On non-belief and the existence of God

[Michael]

What I think Michael means by personification of goodness is the Glorified Christ more so than Jesus in His humanity. In His Glorified state, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is not just another good man; but rather the Ideal of Human Perfection, i.e. the complete unity of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.

That's nicely put :-)

So Jesus, as the embodiment of God's goodness and love, is the perfect King and is simply attractive, even compelling, to follow. I can't imagine any ordinary human taking that place.

And I think we can get that far without even considering the more mystical element of Christianity, the question of how sin is removed from the world (the Catholic/Orthodox tradition focusses on that question, whereas the Protestant view focusses more how punishment is avoided).

So I suppose ultimately the question of 'why follow Jesus?' for the Christian is answered not only by 'he is is good' but also by the belief that Christianity is true. However, what we were dealing with here in this thread was more the question of those seeking to follow goodness but not knowing the person of Jesus, and it's that question that I think is answered by the biblical passages I quoted earlier.

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Fallen to Reason. A reply to you will take a little longer than I currently have, but I will get back to you on all those points/questions.