Honest Questions About Jesus

I have smart friends who are curious about Jesus but stuck on real questions. The same ones keep coming up. This is my attempt to sit with those questions honestly and share what I found.

This isn't a defense of Christianity. It's not a sermon. It's not a debate. I'm a systems thinker. I build things. I test patterns. I follow evidence wherever it goes, even when it goes somewhere uncomfortable. When I applied that approach to these questions, the answers surprised me.

If you're reading this, you probably have questions too. Good. These are worth sitting with. I'm not asking you to agree with me. I'm asking you to look with me.

Before We Start: The Lens

There's something worth establishing before we get into any of these questions, because it changes everything.

How you read determines what you see.

If your lens is "religion is fake," every verse will look like manipulation. If your lens is "the Bible is outdated," every passage will read as irrelevant. If your lens is anger at the church, every claim will feel like a defense of the people who hurt you. The text hasn't changed. Your filter has.

This works in every direction. If my lens is "the Bible is always right no matter what," I'll explain away things I should sit with. If my lens is "I need to defend God," I'll argue instead of explore. I've had to check my own lens throughout this process.

The hammer-and-nail problem. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When your lens is suspicion, everything looks suspicious. When your lens is dismissal, everything gets dismissed. The lens doesn't change the object. It changes what you're capable of seeing.

So here's what I'm asking. Before you engage any of these questions, check your lens. Not because I need you to agree with me. Because if you've already decided the answer before you look at the evidence, you're not investigating. You're confirming.

I asked God to help me understand the Bible. That might sound like a cop-out, but it was the most honest thing I could do. This is a complex book. 66 books, multiple genres, ancient languages, cultural contexts thousands of years removed from mine. I didn't pretend I could crack it alone. And what opened up after that was different from what I'd seen before.

Come with open hands. That's all I'm asking. I'll do the same.

The Questions

These are the hurdles I hear most often from smart, honest, curious people. Each one links to a deeper exploration where I walk through the evidence, the tensions, and where I landed. None of them are simple. All of them are worth sitting with.

1. The Trinity: How Can Three Be One?

1+1+1=3. Not 1. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Three distinct beings, one God? It sounds like a contradiction the church invented.

But you are a trinity. Mind, body, spirit. Three real, distinct things. One person. And when I looked at the Greek, the text, and what the early church was actually responding to, the "contradiction" started looking like the only framework that held all the evidence without breaking something.

Read the full exploration →

2. Old Testament God vs. New Testament God: Did He Switch Up?

Old Testament God floods the earth and destroys cities. New Testament God talks about loving your neighbor. It feels like two different beings.

But have we actually read what He was responding to? A civilization where "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." A city where not even ten righteous people could be found. And the real contradiction might not be in God. We ask Him to stop evil, then call Him unloving when He does.

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3. The Problem of Suffering: If God Is Good, Why Does This Happen?

A child gets cancer. A good person loses everything. If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why doesn't He stop it?

This is the hardest question. I don't have a clean answer. But I've found that most suffering traces back to human choices or human systems more than we want to admit. And for the part that doesn't, the God I've found in the text isn't the distant observer the objection assumes. He entered the suffering Himself.

Read the full exploration →

4. The Exclusivity of Jesus: What About Everyone Else?

Billions of good people in other religions. And Christianity says Jesus is the only way? That feels arrogant.

But exclusivity isn't the same as arrogance. We accept exclusive truth claims everywhere else without calling them narrow. And the invitation, "whosoever," is the most radically inclusive offer in history. One door, but it's open to every person who has ever lived. From what I've studied, every other religion discusses Jesus. But Jesus isn't discussing them.

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5. Bible Reliability: Written by Men, Translated Too Many Times, Full of Contradictions

The Bible was written by men, copied until the original meaning is gone, and contradicts itself. That's what most people assume.

When I actually looked, I found 5,800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament alone. Modern translations work from the original languages, not chains of copies. The "contradictions" are mostly what independent accounts look like. And the structural coherence across 40 authors, 1,500 years, and three continents is something I still can't account for.

Read the full exploration →

6. Science and Miracles: Do I Have to Turn My Brain Off?

Science deals with evidence. Religion deals with feelings. To believe, you have to stop thinking. That's the assumption.

The people who invented the scientific method didn't see it that way. Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Faraday, Pascal. All believers. And when I looked at what science can and can't answer, I realized "how" and "why" are different questions. Science is unmatched at "how." But it wasn't designed to reach "why."

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7. Hell and Eternal Punishment: A Loving God Tortures People Forever?

This is the one that makes people angry. "Love me or I'll hurt you forever" sounds like abuse, not love.

But from what the text says, hell wasn't designed for humans. It was designed for the devil and his angels. Humans ending up there is the tragedy the entire Bible is working to prevent. And the core of hell across every description isn't fire. It's separation. The permanent honoring of a choice someone made.

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8. The Church and Hypocrisy: Why Are Christians the Worst Advertisement for Christianity?

This one isn't a theological objection. It's an observation. And it's often accurate.

But Jesus had the same problem with religious hypocrites. The harshest words in the Gospels are directed at the religious establishment, not at sinners or skeptics. And judging Christianity by its worst representatives is survivorship bias in reverse. You have to know Jesus to spot who's actually following Him.

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9. The Rabbit Holes: Ancient Knowledge, Aliens, and the Occult

You start digging into something outside the mainstream. Egyptian mystery schools, UFOs, the occult, ancient civilizations. You find something real. And suddenly the Bible looks like just another institution protecting its version.

I've gone down these rabbit holes. None of it pushed me away from Jesus. The Bible has more to say about the supernatural, non-human entities, and spiritual warfare than most people realize. Every rabbit hole I've explored has led into territory the Bible already mapped.

Read the full exploration →

A Note on How I Hold All of This

I hold every position in this series with open hands. Not because I'm unsure, but because that's how honest inquiry works. If someone can show me where the evidence breaks, I want to see it. That's not a rhetorical posture. It's how I approach everything.

I didn't come to these conclusions because I needed them to be true. I came to them because I followed the evidence and it kept pointing the same direction. I'm still following it. I'm still looking. And so far, it keeps pointing to Jesus.

I'm not asking you to believe what I believe. I'm asking you to look at what I looked at. Honestly. With open hands. And see where it takes you.

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." — Matthew 7:7

Trent Jackson

Trenton Jackson builds and writes at the intersection of human systems, business architecture, and design.