Why Christianity is Good News

A Return to Camosun College

Twenty-five years ago, I walked through the doors of the Young building at Camosun College as a student in REL102: Religions of the East. I wanted nothing to do with Christianity back then. It seemed irrelevant, perhaps even offensive to my “spiritual but not religious” worldview.

Last week, I stepped back inside that same building for the first time in a quarter-century. But this time, I wasn’t avoiding Christianity. I was a guest speaker for REL100: Religions of the West, spending two hours with students talking about the very faith I’d once dismissed but now embrace.

I never could have seen this twist coming.

And I’m so grateful for it.

The joy of God playing the long game.

What you’ll hear in the recording below is my attempt to answer an essential question:

Why do Christians call their message good news?

Speaking to a classroom of college students—many likely as skeptical as I once was—I walk through the core claims of Christianity, not to prove or disprove them, but to help people understand what Christians actually believe and why.

Standing in that Camosun classroom, speaking to students who reminded me of my younger self, I was struck again by the audacious nature of the Christian claim: that in a world marked by division, despair, and brokenness, the death and resurrection of a first-century Jewish carpenter represents the best news imaginable.

That’s a claim worth understanding, whether you ultimately embrace it or not.