As it was recently discussed at one of our now-virtual church meetings, I thought I'd like to put my journey into Christianity from atheism on here. I've written before about what difference Christianity makes in my life, but never really explained how and why I went from atheist to Jesus follower.
I grew up in a Catholic country but I never believed any of it, and neither did anyone else I knew - our Catholic heritage was something we needed to learn about for cultural reasons, but the idea that any of it might actually be true was like saying maybe Rapunzel really sat in a tower somewhere waiting to be rescued. Ludicrous to take it seriously!
When I was maybe 18 or 19, the Internet really started taking off and because I liked Star Trek, I found myself in mailing list groups of likeminded individuals and encountered actual Christians for the first time. Americans. I was amused to find there were real people in our times who were gullible enough to believe these fairy tales! I had a few discussions with some of them, may well have made a few of them question their faith, but I never encountered anyone who could make me take the idea seriously at all. I just thought that they chose to believe these myths because they needed an emotional crutch in their life, and I didn't need that. I had been through hell in my childhood and was just coming out the other side - having walked through that hell without the emotional crutch of believing in God, I hardly needed that now.
It wasn't until I was nearly 21, at a summer job in Vienna, that I ran into my first real-life Christian who not only sincerely believed all those fairy tales, but whose brilliantly sharp mind I had to admire. And square with her faith, somehow. She was my boss at that job, and we struck up a friendship quickly as we had many similarities, but every lunchtime in the canteen we would have the same argument: she'd argue there was a God, and I'd argue that there wasn't. She was a fiercely intelligent, incredibly well-read person and I quickly found I couldn't out-argue her, but equally I had simply dismissed faith so much that nothing she said really registered for me. I was just puzzled.
And she kept asking me to come along to her church.
I would say, no way am I going to a church.
And she'd ask again.
Eventually it simply became a bit awkward to continue refusing, particularly because she really was becoming a friend. So when she invited me to a "Gospel concert" at her church - which was the African fellowship putting on a worship evening - I finally agreed to come along.
It was an evening of good music and dancing, which wouldn't have impressed me that much, but what truly blew my mind that evening was that there were many people just like my boss - highly educated, smart people, my own age, who seemed to sincerely believe all this and enthusiastically sang their praises to God. My boss introduced me to her home group leader, and I remember my very first question to him that evening: "Do you really, I mean really, believe all this... stuff?" I was just incredulous.
He said yes, and you might want to do some research to see if it's true or not.
I was puzzled, thinking, how do you research a belief system? There's opinions and gurus a dime a dozen in the world, and they all sincerely believe their truth!
His response was, I don't have a belief system. I believe that Jesus was a real person who died and was buried, and rose again. And because no one else has ever done that, I take his claim that he is God very seriously - along with everything else he taught.
Now that gave me something to work with! History can be researched. This is what set me off: seeing all those people, my own age, my own "kind" (as opposed to the old people that populated the Catholic churches I had visited on major occasions in my childhood, who went purely for cultural reasons as far as I could tell: because it's what you did on Sundays) sincerely believing all this and enthusiastically building their lives on it. Chris, the home group leader, invited me to come along to the midweek group; and I went. There I saw those people discussing what the Bible said with great sincerity, as if it mattered to their lives now.
Meanwhile I was going down into a deep, deep rabbit hole of history: I needed to know whether Jesus, firstly, really existed; secondly, whether he really said what the Bible reports he said; and finally, whether he really died (and was dead, not unconscious or comatose) and really rose again. I read for months, arguments for, arguments against. But in the end, the truth caught up with me and the arguments against the historical facts just couldn't stand up to scrutiny any more. This wasn't what I was hoping to find, but truth was truth: and this truth had bearing on my life today. Because if Jesus was who he claimed to be, and proved it by rising from the dead and was still alive to this day, then I had better take very seriously what he taught.
After several months of asking lots of hard questions at the home group, and another several weeks of wrestling with my own pride because the truth I had found wasn't what I had wanted to find, I sat down with Chris and told him that because truth was truth, I may not be comfortable with it but truth has consequences. The example I gave him showed my feelings about it pretty clearly - I said, there are lots of Holocaust deniers out there. I don't like that the Holocaust happened either, but facts are facts and truth is truth and so I have to admit and live with the fact that it did happen. And the same applies to the resurrection.
That's how I initially came into Christianity. Head first, heart later.
There'll be a second installment to this shortly... stay tuned!
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| Christianity in my childhood - just a cultural environment |
When I was maybe 18 or 19, the Internet really started taking off and because I liked Star Trek, I found myself in mailing list groups of likeminded individuals and encountered actual Christians for the first time. Americans. I was amused to find there were real people in our times who were gullible enough to believe these fairy tales! I had a few discussions with some of them, may well have made a few of them question their faith, but I never encountered anyone who could make me take the idea seriously at all. I just thought that they chose to believe these myths because they needed an emotional crutch in their life, and I didn't need that. I had been through hell in my childhood and was just coming out the other side - having walked through that hell without the emotional crutch of believing in God, I hardly needed that now.
It wasn't until I was nearly 21, at a summer job in Vienna, that I ran into my first real-life Christian who not only sincerely believed all those fairy tales, but whose brilliantly sharp mind I had to admire. And square with her faith, somehow. She was my boss at that job, and we struck up a friendship quickly as we had many similarities, but every lunchtime in the canteen we would have the same argument: she'd argue there was a God, and I'd argue that there wasn't. She was a fiercely intelligent, incredibly well-read person and I quickly found I couldn't out-argue her, but equally I had simply dismissed faith so much that nothing she said really registered for me. I was just puzzled.
And she kept asking me to come along to her church.
I would say, no way am I going to a church.
And she'd ask again.
Eventually it simply became a bit awkward to continue refusing, particularly because she really was becoming a friend. So when she invited me to a "Gospel concert" at her church - which was the African fellowship putting on a worship evening - I finally agreed to come along.
It was an evening of good music and dancing, which wouldn't have impressed me that much, but what truly blew my mind that evening was that there were many people just like my boss - highly educated, smart people, my own age, who seemed to sincerely believe all this and enthusiastically sang their praises to God. My boss introduced me to her home group leader, and I remember my very first question to him that evening: "Do you really, I mean really, believe all this... stuff?" I was just incredulous.
He said yes, and you might want to do some research to see if it's true or not.
I was puzzled, thinking, how do you research a belief system? There's opinions and gurus a dime a dozen in the world, and they all sincerely believe their truth!
His response was, I don't have a belief system. I believe that Jesus was a real person who died and was buried, and rose again. And because no one else has ever done that, I take his claim that he is God very seriously - along with everything else he taught.
Now that gave me something to work with! History can be researched. This is what set me off: seeing all those people, my own age, my own "kind" (as opposed to the old people that populated the Catholic churches I had visited on major occasions in my childhood, who went purely for cultural reasons as far as I could tell: because it's what you did on Sundays) sincerely believing all this and enthusiastically building their lives on it. Chris, the home group leader, invited me to come along to the midweek group; and I went. There I saw those people discussing what the Bible said with great sincerity, as if it mattered to their lives now.
Meanwhile I was going down into a deep, deep rabbit hole of history: I needed to know whether Jesus, firstly, really existed; secondly, whether he really said what the Bible reports he said; and finally, whether he really died (and was dead, not unconscious or comatose) and really rose again. I read for months, arguments for, arguments against. But in the end, the truth caught up with me and the arguments against the historical facts just couldn't stand up to scrutiny any more. This wasn't what I was hoping to find, but truth was truth: and this truth had bearing on my life today. Because if Jesus was who he claimed to be, and proved it by rising from the dead and was still alive to this day, then I had better take very seriously what he taught.
After several months of asking lots of hard questions at the home group, and another several weeks of wrestling with my own pride because the truth I had found wasn't what I had wanted to find, I sat down with Chris and told him that because truth was truth, I may not be comfortable with it but truth has consequences. The example I gave him showed my feelings about it pretty clearly - I said, there are lots of Holocaust deniers out there. I don't like that the Holocaust happened either, but facts are facts and truth is truth and so I have to admit and live with the fact that it did happen. And the same applies to the resurrection.
That's how I initially came into Christianity. Head first, heart later.
There'll be a second installment to this shortly... stay tuned!
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