbending yardstick, then who’s to say what they did was actually wrong rather than just something we felt was wrong?

That’s an extreme example, but it applies to our day-to-day.

I once did something I now regret: I returned an item to Target that we hadn’t purchased there.

My justification was simple. “You won’t get in trouble. A big company doesn’t care.”

I felt in my gut it was wrong, but I won’t argue this on moral grounds. Let’s take a look at the Target situation through our skyscraper metaphor.

Remember that at every scale of reality, from the cell to the relationship to the society, you find the same generative pattern: things that give freely to each other and remain distinct tend to flourish. The Christian word for that is love.

Things that extract for themselves—or dissolve into everything else—tend toward collapse. And what keeps the whole structure alive is love.

(The romantic idea of love is a subset of the much larger Christian idea of love.)

Target is an entity like a cell, a marriage, or the economy. And the interaction between a person and that entity is a real relationship with a real structure.

The moral rule about honesty in financial exchanges is not a preference that sits atop the relationship. Like the steel beam, the moral rule is load-bearing. It describes what the relationship requires.

When I returned the item we hadn’t purchased there, I treated this entity as raw material and used the relationship for extraction. It wasn’t a fair exchange.

It was like me treating a steel beam as decorative, foolishly believing its load could be diverted. But the beam doesn’t care how you read the situation—it simply breaks. The structural damage is the real punishment.

I violated that structure when I extracted from Target. It doesn’t matter whether Target ever notices.

If you plant a peace lily in your walkway and want it to grow, you wouldn’t water it with bleach. No one needs to tell you that because the plant’s structure tells you.

The plant cells scream, “We can’t handle bleach!”

This is why Christian morality is almost self-evident once you see it clearly. The commandments help us, but you don’t need to start with them. Start with the question: Does this lead to life, or does it lead to fragmentation?

Ask it honestly about gossip, betrayal, or a Target return. Think about the last time someone you trusted lied. You could feel the fabric of your relationship tear.

The proper answer to “How should I behave in life?” is already there in the structure. Early Christians recognized it and wrote it down.

Once I understood Christianity as an explanation of reality, as a complete view of objective truth, my objections to it collapsed one by one.

“But the church is corrupt!”
That doesn’t mean Christianity isn’t true.

“But believing in God is nothing more than wish fulfillment!”
That doesn’t mean Christianity isn’t true.

“But suffering exists!”
That doesn’t mean Christianity isn’t true.

These are all legitimate concerns, and I’ll address them eventually, but they have nothing to do with whether or not Christianity is true.

And if the Christian worldview is true, if the Christian God exists, and if he became man in the person of Jesus, then it’s our world’s most important event.

The Pattern of Fractal Faith

The patterns I’ve shared are just a taste. You find them everywhere. In literature, theories, architecture, the human body, and marriage.

This is fractal faith.

Nothing really made sense until I understood it, and now I’m sharing it with you.

The real competitors to Christianity aren’t so much other religions. All of them share shades of truth. The real competitors are materialism, nihilism, and the idea that the universe just exists for no reason.

Thanks for joining me on the adventure.