I was an atheistic agnostic until the age
of 26. I sought debate on “religious” questions searching for someone
who could disprove my view of life or to prove the existence of God to
me. I found no one until January 1976. At that time I was challenged
to attend a church. It was a Southern Baptist church in Columbia,
Connecticut. “Ooo”, I thought, “Hoot’n ‘n hallor’n ‘n roll’n in the
aisles. This‘ll be fun”.
The sermon that morning made sense; not
like the sermons I had heard growing up. But, the thing that struck me
wasn’t the sermon, it was the people. They had something I didn’t. It
was the people that kept me coming back Sunday after Sunday. And,
Sunday after Sunday I heard the Gospel presented.
The person that had initially challenged
me to attend invited me to talk with one of the people of the church
about spiritual things. I thought to myself, “Ah, fodder”. My
expectation was I would destroy this man’s feeble faith. Much to my
surprise he destroyed my personal philosophy of life in
10 minutes. He spent the rest of our seven hour marathon discussion
explaining the Bible from Genesis to Revelations. I was dumbfounded.
At the end he asked me if I was willing to receive Christ as my
personal savior. I said I didn’t know. The poor guy looked at me as if
to say, “Buddy I gave you my best shot” but, he realized that I just
wasn’t ready.
Some time after that the church had a
revival. “Ah”, I thought, “Now there’ll be hoot’n ‘n hallor’n ‘n
roll’n in the aisles”. But there wasn’t; just an overwhelming feeling
of need and potential loss that I didn’t understand.
The night before the first revival meeting
I was invited to coffee after the evening service. The host asked me
privately about my understanding of the Gospel. I said I understood
it, but just couldn’t believe in something as intangible as “a god”.
He offered me a book by C. S. Lewis named “Mere Christianity” but
couldn’t find it and suggested I ask their pastor for a copy. I did
ask the Pastor after the first revival meeting but he couldn’t find
any of his 5 copies either. Although not bothered by his not having
the book, I was visibly upset and didn’t know why. The pastor was very
gracious to me. He prayed for a while and offered me another book by
C. S. Lewis.
The next day at work I was still suffering
great internal turmoil. I had brought the book with me and a passing
engineer noticed it. He asked if I had ever read C. S. Lewis before; I
hadn’t. He explained he had another book at his desk named “Mere
Christianity” and would be happy to get it for me. I knew he wouldn’t
have it and he didn’t. It was long about then that I had had it. Two
is coincidence. Three is weird.
I prayed to God and said, “If You’re
there, You have to show yourself to me because I just can’t believe
this metaphysical stuff”! And a thought came to me. In math, there are
axioms. You can’t prove them or disprove them; they just are. If you
accept them then all algebra, chemistry, trigonometry, physics,
calculus etc. all fall into place. If you reject them, you’re on your
own. Well, so it is with God. You can’t prove the existence of God nor
can you disprove His existence. If you accept Him then your whole life
falls into place. If you reject Him you’re on your own.
I had spent my life trying to find someone
who could prove that God existed and now, suddenly, I didn’t need
proof anymore. It all made sense. I began to understand about that
thing the church people had because I had it too. The day before all
this, I had tried reading the Bible and it was a bore. The day after
it was like a novel that you couldn’t put down. And, I haven’t been
able to put it down since.
