A Brief Introduction

My object for beginning this series of articles is straightforward: I am often exposed to the ideologies of atheism, anti-theism, and agnosticism in a variety of settings. I have read, seen, heard, and interacted with many people who all have reasons that they don't believe in God. While this may have been something I would have looked positively on up until a few years ago I have, after coming to believe in God, and then in Jesus Christ, found them troubling. The arguments I am exposed to are very much the same as the ones that drove me to deny God for years.

So then, my first task will be to acquaint the reader with my own testimony; first of my departure from the faith, and then of my return to it. Every two weeks, I hope to give a response to a different argument and hopefully inspire discussion in the meantime. It is important to be able to clearly communicate across the divide between belief and unbelief, and what better way to cross that gulf than to understand where the other person is coming from?

I was raised in a Christian home. I first confessed my faith at age 6, and I can honestly say that overall my faith (although, of course, childishly simple) really brought me true joy. It wasn't just like this Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy joy, either. I really delighted in the thought of glorifying God. I guess I began to doubt the concrete reality of God around age 12. I confessed myself a Christian, but really did all the things in secret that most 12 year olds were probably doing. When I was 14, we started busing to a church in the neighboring town. I was shocked at the venom that was sometimes spouted from the pulpit about all the people who were going to hell (I don't think I have ever since heard the word “fagot” used so abundantly) , and after a couple of years I started associating the attitude of that church with the faith, itself. That was one of the first experiences to make me begin to question God's existence. At age 16 I started studying other religions, namely Eastern, and I renounced my faith at 17.

Many of the reasons for my denying God were very familiar to most of us. I was troubled most by the idea of Hell. How could a God that was supposed to be Love itself consign so many people to eternal punishment just because they didn't believe in the right version of Him? Why would God allow so many of his so-called followers to preach and act in so many appalling ways unless they truly represented him or he didn't exist? How can God exist if it can not be proven scientifically? How can evil and suffering exist in the presence of a benevolent and all-powerful God? Why shouldn't I be able to do what I wanted and not have to deny myself of the obvious pleasures of this world?

After I renounced the idea of a God, I realized that I was the sole judge of morality for myself. I decided that I would seek out my own moral system. I would learn right and wrong as I went along. I liked people, so I didn't renounce everything I had been taught. I wanted to be a good person, and I really hurt some people at different points in my life, but I always tried to be a “good guy”.

I adopted for myself the position of “Evangelizing Atheist” for years thereafter, always wanting to free people from the oppression and ignorance of religion. I saw religion as irrational, destructive and manipulative, and something people just leaned on as a coping mechanism for a life they either didn't understand, or couldn't handle. I saw Christianity and the Bible as a means of controlling others and justifying injustices. I did dabble in this and that; I played with magic, meditated, experimented with drugs, and generally immersed myself in a fairly hedonistic lifestyle. I can't say I felt empty or really consciously longed for anything more. I was fulfilled in myself; there would always be things I should improve, but I was happy with the way I lived my life.

When I was about 22 or 23 I began to doubt the basis of my complete unbelief. From the microscopic to the cosmic, the beauty in the world all around us can be perceived if we only look! The intricate beauty of the tiniest flowers and insects, the sweep of color across the sky at sunset, and the feelings they stirred up inside me serves no evolutionary or naturalistic purpose I can think of; after all, we are probably much more likely to be eaten by a lion if we are stopping to examine every wildflower we pass, and sunsets should be horrifying as they signify an end to security with the coming night! Yet I see their beauty as being so profoundly real as to exist outside my own mind. I also had a conflict when moral reality became a solid fact to me. As far as I can see, everybody innately “knows” the difference between right and wrong. Example: Most people “know” that it is wrong to cause unjustified harm to others, and most people “know” that it is right to save a drowning man even at risk to one's own safety. This knowledge, however, is meaningless if there is no central moral law that exists as fact. If a moral law existed, there must be a moral law giver. The idea that the universe “just is” may have been appealing, but it became to me no less incredulous than the idea that the universe “is, by the action of a Creator.” The moral law and the undeniable metaphysical make this view incredibly plausible.

That is when my presupposition shifted once more. I had gone from belief in an Eternal Creator, to belief in an eternal physical reality, and come back around to a sort of Prime Mover. I still wasn't calling myself a believer, though. After all, no one could prove to me that any sort of God existed. I was convinced of the existence of something outside, that there must be some purpose to creation, but it was not necessarily conscious or possibly observable.

By now it had been about nine years since I had renounced my faith in God. I started to see spirituality as something universal. Although I acknowledged the reality of the metaphysical, I felt that everybody had only their own glimpse of what that reality really was. Nobody could really see the big picture, and those who claimed they could were narrow-minded.

Questions arose, though, what if God is a conscious being?

What if I really am a “creature” and not just the byproduct of a cosmic kettle?

Have I been trying to create my own creator, rather than honestly seeking its nature?

As I this through, certain implications were clear. First, if an all-powerful being exists then I would have to abandon my presuppositions both about its nature, and against its possible intervention in the universe. Second, if I have been created, what is my responsibility, if any, toward knowing why?

Spiritually speaking I had already been pretty a' la carte, picking this concept or that principal when they felt right to me. I started to become interested in the Bible when I realized one day that the only scripture I really knew was either what I had learned in Sunday school years before, or the verses that I had a particular problem with and would use to argue against it. Since the Bible makes a direct claim to be the word of God, I decided I would read it cover to cover, to justify my rejection of its being the “true word of God” once and for all. I sat down to read it as the chronicling of a people's history as they understood it at the time, portrayed through oral tradition and later passed down in written form (which, at the time, I saw as at most a very drawn out game of “Telephone”). I expected to find snippets of wisdom, as I would with any other ancient tradition, but also expected gross inaccuracies and the “fairy tales” I had come to believe it was filled with.

I came into the Hebrew scripture looking for a chink in the armor, a hole in the wall that I could exploit to disprove the whole thing. I was looking for any theological contradiction I could find, anything I could point to and say, “It's simple, really. See, right here: it contradicts itself. How can an inerrant holy book have such a blatant contradiction?” I honestly expected to find dozens of such gems, as well as some generic, universal principles, which I could then share with anyone else who might need their head cleared. Although there was a lot I didn't necessarily like, I couldn't say I found one. The God of the Jews and the Christians was, if nothing else, consistent in nature.

I was startled, and then shocked, by the ring of truth that the Bible sounded within me. All of the minute and mundane details that were transmitted made the Old Testament understandable and accessible, despite the gap of thousands of years between me and it. This was not the stuff of fairy tales and legends! The Hebrews viewed history as a scroll, unrolling slowly toward its ultimate end, and their transmission of this history was meticulous and purposeful; it seemed to be a sacred duty to tell the coming generations everything they needed to know. It was through this lens that I found myself attempting to look, in order to decisively knock the Bible down. It was this view that ultimately knocked me down, instead. Everything fits in scripture, a fact which I probably would've been able to walk away from if not for the New Testament, specifically the Gospels. In Jesus Christ I saw the ultimate culmination of all of scripture that came before; and I did not just read it and analyze it, I experienced it in my heart. I watched Jesus of Nazareth from his birth, I listened intently to his words in the Sermon on the Mount, I saw his trial in the Garden of Gethsemane, and his Crucifixion and Resurrection. He convinced me not just of his existence, but of his identity as the Son of God, of his call to me, and to all people of all nations. In fact in Christ I found many of the answers to the questions I had asked myself before denying God initially. I admit I didn't make it all the way through before this conviction occurred. I got to the end of the Gospel of John, and gave my life to Christ.

So, if you are interested, tune in next Wednesday, September 25^th. I hope to provide the reader with sound answers to the big questions about belief in God, specifically the Christian God, and will begin with a big one: The question of evil and suffering. Thanks for reading!