Many people presume there is no God because that’s all they’ve known. The question of God seemed irrelevant. In today’s episode Daniel Rodger tells his story of moving from a culturally-informed atheism to an unwavering belief in God who completely transformed his life. Learn more about Daniel and Critical Witness: Critical Witness link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QksajfJj_o Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. We try to understand why and how people either move away from or move towards God and Christianity. We want to listen to the lesser-heard B side of either nonbelief or belief, depending on what side you’re coming from. Each podcast, we’ll listen to a story from a former atheist who changed their mind and came to belief in God. They know both sides of the story. These stories might look a bit different from different parts of the world, from different parts of western culture. Today, we’ll be talking with Daniel Rodger, who lives in London, England. He’s a former atheist who came to the Christian faith against the grain of his culture. Welcome to the podcast, Daniel, it’s great to have you on the show. Thank you very much for inviting me on. Oh, good, good. As we’re getting started, can you tell me a little bit about who you are? What you do? Your life? Yeah, sure. So I have a background as a registered healthcare professional that specialized in working in the operating theatres, and for the last nearly four years, I’ve been working as an academic at a university in London, where I teach, and it also gives me the time and flexibility to research and do research into areas I’m interested in, usually related to things in bioethics, so abortion, artificial womb technology, and then some other areas kind of related to my more professional area. That sounds really quite interesting, and with the nature of culture these days, probably quite exciting at times. And that makes me think about just the context of where you are. I know, in the US, we’ve been sensing a push back against Christianity in the last few years, but in England, it’s been going on for quite a long time. Just to give me a context to your story, can you tell me a little bit about what it feels like in England in terms of Christianity and religion and those kinds of things? Sure. Yeah. I’d say, in England, it varies in different parts of the UK, I guess a little bit like the US. I’m in London, so it’s the southern part of England. And that’s kind of known—I mean, it’s not really the Bible belt, but it’d be a much smaller equivalent, more like just the buckle, and that’s sort of in the south/southeast of England. There’s more Christians than there is probably in the midlands and the north, so in my own context, there are more Christians than there are probably in other parts of the country. You wouldn’t necessarily know that, and that’s for a number of reasons. One is, I think, we learn from quite a young age that there are certain things you sort of keep to yourself, and I think people who have religious beliefs kind of know that it’s something they can talk about at home and pray and read their Bibles, but they kind of leave it at home, and they bring it with them to work or to school or wherever they find themselves. And I’d say generally the culture is apathetic, really, to religious belief. I think probably if we go back 10 years ago, a sort of high point of new atheism, it was a lot easier to have discussions about religious belief, often hostile, but it was at least easier to have those, whereas now I find, at least in my own circles, that it’s very difficult to have fruitful discussion about religion, God, Christianity more specifically. And if you do, often it doesn’t last very long because people are very uncomfortable talking about those things, really. I think that’s it, the general summary. So when you were growing up as a child, was it different than it is now? Did you have much exposure to Christianity as a child? Was your family Christian? Did you go to church? Were you exposed to it in school? What’s that like as a child? Yeah. I’d say, in terms of a sort of demographic, I come from a sort of white working class/benefits class, and the think about white working class culture is that religion plays a very, very minute part of life. You tend to find very few churches, or at least very few active churches, and where you find the most active Christian faith is in the middle class. So in my own sort of context growing up, I remember having very, very, very few discussions probably in the first 16 years of my life in regards to religion. I don’t remember ever really having any very long, serious conversations about God and none really regarding Christianity. I remember a few things. I remember being in a biology class at high school and a friend asking me if I believed in God, and I said, “I like the idea of God, but there’s no evidence of such a being,” so I didn’t have any belief. And within my own home, so single-parent household. My mother didn’t have any religious belief I was aware of. It was never discussed at home. Actually, it’s quite good to talk about things. It kind of reminds me. It triggers things. So I did have a neighbor upstairs who, at least for some period of my early childhood, would read me Bible stories, so I actually remember one. I actually remember it was a gold children’s Bible that she would bring down, and I remember one of the stories about King Solomon and the baby and threatening to tear it in two to try and identify the true mother, who the mom was. And I remember that story quite vividly, but other than that, I can’t really remember having any Christian discussion or input at all. And I think I’ve always been relatively honest. I think there could be a tendency sometimes for some Christians to look back at their own views and start seeing themselves as sort of a Christopher-Hitchens-type figure, perhaps being more hostile to it. But I was never like that. I was a hopeful atheist, you know? I would have liked the idea of there being a God. I just didn’t have any reason to think someone like that existed or that it had any relevance to my life, really. Yeah, so that’s interesting. So you had a lack of exposure, really, in your world. You had bits and pieces, I guess, just dots from your neighbor, maybe a little bit of religious education at school or something- Yeah. We had religious education as part of the curriculum. I think that’s an agreement going back over 100 years when the churches were running the schools, and so when they took that over, they’ve always had religious education in the schools in England. But I just used those classes for messing about. I don’t remember ever really listening or taking that seriously. We used to hide under the tables. I didn’t do well at school. Again, being white working class, we’re actually, in terms of educational attainment, we’re the lowest demographic in the UK. Actually, no that’s not true. There’s only one group below us, which is the Romani Travelers, but other than that, we are the lowest attaining demographic in the UK, the least likely to get the minimum 5 A to C GCSEs at school. And I didn’t attain that. I didn’t get even 5 A to C GCSEs. And my mom never finished school. She got expelled from school. Wow. And just considering what we know about you so far, that you work as an academic in a university, that makes me very curious about how you got from A to Z, but I’m sure we’ll get there. But backing up, here, when you said that you didn’t think that there was any evidence for religion or Christianity or anything like that, evidently there was something about it that seemed attractive, that you wanted to believe. You just couldn’t. Yeah. I don’t know. I failed to take too many atheists—agnostics, obviously, not so much, but atheists who don’t even want there to be a God. It just think that’s . . . I find that very difficult to believe. But I can understand not believing in God, but I find it hard to believe not wanting to believe in God. Because it changes the whole nature of existence that there is a purpose behind the universe, that there’s a purpose behind why there’s something rather than nothing, that life might have some sort of meaning that’s discoverable to make a life more satisfying to live. And that especially offers hope for people who have very little. I think it’s easy to think like that sometimes. If you have everything you need, but for the vast majority of human beings now and in the time past, that hasn’t been the case. Right. There are such huge implications for life without God, but so many seem to think that they’re perfectly content without God, and perhaps they haven’t thought through those implications that you just expressed. Again, just trying to get into your mindset, if you didn’t believe God existed, that it wasn’t viable enough for belief, what was Christianity or belief in God to you? Was it some kind of wishful thinking? Was it a fairy tale? Myth? Was it something man made up to soothe those needs that they have inside? What did you perceive it to be? Yeah. I don’t even know if I can give an answer to that, because I just didn’t give it that much thought. It was literally just very rarely entered my consciousness. I had interest. There was no one to talk to, no one talking to me about it. And so I just lived. Without really giving it much thought. And I think there’s a benefit and there’s a downside to that because I didn’t have any . . . . The criticism I had of belief in God, I just kind of absorbed from culture, through things about the degree of suffering, especially human suffering, and natural evil and things like that, so I could come up with objections, but I wasn’t really heavily invested in them in any sort of meaningful way. I would have enough to say if someone brought it up, but as I said, I think I just didn’t really care, to be honest. Yeah. I know that, as you expressed in your current context there in England, just not caring about these bigger questions. There seems to be a bit of an apathy about it. I think that’s very, very common. Yeah. It is. And it makes it difficult as a Christian now to have those conversations, because I think people do view it as a kind of . . . . It’s just not something that’s taken seriously. I think there are so many other views and perspectives that more currency and validity, and religious belief is sort of at the end of the line, really, I’d say. Right. So you didn’t care that much but you just knew it was not that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn’t have any good reasons to take it seriously and to see that it made any difference to anyone’s life, really. So I didn’t have any strong reasons for it, but I didn’t have anything against it as well, so it wasn’t like I was reading Nietzsche and then Richard Dawkins, Bertrand Russell and things like that. I didn’t really care enough to read things like that. I wasn’t even aware of them, so it wasn’t like I was . . . . I didn’t give it any sort of intelligent thought, really, in a way, either for or against it. I wasn’t bothered. I wasn’t interested. So it’s not like. . . . As I said, going back, I wasn’t a Christopher-Hitchens-type person. I was just a normal person who didn’t care about God and had some reasons to kind of back that up but wasn’t really that invested in it. I wasn’t really invested in arguing about it for or against. I think I probably subconsciously accepted some of the conclusions that kind of follow from that, perhaps, in that I just did what I wanted to do. Captain of my own ship. And just wanted to have fun and be a bit lazy and just normal things. I don’t know. It seemed normal at the time. Sure, sure. So it was a bit of a default atheism in a way. Definitely, yeah. So I wasn’t agnostic because I could give you reasons. I didn’t think God existed. I didn’t think there were good reasons to believe in God, certainly not any persuasive ones. And no one had ever told me otherwise. Right. So you weren’t around any good reasons, any good exposure to an embodied Christianity except perhaps for that neighbor who might have introduced a moment of it, but other than that, it seems like it just wasn’t in your world. Yeah, I guess I just viewed them as stories. Even when I was being read Bible stories, they’re just. . . like finding out about the Greek myths. They’re just stories that you’re told, and I wasn’t led to believe they were historical or anything like that. They were just stories. I read my children stories at bedtime. It’s just a story at bedtime. I didn’t really give it any greater thought than that, really. They were just some interesting stories. Right. And this was a bit of your attitude until . . . . How old were you when you began to turn the page or come to a place where you were questioning your beliefs? Or what happened that made you turn the corner and become open towards God? Yeah. So when I was 19, my grandparents had become Christians about maybe five years earlier to that, and so at the time, I think I was working in a frozen warehouse at the time. And also would so some sort of gardening work for my grandparents sometimes, and so when I went ’round their house, they would often talk to me about God, especially Jesus. And we would just talk, and if I’m honest, I thought they were in a cult. I thought they were mad. And often expressed that in sort of choice, coarse language and tell them just to shut up because I just didn’t want . . . . I was just sick of every time I go in ’round there, it was like, “Oh, just stop talking about Jesus for a while. It’s doing my head in.” So that would carry on for a while. But what kind of started it. I wasn’t taking them seriously. And I would ask lots of questions, and I think, at that point, kind of looking back, it was interesting now to look back and look at some of the questions I remember asking, you know, what about different religions. “If you speak to a Muslim, they’ll feel just as strongly as you do about how right their beliefs are. They might have had religious experiences. You say you’ve had a religious experience.” So I remember asking those types of questions, and I think, going back to what we were saying earlier about rethinking about it, but looking back, I must have given it some thought in a way because I did have objections and questions, that I wasn’t ready to embrace something unless my questions had reasonable answers I think. But I definitely remember asking questions about evil in the world and suffering and different religious experiences, about the existence of different religions and they couldn’t all be true. So those types of things. So I remember asking those types of questions and thinks about sex and, well, you know, “How can God want you to be with one person forever? That sounds like madness.” All sorts of things like that, I guess, were just coming into my head at the time. And so they would try their best to kind of give me answers. Some were satisfying. Some, probably most, were not. But what it did is it sort of stoked an interest to maybe think about some of these things a little bit more. I didn’t do very well at school. I was never in a context in my home life that allowed . . . would encourage me to see any value in education, in learning, in reading. I hardly ever read books. I don’t remember having any books growing up, like reading really. So I wasn’t really in an environment where I was kind of intellectually nurtured, but I also wasn’t stupid, and so I thought that, if he’s going to keep talking about this stuff all the time, I should at least have a more informed criticism, and so it’s really at that point when I started taking those questions a bit more seriously, thinking about those bigger sort of questions, and doing a little bit of reading here and there, looking at stuff online, going to the library. So that’s interesting. You were, at first, asking questions back to your grandparents, it seems like in an objectionable way, like trying to disprove it or push back against it because they were bothering you and so you wanted to bother them back with some hard questions, but then somewhere along the way, that push back turned into interest, and then you began a more genuine pursuit of the answers. Would you say that that shift in attitude or willingness to actually investigate- I think part of it was I wanted to prove them wrong, and I think part of it was wanting to be more informed about it as well. I didn’t really have . . . my questions were valid. They’re valid questions. They’re important questions that anyone should ask. It’s not like I’d read books about that. They were just sort of things that, as I said, I’d either absorbed or was kind of thinking of objections at the time, and I think, yeah, at some point that shift kind of . . . . My approach shifted at some point from just wanting to show them wrong, to show them that they’re wrong, to thinking more openly about it. And again, I’ve never been a close-minded person. Even before I knew of G.K. Chesterton, you know, he says the purpose of an open mouth is to clamp down on something solid, just like an open mind. And so it came to a point where I actually stumbled upon a book in a library, which a lot of people I’m sure will be aware of, is The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel. And I stumbled across that book. And, let’s say you’re not being in England, how unlikely that is to happen. To come across a good Christian book in a council library is highly unlikely. I’m not saying it’s miraculous, but it’s close to being, because there are so few good Christian books around, especially in libraries. But I came across that, and I think it was at that point, I thought, “All right, well, let’s see what they’ve good,” and having a read of that. And that book was a real turning point because, although there’s valid criticism of that book and those kinds of books, it led me to Christian thinkers, which I didn’t realize was a category. It led me to read what they were saying and have people I could actually read and listen to and get a pretty comprehensive understanding of Christianity, of engaging with sort of objections that I have had, and just sort of led me to thinking about Christianity a bit more seriously. I think it was kind of after that that I realized, whether it’s weeks or months, coming to a kind of point where I sort of crossed a threshold where I think . . . I always explained it as knowing a bit too much to sweep it under the carpet. So when you were investigating . . . or you saw this book by Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith. That’s definitely Christian oriented. Did you take a look at other world religions? Did you compare them? Did you want to see if Christianity held a candle to any of these other world religions, like Muslims, like you said, that they’re very strong in their belief, or others? How did you narrow it down to Christianity as the one that you were willing to pursue? Yeah. That’s a good question. I remember thinking at the time that I could probably rule out quite a significant number of them, especially those like Hinduism, where reincarnation suggests I would get another chance, exploring in the future, so I kind of focused on the Abrahamic faiths because these seemed like the ones that, although the Jewish faith is quite small, at least Islam and Christianity have a significant proportion of the population as their alleged adherence, and so Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, especially those faiths, come with a sort of finality after death. They seemed like the ones that should be taken most seriously, so I specifically focused on thinking about and reading about the three different Abrahamic faiths. And then, once I guess you settled in on monotheism and then you looked at those side by side, and what made Christianity more persuasive as an ideology or a worldview or that you came to a place where you settled on that? Yeah. I think, in terms of reading The Case for Faith and reading some other books and reading some things online. I’d say the point in which I guess it took a foothold is when I starting reading the Bible. It was the person of Jesus, reading the gospels, and God, looking back, speak to me through the gospels, and so I’d say that was the thing that really . . . the distinguishing factor between the three was Jesus, I would say. In terms of what He had to offer with grace and salvation? Or did it have anything to do with his resurrection or the viability of that? Or a combination of everything? Yeah. I mean it’s what he said. It spoke to me. The resurrection, I think, especially after reading The Case for Faith and reading stuff around . . . William Lane Craig and other scholars. The resurrection I found incredibly persuasive, and I didn’t know . . . . It was much stronger. Like I kind of thought the resurrection would have, in terms of historicity and stuff, the strength for those claims would be relatively weak, and they were much stronger than I anticipated. So I think the resurrection has been a great source of hope and strength, and it’s sort of helped me to continue on that path for the last decade. So yeah, I think the resurrection was really key in that. So, at the end of the day, you came to a place where you were able to realize or appreciate the fact that Christianity is more than just a story, more than just a Bible story, that there’s some kind of historical grounding to these events that are in the Bible? Yeah, yeah. I think the more I read . . . . It was a combination of things. I think first I had to . . . kind of looking back on my journey. First, I had to see that it was perfectly reasonable to believe that God existed. So that was the first stumbling block. I remember thinking, “Okay, well maybe you don’t have to be such a dummy to think that God exists,” as a first stumbling block. I’d sort of got over that. And then it was looking more at the specific claims of the main religions, and I think the one that speak most persuasively to me, especially at the time, was the gospel. How it considered the human condition, my own experience of the impact of sin and hope and love and resurrection. Those sort of biblical themes spoke so persuasively to me compared to the alternate claims of other religions of just where Moses left off and the claims made by Mohammad in the Koran. And so it was a mixture, I’d say, of the rational but also the experience as well. I did have later a religious experience of sorts that I think probably pushed me over the line. So, Daniel, what you’re telling me is that I hear that it seemed to be a rationally historically based kind of religion that seemed to really speak existentially also to your human condition. There was something in it that drew you. You could see yourself in it with sin, yet hope and love and grace and renewal through the resurrection. But you also speak of a spiritual experience. Can you tell me about that? Sure. This is why, I think, the gospel is such good news and so transformative, especially to people who feel that they are insignificant, that they feel they have nothing really to offer, that no one really cares about them beyond sort of immediate family. What the gospel is saying is that, insignificant as we are, as small as we are in the universe, that someone created the whole universe and loved you enough to enter it. To live among you, to enter into the world, the human world. And there’s something beautiful about that to people who feel like they’re insignificant, and I think that spoke to me in a way as well, sort of existentially. But it was also the rational aspect as well, especially in regard to the resurrection, and I think the final part of that journey was . . . . I remember just reading the gospels and just feeling utterly convicted of my own sin, of knowing that I needed forgiveness and knowing where the source of that forgiveness could be found. And just knowing that I had to repent and that, if I asked God for forgiveness, that I would receive it, and I remember . . . . No shining lights or noises but just a real experience of the depth of my sin but also the depth of God’s love for me at the same time. And I haven’t had anything like it since, but it’s always stayed with me. I bet that was, in a sense . . . . It sounds like such a marker, but it sounds like it was just a bit overwhelming but in a good way. Yeah, yeah. It’s a unique experience, and I think . . . I could be more skeptical because, as I said, people from other religions have experiences, and I think I’ll be more . . . . Looking back perhaps, I could be skeptical of just that experience, but it wasn’t just the experience. It was different things. It was the experience plus reason and a rational case for God. It was the experience plus Jesus in the gospels and knowing that what he was saying is true and how it makes sense of the things I already know. It makes sense of the universe. It makes sense of my moral intuitions, my knowledge of certain things of right and wrong objectively. Suffering is evil. Something that shouldn’t be welcome. That pain is bad. That there’s beauty. You look out at a sunset or a mountain range. There’s no reason to have a sense of awe from that. And there’s all sorts of things. I think there are certain things as human beings that we know, and I think any worldview has to be able to provide good answers to what we already know, and I think Christianity does that. Yes, it seems that the Christian worldview, in your mind and for you and for your life, and really I would presume that you would say for all of humanity it makes the most sense of reality, of what we know about the universe, what we know about ourselves and our own human condition and about our loves and our longings, all of those things that you spoke of. Our ability to understand right from wrong. How long ago was it that you became a Christian? So it was about 15 years ago now. So I’m 35, and I was 20 when I started following Christ. Well, tell me about that. Tell me about how your life has been affected and changed. You used the word transformed. How has your life been transformed in moving from atheism to Christianity? Yeah. In a lot of significant ways. I think certain people . . . . There’s only actually very few people that I’m still in contact today who knew me before I was a Christian for various reasons, and I remember one of them saying, of all the people they knew who have become a Christian, I would be last on their list. And he meant that quite genuinely. Yes, I bet they were surprised. Yeah. Just a little bit. And so I mean it was definitely difficult to begin with. Just basic things. I mean, I didn’t know what to do. Before I started attending church as a Christian, I’d never been to a church really, other than maybe . . . I don’t even remember going for a wedding. I don’t really ever remember going to a church. I remember going to a synagogue and a mosque when we were at school, but I don’t really remember . . . I definitely never went to a church service before being a Christian. I didn’t know what to do. It was a whole different culture, different language that Christians can speak. You know, their own in-group language. And I didn’t really know what to do with my life. I remember being at the church where I was part of, that a lot of them worked in healthcare, and so I decided that—well, probably led in some way—that going back to school and getting some qualifications and maybe training to be some kind of healthcare professional might be a good thing to do. And so I went back to college. I worked night shifts, and then in the morning, I went to college during the day. And at the time, there was some family situation that meant it was very difficult—when you first convert, you’re quite zealous in a way that doesn’t necessarily consider . . . inconsiderate zealousness, I would say. And I think I annoyed quite a few people with that sort of early zealousness, and I regret some of the things I said and did at that point. Not intending to break relationships and things, but you know, just silly things. Listening to Christian sermons loud in the evening when my mum was trying to watch TV and just not really . . . I didn’t think . . . and other things as well. I basically ended up—it became uncomfortable and no longer possible to live at home, so I moved in with a guy from church, and I lived on his floor, so I would basically work night shifts, go to college during the day, and then go and stay at my friend’s house, and I did that for about a year. I basically got all the qualifications that I needed to go back to try and get into university, but before as well I said, growing up, not someone who’s stupid but just didn’t . . . I was never really nurtured. My mind was never really nurtured in a way. And so I think God just gave me a love for learning, especially reading, and I just started reading. And I’ve never stopped. I just read all the time. I just read, read, read, read, read. Also trying to catch up. I’d missed so much. I didn’t listen at school. My English was pretty rubbish. I didn’t know how to write an essay. I was not a blank slate, but I was a poorly developed slate. Damaged. And God really used books to change that, and I’m still learning today, but reading stuff like Christian apologetics and philosophy and reading the Bible of course, reading a lot of the Bible, just shaped my mind. Renewed. My mind was renewed. And I don’t want to waste that. And so I went to university, got my qualifications, and I’ve just kind of been studying and working and doing things since then.  Also things as well . . . . I never wanted to get married. Everyone in my family was either a single parent or had been married multiple times, so obviously there was some misunderstanding of the nature of marriage, and I was fortunate. At university, I met my wife, and we’re married with three children today. That sounds like quite a transformation. And I guess, if you’re teaching at the university level, then you must have pursued graduate level education yourself. Is that right? Yeah. So I’m fortunate that, in the UK, if you’re a healthcare professional, if you go to an academic post, very, very few people will have their clinical expertise and also a doctorate, and so usually the minimum requirement to get an academic job as a healthcare professional is to have a master’s degree plus you usually have to have five years clinical experience as well. So I have a master’s degree from Heythrop College, University of London, in contemporary ethics, and since then I’ve done a graduate teaching course as well and some other small things, but yeah. I don’t have a doctorate, but they tend to encourage you to get one at some point, which I’ll probably do at some point, but because I’ve got three young children, I don’t want to take on too much that will affect me and being a rubbish husband and a rubbish dad. Understandable. So you obviously love to learn but you love for others to learn as well. I understand you have a YouTube channel. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah. So I think during lockdown due to COVID-19, it was difficult to maintain normal relationships with people, and so a friend of mine who’s a pastor at a church in Guilford, a good friend of mine, we sort of decided maybe to start up a podcast, and we like speaking to interesting people, and having a podcast is a great way to get interesting people and get to chat with them for an hour or two. And that’s what we’ve been doing for the last couple of months now. I think we’ve interviewed about seven people. We’ve got another one coming out tomorrow. And it’s just great. It just means that we can contact interesting people and just get to chat with them, ask them questions, and get to know them a bit better. It’s called Critical Witness on YouTube. And it’s great. I’m enjoying it. I look forward to having you on there at some point. Excellent, excellent. Yeah, I’ve watched your YouTube channel, and the content is excellent. It’s stellar. Very substantive content, so I would advise anyone who’s listening to take a look at that. Before we wrap up our conversation—your story has been amazing—what would you like to say to those listening to this podcast who are skeptical about God and Christianity, perhaps those who’ve just presumed that atheism is right just because of what they’ve heard, like you were once? Or like you once did? Yeah. If you have a Christian friend . . . . I mean, that’s half the problem sometimes. I would imagine I had friends who were Christians. I just never knew. So one thing, as Christians, is to speak to non-Christian friends, and also if you’re a skeptic, if you have a Christian friend that you know is a Christian, speak to them. If you’ve got some objections and questions, go straight to them. Ask them. Maybe they’ve got some recommendations. Podcasts to listen to. Videos on YouTube. There’s so many resources available now that weren’t available 15 years ago, really, and it’s amazing content. So that would be something. Another thing is I also encourage skeptics to read the Bible as well. I think that Christians, especially those who have an interest in philosophy and apologetics, can often be so quick to go to a book. Read Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig or read a John Lennox book or something like that, but actually just reading the Bible . . . . God can speak to you through the Bible. He’s been doing that for over 2,000 years now. And so I would strongly recommend that skeptics read the Bible. Wherever you speak, but I think I remember starting from Genesis for a bit but also just reading the gospels, getting to know Jesus through an unfiltered lens. I think that’s important. Yeah, an unfiltered lens, I think, is a good idea. I think there are so many ideas about what the Bible is without having read it. But for those who aren’t familiar with the gospels, where could someone find those in the Bible? Yeah. So there’s New Testament . . . I think the one I’ve always enjoyed reading is the Gospel of Luke. Luke was a physician, historian, and his gospel is written specifically for people don’t necessarily have a religious background, contrary to something like Matthew. Matthew is a great, great gospel but specifically written for people of a Jewish background, so I think starting from Luke . . . . Luke and Acts, I think, are always places I love to recommend people going to. Yeah, I think that’s good advice. And on the flip side, what would you say, in this culture where there’s an increasing push back against Christians and Christian beliefs, what would you like to say to Christians today, if anything? Yeah, it’s difficult. And this is probably one of the questions where I might be the least helpful person. Especially as someone who’s in academia, and it’s a very difficult place to be a Christian. I’m not sure I have many good answers. I’m a natural pessimist by nature, a redeemed pessimist, and so I . . . I think Christians need to read the Bible more. I think reading the Bible more. Definitely I need to read my Bible more. I think Christians need to read their Bibles more. I think we need to just get in a habit of speaking to people who aren’t Christians, forming that sort of habit of making it more natural to talk about how great the gospel is, how amazing Christ is, and that there are good reasons to be a Christian. I think those sort of things can make a small difference, I think especially as I said, in the UK. A lot of the US has different places, different cultures. I think just Christians need to have a habit of speaking about their faith more and not giving in to popular expectations to just keep everything at home and keep faith locked away. As soon as you step outside the door to work, school, wherever you’re going, playing football, whatever you’re doing, to find ways of showing people that Christianity shapes who you are and everything you do. Because I think one of the most common but pernicious ideas about Christianity and belief in God in general, is that it doesn’t have any relevance. It doesn’t change anything. I think people think, “Okay, you might believe that. You believe God exists. You believe Christ died for your sins, but what does that actually change?” And I think it’s so important to show people, actually, it changes everything. And I think something I get frustrated about sometimes is . . . . People see me as I am today, so on paper, you think, “Okay, he’s married for 10 years. He’s got three children. He’s got some degrees. He’s working as an academic. He’s published academic papers.” And things like that. And people can make assumptions about me, about my life story, about my background, about how I grew up, and most of them would be false, because what they see now is someone who’s been transformed by the love of God. But they don’t see that. They just see me as I am now. Whereas my whole life is . . . . Everything I have is but for the grace of God. Yeah. It is amazing how we are so quick to presume and to make judgment without really taking the time to enter in to someone else’s life story. And I think your advice is really timely and necessary at this moment, when we’re so, like you say, kind of at the very beginning, when you talked about, in England, that religion is private. And we all have a tendency to kind of close our doors and keep our lives to ourselves and especially in this day of distraction and technology, during COVID, it seems like everything is just amplified, but as you are telling us, I think it is very wise and judicious to just take the time to get to know someone, whether they are pushing back against belief about God or whether they have a very strong belief in God. You don’t know their story, and you don’t know the reasons, why they are, what they believe, who they are, all of these things. And it would be good if we just took time to listen to the other side, and that’s kind of the point of this podcast, and I hope that those who are listening really have listened to you. Because you are a life that has been transformed, and it’s, for me, a really beautiful thing. So I want to thank you, Daniel, for coming on and for sharing your story with us. Is there anything else you want to add to your story before we close? No. I think it’s been interesting. It’s been cathartic, sort of, talking about it, and yeah, I just really appreciate you having me on and wish you all the best for your future interviews. Fantastic. Thank you again, Daniel. Thanks for tuning in to the Side B Podcast. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and share this new podcast with your friends and social network. I would appreciate it. Again, to hear more from Daniel, take a look at his YouTube channel called Critical Witness. I think you’ll find it well worth your time as he and his guests think through issues of culture, apologetics, theology, and evangelism. For questions and feedback about this episode with Daniel, you can reach me by email at thesidebpodcast@cslewisinstitute.org. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next time, where we’ll listen to the other side.  

A Jewish atheist, Nikki wanted nothing to do with Jesus until an unexpected spiritual experience caused her to question all she believed as real and true. Follow The Side B Instagram: @thesidebpodcast Twitter: @thesidebpodcast Facebook: www.facebook.com/thesidebpodcast Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to understand how someone flips the record of their life from atheism to Christianity. Each podcast, we listen to the story of someone who was an atheist and became a Christian. Each journey is unique, filled with unusual twists and turns. The story we’re going to listen to today certainly does not disappoint. It is as fascinating as anything you might imagine seeing, reading, or hearing about. Nikki contacted me after hearing my interview on Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable? Podcast and told me her incredible story. I thought it was too good not to share. As a Jew who didn’t believe in God, who lived and immersed herself in an anti-God, very intellectual culture, Nikki was highly resistant to religious belief, particularly to Jesus, someone whom she adamantly did not believe in, nor anyone she ever wanted to believe in. But she experienced an unexpected profound spiritual encounter with Jesus, that she immediately became open to the possibility that perhaps God existed after all, and that His name was Jesus. As someone who valued reason, Nikki set out on a diligent intellectual search to find out what was actually true, whether or not a reality outside of the natural world actually exists and that the person she met, Jesus, actually had good reason to exist based upon more than just her personal experience. I hope you’ll come and listen to her extraordinary story with me. Well, thanks for joining us at the Side B Podcast, Nikki. It’s so great to have you here today. Thank you. Thank you. Well, as we’re getting started, so the listeners know a little bit about who you are, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself? So my name is Nikki, and I live in Portland, Oregon. I work as a pastor’s assistant at a local church, and I’ve lived in Portland since 2005, but I’m originally from the South. Originally from the South? Oh, okay. Yeah, I don’t hear a real strong Southern dialect. As someone from Atlanta, I can tell you’ve not lived here for a while. So, why don’t you take us back to the beginning, your childhood, and let us know kind of where you grew up. What was it like there? Did you live in the Bible Belt? Did you live in southern America. Tell us what that world was like. Was there any sense of God in it in your world? So yeah, I grew up in Houston. We moved there when I was four years old. And I knew that we were… I’m Jewish by birth, so we were the only Jewish family in the whole neighborhood. I was often the only Jewish kid at school, but we were unique in that my parents did not believe in God. They were atheists, and that’s how they raised me. But we would still go to synagogue. But my first encounter with Jesus was when I was seven years old. We were on the school bus, and I was about to get off the school bus, and I was going down the stairs, and this little girl came up to me, and she had this angry look on her face. She was actually a friend of mine, and she just yelled in my face, “You killed Jesus!” and she shoved me down the bus stairs. So I laid there stunned. I went home with tears, and I had to ask my parents. “Who’s Jesus? And why did I kill him? I don’t remember killing anyone.” So it was at that point that I heard about Jesus and was told that He was a rabbi and that he’s not the Messiah but most of the people that we live around believe that he’s, like, a savior. “But that’s not for us. Jesus is for the Christians, and we have nothing to do with them. Yeah. So that was your introduction to Jesus? Yeah. So I would imagine… Did that make you feel like an outsider with regard to your culture? Was that girl… unfortunately, was she representative of most of the people around you? Did you live around a lot of Christians? Did you ever experience any kind of Christianity apart from the girl who shoved you down the bus stairs? They were just my neighbors, so I didn’t know any different, but I knew that we were different, that the teachings about Jesus were that… That was for the goy. That was for everyone else. I didn’t understand because I was told there wasn’t a God. And we were going to synagogue, and my dad acted like he was God but he hated God. So there wasn’t any God. We still went to synagogue. It was all very confusing. And then, every year, my brother and I would do a Hanukkah presentation, and my mom would make latkes, the potato pancakes, and bring them to school, and I’d have to do this presentation and educate all the Christians about Hanukkah. So it was kind of weird growing up in the Bible Belt as just, like, the one Jew, but apparently actually Houston has a large Jewish population, but we were not a part of it. So I was kind of isolated, and I didn’t really understand religion. It didn’t make any sense to me. I would go to Hebrew school and learn Hebrew. I would go to synagogue and kind of say these prayers that were transliteration and not in English. They were just… they had absolutely no meaning to me. I liked being in synagogue because there was a sense of community and I kind of felt self, especially when you’re in a culture that is different than yours. And then you have this one little group, so I liked that, but it didn’t have a… I’d hear other people talk about their faith and what faith should be, and that wasn’t my experience, so I kind of didn’t like the whole religion thing. I would go with my friends to Mass sometimes, and there was a sense of peace there that I didn’t understand, but I knew it wasn’t for me. That’s what I’d been told. It was… Christianity and this whole Jesus thing really wasn’t for me. So that’s all I knew about it. So as you were growing up, that must have been a bit confusing, participating in religious ritual and services but not believing in a sense. That it was more, I guess, community and part of your ethnicity. Part of your community in a sense, but not believing. Yeah. It was just tradition. It was something that we did, and especially coming out of World War II, there was a strong sense of, you know, “We’re going to stick together as Jews. We’ve just come through this horrible experience. We’ve lost a lot of our families, and so you kind of have an obligation to be Jewish, even if you don’t believe that there is a God or even if you want to be a Buddhist. You still have to be Jewish first. That is your identity. Even though it doesn’t make any sense. That’s your identity. You can be an atheist Jew. The Judaism itself is your identity.” But I didn’t understand. It was unmoored from anything scriptural. I didn’t really understand that part. We did do the feasts. We did do Passover. We did do… Well, Hanukkah’s not really technically a kingdom feast, but we did do that, so there was kind of a semblance of community and culturalism, but it wasn’t connected to who I now know God is, so it was really empty and devoid, and I saw that in the lives of Christians around me, too. So I was told that science was the answer, rationality was the answer, and everything is observable, and reality is no more than what we can see and experience and observe. So that took the place of my God, and that’s what I pursued. I was always just interested in knowing what was true. So that’s how I grew up. I also was pretty ill growing up. I was born prematurely, and so I had a vestibular issue which… I would have severe attacks at least four times a year, and they were hell. I mean I’ve had it all my life until recently, so growing up with that and not having a God was particularly challenging. And I was told that I wasn’t sick. Because it was a dizziness thing, so there was no treatment, and my parents really didn’t know what to do about it, and so I grew up with like a sense of a moral weakness. I know that sounds funny from an atheist perspective, but because I wasn’t able to function, there was something wrong with me. I was morally weak because I couldn’t quite hold a job after graduate school, and so it was all… Growing up was a little bit challenging compared to a lot of people. Okay. Wow. It does sound like you grew up with some challenges for sure, in terms of trying to navigate your way. Very admirably, though, in terms of really your pursuit of what you believed to be true, whether it was science, rationality, so obviously then you believed that religion was not rational, not true in any sense. So talk with me about, as you were growing up, obviously, through high school, college, graduate school, you were moving through this period of your life, doing life on your own, but what did you perceive religion to be if it wasn’t true or rational? Religion was an opiate for the masses. It was a crutch for the weak. It was something that people hung their hat on when there was nothing else to hang their hat on. They were uncomfortable with ambiguity. Of course, I… In my intellect, I was so superior because I was okay with not knowing. Belief had nothing to do with truth. I mean that never entered my mind, that belief could have anything to do with truth. At least a faith belief would not have anything to do with truth, so I never… I just saw it as patently untrue. I would hear the bible stories of, like, a talking donkey, and I would just laugh. I worked in a children’s bookstore at one point, and they had the creationist books, and I would be on the floor laughing. I would mock and deride it. I really did. Anyone who believed in any sort of God was… I thought that they were really dumb, although I met some smart people. The Jews were smart because they had been… I guess it was genetic or something, so there was that sense of Jewish exceptionalism and superiority, which is no more than pride, but that’s what I grew up. The term “chosen people” that were chosen by God. I thought that was silly. But I couldn’t see how any of it could be true, and I didn’t understand why otherwise smart people would believe in it, other than it gave them a sense of comfort and ability to deal with the unknown in a way that kind of structured their anxiety. I just thought, in the end, it was a mental illness. I really did. I thought that belief in God was delusional and that some day science would come along and cure humanity of all of this insanity. So that’s the way I looked at religion and belief. No, yes, in a very… I mean, according to your own worldview, that makes perfect sense. So as you were again embracing your atheism as the rational way of thinking about the world, did you… I know you were dealing with your vestibular issues of illness and frailty on your own part but weren’t able to do that, like you say, with the comfort of a God, but within your own atheistic worldview, did you look at the logical implications of your atheism, in terms of what it meant for your life practically speaking, in terms of…. whether it’s meaning or purpose or human value or freedom to choose or your own consciousness and those kinds of things? Did you reflect on what atheism meant for you and your life in terms of its logical implications? Not in an ultimate sense. I never really looked at the logical presuppositions of my blind faith in atheism, but I would say that… The farthest I ever got was that I was just going to be comfortable with the ambiguities, that I was just made in that way. I wasn’t weak. So it was really more of a superiority thing that I took comfort in. As far as the logical endgame of reconciling that… how I reconciled that there was meaning and purpose clearly, but ultimately there wasn’t. No. I didn’t think about it had to be logically consistent all the way through to be true, but I just… It was about really self sufficiency, and so ultimately, it didn’t have to have meaning and purpose as long as it had meaning and purpose in the here and now, and then, of course, when you die, you’ll return to dust, and it all goes back. So that’s as far as I ever got. I didn’t need to have anything beyond that. It was just observable and provable. That was what made it comfortable for me. But I never got into more the deep philosophical things, and when I would have those conversations, they were… I think I would just mock them and laugh at the people who wanted to push beyond that. So you had quite a resolute understanding of the world, of your own atheism. It just seems very pragmatic. It seems like this is the way the world was. Did you feel… It sounds like you had some intellectual superiority with that, some sense of existential satisfaction that you were where you should be as a rational thinking person. Yes. Did you live among a community of atheists? Or was this… You said that you live in Portland. You moved from the South to the Northwest, where I presume that atheism is a bit more normal way of thinking about things. Can you talk about the change of culture for you as you pursued your life as an adult as an atheist? Yeah. One of the reasons we chose Portland is because it was one of the most well-read towns, and I was such a reader. And so I liked being around people that were people of ideas and liked to have deep discussions and were thoughtful about things. So when I moved here, people had all different types of belief, and so finally I got to the point where I realized that not all of them could be true but if we’re making up our own idea of what’s out there maybe some of us are wrong. That kind of occurred to me, but it didn’t really… it was like, well, how do we ever know which one is right, and so we’re just going to make up what we think is objectively true. But I was never really challenged on that. But it was comfortable to me to be around people who had thoughts. Thoughts were really interesting, and so I was very comfortable here. Escaping the Bible Belt seemed like… very fundamental and very restricting to me as a self-identified intellectual atheist, when I was being told I was just wrong all the time. It was very freeing to move to the Pacific Northwest. But I got to a point where my health struggles were getting worse. I’ve always had severe anxiety and depression, and as my health got worse and worse, I did reach out for help, and I began to have my beliefs challenged in a way because truth became very important. Truth, like knowing what was true, what was actually true, became central to my life at that point. If you’re going to be honest, if that’s a characteristic in your life that you want to pursue, honesty, then you have to know what truth is in order to tell it. And so I got to the point where I was told, “You have to choose a higher power,” and well, as an atheist, that’s a really challenging thing, right? So how do you choose something that’s higher than you? Well, I knew truth as higher than me, so put, on the altar of my life, truth. And then I also knew that energy was true, right? Because we can see it. There’s light bulbs. And then love must be true. So those three things I kind of lifted up to a higher power and began to deify those characteristics. And that’s probably when that door opened for me, that I just really wanted to know what was true in order to speak it. Because I wanted to have integrity in my life. So that was the first step that I took. But it wasn’t like God. I mean I never thought that God was a person or anything like that. That was- Yeah. But there was something in you that became open to another perspective or perhaps another view of reality or, like you say, the pursuit of truth above all else. And that’s very admirable. Sometimes that’s very difficult to do. I’m curious, during this time where you were becoming a little bit more open, did you meet any Christians or anyone of faith that tried to tell you, “Oh, I know a higher power.” Yes, I did. And her name is Mary. She’s my little angel. I came in one day, just shaking, and she grabbed onto my hand and has not let go. We called her “Bible-thumping Mary,” and here’s this atheist and this Bible thumper, and we became friends. There’s just like a similar spirit that we had. Because we can spot each other even if we’re in a different field, like the wrong field. But she would just… She told me about Jesus, and she said her pastor was Jewish. I would roll my eyes at her and think, “Lady, you’re crazy, because pastors aren’t Jewish.” But she said, “No, no. Jesus was a Jew.” I’m like, “Well, yeah, I knew that,” but towards the end I really thought that Jesus was fictional. There was a DVD that had been passed around in Portland on the streets called Zeitgeist, and it posited that Jesus was probably made up. Or He was just kind of an embodiment of all these other different mythical gods or real gods or… I don’t know. But in the end, I really believed that Jesus was probably fictional, probably completely fictional, and so when Mary started talking to me about her Jesus and how much she loved him, I thought, “Oh, my gosh! This lady is nuts. But I really like her.” But she would tell me she’s praying for me, and she’s got her church praying for me, and I didn’t know what to make of that. I would just tell her, “Please don’t. Please don’t pray for me. That’s dumb.” But she was… The things she would say were true, like morally true, emotionally true, and I didn’t know what to do with that. That was really challenging. And I was meeting more and more Christians who were like… They seemed really solid, and they didn’t seem crazy, and they were talking about Jesus. I still couldn’t go there. I was not having any of it. So I did meet some, and that wasn’t… That didn’t move me very much, other than to just kind of put things in me that said, “Okay, maybe they’re not completely nuts. Maybe there’s a truth in there somewhere. Maybe Jesus had some really good teachings,” and that’s as far as I got with that. Well, but I suppose what Mary did for you is to break down some kind of stereotype about who you thought Christians were and that perhaps they’re not as strange or irrational or whatever it is you had in your mind. “They’re not as bad as I thought they were,” perhaps. Yeah. When you get desperate enough, like… So Mary is a very salt-of-the-earth person, not intellectual at all, but God had… I didn’t know it was God, but my heart was open. Love was a very important virtue to me because I needed that connection. I didn’t have a really good family that I had connection with, and as I had been ill for 13 years at that point, off and on on my deathbed. I had been just, like, slowly dying, and so my friends had fallen away, and so I needed that connection, and you know when it’s real. On a human level, you know when it’s real. So that’s what I was craving. All the intellectual stuff, it didn’t matter at that point. So I think that’s what happened. I hit a point where I was so desperate in my life that I was just going to choose good people, and Mary was good. And she was loving, and she showed up, and that’s what spoke to me. So I would try to engage her, like, “Well, it can’t be true.” She couldn’t follow what I was saying. She didn’t want to talk about quantum physics. So we just had a relationship that wasn’t based on all the intellectual stuff that I would put up that I would have with my other friends, and my other friends just had kind of disappeared when I had been sick. They were in it for just the discussions, and when my IQ started dropping because of the vestibular issue… I mean, in the end, it was down to 85, a functional IQ of 85. I wasn’t discussing a lot of quantum physics. I wasn’t discussing the nature of the universe and reality a whole lot. I was just lying in bed, being sick, and so I needed someone like Mary to just kind of love me. And that’s really what spoke. That’s what did it. I imagine that was very powerful. Yeah. But again I suppose the issue of truth – even though you weren’t able to speak to Mary so much about quantum physics or the hard questions, she softened you in that way – but what happened, though, in terms of… you still had a desire to know what was true. Talk to us a little bit about what happened next in your journey. So yeah, I was sick. So I still had the vestibular thing. I was diagnosed with MS, I think in 2008, and then in the summer of 2017, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and so I was put in the hospital, and it was strange. I had this sense of peace that I’d never had, and Mary visited me every day. She continued to tell me about her Jewish pastor, and she brought me this Bible, and she said her pastor wanted me to have it because it was written by a bunch of Jews, and I’m like, “Okay, lady, I’ll take it,” because I didn’t want to upset her. Here I am dying, and in the hospital, they did another MRI, and they said that I didn’t have MS, which was… I had never heard of anyone just having MS and then all of a sudden not having it, and they did a contrast CT scan. They diagnosed me with pancreatic cancer based on the lab work, and then the next day, they go in to biopsy it, and there’s nothing there. I didn’t know what to think of that. They discharged me from the hospital, and I didn’t know that that had been the case, so ten days later, when I still don’t get the results and I still think I have pancreatic cancer, Mary says, “You probably need to call them to find out.” I called the doctor, and I said, “So what are the results?” They said, “Oh, we didn’t find anything.” I said, “Oh, good! So the biopsy was negative?” And they said, “No, there wasn’t anything there.” And that really shocked me because I’d seen the picture of the contrast CT scan, and there was something there. I said, “But there was a lump.” They said, “Yeah, but it wasn’t there when we went in.” And I didn’t really think about that was a miracle or anything. I just thought, “I don’t have pancreatic cancer. Yay,” move on to the next thing. But the thing was I was still declining. I was having transitory paralysis. My IQ was dropping. I wasn’t able to function. Things I could do before were just not available. My intellect was being taken away, and so in November, November 11, 2017, I go to bed, and I have an encounter with the Lord. But, you know, had I wanted a god, the last god I would have been chosen would have been Jesus, so I know it’s the Lord. There’s a golden light. He gave me the symbol of the cross. I could see that. So it would be unmistakable. He was singing over me, and this word “shekhinah” kept on ringing through my head. I wake up… So I had been asleep, and I had woken up and had seen the Lord. And then the next morning, when I get up out of bed, I don’t need the walker anymore. The word shekhinah’s running through my head, and out of my mouth comes words that sound like scripture, and I don’t know what to make of this. So I had this experience. I call Mary. I said, “Maybe you should take me to church. Maybe I should thank Jesus. I think it was Him.” But I still… Even though I had that experience, I’m like, “I could be crazy,” so I have to do the investigation, right? So if I ascribe to the scientific method, if I think scientifically, I have to put this to the test, and so I went through a very rigorous period of looking at science, looking at the history, looking at the textual criticism, talking to people, looking at things that I’d never looked at. The Lord was giving me logic proofs. I’d never studied logic. I never studied these things, but they were coming in whole. There were things that I knew that there was no way I could have known because I’d never studied them. I never formally studied logic or philosophy, and yet He was giving me things that there’s no way I could have known unless it was Him. It’s kind of like I had a library card to the universe. And I used it. I did, I did! I would just ask these questions. And in the beginning I didn’t know who to ask them to. I said it was the universe, and then I knew it was the Lord at some point. But even as I went through the investigation and the science and into history, there was a majority part of me that did not want Jesus to be true. I didn’t want it to be true. Because then there are certain implications. At the same time, though, I was attending church, and I was worshiping, and I was studying scripture, hard. I was studying the Torah. I was reading the New Testament, and the Lord was putting it all together. I knew things that… pretty advanced theological concepts were just like I knew them, and I didn’t have any explanation for that. People were seeing the writings I was… the Lord had given me. They were coming to the Lord. Ex pastors, atheists. I mean, it was just kind of crazy, and I liked Christianity because it just opened up the world. It gave it color. It gave it dimension, and the world began to make sense. When you see truth, things come in line, and I really like that. My political views the day I went to bed had been very, very liberal. I do live in a… Well, you guys know Portland. You’ve heard of it. It’s a very liberal town. The morning I woke up, my views had changed. I became a political conservative overnight. Never wanted that to happen. So what the Lord did with me was extremely dramatic, and I don’t even… There are some times I just don’t have words to put it into context. It’s just a miracle. So that’s how I got to Christianity. I had to have the Lord blast my eyes open, give me scripture supernaturally, and then I had to do the rigorous research, and then I came to see that it was true. What an extraordinary story! A very supernatural story, it sounds like, in many ways. So you came to believe that it was true, but there’s a difference between just belief that something is true and actually willing to give your life to a person who is truth. Yes. So you obviously made that step towards an embodied belief, almost. Yes, exactly. But that took a while. He had opened my eyes and put the questions to seek out in my heart and gave me that spirit of inquiry, and it was progressive after that. It wasn’t a very clear vision of Jesus in the beginning. It was more conceptual, and the embodiment, like seeing Him as a person, it took time. It’s only been three years, but it took time for Him to come out of the scripture into 3D form as My Beloved. Yeah. That was not immediate, but the eye opening was, and the Lord just removed whatever was blinding me. And I truly believe that the reason that that was possible was because I had truly been seeking truth. I truly wanted to know what was true. But more than that, I needed something more, and it was the morality of truth that I needed. Because I wanted to be a person of integrity who spoke truth, not just an intellectual knowledge of it, but a heart knowledge of truth, which is different. Those are qualitatively different. Yes, and it strikes me, as you’re telling your story, that the three values that you honored or were pursuing the most before you met Jesus were truth, energy, and love, and it’s not lost on me that the person of Christ came, you said, in golden rays of light, which is extraordinary energy, but yet He is the personification of both truth and love. So He came as, again, the person, the embodiment of all of those things which you had valued but you had no place to put them. But then you found them in the person of Christ, and it sounds like He’s just completely transformed you, so that you are actually experiencing and knowing those things, knowing them intellectually but experiencing them in your life and in your heart. I’m curious about two things, really. One is how has your life changed? And secondly, now that you still live in Portland, Oregon, in a place that now you find yourself as an outsider again in a different way, describe for us what that is like. Well, I’m not in my deathbed anymore. Praise the Lord. And just like the disciples, after He had communion, they’re like, “Where are we going to go, Lord?” Where am I going to go? I had to find something to do. So I started working at a church. I didn’t have any income when I started. They didn’t pay me for two years, but praise the Lord, He’s been faithful, and this year I started earning a salary. So I started doing that. I started working again after not having worked since 1999 because I had been so sick. There’s some sadness, of course, but the Lord says that those who are not willing to leave house and father and mother are not worthy of Me. And so my husband did leave. My family, most of them do not talk to me because they know that I’m a follower of Yeshua, so that’s been… I’ve largely done this alone. My son, as I raised as a very good atheist. He will not talk to me. So there are these things that the Lord tells us about, and truth is truth. He is the embodiment of truth. He is my beloved. I’m going to follow Him. And yeah, there are sacrifices, but He sacrificed Himself for us, and I don’t get to make up truth and change that. I have to follow it. I was following it, pursuing truth before I met Jesus, and I’m still going to follow Him. And I’m glad He’s a person. Let me just tell you that. When you walk alone and you have the Lord, it fills you, and my life, even though I’m alone, even though I’m in Portland, I’m alone without my family, I am in a really good Spirit-filled church with the word that has kind of embraced me. I’m literally at the center of the church now as the pastor’s assistant. But it’s Him, it’s the Lord that fills me. I have time to study the word. I have time to worship Him. I have time to pursue education in apologetics and do ministry, so He’s filled my life. So it is different, but He is worthy. I don’t know what else to say. I think a lot of other Christians might look at it and say, “Wow, that’s a big sacrifice.” The Lord is worth it. And especially I know the joy of salvation. Every day, I know the joy of my salvation, because I know from whence I come, and that was hell. Literally being snatched from the jaws of death in the midst of depression and anxiety, suicidal often because of my vestibular issue and because of emotional scars from my past. I know what I’ve been given, and I know what I’ve been saved from, and I am not… what’s the word? Complacent about it. I am not complacent about my belief because of what He did for me and who the person of Christ is and the reunification with the Father and having the Holy Spirit. So my life has dramatically changed, and to know truth is the most glorious thing I can possibly imagine. So Portland… They can burn their flags, and they can ring cowbells in front of my house or whatever they’re going to do, and that’s fine. God bless them. They don’t have the knowledge yet. And I have great compassion, and I just remember Jesus on the cross saying, “Father, forgive them.” That’s my attitude towards Portland because they don’t know, and I’ve been given such a treasure and such a gift, and I’m so grateful that I have him in the midst of this. I can’t even imagine going through the world now, the way it is, with COVID and the elections and fires burning this summer and riots going on. I mean, my goodness! So I’ve got a grounding in truth, and I’ve got the peace of God and meaning and purpose, so yeah. It’s great living here because, in the middle of this darkness, they need the light, and we’re the light. I mean, I get to be the light! That’s amazing! What a privilege! What a privilege! And I’m thinking, for some people listening, they may not understand how you can be Jewish and Christian at the same time. Can you just very briefly put the dots together for that? Well, if Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jews, He’s the Messiah of no one. He came for the Jews first, to reunite the tribes, and then to the rest of the world. So I am more Jewish now than I have ever been. It’s just such a joy. I study the Torah. When I do Shabbat, His presence and being in the presence of the father is profound, but Jesus is a Jewish man, and that just… If I had just been given the New Testament, it would not have made sense. I have to have all, and His wisdom of the Torah and the Chinuch and the prophets and the writings, all of it, in order to be complete. Jesus completes… He stands at the center of Judaism and Christianity. He is the whole thing. He is the embodiment of God, the same God, the Holy One of Israel. So that’s what I would say. I think that Christianity is beginning to wake up, that those false divisions are being broken down. That’s what God wants. He wants us all united. There are no Jew or Gentile, male or female, none of it, in the kingdom of God. So yeah, He’s breaking down those walls for all of humanity and reuniting us back to the original Adam in the garden before the fall, so that’s what I would say. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for that, Nikki. As we’re wrapping up, I wondered if there was someone listening who valued truth like you did and like you still do. What would you say to a curious skeptic or a seeker or someone who really does want to know what is true and what grounds love and what is light and what grounds even, like you say, you had a strong sense of morality, a strong sense of good and evil, and you wanted to know what was true. What would you say to someone like that, who is open to seeking truth? Yeah, so I think you do have to be humble, and you do have to be open. I wasn’t. I never would’ve made it on my own. I admire atheists who actually have the humility to put their true bias aside and just seek after it. So if you’re truly seeking truth, then you have to approach it humbly. Because it is greater than you. Truth is always greater than you. Put it on the altar of deity in your life and seek it humbly. Ask questions. Follow it, even where you don’t agree necessarily. Look at all the sources. Truly be unbiased. Don’t exclude the Bible. Because it can be treated like a theory. You just want to see where the evidence best fits, and if it best fits on scripture, then that’s where the evidence leads. So that’s what I would say. There is a logic proof that the Lord had given me very early on, and it’s called the absolute truth proof. It’s very brief, and it’s that all claims of religion are claims of absolute truth, including atheism. They describe the nature and function of reality. But absolute truth is exclusive. It excludes everything that isn’t absolutely true, so that if there are differences in the claims of absolute truth, the differences between the claims of religion or atheism, that means that only one claim can be true. Now if that’s true, which it is – and that’s just logic. Well, which claim? Well, God’s going to make it easy. He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He’s not claiming to be just one way among many, nor is he claiming to be a truth among many truths. He’s claiming to be the truth, the absolute truth. So if we’re going to start looking at truth, you can use that claim and just say, “Okay, let me take this claim seriously because I value truth. Let me look at the historical evidence. Let me look at the evidence for the resurrection unbiased.” Follow the evidence. Look at the scientific sources and then make your own decision. And don’t rule out people who are experts in the Bible. Because they’re going to know it better than you. Just like you would go to an expert in any field to look at the information, you also want to consider the claims seriously. So seek truth. Knock, and it will be opened to you, and the truth will set you free. That’s what I would say. That’s excellent. And again, you are speaking as a voice of wisdom and experience, as a light in your own culture. If you were speaking to Christians now as those who want to be light among those around them, what would you say to the Christian who wants to be like a Mary in your life or even in a different way addressing the issues, the intellectual issues with regard to truth, or whatever you think. Stereotypes or anything that you want to say. What would you say to the Christian in terms of them being a better witness to a resistant world? Fill yourself with God. Get to know Him. Make sure you have a good relationship with the Lord. Worship. Read the word. Take it seriously. It should come first. Secondly, if you’re going to talk to atheists, you want to lay a foundation. So one of the objections I had about Christianity that it was intellectually vacuous. I would ask someone, “Why do you think it’s true?” and they would say, “Because Jesus” something. And that did not… It’s not very satisfying when you’re an atheist. So if you really want to deal with atheists, you’re going to have to do the hard work of learning their perspective, learning what they know, and studying. So you want to do the preparation, which is work. Of course, you do that with a grounding in the gospel. No one’s going to listen to you if you’re shoving facts in their face because it’s disrespectful. Jesus gives us dignity. He comes from grace. He asks questions. He’s not forceful with anything, so we want to, when we’re preparing, just really embody Christ and treat the person in front of us as a person, as Jesus would, despite their beliefs. And build relationship. I would say that relationship is key. God is a relationship of three persons. He puts us in relationship. When He was here, He had his disciples. You see Him moving in relationship. That’s how He shares love. So, like with Mary, the reason I even listened to her is because she had ministered to me in relationship. She had shown her love and proved that to be true. If we think that someone doesn’t care about us, we’re not going to listen to them. No matter what, I would say. No matter how good the argument is, if there’s not love – 1 Corinthians 13 – there, you’re just going to be a noisy gong. So you have to ground it in true love for the person in front of you and true caring and then prepare. Yeah. That’s what I would say. Yeah. That’s beautiful. I am sitting here feeling so – I guess blessed is the best word I can come up with  – to hear your story. Just to have sat back and listened to the really extraordinary transformation in your life and how that happened. I mean, someone who was an atheist and so strongly against Christianity, an intellectual atheist who believed that nothing supernatural was real, and then you encounter this incredible supernatural reality in the person of Christ, but of course, at that point, too, you had made a choice to be open to that coming into your life, to that person coming into your life, that truth, that love, that energy, and that speaks to all of us, really, that we all need to have an openness to truth, wherever that evidence leads. Whether we’re Christian or non-Christian or wherever, that should be our posture, one of humility. I mean if we know anything as humans, we know that we’re very finite! And we’re very fallen, right? But God overcomes those, and like you say… I love what you said about the fact that He will show up if you are earnestly seeking. So thank you for your story, Nikki. It really is extremely powerful and such a privilege to have you on the podcast today. Bless you. Thank you so much. You’re very welcome. Thanks for tuning into the Side B Podcast to hear Nikki’s story. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can reach me by email at thesidebpodcast@cslewisinstitute.org. If you enjoyed it, subscribe, rate, and share this podcast with your friends and social network. I would really appreciate it. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next podcast, where we’ll be seeing how someone else flips the record of their life.

Former atheist Stuart moved from a world without God to one where God changed his whole world. Stuart’s new book, Faith that Lasts: A Father and Son on Cultivating Lifelong Belief, is co-authored with his son, Cameron. They reconsider each myth in the light of the Christian faith and their own experiences. When our confidence is rooted in the good news of Jesus, our homes can be places of honest conversation, open-handed exploration, and lasting faith. For more information on events and resources, visit www.cslewisinstitute.org Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Sometimes we look at others, and we think, “They will never change their views, their lives, their decisions, what they believe.” Sometimes we think to ourselves we will never change our views, our lives, our decisions, our beliefs. That certainly was the case for the majority of the 52 former atheists that I’ve interviewed. Two-thirds of them thought they would never change from being an atheist, much less become a Christian. That begs the million dollar question: What would it take for someone to change their lives so dramatically? More than that, what did it take? What was the catalyst that turned someone so resolute against God to a place of openness towards God? More specifically, towards Jesus Christ. In my research, the catalyst was different for different people. There’s certainly not one size fits all. For some, it was sudden. For others, quite gradual. For some, it was a crisis moment. For others, it was along the process of their life. It may have been prompted by existential dissatisfaction, looking for something more in life. For others, it may have been a quest to disprove religion or even to quest for truth itself. Still others, it was an unlikely spiritual experience. It may have been meeting a Christian for the first time who completely broke down their negative stereotypes of Christianity, someone who was intelligent and kind, and well, normal. Someone who makes Christianity look attractive, even plausible. Each person’s story is different. If you’ve been listening to these stories of change through this podcast, I would encourage you to begin actively searching for and identifying the catalyst, that thing or combination of things that moved someone towards considering another life-changing perspective. Today’s story is of a former atheist, someone, if you looked on from the outside, you would never in a million years think they would ever change, but change he certainly did. Not only did his own life dramatically change, but since his conversion to Christianity, he has spent his life helping many others see things differently as well. I hope you’ll listen closely to his surprising journey to see if you can identify the catalyst that opened him towards another direction. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Stuart. It’s so great to have you! My privilege to be here. I look forward to talking with you. Well, we’re looking forward to hearing your story, but before we get into the story, Stuart, why don’t you tell me a little bit about who you are, where you live, perhaps what you do? Well, I am originally from Glasgow in Scotland and was raised in a non-Christian home. I became a Christian when I was just turning 21 in Glasgow in Scotland and then pretty much got involved in a call to mission right from the beginning of my Christian life, so I moved to Vienna, Austria, where I was working as a part of a team taking Bibles and literature into the Communist world at that time. I operated there for a number of years, and I actually met my wife, who was from America, Mary, on the team, was married in Chattanooga, then went back to Vienna, and both my kids, Cameron, my daughter Catherine, who works here in Atlanta, were born in Austria, where we lived for, in total, 20 years, so brought me to sunny Atlanta from Glasgow through Vienna, Austria, to this beautiful city of Atlanta. It sounds like you’ve journeyed quite a long way in your life since atheism. Why don’t we go back to the beginning and I guess this would be in Scotland. And why don’t you talk with me a bit about what life is like in Scotland in terms of, I guess, worldview or view of God or those kinds of things that were in your world as you were growing up. Yes, well the Scotland I grew up in—of course Scotland has a rich Christian heritage, but that’s a long way off now. Many people would see Scotland today, and particularly as I was growing up, as very much a secular country. My dad was a product of the second world war in a sense. He’d been a young man in the Royal Air Force, and the home that I grew up in—my mother had actually fled Christianity. She had been raised in a very devout Nazarene home in a Holiness-type church, and she had chafed against the restrictions. She loved her parents but hated the restrictions of that kind of life, so Dad became a ticket out to her. So when they met, fell in love, and got married, really it was a new beginning for her, and so the home I grew up in was one in which there was kind of a religious background roughly because of Mom’s background, but they had really chosen very much a kind of a party lifestyle in a sense. I don’t mean that in an overt way, but I mean, drinking and smoking became a big thing to my mother, for some reason, and at the weekends, that was a big part of our household. And for me, growing up, in terms of ideas, it was very much the postwar years. Economics were a bit tight. And as far as Christianity went, there was very little presence of it, other than the symbols of Scotland. I never saw it as having any traction or relevance or value in my life whatsoever, and my interests were just more like a little boy, the usual kind of things of adventure and having excitement and fun, and that’s pretty much the way it was until my teen years. So you may have had some kind of cultural reference of God or Jesus, on a building somewhere perhaps, but it obviously wasn’t in your home. Yes. My grandmother was devout, and I really didn’t like her because she had . . . . I guess I’d her hear quote Bible verses now and again, but I was kind of a raucous kid, and I think not a kid that stayed within the lines, which led to, when I became a teenager, then my parents saw me being drawn to a gang culture in the east side of Glasgow, so my dad, being at that time doing well in his business, bought a house on the west side of Glasgow, which is a more middle class area, and I hated it from day one, right from the beginning. As I went to the school there, I was just alienated and ended up skipping class most of the time, and then, as many young teenagers do in Scotland, I found my way to get alcohol. You know, usually if you hung around pubs, you could get some drunk to buy you booze, and I started getting drunk at an early age, so that really began a pattern that was to have kind of a sad outcome in my early teens, actually. So you really pushed against convention, it sounds like. You wanted to go your own way from an early age. I guess . . . . Did you find other friends? Or were you part of that gang culture? Or did you find other friends that reinforced that kind of dark lifestyle or party lifestyle? Like kids do, you find the other kids who are the wild kids, so there was a guy in particular, this Ian Cassells, a friend and I. We teamed up, and he was the one that introduced me to Alice Cooper and some of these things, so there was music that was, at that time, it was that real youth rage kind of music, Alice Cooper being kind of there, and of course, the Stones and the Beatles were more in the background. They were classic groups, but this more angry rock. And then . . . so drinking and fighting particularly. It all led to a conclusion where I came home drunk one night and ended up getting into a major fight with my father, as he had seen I’d been drinking, and he actually hit me, and I . . . . All this pent-up rage towards him came out, so I had this knock down, slap out fight, which led to me then basically leaving home when I was 15 years of age. Wow! What was that life like? Trying to survive on your own as a teenager? Well, there was two pieces to it. First was the excitement of being on your own and having nobody to tell you what to do, but the other thought was of survival. I mean I didn’t know how to wash my own clothes, didn’t know how to cook my food, and I didn’t realize the money that I was earning, which wasn’t terribly much at that point, had to go to pay my rent and cover my costs, you know? But what it did do is it brought me into a world where I guess I was seeking a new family, and during that time, I ended up beginning to work in a dance hall as a bouncer. A guy that had invited me and we’d met in the shop I was working in. And that opened up a whole new world for me. This was the world of parties and girls, and I mean, a dance hall, when I say a discotheque, there were about 1,500 to 2,000 kids over the weekend, so it was a huge place, and I was part of the security team there. And yeah, that just brought me into a new way of just living for my passions and pleasures, really, you know? So that was, in a sense, your life, just living for the moment, living for pleasure. Was that your personal philosophy in life? Just kind of eat, drink, merry, and then we die. Or- Well, it grew to be that. I got recruited by a guy who was part of a car business but involved in Glasgow’s darker side, and he wanted young drivers to drive cars from one place to another. I didn’t have a driver’s license, but I ended up working for him. And he took a shine to me, and I liked what it was. These were tough, hard men on the south side of Glasgow, and of course, I began to get trusted as a faithful lieutenant, so I was in that world, and things began . . . driving nice cars, earning a bit of money, beginning to do some stupid things, and yeah, my philosophy became . . . I mean, just being wild and free. I guess I can remember we’d have these drunken parties, and sometimes we’d buy so much beer and whatever, vodka usually, and we would joke that we’d drink till we passed out. Well, the only one that ever did, as far as I remember, was me. So yeah, that was the world, and everything in that seemed that that was the trajectory. Just live for passion and pleasure. Also against my parents’ middle class lifestyle, I was involved in a kind of criminal set and seemed to rejoice just that suckers lived by rules, and those of us who were the wise dogs just did what it took to get ahead, you know? Right, right. Wow. It sounds like . . . I imagine, as a teenager, living in that world would be somewhat exciting, although a little bit dangerous, but I guess, as a young man, though, it seemed like you were living the life in your own way and on your own terms. Well, we glorify all this today, Jana. I mean, I look at a lot of movies and things, that kind of stuff, and of course, that’s exactly right. There was money. And I mean of course there were a lot of boring times and hard times and stupid times in the midst of it all, but the idea of thinking in your mind you’re a tough guy and that you’re making money and you’re cool and all this kind of stuff. Well, then, in the midst of that, I was asked to help a lady, a married woman, who was living as the lover of a policeman and had got into some trouble. This guy was kind of extorting her, and I was asked, with my colleague, to help her out and see if I could get her money back from this cop, which I did, and this girl ended up moving in with me, so all of a sudden . . . She was 23 years old. I was then 18, 19, and I had this beautiful girl. She wanted to live with me then. Driving cars. And I thought everything was pretty cool. So I had achieved what I felt was kind of a nice status in life, and I was pretty happy with the way things were at that point, you know? Right, right. Wow. So with achieving this nice status—you had a girl, you had a job, and you were getting along—so there was really no sense or even thought of God of in your life. We there any kind of spirituality or interest in anything? Or exposure to? Or anything like that during this time? There was some very dark stuff. This was around the time—I don’t know if you remember Peter Blatty film The Exorcist? Yes. Well, I had some friends that were occultists. At least that’s what they said they were. I didn’t really believe it, but I’d gone and saw that film, and I have to say, it really freaked me out. It scared me, and I don’t know why. I mean, I didn’t believe in God, so I thought, but I certainly seemed to believe in the devil, and then, with my colleagues one night at a party I was having in my apartment, these guys . . . a couple of them went off in another room with some of the girls, and they were supposedly doing some kind of a seance thing. Anyway, something did happen. Something happened. I remember there was a sound like a cracking on a window. The whole place went very cold. And everybody got freaked out. And in fact, the party came to a sudden end, and this big friend of mine, Big Stuart. I was Little Stuart; he was Big Stuart. He was absolutely freaked out. I’d never seen someone so scared in all my life. He said, “Something’s happened here,” and one of our friends was a Catholic, so we commissioned him to go and find a priest and come and do something in the house, which the priest laughed at and didn’t come. But the long and short of that was we had to abandon that. I moved out of that apartment within about three or four days. There was something freaky. And that always left a backstop. So that was a spiritual thing but not on the usual variety that most people would tend to, you know? Right, right. So there was this sense, this presence or exposure to dark spirituality. You felt a touch of it in The Exorcist as a film, but you also felt a touch of it in your own apartment, so much so that you moved out. That must have been incredibly frightening. I can’t imagine! But I’m just curious—if you encountered or had a sensibility that there was a dark spiritual world, did it ever cross your mind that there might have been some alternative form of spirituality that’s good or God or any of that? I think the key that came . . . and there was some follow through from that because there were some subsequent dark experiences, and the only word I could use about that time was terror, Jana. I mean I’d never felt fear . . . . You know, we’d been in fights and things. I mean, people get scared when you’re fighting, and you can get hurt or winded or whatever, and this was a different kind of thing. This was of a whole ‘nother dimension. And the next encounter with spirituality was when, after a couple of years, Joyce came in one day and asked me what did I think about Jesus. And that absolutely threw me for a loop because I never thought anything about Jesus, other than the fact, you know, whatever his name was, but I thought that he was probably maybe a spaceman who had came to earth and they were so primitive . . . I mean, it’s so naive, the way I thought . . . but they worshiped him. So I basically had written Christianity off. It had no traction whatsoever. But then she ended up having a real encounter with Christ and became a Christian, and we split up because I really didn’t understand any of that and wasn’t interested, so that was the beginning of a more positive turn. Ah. So even the thought of Jesus or her becoming a Christian was very off-putting to you, I guess. Yeah. There was nothing attractive or interesting. To me, I think my philosophy was kind of a Nietzschean view, that life was for just take. It was seize whatever you wanted and keep it. And then there was a survival of the fittest type of thing. So probably a lot of ideas that I hadn’t really fully understood, but they were in my bloodstream, and the idea of any transcendent order of a God or Christ or forgiveness or any of that, even goodness just wasn’t there really. Wow. So you were willing to give up the relationship because you didn’t want to have anything to do with God or Jesus. What happened or proceeded from there? Or actually, I’m curious, how is it that your friend, Joyce, became a Christian in this world that you all inhabited? Well, there’s two things to that. One was that Joyce was really like, now that I know the Bible, she was really the woman at the well who had multiple relationships, many men, seeking in lust in a sense and relationships for love and never finding it, and in desperation, while she was with me, she’d had an affair even while she was with me, she reached out and went to a church one day. And she’d been witnessed to by a nice Christian couple in the tax office in Glasgow where she was working, and they had a big impact on her, and she walked into a church and said, “I need to know God.” So she had a genuine, I mean a very strong encounter of forgiveness and healing and really meeting God, and when she told me this, I just basically told her to get lost. So for about two or three weeks, and I was mad, and in fact, I didn’t know who this God was, but I thought, “Whoever these Christians are, if I ever meet them, I’ll put them right,” you know? Right. Well, yeah. That’s who you were, right? You were a bouncer. You were someone who didn’t mind going after. Yeah. So that’s actually what happened. A couple of weeks later, the Christian friends, who I didn’t know were praying for me, suggested to Joyce that she contact me and ask me to come to their house, so she called me, and thought, “Oh, maybe she’s coming back,” and of course, it wasn’t that. She wanted me to meet them. So I went with a chip on my shoulder and ready to do battle, and it didn’t work out that way. What happened? Well, we got there, and they were obviously . . . they were quite excited to meet me. They were very nice. The guy was kind of a soft, gentle human being, which I didn’t take to. That wasn’t my world. The wife was a kind of cutie, and I liked her, and I didn’t know she was an evangelist. And of course Joyce was there. And they began to share, and I mean I began by throwing back all kinds of stupid comebacks which I think were relevant, but as the night wore on, they testified about who God was, who Jesus was, about sin, about brokenness, and of course, Joyce continued to tell her testimony. And yeah, I don’t know how long it was, but eventually I became there was a presence. There was something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, kind of an intuition of something, but this time not dark. Good. And after them sharing for some time, I ended up going up to their bathroom, because I became convinced it was real, and thought, “Well, God if you’re there, and this is true, and Jesus really . . . You are the Lord, then I need to know You. I’m a mess. I need help, and I need forgiveness, and I’ve done some real wrong here,” so I prayed in their bathroom and then ended up . . . came down and told them, and they all started hugging me, and that was really a “Whoa!” That was a bridge too far at that point, but something began then. That was the beginning of the story, really, for me. Wow! What a dramatic shift in such a short period of time, in just a moment practically. How old were you here? Just turning 21. It was just on the cusp of my 21st birthday. Right. Because you had been thinking and living in seemingly the opposite way of what the truth that you had just accepted. Totally, yeah. Yeah. Everything that I stood for was so violent. I mean everything, language, behavior, thought. I mean it just . . . . Violence and anger was a central part of this, because I really had been kind of framed to believe that if someone crosses you, you hit them. Right. And if the police become involved, well hit them, too! I mean, a see if they can get you kind of thing, you know? So it was really a messed up idea. So talk with me then about this sudden change, yet you just chose, and that evening, because of the reality of the presence of God, of who God is and who you were before God and need of forgiveness. You obviously found that gospel, that good news of Jesus that actually forgives and, like Joyce found, that loves you no matter what or who you are or what you’ve done. I imagine that concept by itself was just transformative, but I can imagine how this might play out in your life. I mean such a sudden change, and like you say, so many things differently. How did your life change? Did you start reading the Bible? Did you go to church? Your heart, your mind, all of those things. Talk with me about that. Yeah. I mean, gosh, Jana, it all happened very quickly because I think the passage that struck me very clearly was 2 Corinthians 5:21 or 17 first of all. You know, “If any man is in Christ, he’s a new creation.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” And all of that was really impressed very deeply on my soul right from the beginning. So I mean I was told . . . These people who led me to the Lord were very devout and encouraged me, of course, to come to their church, which was a Brethren Assembly in the east side of Glasgow, and the Bible and prayer. I was taught . . . Of course, I started, from day one, just starting to read the Bible. I didn’t really understand it very much, but I really got into reading nonstop and of course it was like . . . I couldn’t even describe what effect it had on me. Reading and then praying, and I went to this little church, and then I started having fellowship with these Christians, and of course, they were a whole different world. I mean, the way that they talked and acted. They didn’t swear. They didn’t do any of the wild stuff. And I kept thinking, this may be kind of boring, I thought, but then they could have fun without alcohol or without violence. They could enjoy each other. And so really, for me, because I’m still in my old world. I was caught between my work world, where I was still with these gangsters basically, and then every moment of the day I could, I would go to the church or go to this young couple who discipled me. I’d go to their house, and it was simply extraordinary to me. It was marvelous, you know? Wow, wow. So your life and your decisions and your choices just started changing. I guess you didn’t stay in the work that you knew? Well, several things happened very quickly. I’d only been a believer for about two weeks, and I was encouraged by this couple to go to this Christian camp. I didn’t even know what a Christian camp was. And normally I worked seven days a week, and monthly, the guy who I worked for—I was his lieutenant. He normally wouldn’t be keen to give me time off, but anyway, for some reason, he let me know, and off I went, and at that camp, God really spoke to me. There was Bible teaching every day. There were games. There were all kinds of things. And I got just turned upside down about the lordship of Christ, mission, and God spoke to my heart very clearly, Joyce and I, about . . . . We thought that, now that we were Christians, she would get divorced, and we would get married. I just thought that was the right thing to do. And then I heard some teaching there that put that into question, and that became one of the first tests of my early Christian life. Because really we were . . . I thought the Lord was asking us to split up, and I did that, and that was very, very hard on us both. But that was the first test of obedience early on in my Christian faith. Oh, my. And I’m curious: The folks that you worked with. I imagine they were somewhat surprised by your life change and your decisions. Yeah. That’s the understatement. Well, first of all, they thought I had been brainwashed, so there was a real attempt on their part to try to help me and then to mock the faith. I mean, they would do some ridiculous things, like, after several weeks of talking . . . Of course, I didn’t know anything, and they would ask questions about, “Well, where is God?” and, “Where is Jesus?” “Where’s the proof?” and all this kind of stuff. “It’s a lot of nonsense.” “You don’t need to believe that.” At first, it was out of curiosity. Then it became anger. Then it became a determination to de-convert me, and at one point, they were cutting out all the centerfolds from Playboy magazine and all this kind of thing and posting them all over the office, so there were naked women all in our office. And it was at that time that I discovered there was a thing called a Christian bookstore, which I didn’t even know existed. And when I went to this Christian bookstore, they had these things called tracts, and you could buy them, whole bunches of them, like 100 for a pound or whatever it was at the time. So I bought hundreds of these tracts, and then I would go back and paste them all over these naked women! These tracts. And then when Monty and the guys came in, they would tear off . . . . They tore all the pictures off the wall because of all these Bible verses all over the top of them. So the literature war started at the beginning, and that went on for a little while, but it stopped fairly quickly. Wow. Okay. But they were obviously posing questions to you that you didn’t know how to answer, and they were determined to de-convert you and de-construct your faith. I wonder, did that kind of push back, did that compel you in any determined way to look for those answers that you didn’t seem to have at the beginning? I think in a curious way. Because they asked questions, and then, as I would talk to my Christian friends . . . . They would point me to the Bible, and say, you know, “Show me the answers,” and of course, as I began to read the scripture, I found there were answers. So, over time, I began to read the gospels and to find out what it actually said. And the caricatures of Christianity, I realized that they were throwing were not true, so really, in the early days, it was developing an apologetic in the sense of, “I know that you think this is what it says, but that’s not what it says. This is what it means.” So part of it was learning to understand, well what was the gospel actually about. What were the claims? And many of the things that they believed—they still rejected the truth, but I could answer the caricatures fairly readily. And I think that was probably a good school to get me started on my own Christian defense of how to do evangelism, how to answer hard questions, in a sense. You know, I can just imagine the skeptic listening to this and listening to your journey and thinking, “Oh, he just found answers to satisfy the questions just because he had already converted.” You know what I’m saying? That you found the answers that you were looking for. So I wonder what you would say to the skeptic about that, in terms of—I know that, as you were reading the Bible, that the caricaturing of Christianity was being defeated in your own mind. But for those who might be pushing back on you still, or pushing back on this story, how would you answer that? Yeah. Well, there’s two things I would say, Jana. One is, first of all, we’d need to lengthen the story out. One would be that I wrestled. I had doubts myself. I took the doubts that I had—when I came across hard passages in the Bible, and most of them were hard because I didn’t understand many of them, I would argue with my Christian friends to try and get an interpretation to understand, so I didn’t give them an easy time. But there was this experience of God that was real. It was an encounter. It wasn’t just an idea. The heart of this was there were concepts involved, but I was overwhelmingly gripped by the presence of God and by ongoing answers to prayer. The second part would be, as my Christian life unfolded, I began to deal more with the objections and then try to read books. Because in my first Christian experience when I went on mission the following year, I was arrested and put in jail in Yugoslavia taking materials into the Communist world, and I was interrogated repeatedly. So these were Marxist people. If someone could talk me out of this by a set of ideas and concepts, then I would give it up, but I was willing to expose myself to the thought of others. And I have tried to do that all my Christian life since then. And if there are objections, that doesn’t mean to say all the answers I’ve found have been tidy or nice or neat, but I found that the Christian faith stands up to robust examination, and I don’t find that that’s a threat. And it wasn’t just my emotions. It was an experience, including my mind, that was involved in my conversion. Thank you for clarifying that. Because I think it could be very easily misinterpreted, I guess, but yes, very much you’re encountering with a Person, the Person of God, in a strong and powerful presence, as well as, like you say, answer to prayer and then it just becomes more fully orbed intellectually and in your heart and in every way, I guess so much so that I’m surprised that you, it sounds like, almost immediately changed your life from the vocation that you had almost into mission. You must have been strongly compelled. Yes. I mean I really heard . . . I mean they use the word “a call,” but I did hear a call. I was in Moniaive in Scotland at the time, and they’re preaching particularly from Luke 9 and Jesus saying, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me,” and I really knew that was to me. And I had to follow. So I didn’t know what that meant, but what eventually I did was I sold into my bank accounts. I redid the kitchen at my mom’s house, fitted that out. I put a coffee bar into my church. I gave the rest to mission and sold everything else I had, my car included. And took a suitcase and joined Operation Mobilisation, believing, at that point, that was it. I was leaving, never to go back. That’s quite a transformation, I must say, in terms of your own purpose, your own understanding of reality, and who God is, who you are, and your role in the world. It sounds like you had found something you wanted others to find as well. I mean, you were willing to give up everything for Jesus and give up everything so that others could know what you knew. Well, because at the heart of this . . . . I mean I saw a young man killed before my eyes. I was involved in fights. I saw people on drink and drugs. I saw the worst of humanity in those days, in the early days. And I thought that was reality. When I realized that I lived in a world that God created, that there was a God that loved us, a God that knows us, that there is a destiny and a possibility, that salvation . . . . Not just going to churches and being religious or becoming a conservative person, but understanding what we’re made for, that there is a type of life, and there’s eternal life beyond this, that this world is not the end of the story, it’s just a stage in it, but it’s important in his own right. I mean, I ended up having categories for truth and goodness and beauty and meaning and family.  Things that I had just no idea how rich this was, and Christianity was not boring. I mean, the people I was working with were laying down their lives. I had people who died while we were in Vienna because they were missionaries. My wife was on a team in Turkey where her team leader was shot dead at the door, and his wife nearly at the end of her pregnancy with their first child. So these were people who are willing to die because of Christ, not just as an idea, as a concept, but as a living reality. So, for me, it was an all or nothing. I mean, I had found the truth and reality, and I wanted to live my life and share my life and share the truth of this life, as I was commanded by the Lord, with as many as I could for the rest of my days. Wow. That’s really amazing. It reminds me a lot of those who had been with Jesus at the very beginning, and that they died for not only what they believed but what they saw, what they believed they saw and had an experience with Christ, and they knew it was true. And that mandate, or that experience, actually, in a sense, goes on with a real God who really exists who shows his presence when you call, so you have come a long way. I mean you’re still in the mission field in a sense, but in a very different way than being overseas in Yugoslavia. You still travel the world. Talk with me a little bit about what you’re doing now. Well, in my later journey in Europe, I developed in leadership and things and would want to speak up about the Christian faith, and I knew about apologetics. I’d never thought of apologetics as my front-line thing, but I was involved in Christian leadership and witness. I knew that we had to do that. We had to give a reason for the hope that was in us, and we had to do that against Marxism and existentialism and all the ideas of this time, and in my own journey, I’d done a lot of reading and thinking because I’d had hundreds of hours of conversations with people of faith, no faith, or other faiths about the meaning of Christianity and to bring it into the public square. So I was asked to be a public voice for the Christian faith, either helping the thinker to believe or the believer to think, and that’s really kind of what I’ve been involved in for the last 23 years. So you’ve really dealt thoroughly with and have a really deep understanding of these worldviews around the world, all these competing worldviews in our very, very pluralistic world, but yet you remain convinced that the Christian worldview is worth contending for. We encounter so many of these different worldviews really in our own lives today, no matter where you are, because of the global nature of technology. And we feel all these different worldviews pressing in on us. Yeah. I learned I had to do my homework. A lot of this was reading books and talking to people, so I would ask people, finding out what were the questions that we all had to answer and looking for ways to compare them. I mean, I’ve talked to many Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and of course atheists in abundance. But yes, the truthfulness of the Christian faith and its ability to answer the question in a way that none of the others do has been one of the reasons why I remain committed to the Christian faith. I mean I fully . . . . Its coherence, its clarity. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean it’s tidy. Are there things that make us sometimes draw our breath. There are passages in the Old Testament and so forth that give us pause, but the God of the Old and New Testaments is one, and I am fully comfortable in my faith and confident to share it and leave the onus on the individual to weigh it up and consider the evidence, the facts, and the arguments for the Christian faith if they’ll give it an honest look. And it’s my hope that there are some curious skeptics or perhaps honest seekers who are exploring or even considering the possibility of God and Jesus Christ through Christianity. If there are those listening, what would you say to, say, a nonbeliever or a skeptic for them to consider the reality of God and Christianity? Well, there’s all kinds of books that can be read, and sometimes those are a mixed bag. There are testimonial books. But I would obviously encourage a person to begin with the gospels themselves and just read particularly Mark or John’s gospel and then they could, by all means, ask critical questions. Talk to someone who’s a believer. Talk to someone in the faith. Let them answer your skeptical questions. We’re not afraid, as a Christian, of the questions, “Is the Bible true?” “Why should I trust the gospel?” Just reading the gospels themselves, by the earliest witnesses to the story of Jesus, and they’re not all exactly the same. There are four gospels, which are like four angles looking on a diamond, and I think the questions will rise from the text, from what you see in that, and why we believe that Christianity is true, why it is a better answer than atheism or the alternatives. Ravi used to use this idea of origins, meaning morality, and destiny as four questions that every worldview should be answering. We can compare them, what it says about origins, what is the meaning of life, is there meaning in life, is there a basis and a ground and a focus for morality, death, is there something after death or not? How does the other world system or the person’s worldview answer those questions? How does the gospel answer those questions? And when I look at what the Christian answers to those questions are, I find that it offers a compelling reason intellectually, as well as morally and existentially, for a life well lived, and to meet God. Because that’s what it comes down to at the end of this. If God’s just an idea . . . we’re not talking about concept. If there’s no God there, there’s nothing to ask for. But if we knock at the door and someone on the other side answers, then now we’re accountable, and that’s often the reason why people don’t want to even give it a shot. Right, right. And just for those who perhaps haven’t looked at a Bible before and don’t understand the reference of the gospels themselves, can you explain where the gospels are or what they are in the Bible? Well, the gospels are found in the New Testament, and if you have just a simple New Testament, it starts . . . . The first four books are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the gospels are the recordings of those who witnessed the live of Jesus and saw the events and particularly contain the teachings and basically they’re really like a theological biography, if you like. Written in an ancient style, of course, but to ask the question—each one of them asks the question, “Who is this? Who is this Jesus?” So that’s the question that they were written for, and I think, if you would read them and give them an honest hearing, you would understand then some of the questions that came out as to the back story into which Jesus came, the story of the universe, the story of covenant. What do those words mean? Why were they important? Why did Jesus die? And what difference did that death make. And resurrection. Is resurrection a possibility? And if it happened, what would that mean? Well, those are the questions that the gospels seek to address, and therefore, that’s always a good place, I think to start. For the Christians who are listening to your story today, Stuart, how could you encourage them? You just spoke about the seeker, perhaps, taking with somebody who actually is living the Christian life. How would you encourage us as Christians to perhaps engage better or understand the questions that are being asked of us? Well, Jana, there’s nothing like being willing to witness to deepen your faith because you have to break the sound barrier by talking to people and then be willing to engage their questions. There’s so much fear and laziness in the church, so that we don’t share because either we don’t know or we don’t care enough. I think evangelism—it’s not a duty. We’re called to be witnesses. That’s part of what Jesus said in Matthew 28. Sent us into all the world to make disciples. So we should be willing to talk to people, to ask them questions, to share the love, and that means we have to do our homework. It doesn’t mean to say we have to study theology completely and memorize every sermon, but we will need to do some of our homework over time. Don’t be afraid of questions! When someone comes with a question you can’t answer, you can go do your homework. Find an answer! But if we love people and we believe that this is the truth, then out of compassion and conviction we should be motivated enough to try to find answers to pass the truth along. And not be afraid. And Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always.” The Holy Spirit will be with us in our witnessing and how we witness and what we share, so it becomes a part of the adventure of faith and walking with God in this world and being witnesses, to His life, to His love, and to His care, in our time. I don’t want to end before I give you an opportunity, Stuart, to tell us about a new book that you and your son have written that’s about to be published. Would you talk with us about that? Yes. My son came up with the idea of us writing a book together because we get a lot of questions here about raising kids and the family and particularly in the hostile climate that often is our culture today, movies and music and so forth. So because I was raised in a non-Christian home and then I raised my kids, of course, I was always terrified that I would inoculate my kids against the gospel by maybe my imperfections, my lifestyle. By God’s grace, they trusted the Lord, so we’re grateful for that. The book that we’ve written together is Faith That Lasts: A Father and Son on Cultivating Lifelong Belief. So what we’re doing in the book is to talk about some of the questions that we get from Christian parents, and some of what we felt were the mistakes made, particularly three big ones. Using fear as a controlling mechanism in the home, believing that information alone saves and trying to bombard your kids just with facts, and then outsourcing children or kids to experts to try and save them or help them or whatever. And really what we want to talk about is the home and the parenting and the role of witnessing and taking the home as a place where hard questions can be dealt with safely, in a loving, safe environment. So the book comes out towards the end of the year. It will be on Intervarsity Press, and we’re quite excited and hope it will be a conversation starter. Excellent, excellent. I can’t wait to get my hands on that. I know it’s going to be a wonderful resource for so many Christians and parents alike. So thank you, Stuart. Your story is extraordinary. It really is one literally coming from darkness to light, to the person of Jesus, who is light and life and truth, and wow, I’m inspired by it. Sometimes I think that you can pre-judge someone or even yourself, saying, “I’ll never change my mind,” or, “They will never change their mind,” but in your case, that wasn’t the case. It’s truly extraordinary that someone can come from such a place of darkness to an amazing life in Christ. So thank you for sharing that with us. My pleasure, Jana, and I wish you every success with this, and may God bless the ministry and the opportunities to just talk to people and dialogue about important ideas and ideas that lead to life. Thanks for tuning in to the Side B Podcast to hear Stuart’s story. You can find out more about Stuart and his new book, Faith That Lasts, by looking at this episode’s notes. For questions and feedback about this podcast, you can reach me by email at thesidebpodcast@cslewisinstitute.org. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends and social network. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next time, where we’ll be listening to the other side.

Dr. Ted Cabal shares his journey from atheism to Christianity, reflecting on personal experiences and the power of emotional connection. He discusses his role as a professor of philosophy and Christian apologetics, his marriage, and his battle with terminal cancer. The podcast explores the desire for freedom and independence, the influence of culture, and the importance of incorporating emotions into arguments. It also touches on the C.S. Lewis Institute, seeking pleasure, moral failure, and the journey of self-discovery.

There is often a presumption that religion is irrational, far from truth and reason. In today’s episode, Philip Vander Elst describes his “journey of discovery” from atheism to an intellectually-grounded Christian belief. Find out more about Philip and his writings at www.bethinking.org/author/philip-vander-elst Recommended resources from this podcast include: C.S. Lewis’s books:  Mere Christianity, Miracles  C.S. Lewis essay “On Obstinacy in Belief” N. Geisler and F. Turek: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist J. Lenox: God’s Undertaker:  Has Science Buried God? L. Strobel:  The Case for Christ (book and film); The Case for a Creator Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Each podcast, we listen to both sides of a story, from atheism to Christianity. It’s commonly said that people are religious merely because the people around them are, but what happens when the people you love believe in God and you don’t? You won’t believe in God because you don’t believe it’s true, no matter what they say. At the end of the day, truth and reason are more important than the potential of lost relationships. There were several in my research with former atheists who chose truth over social gain or loss. Today’s story with Philip wrestles with this difficult conundrum. If he remained an atheist, true to his belief in truth and reason, he would lose the one he loved. If he became a Christian, he would compromise his intellectual integrity. Conversion for social or emotional reasons alone was unthinkable. As an intellectual, a thinker, it would be immoral and dishonest. He would be denying his highest value, holding fast to truth. How could this situation be resolved? There is often a presumption that religion is irrational, far from objective truth and reason. For many, the assertion that scientific, philosophical, or historical truth can be found within the Christian worldview is simply nonsensical. Today, through Philip’s story, we’ll explore whether or not rationality and truth can be found, can be grounded in a religious worldview, specifically Christianity, or whether or not religion merely serves a social or emotional purpose. We’ll consider whether or not Christianity is worth believing, especially for the intellectual. Today, we’ll be talking with a true English gentleman and former atheist. Philip Vander Elst is a prolific writer and esteemed lecturer, working in and among forums discussing deep philosophical issues. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Philip. It’s wonderful to have you. Well, it’s lovely to be with you, Jana, and I’m looking forward to our discussion. Terrific! Me too. Before we get to your story, Philip, I’d love to know more about, and for our listeners to know more about, where you live and your academic study and work. Okay. Well, I live with my lovely wife Rachael. I live in a little village in West Oxfordshire in England, about 22 miles northwest of Oxford, and that was my old university, where I studied politics, philosophy, and economics in the early 1970s. I’m a freelance writer and lecturer, and so I spend my time writing stuff and getting it posted on the internet. I wrote a book on C.S. Lewis some years ago, amongst other things. I give occasional lectures on C.S. Lewis and indeed on Tolkien as well. And most of my professional life has been, since leaving Oxford, has been actually in politics and journalism. So really my world has been the world of ideas, and that’s what I’ve always been most concerned about, which is the battle for truth, the battle of ideas, the battle for hearts and minds, and that’s what makes me get up in the morning and gives purpose to my life. So, yeah. So that’s by way of some intellectual background and what I do, in terms of my work. And I write about politics and political philosophy, and I also write in the area of Christian apologetics. So that more or less sums up what I do. Fascinating. And so you live, actually, physically close to Oxford? Is that right? Yes. Yes, that’s right. I’m a life member of the Oxford Union Debating Society, a famous debating society which was set up in 1823, and I’m a former officer of that debating society, and so I have access to their wonderful library. It’s one of the finest private libraries in the world. So yes, I have access to Oxford libraries, which is always a great blessing to a writer and researcher like myself. Right. Yeah. That’s wonderful. I can’t imagine just being constantly inspired by being in that type of intellectual environment, constantly thinking and discussing. I remember visiting there in Oxford and the lovely bookstore, and I didn’t have access to the library, but it was just such a wonderful, wonderful place just to be. I can’t imagine being an academic there in that environment. What a privilege! It was lovely being there. So I know that you were an Oxford man, as it were, and that, during your time at Oxford, you weren’t a Christian. No, I wasn’t. So let’s take this way back to when your life started, as there are many things that influence atheism, of them being your family and your culture and the place where you grew up. So why don’t you take us back there to the beginning of your journey towards atheism and talk to us about how your life began, your early concepts of God, how your parents spoke into your life. Well, I grew up… I had a wonderful father and mother who were highly educated professionals. My mother had grown up and had her education in Germany before the war and in Switzerland during the war and was very proficient in modern languages. She became an interpreter and was the youngest interpreter at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1946. My father was Belgian and was trained as a civil engineer and physicist in the 1930s, University Libre de Bruxelles, which was the secular university in Brussels. There was a Catholic one as well. And he was a brilliant scientist, and so my parental background was I’ve got these highly educated parents, English on my mother’s side, Belgian on my father’s side, but neither of them, although they were upright people with a strong sense of morality and belief in excellence and truth and very impressive human beings, they weren’t Christians. They didn’t believe in God. And one of the reasons for that was that they’d been put off religion and belief in God by their experience of Catholicism or the Catholic Church, and here, Americans need to understand something about European history, that on the mainland of continental Europe, particularly the Latin countries, like France, Belgium, Spain, and so on, the main Christian witness was the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church had been a persecuting church for much of its history, and so I grew in a mental universe where on one side you had reason and liberty and science and progress and on the other religion, authoritarianism, a persecuting church, and a generally obscurantist attitude to life, and so that was the kind of mentality that I grew up surrounded by, and in continental Latin countries, there has been this cleavage of kind of the intellectuals against the church sort of thing which you haven’t had in the same in the English-speaking world. And they personally, my father and mother, had personally bad experiences with Catholic priests. When my father’s father had died, the local priest had bought up lots of the books that he had that my grandmother sold, and the local priest burnt them because they were on Papal Index as forbidden literature, so these kinds of experience had put off my parents, off religion and so on. I do remember asking questions like, “Well, where does the universe come from?” and I think my father said that the universe had always been there, so it didn’t need any particular explanation. And that was, of course, the view of many intellectuals who didn’t believe in God, that the universe had always been there, so it didn’t need any particular explanation. And then, well, I didn’t come across any Christian stories. I didn’t come across the gospel or anything like that until I was at my first boarding school when I was eight years old, and then I came across all the scripture stories, David and Goliath and Abraham and Isaac, all those great stories from the Old Testament and of course some of the stories of the Gospels, and I was always top in scripture at school, so I liked the stories, and I remembered them, but I didn’t engage. I didn’t come across any intellectual arguments for Christianity and for God until I was at my second school, my second boarding school, which would be the equivalent of your high schools in America, and that was when my father died unexpectedly when I was only 17, and that was a great shock to my system, and so I was grief stricken and I suppose looking for meaning and comfort in life, and I dipped into C.S. Lewis, into his book Mere Christianity, his famous wartime broadcasts, and for a while, they held my attention, and I began to have contact with an intellectual argument for Christianity which was beginning to make some sense, but I was interested in politics at that time, and when you’re young, even when you suffer great grief, if you’re in a nice school, if you’ve got good friends, you’re young, you’re resilient. The grief gets submerged underneath other things. You’re thinking about life and what you’re going to go and do in the future and so on, and I started reading Bertrand Russell and Ayn Rand and anti-Christian writers, so my interest in Lewis sort of died, and I stopped reading Mere Christianity and drifted away from thoughts about God, so when I get to Oxford, I don’t believe in God. I’m not interested in religion. I’m only interested in politics and political philosophy and having a career in politics and journalism afterwards. So that’s where I was by the time I met my wife, Rachael, since we were both involved in conservative politics a few years after leaving Oxford. So that’s a kind of gallop through my past. So, Philip, you have quite a… It sounds like a very strong intellectual history, and there was a very clear understanding of what the church was to you in terms of perhaps some of the negative aspects of it. You heard some good stories, but you were more interested in truth and reason, and that, I think… where those stories that you read in the Bible were just merely stories, right? What did you perceive God and Christianity and Christians and those stories to be? Was it mythological? Was it social construction? What was your thought about what religion was at that time? I didn’t really think very deeply about the stories. I suppose I regarded them on the same level as The Twelve Labours of Hercules, stories from Greek mythology which I enjoyed. Like the story of Odysseus and the War of Troy and so on. So I didn’t really think about them very much. I did wonder whether there was a God because of this question of where does the universe come from, but I found it difficult to believe in God because, if God is good and our Creator, why is there evil and suffering in the world? Why is there so much cruelty and suffering and disease and so forth, so I couldn’t… Although I was aware of the argument for God from intelligent design, it seemed to me that argument was canceled out by the existence of evil and suffering, and I remember… It was the argument of Bertrand Russell. And Ayn Rand, reading Ayn Rand, as well as Bertrand Russell, made me think that worshiping God was really a kind of form of worshiping power. You worship God because he’s all powerful. And also the story of the fall in the Garden of Eden, you know, “You mustn’t eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” seemed to be to present a view of life where God is this omnipotent power that doesn’t want human beings to think for themselves but just to submit to him, so it was kind of a form of self abasement which was not worthy of human dignity and anyone who cared about liberty. So that was a very jaundiced, prejudiced, shallow view I had of God, derived from reading Bertrand Russell and Ayn Rand, and not really encountering Christians who could feed my intellect, apart from having dipped for a short while into C.S. Lewis, so then when I met my wife, Rachael, who was highly intelligent, and her Christian friends were also highly intelligent and lovely people, then I began to think… This began to challenge my prejudices and then made me think, “Well, perhaps I ought to go on a journey of discovery to see whether there is any good evidence for the existence of God and the truthfulness of Christianity and the truth of the gospel. So were you surprised to meet Christians who you thought were deemed intelligent in your mind? Well, yes. It’s funny how inconsistent people can be, because I had… There was an intelligent Christian chaplain who was called Dr. Pugh at my school, my independent boarding school which I attended before doing to university, and I remember some interesting conversations. I remember a conversation with him when I said to him, “Why it is important whether there is a God or not?” and he said to me, and his answer remained in my mind, “Well, because without God human beings have no value. Life has no value.” And I didn’t believe him at the time. I thought, well, we can just make it valuable, create value for ourselves, but nevertheless his answer, his question, his comment remained in my memory, so I had come across intelligent Christians, and my tutor at school—I had this wonderful tutor who was a history master, and he was a lovely, lovely man. He loved C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books and The Lord of the Rings, and we used to discuss how much we shared our love for these particular books over a cup of tea before a roaring log fire in his book-lined study at school once a week. So he was a lovely Christian and a highly intelligent, scholarly man, so it wasn’t that I said to myself rationally, “All Christians are idiots,” but I just hadn’t spent enough time, I suppose, with Christians and been interested enough to get them to talk about the reasons they believed in God and the truthfulness of the Bible and therefore I hadn’t encountered the arguments, as I say apart from this brief dip, which meant a lot at the time, into Mere Christianity after my father died. So you perhaps hadn’t, except for that dip, really appreciated the rationality of Christianity. I’m wondering… It was brought to your attention that… The gentleman said that you wouldn’t have human value without God. I wonder if you actually looked fully at the implications of the atheism that you were embracing or that you did embrace. No, I hadn’t. You see, that was the point. I hadn’t understood that, if atheism is true, if we are only the accidental byproducts of a meaningless and accidental universe, I hadn’t appreciated the argument that Lewis developed against atheism, which is that, if atheism is true, that means all our thinking processes are simply the inevitable, unplanned result of a long chain of non-rational biochemical causes at work in our brains and therefore how can we attach any truth or significance to our thoughts? We’re simply bound to think them because of what’s going on in our cerebral biochemistry, which discredits all thinking, including the arguments for atheism. And also if we are simply the accidental byproducts of a meaningless universe, then we’ve got no grounds for moral value. We can say, “Well, we choose to value life, and therefore anything that enhances life is good and anything that destroys life is evil,” but that conviction is, in itself, a moral axiom which needs justification, and unless our moral values, that moral law written in our hearts, is rooted in God, in a reality outside the chain of physical causation, of material being, we have no objective ground for this conviction that good is somehow an objective category. I suppose I’m jumping ahead, really, to the arguments which started making me doubt the truthfulness of atheism, but I just hadn’t understood this basic point, that atheism discredits our thinking processes, cuts its own throat philosophically as a result, and deprives any belief in moral obligation and the objectivity of moral values of any proper metaphysical foundation. Because somehow what’s interesting about the belief that raping a woman or torturing a child or telling lies is wrong is that these truths are somehow transcendent. I mean they remain through whether we live or die, whatever culture we’re part of, whatever time we’re born in. They remain eternally true, whether we acknowledge that truth or not, whether we die or not, they still remain true. As Plato believed, there are eternal categories, and yet how can such categories exist except outside time and outside the material universe, which therefore leads us to God, to a being or a power or a reality that is outside the physical universe. So that becomes a complicated philosophical argument, but it’s a true one, and I hadn’t understood it. I hadn’t even thought about it when I was an atheist. I had to read C.S. Lewis to come to that realization and understanding. So there was a strong what you felt rational presumption for the truth of atheism, but you said that you came to a point in your life where you actually met some Christians, particularly your wife, that caused you to step back and rethink your atheism and perhaps think a little bit more about Christianity. Talk with me about that. Okay. Well, I met Rachael, and I fell in love with her very quickly. We more or less got unofficially engaged after about the fifth date. So it was very swift. She hardly had time to say she was a Christian. Anyway, she had Christian friends who were praying for me, who started praying for me, and she, of course, was praying for me, so there was that going on spiritually, but I said to her, “Look, I’m not going to become a Christian just because you’re a Christian, but I will go on a journey of intellectual discovery. I want to see whether I can find answers to my questions, like what is the evidence for God? What is the evidence for the truthfulness of Christianity?” So I read C.S. Lewis books, C.S. Lewis’s book Miracles. Oh yes, actually I ought to say, before I did that, I read a paper he wrote for the Oxford Socratic Club, which was a debating club to discuss God and religion and so on. It was a debating forum that was set up during the war in Oxford to bring Christians and atheists together in intellectual debate and argument, and Lewis was the president of the Oxford Socratic Club, and he often gave papers or talks to that club, which were then answered by atheist philosophers the next week, and then he replied to them and so on. And one of these papers was called, “On Obstinacy and Belief,” where he discusses the issue of faith. When Christians say you ought to have faith, what do they mean? And he said it does not mean that you ought to believe in God without any evidence. He argued that if you genuinely thought there was no evidence for God, no good arguments for God, philosophical or historical, then it was perfectly correct for you to seek out those arguments, to try and find out whether Christianity and belief in God could withstand forensic intellectual examination, historical evidence, logical arguments, and so on. When Christians, when the Bible talked about you need to have faith, that’s a commandment aimed at people who already knew that there was a God and were being asked to believe God, were challenged to have faith in God, when it involved believing some commandment or promise of His that seemed impossible of fulfillment, the famous example, of course, being when the Lord says to Abraham and Sarah, “You’re going to have a child in old age,” and they find that hard to believe. But faith involves a personal relationship with a God you already believe in. But if you don’t believe in God at all in the first place, then it’s okay to search for the evidence. So because I knew that this was Lewis’s attitude and that Lewis himself had been an atheist, I thought, “This is a guy in whose footsteps I can walk because he’s somebody who’s honest, who cares about truth, who understands why people are atheists, and so I can confidence that, if I read his books, I might actually find answers to my questions. So I started reading Miracles, where, the first three chapters, he proves the existence of God philosophically, and to come back to this argument that I was referring to earlier, where he says that the problem with atheism is, if we’re only physical beings, unplanned physical beings, the accidental byproducts of a purely physical universe, then all our thinking is simply the unintended and unplanned end result of the mindless movement of atoms in our brain, which is just as likely to produce falsehood as truth, and therefore we have no reason for believing in the truth of any of our conclusions. So in other words, atheism discredits thinking, because it makes all our thoughts the inevitable result of our cerebral biochemistry, of non-rational physical events, and as Lewis said, we don’t accept the truthfulness of any conclusion if it can be shown to be purely the result of non-rational causes, but that’s exactly what atheism essentially implies for all our thinking processes. So atheists cut their own throat philosophically. And then the other great argument of Lewis’s that influenced me was the argument he uses when dealing with the problem of evil, which is that we can only complain about evil if we already have a prior sense of good, just as you can only tell a line is crooked because it’s a deviation from a straight line, and you already have the idea of a straight line in your mind, so we can only complain about evil if we have a standard of good in our minds, of objective goodness, and therefore the question then becomes, “Well, where does our standard of good come from?” And you can’t explain the existence of this objective eternal standard of good written on our hearts without introducing God into the picture, because again, if atheism is true, all our thinking processes, including our moral judgments, are simply an accidental byproduct of non-rational physical and chemical events, to which we can attach no ultimate significance. So these were the great arguments that destroyed my atheism, more or less in three chapters in Miracles, and then he goes on to argue that, well if God exists and is the creator of the universe, then clearly He can suspend the laws of nature that are His creation in the first place, just as an author, and introduce miracles, just as an author can change the ending of a book and a composer can change a note in a symphony, so if one should acknowledge the existence of God, all my objections to miracles and the supernatural collapsed, and then I could begin to look at the gospel stories and the story of Jesus with an open mind and not simply rejecting it because it introduced the miraculous. So those were some of the arguments that really put me on the road to Christ. So your perceived foundation in atheism, it sounds like, was crumbling, one argument at a time, so these obstacles were being brought down, so that it gave you an openness to pursue whatever Christianity was. So how did you pursue what that was? Did you read the Bible? How did you kind of figure that out? Well, I didn’t read the Bible. I mean I was familiar with the basic story of Jesus. Well, and of course Lewis talks a lot about a lot of the truths, the stories, the claims made in the Gospels about Jesus and His divinity were discussed by Lewis in his book Miracles. So for example he says that the idea that you can’t trust the gospel writers because they were ignorant of the laws of nature, and so they believed in things like a virgin birth. And he knocked that argument on the head by saying they might not understand modern physics and chemistry, but they knew perfectly well that babies aren’t born unless a husband and a wife come together sexually, and Joseph knew that as well as we do, which is why he was minded to put Mary away when he discovered that she was pregnant with Jesus. So a lot of the arguments that people have about the truthfulness of the gospel stories in the New Testament were already being discussed by Lewis in Miracles, so I didn’t need to read the Bible, but I did read… I was interested in the whole issue about what evidence was there for the resurrection of Jesus, and so I read a book called Who Moved the Stone?, a famous classic I’m sure that you’ve heard of, Americans have heard of, Who Moved the Stone?, which discusses—which was published in the 1930s, I think—where the argument of that author. I can’t remember the name of the author for the moment, but anyway, the great argument, of course, of the empty tomb. Jesus is crucified, he’s put into the tomb, a guard of soldiers is put on that tomb, and then a few days later, there’s no body in the tomb. And how do you explain that, other than by the resurrection. And so, you know, if the Jewish leaders and Pilate and the Roman leaders had wanted to discredit Christianity, as they had every reason for wanting to do, politically and religiously, all they had to do was to point to the body of Jesus in the tomb, but they couldn’t do that. And why couldn’t they do that? And how is it that Christianity takes off in a big way in Jerusalem 40 days or so after the crucifixion, with 3,000 people coming to Christ as a result of Peter’s first great sermon that we read about in the book of Acts. How could that happen in the city where He was crucified, where thousands of people knew exactly what had happened to Jesus, if the tomb wasn’t empty and there wasn’t good evidence for the existence of the risen Christ? So as I started to look at the historical evidence for the existence and the claims of Jesus and the truthfulness of the gospel writers and of the early disciples, I began to see that the evidence for the truthfulness of Christianity was overwhelming, not least the evidence that we have from St. Paul. I mean here is a man who is persecuting the early church, convinced that they’re liars, that Jesus is not God, and then he has this famous experience of seeing Jesus on the road to Damascus, and he turns over 180 degrees and becomes the greatest preacher of the early church, and both he and the other apostles were prepared to lead lives that involved suffering and ended in martyrdom, and would they have done that for something that they knew to be a lie? What was it that explained the total transformation and the character of the disciples, who went from being terrified of the Roman and Jewish authorities to being heroic missionaries for the Christian faith, and likewise how do you explain the conversion of St. Paul. And then, of course, later on I read in the book of Acts and in the epistles that Paul refers to 500 witnesses to the risen Christ, and some of these people are still alive if you want to check my story with them. So when I began to look at the evidence, the historical evidence for the truthfulness of Christianity, I was overwhelmed. That’s quite a paradigm shift. So you were moving through this evidence, and during this time obviously you were still dating Rachael and trying to figure out things relationally. Do you… I can see a skeptic saying your emotional involvement with a girl that you loved was skewing your perspective on how you were viewing the evidence. If someone accused you of that, how would you respond? Well, I would respond that, on the contrary, the fact that I was in love with a Christian girl simply counterbalanced, in equal measure, all the emotional prejudices I had against Christianity. And one powerful force that was hindering my open-mindedness and, as it were, countering my progress along the road to Christ, was the worry of what would my family and what would non-Christian friends of mine think of me if I embraced Christianity? I was embarrassed and anxious about how other people would think of me because I still had this feeling, this purely emotional prejudice from the past that it wasn’t cool to be a Christian. It would make people think you were intellectually second rate. And it was just embarrassing. It took me a long time to admit to my mother that I was a Christian. So really my love for Rachael simply counterbalanced, in more or less equal measure, the other reasons, other emotional influences on me not to accept Christianity. Also, I have to say Rachael took me to an Anglican service, communion service, in her local church, and we were both living in London, at opposite ends of London, and she took me to one of the services, and it was a communion service, and I’d never had communion. I’d never been to a communion service, and I was shocked by the liturgy. You know, “This is My body, broken for you. Take, eat. This is my blood. Drink it.” And I thought, “This is cannibalism.” I was really, really shocked by the liturgy of communion. And the other thing I didn’t like about that particular church service—and what I didn’t like about liturgy. It was the sense that I thought it was a bit like the Moonies, with chanting stuff, which is kind of a form of brainwashing. So I didn’t like going to church, and I didn’t like the idea of reading your Bible every day. I thought that was a kind of irksome and rather embarrassing habit. So I had plenty of emotional reasons influencing my approach, my journey, so really it was a kind of… By God’s grace, if you like, the fact that Rachael was in my life simply created the opportunity… made me set out on a journey of discovery, of exploration, which I would never otherwise have done. And it just counterbalanced, in equal measure, all the influences on me not to do that, so I was kind of caught between two equal and opposite forces, which is where the prayer comes in that people were praying for me. Because as we know, those of us who’ve made the journey and come to discover God and become Christians, there’s a spiritual battle. There is a supernatural force of evil. There is such a thing as Satan, who tries to stop people coming to the God he hates. So that would be my answer, really. And also I would challenge… I’d say, “Look, forget about what you think are the reasons… what you think about my emotions or not. Look at the evidence for yourself.” I would challenge them to look at the evidence. There’s good historical evidence for the existence of Jesus from non-Christian sources like the Roman historians, Tacitus and Suetonius, and a Jewish historian, Josephus, so no serious historian doubts the existence of Jesus or that He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. So how do you explain the growth of the church? Why should the church spring up led by people who made this extraordinary claim that their God was somebody who hung on a Roman cross and then was resurrected? I mean it’s the most amazing statement for anyone to have ever made in the history of the world. How could they possibly have got away with it if it wasn’t true? So I would just try and turn the tables and challenge them about their assumptions and about their emotional hangups about God which might obscure their ability to recognize rational evidence. So I’d kind of take the fight back to them, hopefully in a sympathetic way. Yes. Wow. You were becoming intellectually convinced. You were somewhat conflicted emotionally, but you were becoming intellectually convinced, but I know Christianity and accepting Christianity as true doesn’t necessarily make you a Christian or even want to be a Christian. So what was it that was next in your journey? I hadn’t prayed to God beforehand, and I just prayed to Jesus, and I said, “If you’re real, come into my life and sort out this mess,” this inner conflict, which, at a key moment, I couldn’t resolve, and I had perfect peace about it somehow after that time of prayer, and then I was with a Christian friend afterwards, and I explained I had a bit of a hangup about the cross. I wasn’t quite sure. There were moments when I understood what the cross was about and the atonement, and then there were moments when it seemed a veil came in front of my eyes and I couldn’t quite grasp it anymore, and so I was kind of blocked, and anyway, he started talking to me about the veil in the temple of the high priest being torn in two when Jesus died on the cross, giving access to God, and as he said that, a kind of understanding of what the atonement and the cross was about just fell into my head. “Oh, yes,” I said. “What you find on the cross is the reconciliation of God’s justice with His mercy because sin separates us from God and therefore has to be… The penalty of sin has to be paid. God pays it through Christ in our stead and enables us to then have a new relationship with God,” so the penalty, the justice, God’s justice is satisfied by Jesus’s death on the cross as a representative of the human race, but at the same time, because He’s God and can conquer death, His mercy is released into our lives, and we are able to have a relationship with God, and that’s, of course, what the resurrection is all about, that Jesus conquers death on our behalf, pays the penalty of sin and conquers death, so I understood all that, certainly, in a way which, funnily enough, didn’t involve quite the same sort of reasoning that my friend was using at that time. It was a kind of separate, alternative explanation, parallel explanation to the one he was giving, but it just kind of literally fell into my head, and then I just had this experience of… It was like falling in love again but much more powerfully, and so I caught a taxi home in a sort of daze, realizing I had now become a Christian. So there was this kind of spiritual struggle, and I’m sure the prayers of Rachael and her friends made a difference. So there were two things. There was a spiritual struggling on for my will and my understanding and this intellectual journey through following the footsteps of C.S. Lewis. So the two kind of came together at that moment, and there I was, becoming a Christian in last days of summer of 1976. And you received a sense of peace. Yes. Total peace. And I presume that peace has remained, in a sense, and that the pieces came together, that everything started to make sense to you, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally things were resolving. Yes. That’s quite right, Jana, and then, of course, I began to read the Bible properly for the first time, really seriously, and that began to make sense. And yes, I mean I’ve had lots of ups and downs in life since becoming a Christian, as we all do, but I’ve never for one moment doubted the existence and goodness of God. I mean I get angry with God sometimes when things don’t work out the way I’d like and when there are unexplained trials and sufferings or friends I love die seemingly prematurely and for no good reason, so one goes on… I think as a Christian, you go on wrestling with God, but once you have met Him, once you’ve had an encounter with Him and you know that He’s real, you know then that… Life then moves on to a different level. You’ve now got a personal relationship with your Creator and Savior, and you know you’re challenged to trust the one who created you and who died for you and who, because He knows the end from the beginning and created our very ability to think and reason, must always know better than we do, and so we must trust him, even when we’re sort of in the dark and we don’t understand why certain things are happening in our lives. We need to trust His sovereignty and His goodness. That’s where faith comes in. That’s what faith is about. It never involves a leap in the dark with evidence. Once you know that God is real and you have a personal relationship with Him, then you have to learn to trust Him. And that’s what life’s about, really. Wow, that’s really quite beautiful. Such a transformation from where you began. I’m curious. You were concerned about the perception of your family and friends after you became a Christian. How did that resolve? Well, my mother… I gave her a copy of my book on Lewis, which is a very evangelistic book. I sent her essays and lectures that Lewis had given. And so I did witness to her. We did witness to her, including the evidence for the resurrection. And I think the situation we got to was… And also she met some of our Christian friends, some of whom are very impressive. Well, they’re all impressive, but one in particular made an impact on her. And I think she certainly respected our faith. She said to me early on, “You must think for yourself and follow what you think is true, and I respect that.” And I think we’d got to the position not long before she passed away that she, I think in her heart of hearts, was beginning to realize that actually all this stuff is true, but she wasn’t going to admit it, but I believe that, before she passed away, she did, in her heart of hearts, believe in God. I just have reasons for believing that which… It’s too personal. I can’t really share it. But I’m quite sure she’s with God. Well, my father had passed long, long before, when I was 17. Other family members are not Christians, and I go on praying for them. Yeah. So I’m encouraged by the fact that Jesus had problems with His human family, and a lot of Christians are in that position, aren’t we? We have relatives we love and value who haven’t yet made the journey we’ve made, so we keep praying for them. So I would say to any Christians who have unbelieving relatives, “Just keep praying for them. Keep loving them and keep praying for them. And believe in the power of prayer.” So yeah. So that’s where I am, really. And so if there are those, Philip, who are listening today who might be curious. They’ve been inspired or challenged by your own story of atheism, especially as an extremely brilliant man. It does challenge the stereotypes of Christians as nonintellectual or anti-intellectual kinds of people. I wonder what you might say to them. Well, I’d say to any atheist, any unbeliever, I’d say, “Look, do you care about truth? Are you willing to ask yourself, ‘Is there good evidence—philosophical arguments, historical arguments, scientific arguments—for the existence of an intelligent and rational and good Creator God? And is there historical evidence for the existence of Jesus and the truthfulness of the Gospels and the stories they tell about Jesus? And is there good evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus that suggests that actually He is divine?'” So I would say to them, “If you care about truth, then why not go on a journey of discovery? Why not try to find out whether there is any evidence for the beliefs that I hold and other Christians hold?” And I would say to them, “It’s a big question, isn’t it? Whether we’re just accidental byproducts of an ultimately meaningless universe, and all we have to look forward to are our years in this life, followed by death and oblivion, or whether there actually is a creator and there is such a thing as the supernatural and there is such a thing as eternity and are we going to be with God in eternity or are we going to be eternally separated from the source of all life and truth and goodness and beauty and so forth? It’s a really important issue.” And I would suggest that they might try reading C.S. Lewis, try reading Mere Christianity, which is his radio broadcasts, which were addressed to a general audience during the Second World War, and starts off with, “What is the evidence for the existence of God?” I would suggest that they read C.S. Lewis if he might be a thinker who could help them. And I would recommend other books. There’s a book called, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. That’s quite a good book to read, where these are two Christian philosophers and scientists and theologians who set forth the arguments and the evidence for the existence of God and the truthfulness of the gospels, and there are lots of other books along the same lines. There’s another book by a British scientist and mathematician called Dr. John Lennox called God’s Undertaker, where he looks at the scientific evidence for the existence of God. So I would just challenge them to do that and to visit websites like bethinking.org, the website of the Oxford-based universities and colleges Christians fellowship, based in Oxford, where there’s lots of material on these issues and equivalents in America. Well, I would just challenge them to go on a journey of discovery. “And if you don’t find the arguments and the evidence convincing, okay, that’s fine. At least you made the effort to try and see what is the truth.” So that’s what I would say to them. Go on a journey. Oh, and the other thing I’d mention is the example of Lee Strobel. Lee Strobel used to be… I think he was the law editor or law correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and an investigative journalist with an excellent mind. I think he got a law degree from Yale, and he didn’t believe in God until his wife had a conversion experience and became a Christian, and so he set out on a journey of discovery and has produced these books, The Case for the Creator, The Case for Christ, where he describes all the interviews he had with theologians and scientists and philosophers when he was making his journey of discovery, and he became a Christian. And in fact there’s been a film that’s been made about his life, his journey to Christianity, so there’s lots of material out there for those who care about the search for truth and are willing to embark on it, so that would be my challenge. If you believe in truth, put it to the test. Put Christianity and belief in God to the test, and with an open mind, try and see whether there’s any good evidence. That would be my invitation and my challenge. That’s excellent. And as far as Christians, if you had a word to say for them or to them, I know you mentioned to keep praying and to keep loving, and I also am reminded of what you thought when you saw those Christians in the coffeehouse. You described them as being rather lovely and that there was a beauty to them. I wondered if you could speak to the Christian. Well, yes. I would say, “Dear brother and sister, first of all, don’t despair. The Word of God says that the prayer of a righteous man or woman has great power and achieves wonderful results, so that’s a promise, and we’re righteous through the blood of Jesus, so that’s a promise that you can stand upon in prayer. So pray. Just pray by name for your loved ones.” I also include them when I pray The Lord’s Prayer. You know, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Well, I often pray, “Well, Lord, Your kingdom come, Your will be done in the lives of those I love and care about who don’t yet know you.” That’s a powerful prayer because it’s part of The Lord’s Prayer and that the prayer of Jesus, the prayer of God the Son Incarnate, so that prayer, the whole of The Lord’s Prayer has great power, so the first and most important thing I would say to my fellow Christians, to my fellow believers, is to believe in the power of prayer. It’s an incredible weapon of warfare, of spiritual warfare, that God has given us, that the enemy does everything in his power to make us disbelieve in. And he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t recognize the power of prayer, so I give you that thought. So pray, pray, pray. Every day, pray for those you love who don’t yet know the Lord. Just pray for each one of them by name and claim their salvation. Jesus has paid the ransom price for them, so claim them. And never despair. And be good at listening. Listen. Try and find out what makes them tick and why they have the views that they have. And then pray into that. You won’t necessarily achieve a great deal by arguing with them. I find arguing with relatives is not an easy thing to do. But don’t be discouraged if you find that arguing with them doesn’t seem to get anywhere but pray for them and pray that God would bring other people into their lives, experiences into their lives, books, whatever, that might speak to them. And the Holy Spirit knows them and loves them and knows how to reach them. God knows how to reach them. So just pray. Listen, love, and pray. And obviously, if you do have relatives or friends or loved ones who are open-minded and prepared to engage or to listen to arguments and read books and so on, well then lend them books and send them tapes or links to good websites where there are other testimonies. So I think actually sending people links to good testimonies that might influence them is another good thing to do. So there it is. That’s just a few thoughts that I would share. That’s wonderful. And hopefully this podcast will be a good resource for those stories, those testimonies, yours being a beautiful one. And if I could co-opt the English word, your testimony is just quite lovely. But yet incredibly profound and very, very substantive. So, Philip, I appreciate so much your being on the podcast today and taking us on your investigative journey, your journey of discovery to the one who made you. It’s obviously made a big difference in your life, and I do pray that it will make a difference in the lives of those who are actually listening. So thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you for having me, Jana. Thanks for tuning in to the Side B Podcast to hear Philip’s story. You can find out more about Philip by visiting his website at bethinking.org. I’ve included that in the episode notes for your reference. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can reach me by email at thesidebpodcast@cslewisinstitute.org. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If so, subscribe and share this new podcast with your friends and social network. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next time, where we’ll be listening to the other side.

Former atheist Warren Prehmus thought he had all that life had to offer until a turn of events sparked reconsideration of what might be missing. But, the answers were not coming from a place or position that he wanted to believe. Warren found himself in a dilemma of need and belief. Someone who had no need for God realizes perhaps, well, that he does. Not merely because of his own need, but because it was true and provided the most satisfying answers for his questions and his life. Email Us: info@sidebstories.com www.cslewisinstitute.org Episode Transcript JH: Hello and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon and you’re listening to the Side B podcast where we listen to the other side. In my research with 52 former atheists, one-third of them simply felt that they had no need for God.  They enjoyed making their own decisions, living like freely without moral constraint.  They appreciated atheism’s intellectual standing within science and the university.  Their lives were generally full and happy.  They didn’t see themselves as people who needed religion as a social or emotional crutch to get them by in life.  Rather, they were strong, independent, courageous in answering life’s biggest questions. When life is going well, life without God works well.  When life throws a curveball – which inevitably happens to everyone – it can cause you to step back and reconsider your options your perspectives to see if they hold up, to see if they adequately address your questions.  When solid answers come, you learn to accept and deal with the issues at hand.  When answers seem dissatisfying, it can open you to other ways of thinking about the world, about your life, to become willing to see another point of view. Answers can start to become clear but they may not be coming from a place or position that you want to believe.   What happens then? In our story today – that’s the dilemma our former atheist faced.  Someone who had no need for God realizes perhaps, well, that he does.  Not merely because of his own need, but because it was true and provided the most satisfying answers for his questions and his life.  Warren Prehmus was a former atheist but is now a Christian.  He is a successful business owner, father, and family man. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know his daughters Courtney and Sarah, both brilliant and beautiful.  And, if they are any reflection of him, which I believe they are, it is an indication that he has done something very right in his life. JH: Welcome to The Side B Podcast, Warren! WP: thanks glad to be here. JH:  As we’re getting started Warren, Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself ? WP:  Sure.  I live in Atlanta and have a small business that’s a wealth management company with four partners including my son.  So I have three children. My son is about to get married.  The other two are married and each have 3 children and I have six grandchildren.  I have all my life been an athlete and I still play basketball in my 60s and tennis and golf and I’m a fisherman so those are the things I spend my time doing when I’m not working at the company or playing with grandkids. JH:  Fantastic!  I guess the beautiful thing about all of those sports is that you can still be outside and still enjoy them. I know for my husband, his golf game has gotten a lot better during the coronavirus for some reason because it’s an outdoor activities or something he’s been able to do. So I guess you’ve been able to still enjoy your sports. WP:  Yes.  Golf and tennis from particular have been very popular.  Basketball, however, is kind of on the outs.  No one’s playing basketball but I tell people that if we start and you’ve got to do social distancing and stay 6 feet away from me.  I’m going to score a lot of points. Yeah, that would be a good way to play basketball certainly, for sure. JH:  Well, let’s get started with your story.  I’m so excited that you’re here today and I want to hear all about it but we want to start really at the beginning.  I want to really understand where your atheism was formed, the context in which you grew up.  So why don’t we just start there at the beginning and your childhood. Tell me a little bit about kind of the community and culture where you grew up.  Was it religious at all?  Was it urban?  Was it rural?  Tell me a little bit about that. WP:  Sure. I grew up in upstate New York out in the country about 5 miles outside of a small town of Scotia, NY and my dad was an engineer at GE.  So as I was growing up, you know, my dad taught me good there is no God.  God is for weak people that need a crutch and we’re strong we don’t we don’t need crutches.  I loved my dad and my dad was actually was a very good dad, a very good father and so I bought into that fully.  And it kind of gives you a prideful thing knowing that you’re strong while others are weak. For instance, in the second grade when we had Christmas carols where all the parents file into the cafeteria and all the kids get up on stage and sing Christmas carols for the parents.  When the religious songs were singing, I had to get down and walk down from the stands and go behind the curtain because I was not allowed to sing the religious songs.  Singing about Santa Claus and Rudolph I could sing those.  I sang those songs but if it was about Away in the Manger, I was not to sing.  So I was definitely a little different than the other children in my little school. There was one family down the street that were Christians and they were a lot of my best friends and I played with them all the time and really liked them.  But yeah, it was too bad that they had to believe in God. So, we did go to church to the Unitarian church and the Unitarian preacher pastor whatever they call him there he gave my father a saying that my father really liked.  He told my father “I’m not an atheist. I’m an agnostic with atheistic leanings.”  So my dad really liked that and so I really liked that too.  When I was in the 4th grade, my brother and I rebelled against the Unitarian church and I tell people is because we felt it was too conservative for us.  So it was it was Sunday morning and my mother was getting dressed and everyone’s getting ready for church my brother and I ran up in the woods and hid and my mother came out and yelled for us and we’d never came back until an hour later.  And so after that we never went to church.  That was our way of going obviously just as a curiosity. JH:  Why did you go to the Unitarian church if you or your family or your father were really pushing against religion or religious things at that time? That’s a little bit curious for me. WP:  Well I mean Unitarians, you can basically believe whatever you want to as long as it’s not Christian.  At least that was my impression of it. And it was more of a social thing for them. They enjoyed those people because those people were mostly atheists and but they enjoyed doing the function of church for the social reasons and hearing the preacher preach about social causes and complaining about Christians. JH: OK, well that makes sense.  They were just wanting some community and there was a way to do it. Let me ask you too about that family down the street, that family there were Christians. Was there anything about that family that was attractive to you?  Did their faith in any way seem to inform their lives? WP:  It definitely informed their lives and I knew that dad took a real interest in me.  I could tell he really loved me and there weren’t many other dads like that so that was impactful.  I’m still in touch with the that family.  I was on the phone last night with one of the boys.  There were four boys in that family.  One of them is a pastor up in upstate New York near where we grew up. I’m still in touch with him and I really give him a lot of credit for praying me into the Kingdom because I know he did. JH:  Wow. That speaks very highly of him to have been that part of your life for that long. WP:  He was three years older than me and he kind of took me under his wing. JH: You had this Christian father down the street and you had a father who was agnostic with atheistic leanings.  I find it a little bit curious to have a father who at that time and even American culture who was atheist. Was there something that informed his atheism because he seemed to have a pretty strong resistance against religion to not even allow you to sing songs that were religious in nature. WP:  Yeah I can’t tell you for sure how he came to his beliefs but I do know that when he grew up on Long Island when he was four his father left the home to go live with his girlfriend in New York City. And he only saw him once ever again.  And you know a lot of people get their view of God by their view of their father and his father was not there.  In addition when his dad left, his mom moved in with her two boys into grandma’s house and when grandma add died, the church took over the house because apparently the grandma had willed the house to the church and they kicked my grandmother and my father out with their and his brother.  And so their view of the church was very negative because they had kicked him out of their house.  That’s how he viewed it . JH:  I can I can appreciate why he might have pushed back against God that considering his father and the way that the church treated his own family.  I can see why he would want nothing to do with it ‘so thank you.  I think that brings some clarity really to the context of your story.  Now going back to growing up –  You said that sports was a very important part of your life.  I would imagine that that occupied you growing up.  You were athletic. I think probably were you athletic from a young age. WP:  Yes I mean sports was really important to me.  Basketball in particular kind of took over in junior high and then I was you know a really good high school basketball player and I got a scholarship to play in college.  That’s what I loved to do and put all my passion and energy towards it. JH: It sounds like you had a real full life, that it was a good life and you really had no need for God growing up that just wasn’t something that was a part of your life. WP:  Only if he could help me get better.  The only reason I would have needed him. JH:  It sounds like you were pretty good on your own. WP:  I did have a good career. JH:  Did you go ahead and play basketball in college or University level? WP: Yeah I played at the University of Vermont. I had a scholarship to play there and was a starter for four years.  I ended up as the all-time leading scorer at the University so yeah I played a lot of basketball. JH:  That’s quite impressive – all-time leading scorer!  Wow!  So your life was going as just as well as it could be without God.  There was really no need.  So tell me then, what changed in your life as you are continuing along in the journey.  What happened next after you got out of college? WP:  First thing that happened is in college I had college roommate for four years who was also on the basketball team and we were best buddies and until about halfway through.  He got hooked in with the Campus Crusaders and he became a Christian. He stopped running with me and our friends and he started hanging out with his Christian friends and it irritated me quite a bit.  We stayed roommates and we were cordial to each other and were friends but that had put up pretty serious divide between us.  So that happened. And then I met my wife in college and we got married two years out of college and then everything like you said everything was going well in my life.  I got a job with GE was doing well in my career and had no need for God.  And then my wife got pregnant and at 6 1/2 months along we found out we were having twins and that was very exciting for us for me.  And I was about to become the most naive parent in history I think.  And then two days after we found out we’re having twins I got a call in the office and had to rush home in a snowstorm and rushed her to the hospital in in the snow storm with her in the back of my hatchback yelling, “I’m having a baby!” driving to the emergency room.  And the first of the twins was born you know 5 minutes after we got there and then the second one shortly after that.  Ao that was a hugely emotional time and they those babies lived for a day and they died. JH: Oh goodness. I’m so sorry. WP:  From the excitement of having twins to the pain that they died.  We were very well taken care of by that hospital in New Jersey.  They helped us to start the grieving process and it changed my wife’s heart.  She was not an atheist.  She had always gone to church and she loved church.  She didn’t go to church when we were first married but she loved Bible stories and so forth.  But at her church she never heard the gospel. This emotional event turned her heart so that she wanted God.  And so shortly after that she joined Bible Study Fellowship, started reading the Bible and all this.  In fact during our grieving time, she kept saying that this is happened for a reason.  And I hung on to that because it felt good to think that there was a reason.  But if you’re an atheist, there is no reason that things happen. So she started going to Bible Study Fellowship and I started getting hungrier just trying to figure out what’s the truth again. I knew some Christians.  I knew some Jewish people. I knew some Muslims. I knew some Mormons and I had figured out that they couldn’t all be true. And, I was an atheist so I mean I just there was a hunger to figure out what the truth was.   So I started reading books on comparative religions which was kind of a waste of time in retrospect because they weren’t written from a Christian perspective.  But, I started reading lots of other things.  The first books I ever read that mentioned Jesus in any kind of positive light were Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuler with the positive thinking books.  And looking back their theology may not have been that great, but it was something for me to read where Jesus was not a cuss word. JH:  Your wife is obviously pursuing her faith perhaps that she had laid down for a while and trying to make sense of this tragedy in your life.  And she started opening the Bible and reading the Bible.  Now it sounds like there were some kind of curiosity for you about it in pursuing the truth.  How did you feel when your wife started pursuing these things as an atheist? WP:  It was fine. She could do that.  That’s fine whatever she does but I’m going to pursue my own path.  I had a lot of pride and so I wasn’t paying much attention to what she was doing, honestly.  I had my own internal struggle going on. JH:  You said that there was something kind of birthed in you that wanted to know what was true.  Is that what was the struggle or can you describe that?  Did it have something to do with pride? WP:  Well my pride was holding me back.  My struggle was to find out what the truth was because there’s got to be something more.   And it was, looking back, it was God just drawing me little by little towards him.  So I had run across some Christians that witnessed to me and they were people I respected.  And I listened to what they had to say without fighting back too hard.  But, my dad was a scientist, an evolutionist and very well read and I had bought and fully into that.  I was in science in school. I was a physics major and so all this God stuff was fine but you know evolution is a fact.  And so that really was something that I hung on to strongly.  So there was a sense of ‘religion is not factual, just blind faith or story as compared to science which is a fact. JH:  There seemed to be some kind of irreconcilability between science and belief in God in your mind at that point? WP:  Yeah, it’s basically has proven that stuff is not true.  Science has proven that certainly the Bible is not true and probably there’s no God because of science. JH:  So you were wrestling with that? WP:  Yeah but I started reading a lot of books and I got into some better, theologically better books.  And we had moved to Atlanta after the twins had died and we were living here for a year and a half or two years or so.  And, as I was going through this struggle my wife said, you know we’re in the South kind of like the Bible belt now.  We need to have a church home.  And so I thought, ‘Well that’s probably a good idea.’  So we started out to try to find a church which you think about it – an atheist and maybe perhaps a baby Christian going to try to find a church – that would be an interesting thing. JH:  That would be that would be an interesting thing, but you were both basically going to support her I presume. WP:  Going to lead her, ah yeah, ‘follow me honey. I’ll find us a good church.’ OK that’s an interesting question for an atheist.  Yes well some of these self-help books I had read had talked about the man being the leader of the family and so that that was what I was kind of following with that. JH: OK so did you find a church home?  Did you lead her? WP:  I did. We went to several churches and we would leave and I said, ‘Well we’re not going back there.  That preacher didn’t even believe what he was talking about.’  I might have been right on some of those it seems, like I don’t know.  We did go to one church, the local Baptist Church, with a preacher, I really liked him.  I had known him personally outside of church but they did this terrible awful thing there at the Baptist Church.  At the end of the service they sang the song and they did an altar call and that was very difficult for an atheist.  And he had said something during service that I remember to this day which was ‘When the hounds of heaven get on your trail, there’s no getting him off.’  And I felt like that’s speaking to me.  And so we didn’t go back to that church because of the altar call. And finally my wife heard about a church that you could go to this class they had that taught you what the church believed and what other churches believed.  And he didn’t have to join the church to go to this class it was something called an Inquirers Class and the church was Perimeter Church.  So we decided we go to that class.  We’ve never been to the church and we went to the class and it was Randy Pope was the pastor and the class it was a classroom. It was kind of tight there.  Everyone is was shoulder to shoulder, sitting in these little desk chairs.  And the first thing they did was hand out this form.  You wrote your name and then the first question was ‘Are you a Christian? yes or no.’  And I didn’t want to fill that out because you could read everybody else’s paper, so very awkward. So I put my arm across the question and put a question mark move my remove put a question mark there and then covered it up and filled out the rest of the form.  And then you’re supposed to pass your paper down the row to collect them.  And so mine was folded up. Everyone else’s was open and it was just really awkward.  That’s where I got introduced to Randy Pope an I really liked him and I knew he believed what he was talking about.  And so I didn’t even meet him directly that day, but I connected with him. And from there we didn’t continue going to that classroom.  We did start going to church periodically and the church was pretty small back then.  Randy used to have the habit of he’d preach and then he’d go to the door and greet people as they would leave.  And so I went to church and we were leaving and he shook my hand and I told him my name and he said, ‘Oh I’ve been meaning to get with you.’  And I knew why.  He had seen the question mark, you know right? And so he said he was in the process of putting together these four booklets to help businessmen to understand what it means to be a Christian and would I be willing to meet with him? And so in my arrogance I thought, ‘Well I could probably help him out and I agreed to meet with him. And so we started meeting at one of these inexpensive steak houses we’d go to.  And the first week he gave me an assignment.  I can’t believe that somebody just meet you for lunch and they give you an assignment, okay, and it’s to read the 1st three chapters in the book of John.   Well, I had never read the Bible at all.  I never had even touched a Bible and I didn’t want to, but he gave me this assignment.  And so I didn’t want to let him down because I really liked him.  I thought he was a very interesting going places guy and so I picked up, finally with great difficulty, picked up the book.  It was like it was poison or something, but finally I picked it up and I started reading the book of John and I couldn’t stop. So I read the whole book of John that week and went to meet with Randy the second week.   and he said, ‘Well did he do your assignment?’ and I said ‘Well, I read the whole book of John.’ He said, ‘Oh, you were only supposed to read the 1st three chapters.’ JH: I’m curious, in reading the Bible for the first time obviously you didn’t want to but then you did.  How did it meet with your expectations?  It must have obviously surprised you and intrigued you to have read more than three chapters.  This was in the book of John, the story of Jesus, right? WP:  Yeah and there is there was something in there that was gripping me but I was fighting that.  That gripping was fighting against my pride of not believing that there was a God or that this could be true.  So as it was kind of a battle going on inside of me there, but I did read it hungrily. JH: I wonder what you thought of the person of Jesus?  Reading his biography for the first time, was he like or unlike what you expected or who you expected? WP:  Well, I didn’t really know most of the stories.  Now, this was all new to me and it was like ‘Well this is fantastic.’  Not in a ‘Oh, that’s great’ but it’s just ‘That could that really have happened’ and ‘That’s just so unlikely to have happened’ that I was looking at it from the outside knowing that this kind of thing does not happen.  And so, that’s how I looked at Jesus. JH: I guess the miracles that he was perhaps working or the claims that he was making especially, I guess as a scientist, it probably didn’t fit with your view of the world? WP:  That’s right, yeah.  Those things cannot happen.  That was my view but there was something really drawing me with reading those pages. JH: Did it have any ring of truth to it at all or was it just like a fairy tale a good story that was incredibly intriguing and gripping? WP:  I would say more a good story that was intriguing and gripping but this can’t be true.  That was my feeling at the time.  I began and part of me wanted it and part of me didn’t so then we kept on meeting and the last week the assignment was to pray to receive Christ.  And I told him, ‘I’m not ready’ and just ‘If there’s no God, this is just the story and I’m not going to put my faith and trust in something that’s just a story.’  So he said, ‘Okay, well, we’re done.  We’re not going to meet anymore unless something else changes.’ We started going we go to church periodically and then months later I picked up a book that my probably atheist sister had given me called Mere Christianity, a book you might have heard of. JH: Yes, I have for sure! WP:  Well, when she gave me the book she said, ‘You might want to read this book. It might make me you believe in God.’  And remember, she said that to me and I had that.  It was months and months before that, maybe years.  So I picked up that book one night and started reading it.  And it was in February in winter time and I was lying on the couch all by myself reading this book.  And CS Lewis takes you through the proofs for the existence of God and that was something that I had never heard.  And he started making sense to me. And so I put the book down just to think about it and this thought came in my head that I didn’t put there.  It just kind of came in and said, ‘I’m a sinner.’  And I knew that that was the first step of the four step sinner’s prayer and that was a dangerous thought.  And so, from the other side came this other thought and said, ‘Think about that later.  Put it off.  Think about it later.’ But it came back.  ‘I’m a sinner.’  ‘Think about it later.’  And finally, I felt like I was hanging on to something with all my might and finally just let go and I went ahead and said ‘what I’d been taught with the sinner’s prayer, which was ‘I believe I’m a Sinner and I deserve to go to hell and then Jesus died for my sins and I now trust you with my life.’ I went back to reading the book but I knew that that was significant something had changed right there.  I had too much pride to tell my wife about it, but like I said it’s February. We usually keep the house real cool and went to bed not too long after that.  And we usually bundle up all pile up the blankets.  And so, I was lying there as we got in bed with nothing covering me and I was sweating and she was all bundled up under the blankets and she leaned over looked to me and said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Must be the Holy Spirit!’  And again, I had too much pride to talk about it but I thought to myself, ‘Wow I’m going to remember that she said that.’ Yes and it so the next day, I called Randy and said, ‘Randy we need to get together for lunch.’  And he said, ‘How about a week from Thursday?’ And I said, ‘Randy, it’s got to be sooner than that.’  He said, ‘Oh, how about today?’  And so, we met that day and with great difficulty I shared with him what had gone on.  And he said, ‘Well, that sounds like it’s real, but time will tell.’  So he was a bit skeptical. I don’t know if he was skeptical or I think he saw because I had tears when I was telling the story.   So it wasn’t like I was faking and I know he had seen a change, but I think it was very wise on his part because what that said to me was ‘You better check that this is real’ and I think it really helped me too, to put a nail in it to say, ‘Yes, this is real.’  So it took about 2 weeks for me to be able to share with my wife, maybe a week or two weeks to be able to share with my wife what happened just because I had so much pride. JH:  I bet she was surprised! WP:  Sprobably was but she’s a pretty discerning person and she probably saw things changing.  The people who were surprised wer my college roommate when I called him and the boys down the street that were Christians when I was a kid.  They had been praying for me most of my life, yeah, most of my life.  We had some very joyous calls. JH:  I think for them it probably really confirmed the value of prayer and never giving up on it.  Really the prayer for another person, that sometimes you can see fruit bear many years later. So it sounds like in your story Warren,  you had a lot of things kind of coming together.  Of course you were sparked towards this journey by personal tragedy and then your wife’s pursuit of God, but you still had those questions.  But somehow those intellectual questions of God’s existence were answered through CS Lewis and the hounds of heaven who was actually seeking you, and that the Bible reading the Bible seemed to be a pivotal part of your story.  All of those things were coming together so that your willingness changed to see and to find something that you were missing.  What a beautiful story of everything kind of coming together over a process, over a period of time.  And even though the hounds of heaven were pursuing you, there was a patience there, it seems like as well, to allow you to journey at your own pace – even from the preacher to tell that you needed your own time and space to work through some things. WP:  I think that what actually occurred figures not patience on my part but on other people’s parts.  I did not want it.  I did not want this to be true and fought it with everything I had.  But I ran out of gas shortly after that, yeah. I was so very excited about my new faith and I wanted to tell my family and I got blasted pretty good and it didn’t go well.   And the big thing was evolution and I didn’t know anything about creation science, any of that.  But, by golly, I was going to learn. And so, I finally got some books that talked about how creation is scientific and how evolution is a fraud, and that changed all that.  That was another big change for me that really solidified my faith because evolution and Christianity don’t go together in my view. So after I was meeting with the pastor, I started reading lots of books and one of them that really impacted me was a book that as an atheist I read called The Battle for the Mind by a guy named Tim LaHay.  It was written in the early 80s and it talked about secular humanism.  And it talked about the fruits of secular humanism versus the fruits of Christianity.  And I read that and I thought that’s probably true.  And I did not like the fruits of what I believed and it was very difficult for me to reconcile that at that time.  Then actually there was a pain there was in my chest, tightness in my chest that didn’t go away until the day that I finally submitted. JH: So when you say there was a tightness in your chest because of the what you were reading in terms of the implications of humanism and atheism, that it was so disturbing to you that you actually felt a physical pain? WP:  Yeah, I actually felt the physical pain.  It wasn’t a huge pain but it was just a little nagging thing that I didn’t even think about it but I noticed that after I become a Christian it was gone and never come back. JH:  That’s fascinating!  As we as we are coming to a close, I wondered since you’ve been on both sides of the story, you know what it means to feel like and to think like an atheist and you know what that resistance is towards God or are just thinking that there’s no evidence for God.  If there was a curious skeptic listening today, what would you advise them to think or to do or r to consider in terms of God or Christianity? WP:  One thing that is significant for me in that area would be to look at creation and the complexity of creation and to think, ‘How did this just happen by chance? How did the human brain become the most complicated piece of the whole universe by chance? and How did the Bombardier beetle get to be able to shoot fire at his enemies from turds that he can rotate around on either side of his body and not kill himself with the poison he’s squirting at them in his body?’ Things like that are things that the atheist has a real hard time if he’s being honest. JH:  The irreducible complexity and specificity and diversity of creation, the fine tuning of creation from the cell to the cosmos – there’s a lot there isn’t there in terms of trying to figure out how that might happen just by chance. WP:  Yeah by random mutations over billions of years.  And, if you’ve got an open mind to it, it just doesn’t work and so you’re down to ‘Okay, there has to be another explanation.’  Well, that’s where God comes in.  And, I find very few Christians are armed with this kind of capability to discuss.  So that might be a word actually for Christians –  to become informed –  that it’s not a God of the gaps kind of explanation.  You don’t just plug in God where you don’t know what the answer is, that the hypothesis of God for which atheists say there is no reason. To have that hypothesis is actually that we know that certain things are the way that they are because of what we do know about the universe, that God is a good or best explanation because of what we already know about experience of what we already know about intellect in the mind and language and all of those things.  So there’s a lot there for us as Christians to really take hold of in terms of again speaking to Christians. JH:  I guess that’s one of the things that you would probably advise them as to become better educated in terms of the arguments for the existence of God. WP:  Yes arguments for the existence of God, for the evolution-creation debate.  And the other thing is humility, that when– as an atheist speaking from the past – when an atheist runs across someone who takes an really sincere interest in them and doesn’t preach at them and tell them things but has good information, more by asking questions, that that’s to me a more effective way of opening someone’s eyes or helping to open their eyes. JH:  I guess you had that beautiful example of that loving Christian family back even as a child that you could see that they had a sincere interest in you even though you didn’t have the same beliefs.  I’m sure that probably stayed with you.  Obviously if you’re still talking with that friend there’s something there that started and lasted a lifetime really and helped you moved towards God even though it was in a perhaps not a blatant or overbearing way, but just out of love and humility like you say, in sincere interest.  And that’s really beautiful the way that that has come full circle for you. Thank you so much, Warren, for being on the podcast today. I think your story is really a beautiful one.  You really come a long distance from where you were as a child and even as a young adult resisting God to a place where it sounds like you’ve got a beautiful legacy now and family, children, and grandchildren who all embrace God.  You have wonderful life and beautiful story to really celebrate so thank you for coming on the podcast today. WP:  Thanks for having me.  I enjoyed being here.

Apatheism is a word to describe someone who doesn’t believe in God and thinks religion is irrelevant to life. In today’s episode Mary Jo Sharp tells her story of moving from apatheism to a strong belief in God that informs all of her life. Learn more about Mary Jo Sharp at www.maryjosharp.com. There’s a wealth of information to explore – debates, a blog, books and much more! Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute, where we will be listening to the other side of the story. In my research, I heard the stories of over fifty former atheists to better understand their journey from nonbelief to belief in God. The Side B Podcast is a show where I’ll be talking with former atheists who, against all odds, changed their minds about God and became Christians. Each time, we’ll listen to someone’s story and have a conversation about why they were atheists and what opened them to the possibility of God. We’ll talk about why they became Christians and their thoughts and experiences along the way. In this cultural moment, where the other side, side B, is often dismissed without a hearing, this is the podcast where you are encouraged to listen to the other side, whether it is the unheard side of nonbelief or belief, and then draw your own conclusions. You might just be surprised by what you hear. I know I was. Today, we’ll be talking with someone who inherited her atheism from her surrounding culture. It was the air she breathed. God was essentially a nonissue, not worth considering, off the radar. Religion just simply wasn’t relevant to her life. Her name is Mary Jo Sharp. She is a former atheist who came to Christian faith. She now serves as an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University and is the founder of Confident Christianity apologetics ministry. She is the author of several books, including Why I Still Believe: A Former Atheist’s Reckoning with the Bad Reputation Christians Give a Good God, released this past November. She’s also the author of several Bible studies, including a best seller, Why Do You Believe That? A Faith Conversation, from Lifeway. She lives with her husband and family in Portland, Oregon. you can find out more about Mary Jo at maryjosharp.com. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Mary Jo. It’s so great to have you. Thank you so much for having me on. Wonderful! It’s great to have you here and to hear you and your story, as a former atheist come to be a Christian, and we’re all very interested to hear how that happened. So let’s start with side A, your life as an atheist. Why don’t you tell me about your influences growing up? Your family, your culture. What generally formed your identity as an atheist? Yeah. This is always an interesting question for me because I grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and as you noted, in the Portland area, which… I’m back there again. But this area was sort of a post-Christian culture that I grew up in. It wasn’t a place where I would say was heavily influenced in cultural Christianity. And I’m saying this, as opposed to where I lived for twenty years in the South. It was very different from the southern United States, which was more steeped in a culture of Christianity. So the area that I grew up in, and I’ll give an example of what I mean by this cultural Christianity type thing is that, in the area I grew up in, there weren’t a lot of people who I would encounter who would say, like, “Oh yeah. I’ve gone to church my whole life.” They wouldn’t just openly say, “I’m a Christian,” or, “Oh, yeah. My Daddy was a preacher,” or, “My uncle was a preacher,” which is something that I encountered almost all the time, like noticeably different, in the southern United States. Right. So just a very different atmosphere, post Christian, more similar to a European style, a European culture of postmodernity and relativism and things like that. Did you have any exposure to Christianity growing up at all? Or was it anywhere on the radar? Well, sure. Because I live in a Judeo-Christian-influenced society, so there’s Christmas and Easter and things like that and television shows that show Christian pastors, so those things were present in my line of sight. Those movies and things. But what I was exposed to more so was a lot of nature and science shows, because my dad was a huge Carl Sagan fan. He was a chemical engineer. He just loved the sciences. He loved outer space, and that was something… We watched a lot of shows about space. So what was going on was he had exposed me to a bunch of this materialized worldview that was through these television shows. It was a thread. It was the under-girding philosophy of these shows, and so that was something I was exposed to as a very young person, and I didn’t know that this materialist, or this view that all that exists is what is in the material realm… I didn’t know that that was only one view or one philosophy on the nature of reality. That’s just what I was exposed to. So I would say my upbringing, culturally, not being exposed to Christianity other than what I saw on TV and the movies and a few friends here and there, combined with my upbringing outside of the church. My parents did not go to church. By the time I was very young, they had left it. And my dad’s constant viewing of these nature and science shows that were steeped in the materialist view of the world really was the background that formed my views of reality. I really didn’t have a view of God. And I wouldn’t have thought to gain one or why a person should gain one. That just wasn’t on the radar. Right. Did your father call himself an atheist at all? Or just more of a science-oriented person? My dad was one of those people that wouldn’t talk religion. So we did not talk about it and I wouldn’t have known whether he would call himself agnostic, atheist, or what. Because that was not something my family discussed. Okay, okay. Did you have any hostility towards Christianity? Or was it just that they can live their own lives? I’m not really sure who they are. In fact, I’m not really sure what they believe. What did you think about Christians and Christianity around that time? Christianity, to me, was… There was sort of a dual perspective going on in my mind. My experiences with Christians, they seemed pretty nice and innocuous. I had friends who went to church, and I thought they were great people, but then I would see things on television like the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker scandal and how they were using money that people were giving them inappropriately and for their own selfishness, their own selfish desires and greed. And that seemed pretty disingenuous that the church would ask for money. I didn’t know why the church was asking for money because I knew nothing about church. I also realized… Not too long ago, I started thinking about my childhood, and I was like, “You know, the Rajneeshpuram were in here Oregon when I was a child in the early ’80s, and this was this cultish group of people who… They were religious. That was the basis for them having this compound in Oregon. And what I remember of them, the number one thing I remember about this religious group was that they attempted a bio-terrorist attack on the nearby cities, which is they poisoned people with salmonella, and so I think that… I’ve come to understand that was also informing my view, but I just realized. I had a lot of misgivings about what religion was, who God was or is. I didn’t understand things like what religion was for. It just seemed like those kind of things that people did because they were raised that way, and I wasn’t. I would also say that I thought my view, the sort of atheist or non-theist view, was the normative. I actually believed that I was the normative view and had no perspective on the vastness of religious adherence across the world. So I would kind of also say that what I was exposed to as far as religions growing up was the myths, like the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians, as well as Native American stories, and so I probably, if I had known to say it as a child and as a later teenager, I probably would have said I had some chronological snobbery, that I thought I was more progressed than other people. But I wouldn’t have known to say it that way. I just kind of would’ve thought, “Oh, wow! Look how much better we are than all of these religious factions and these myths and things.” Right. There seems to be a bit of a sense of rational superiority sometimes among those who embrace a scientism or a naturalistic worldview. Would you say that that was the case in your world? I would say yes, but it was below the surface, because I had a Midwestern mother and father who taught me to respect people of all different backgrounds and to be polite and nice. So I would never have tried to make other people feel bad about having a religious view. That was not in my DNA. That was not in my blood. So I wasn’t aggressive or hostile person towards religious belief. That’s good. It’s just that it wasn’t something that was on the table for you as an option. Right. And a little bit of distrust towards it, too, about the whole, “Why are you giving money?” It looked like it could really take advantage of people. That sort of thing. As an atheist, it seems like you’re moving along well and feeling comfortable in this worldview or this assumed worldview that was part of your family and part of your culture. Did you ever think about what that meant for your life in terms of atheism? Apart from, say, the naturalistic view of the cosmos? How did it affect your life? Yeah. I wouldn’t have looked long term. I didn’t know to do that, and I think part of that is… I had a great education generally, but my education was lacking in critical thought and philosophy and thinking on these bigger issues, like, “Oh, what you believe now is going to have an impact on your life and your decisions later on,” so I wouldn’t have had that transference in my mind of whatever I believe now and how it’s going to affect me in ten years or five years or twenty years. I wouldn’t have seen the long-term effects of an atheist commitment. Right. So would you call yourself a happy atheist, I guess, at that time? Yeah. Yeah. I felt I was a good person. And I wasn’t a person who drank. I wasn’t a person who did any of these vices, in my mind, a person who took drugs or anything like that, so I thought… And I’m a good student, so I’ve got it together. I’m a good person. Right, right. So moving along, then. What happened in your life or in your thinking that caused you to stop and think about another perspective or open your mind towards the possibility of God’s existence? Well, I think a lot of the environment which I grew up in had this dual effect of giving me this sort of materialist view or naturalist view of the world, but at the same time, the amount of exposure that I had to music… One of the things we haven’t talked about yet is I’m a musician, and so was my father… To music and to these science shows which were teaching me the universe, in all of its vastness and mystery, and just there were a lot of things that I was exposed to that I think had a double effect. One was that it was void of discussion about what is this all here for and why does this all make sense? Why does it all fit together? Why does the universe just seemingly work for survival of humans? Rational human beings on the earth. But at the same time, it was causing me to wonder about that. Like it actually caused me to say… Like sitting there, watching the beauty of a sunset or sitting in my band experiencing the emotion of the musical performance, or when my dad would take us camping and seeing the majesty of the mountains, the vastness of the universe, watching those science shows, considering the intricacy of ecosystems and the complexity of life when we’d watch a nature show, that drew me towards sort of developing this wonder about all of this. What was it here for? So am I just a blob of atoms in a vast, indifferent universe? Or is there something that I’m supposed to be taking from all this? Is there meaning to this created musical experience? Is there meaning to the artistic works? Is there a reason that we should continue in the sciences that transcends my own experience of it, my own subjective experience? And as a teenager, I’m not putting it together that way, but I’m starting to question things about, “Well, why is the universe here at all? Why I am here? Is this it? I live and die and there’s no rhyme or reason, so what’s the purpose of all this?” And I didn’t have any answers to that. So I was wondering. And I think that it’s funny how, as I work on this, as I become older and older, and I look back and reflect on my teenage, especially in later teenage years, as I’m starting to gain my skills, my rational skills, I’m starting to wonder more based on the very things that were sort of holding my attention towards a naturalist perspective, but now they’re influencing me to say, “Wait a minute. Is this all there is?” So those are the kinds of things… I’m starting to ask those kinds of questions, and right at that time, as I’m getting older and I’m starting to ask these questions, there’s a Christian that comes into my life who is influential, and he gives me a Bible. Oh, my! Oh, my! Okay. So what was your view of the Bible around that time? What did you think that was? No idea. I had no idea. I wouldn’t have even known what to call it. I know it was the text that the Christians used, but I really didn’t know anything about it. So what was your response when he gave it to you? What were you thinking? And why did he give you a Bible? Yeah. Well, this is really an interesting part. On this side of belief, believing that there is a God and that he was working in my life, this gentleman was a person who had never shared his faith before, and he was a band director, so he taught the music program in our schools, and I was studying… I knew by my sophomore year in high school that I wanted to become just like him. I wanted to be a band director and teach music. So it’s one of the most influential people who could have been sent to me at that time to share their faith, and here he is in a public school district that had taken out most of the Christian symbolism because they wanted separation of church and state, so they didn’t have Christmas anything, they had winter everything, and stuff like that, and here he is in this situation, saying, he felt really burdened for me, and he felt like he needed to do this. He needed to at least give me a Bible and share his faith with me, and so he did, and it’s not a real big moment. It’s just like he said to me aside in my senior year and says, “Here, I have a gift for you,” and he gives me a Bible, and he says, “When you go off to college, you’re going to have hard questions. I hope you’ll turn to this.” And I need to include that I did not receive it well. I didn’t say anything mean, because that’s not my nature, but he said he was worried that I was going to turn him in to the school for having shared this with me. And I feel so bad about that. Like, “What did I say that was so awful?” Oh, no. I mean obviously… We can appreciate this now. It’s quite a risk to try to impose your faith or be seen as imposing your faith on a student, so he was taking a professional risk to give it to you, wasn’t he? Yeah, yeah. And he was a person that I respected. Obviously, like I said, so I really wanted to… It was just like he hit me at just the right time. I was having these questions. There was no outlet for it. There was no philosophy in my background because the public schools were not teaching critical thinking in that way or philosophy or about these big questions of life, and here comes this man I greatly respect and says, “Here’s some answers to hard questions,” right? Right. So I actually went and read it. I read that Bible. And it really… I was caught off guard because it wasn’t what I expected. So what were you expecting when you were reading the Bible? What did you think it was? So I had no experience, like I just said. Like nothing. I don’t know. But my experience was mythologies, so of the Sumerians and the Greeks and the Egyptians and Native Americans. And as I’m digging into the Bible, it’s nothing like that. As you can tell, I don’t have any experience with, like Judaism or Islam or anything. I don’t have any experience with these monotheistic traditions. So it really took me off guard, in that it sounded very report like in places. Some places it’s very poetic, but other places, like in Luke, he’s just saying, “Hey, I investigated all these things, so you can know the certainty of the things you’ve been taught.” Right. And then he, a little bit later on, lists off all these places and times. He’s got these governing officials and where they were governor and what time it is in the history of the world, and I’m like, “This sounds like he was just trying to report what was going on.” And that really shook me as far as, “Well, maybe he’s intending to tell me something true here. Or maybe he’s intending to report something that actually happened, rather than just tell me a great myth that teaches me some kind of moral lesson.” So it was more of a historical document, and it was a surprise to you. How did it shape your understanding of who God was or Jesus or Christianity when you started reading it? Yeah, that was really important because, since it wasn’t what I was seeing in TV, in the movies, it wasn’t this superficial, just moral guidelines for your life. It actually talked about how humans had failed to do what was good for them the way that God had intended for them to live, and they had failed to be in that way that God had for them, and so, because they had failed to do what God intended for them, they had brought evil upon themselves, and that started to make sense to me about why there’s good and evil in the world. Because I was always a person who felt like morals mattered and there was right and wrong and that there was just and unjust, and so the story from the Bible about how evil got into the world and that evil was not what we were intended for really made a difference to me. It really started to inform me as to, you know what? That makes sense of the human experience. That makes sense of why I have this sense of right and wrong. And so things like that started to inform me. “Oh, I see. If humans were the problem. If they were the ones that brought the evil into the world, and they’re the ones that are constantly engaging in this, then they’re also not the solution, so it makes sense as to why God himself incarnates, comes into the world, and is the sacrifice for our wrongdoing.” That started to make sense to me, logical sense. And so that’s what changes my perspective on the whole story, on who God is, on why Jesus is necessary. That’s what leads me towards understanding God and towards trusting in Him. So it made sense logically. It made sense experientially. Did you ever question whether it was really true? Or how would you know that? Did you investigate that? Or was it just that it rang true to you? So originally, if we’re still in the beginnings of where I come out of atheism into Christianity, it begins to ring true to me. And then I have to figure out what I’m going to do with it. And so as I leave the nest of my parents’ home, where I’d been taught naturalism, and I go off and start my whole college experience… You’re supposed to go away to college and lose your faith, right? I went off to college and started investigating, “What are people talking about when they say faith?” So I went to church on my own for the first time and eventually I find a church where I hear this gospel presentation, and it makes sense to me, and that’s at the point at which I’m ready to trust Jesus. So it’s a little bit of a journey to get to that point, where I say, “Hey, yes, I’m willing to trust this. It wasn’t an apologetic investigation. I wasn’t going, “Well, is this true? Is this not?” It was more experiential, and it had, like you were saying, the ring of truth to it. It’s not until I become a Christian that I start to say, “Wait a second. How do I know this is true?” Before we get there, you had said something, just there, about you heard a gospel presentation. For those who don’t know what that is, in a nutshell, could you tell them what that was and why you were drawn to that? Yes. So it was at the church where I eventually accepted Jesus, and the pastor… Basically they’ll give a sermon. So they’ll explain something from a passage of scripture. And at this particular church, he always ended each of his sermons with what’s called an invitation to accept Christ. So, in doing that, he tells you basically what’s happened. Like I said, God made us for good, but we’ve chosen to do evil, and that’s what’s called being fallen and sinful, and so he explains this, and then he gets to, well what’s the remedy for sin? If we’re intended to be good and part of that was being in relationship with God, how do we get back there? So he tells you what has been done. Jesus has come to pay the penalty for the sin. So by trusting in Him, you can be restored to this right relationship with God, which is the gospel message. It can be done in many different ways. You can talk about it that there was good creation, then there was the fall of mankind, and now there’s redemption through Jesus Christ. And that’s real short. We’re really being sort of reductivist in it because it’s much bigger than that and there’s so many more details, but that’s what I mean by a gospel message, so it helps people understand their circumstance. It helps them understand why there’s evil in the world. It helps them understand that there’s an answer to that. And that has been given through Jesus Christ. And so what rang true again came to ring true for your life. Tell me what happened after that in terms of… How did you connect the intellectual part of your faith with your experiential part of your faith? Well, the intellectual and experiential… What happened is that the experiential is a bit problematic for me, in that it fades over time, so if I have an experience, even if it’s psychologically impacting, like something like coming to trust Jesus, over time, those experiences fade, right? That memory is fading, and the emotion that I felt and all of that, so after becoming a Christian, I wasn’t in a church where there was a rigorous intellectual life. And I hate to denigrate any of the churches that I was ever in, but I wasn’t seriously studying the doctrines of Christianity, like, “So why do we believe Christ rose from the dead?” or, “Why do we say God exists at all?” or, “What does it mean that Jesus atoned for sins?” I wasn’t really thrown into a deep education where I’m studying the intellectual aspect of my beliefs. So you’ve got this experience, but then I run into these other experiences of Christians behaving opposite of what I’m reading in the Bible. So not only is my former experience starting to fade over the years, but I’m gaining new experience, and they’re hurtful, with Christians who are being hypocritical about their faith. And so they’ll say one thing but then they’ll absolutely do another and not hold themselves accountable, and this is becoming a pattern that I’m seeing. So what happens over time is that those experiences start to cause in me some emotional doubt. I start to distrust Christians, and that begins to cause me to distrust this whole endeavor of Christianity, which transfers over to distrusting God as a person. Is He even there? Is He even real? Does He exist? And I realize I have no answers to that. And there’s where the intellectual side comes in. And I say, “Wow! What did I do back then?” Here, I’ve plunged myself into this community, and I’m just going to be in short form. I don’t mean everybody was this way, but in short form, this community of hypocrites who I like less than my former atheist friends, and I feel less accepted for who I am, who are constantly trying to put me in this mold of a southern evangelical woman that I don’t fit because I’m not from the South and I don’t come out of evangelicalism, and so this experience with this cultural Christianity just really causes me to have these emotional doubt, and it eventually leads to intellectual questioning. And that’s the first time I start going, “I really need to know why I say I believe this because I’m starting to feel like I really don’t want this to be true. Or don’t even care if it’s true. I just want to get away from this.” And so I start into this path of trying to discover, “Why do I believe Jesus rose from the dead? Why do I say God exists?” and that sends me into the intellectual journey that I’ve been on and am still on. That’s amazing. I appreciate your honesty there. A lot of people wouldn’t say that, and it’s really quite an interesting conversion story, that you convert to a belief that rings true but its people don’t bear out what the Good Book says, right? Although it does say that we’re fallen, so… But fallen to a point that it’s very disheartening and discouraging and fuels your doubt. So what path or what direction did you go in terms of trying to provide some answer to some of these doubts that you had? Yeah. When I started out, I didn’t know what I was looking for because I had no experience in this and it wasn’t being taught in church. I found, in church, they already assumed the truth of Christianity, so they never taught, like, “How do we know it’s true?” So I thought, “I’ve got to find somebody who’s talking about, ‘Does God exist?'” And I don’t know how I got there. I know that I began asking those questions, and that’s what I remember, so I started looking for answers to how do I know that Jesus actually rose from the dead and how do I know God exists, and I remember finding a book in one of our church libraries that was by Lee Strobel. It was The Case for Christ, and I actually found a book before that. And I don’t always include that in all of my testimonies because sometimes it’s just too much to include, but it was Norm Geisler’s book, Christian Apologetics, and- Oh, my. Yes, that’s… I had some really hard philosophical terms in there for a person who’d never been trained in philosophy or theology, and I went, “Okay, this is really lovely, but I’m a band director, and I work 70-hour weeks, so I’m going to set that one aside.” Yes. For now. For now. “And I’m going to go after this one because I can read it, and I can consume it right away.” And I never heard anybody delve into how do we know that Jesus rose from the dead? Or what’s the evidence for this? And Strobel’s book fascinated me because of how he treated it journalistically and from a law perspective, so that set me on the path towards, “Okay, who did he interview? Now I’ve got to go read those guys, and now… Oh, wait! There’s debates. They’re debating people who disagree with them? Why has this never been brought to my life?” And so now I want to hear the atheist rebuttals of all these things because now I’m familiar with these terms, theist and atheist, and I want to see what has been brought against the Christian faith, and so now I’m engaging in these debates, listening to them, analyzing things, and I start to see that Christianity, the answers coming out of the Christian philosophical debates are more coherent. They make more sense. Logically taken to their conclusion, they seem to work with the human experience, and that the atheist arguments weren’t doing that. They weren’t as explanatory about what we have. Why is the universe? What is the universe? Those kinds of things. About human value, meaning, and purpose. And so I began to have this shift towards, “Yeah, the church has caused me a lot of hurt and pain, but it looks like Christianity’s true and I’m not going to be able to escape that rationally.” Right. And it was actually providing answers to all those questions you had as a late teen, when you started really looking at your life and meaning and purpose and value, and those questions were finally being answered, I guess in a satisfying way? Yes. Yes, that’s a good way of saying it. Yeah, so it was almost like it was coming full circle, and you were having both answers to human experience, as well as the logical questions you were having. So everything was coming together, like you say, in a more comprehensive, coherent way. Yeah. And it was actually kind of funny, because honestly I had gotten to a point where I was like, “Man, if I could just go back to a non-theist or agnostic point of view, I could just be done with all this Christian community and hypocrisy and this group I don’t really relate to! I could just walk away. That would be nice.” And I can see why some atheists who leave the faith, or people who have been Christian and then leave it, I can see why they say it’s liberating. Because you are released from the burden of this community that you’re trying to be a part of. And it can be so emotionally draining to be a part of a community like that. Any community. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Christian community or the atheist doughnut eaters’ community, it’s draining to be a part of a community, so I can see why that initial, “I’m walking away,” can be so liberating. Because you finally have been released from what I was describing before, having to engage with people who are fallen and are working through on their own journey towards Christlikeness. Yes, we’re all broken people, aren’t we? Yeah. But I hope you’ve found at least a community of people that you are finding a little bit better success and more authenticity, I guess you could say. So, leading on from there, you actually took this intellectual journey pretty seriously, because you actually ended up pursuing formal education in it, didn’t you? Yes, yes. Do you want me to describe that? Yes. Why don’t you tell me about that? Yeah, so during my time of reading and listening to debates, I actually subscribed to a journal, and it was a Christian journal, and that journal was an advertisement for a university, and it was Biola University, which I’d never heard of, but when I looked at who I would be studying with to get a master’s in apologetics, I was like, “I’m reading these people already. This is who I’m reading,” and so I thought it sort of makes sense for me to do that. I don’t make decisions on an impulse almost ever. I over analyze everything. I mean everything. So yeah, I saw this advertisement, and it was right at the time when I was trying to decide to go back to get a master’s in music education, so I could be a college music professor, and here comes this master’s of arts in apologetics, and I’m like, “This doesn’t make any sense to me. I don’t know what I’m going to get out of this, other than it’s just an intellectual journey. I’m not going to get any monetary compensation. In fact, I’m just going to pour into this because I’m a music teacher,” but I just knew it was right, and I went after it, and that was first time I really found a community of Christian intellectuals who were all there just to be on an intellectual journey. Now, I don’t want to make it sound like it’s so heady. I don’t believe in the separation of the emotions from the intellect. I believe it’s all bound together. So part of growing in our relationship with God is knowing who he is, right? And properly worshiping him with our emotions and our mind. You know, the Matthew passage that we’re supposed to worship the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. And here I found this group of believers that are doing just that. And I was like, “Wow! They exist! These people really want to know God, and it’s not for any kind of perceived gain as far as a job or a monetary outcome. They’re just really investigating what they believe,” and that was just so life giving to me at that point in my life, just to see these people who just worshiped God with all they had, including the life of the mind. And so I got that formal education. I got the master’s degree, and during that time, there was an assignment to start a blog or you could have a private email conversation with somebody defending the resurrection, and I ended up starting the blog. I didn’t want to. I did the private conversation first for the grade. And then I thought, “Why won’t I be a public Christian? Why won’t I put this out in public?” And a lot of that has to do with my upbringing in the Northwest, where religion is more private, but it was that finally going, “Okay, I’m going to put my faith out in public that eventually leads to a lot of speaking, a lot of writing, and then eventually a professor position at Houston Baptist University. I guess you could say that you’ve been sufficiently convinced, that your doubts have been answered? Yeah. And people ask me that. They’re like, “You never have any doubt?” and I’m like, “Well, I don’t have the mind of God, so there’s always going to be room for mystery. There’s always going to be that room for, ‘I don’t know X,’ and so that’s where I’m at.” I don’t think I can get away from my belief in God. I don’t think I can get away from me seeing it as true and as justified, even warranted, but I do think that there’s still room for me to not know things and to develop and grow, and I think that will always be there because I’m human. Well, that’s an incredible and very humble attitude to take, I think. Your story is a really wonderful one, and I think it’s a very honest one, and I love it because it looks at the whole of who you are, your experience, your culture, your family, your questions, your existential questions, and somehow God met you in every way, intellectually, experientially, existentially. He is there providing substantive ways to meet all of those needs and answers for you. So, at the end of the day, you are a confident Christian. That’s what your website says. You promote confident Christianity. What would you say, as we’re ending our conversation, to someone who is a nonbeliever, someone who perhaps is apathetic or never really even thought about God or the question of God? Do you have any words for them? Yeah, that’s great. Because I’ve been on that side, so I would say to be more critical of your own views and be skeptical of how you arrived to your own commitments. That’s normally what we think of… Atheists are skeptical. However, religious people arrived at their commitments, but I would say be skeptical of how you’ve arrived at your own. So, for an example, like in being critical or skeptical about your beliefs, carry your beliefs out to their logical conclusion or their logical end. And there’s a book by Andy Bannister where he does this. He takes some of the New Atheist movement, their arguments, and I want to specifically say the New Atheist movement, not like the atheist philosophers of old. This is this new movement. It’s a popular movement that has arisen. He takes some of their arguments, and he takes them out to their logical end through fictitious scenarios that he creates. And it’s riotous what happens… It’s hilarious. I mean it’s just hilarious what happens. His book’s actually called The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist: Or: the Dreadful Consequences of Bad Arguments. And it’s having a bit of fun with failing to take an argument to its logical end. So, you know, when I was looking at human value, meaning, and purpose, well, Richard Dawkins, the atheist biologist at Oxford, he’s aptly described an atheist doctrine taking this view that there is no meaning, purpose, or value to the universe, that DNA is all their is, and we dance to its music. You’ve got to take that all the way out. So he says there’s no rhyme or reason to anything, right? There’s nothing informing you. Right, right. You know, he has the book The God Delusion, but if you think about it, it could be like The Human Value and Purpose Delusion or The Human Rights Delusion. Those things don’t exist in this universe of just everything’s ever evolving in this pattern, that you’re reducible down to your DNA. And so that’s one of the things I would like to see, is that you take your beliefs and you implement them, rather them in a buffet style of, “I pick and choose what I believe when it helps me or with whatever I like.” Because I think we can get kind of smug about our position once we finally commit to proclaiming a viewpoint and that actually can hurt our inquiry into learning about the world in which we live. So I want to make sure that we don’t become these kind of people who cut ourselves off from learning. That’s what I would say. Be skeptical about your own skepticism. Cynicism is not a virtue. It can keep you from learning rather than growing. And then maybe, as a final tag, maybe try to figure out why someone might actually believe that God’s existence is convincing. Why do they believe in God? Why do they find that convincing? And while you’re doing that, leave out your stereotyped answers and really consider that question. So that’s my to nonbelievers advice. Well, that’s great advice. It’s great advice for anyone. The unexamined life is not worth living, right? According to Socrates, and really examining your own presuppositions or what you think about your own views is a good thing to do. It’s a healthy, it’s a human thing to do. It’s a way to grow, so thank you for that. And the last question is what would you say to Christians to help them understand those who don’t see a need for God in their lives? Or who don’t believe? Yeah. Along the same lines, I would say one thing is to be critical of your beliefs as well and about how you arrived at those beliefs. Because, in my own experience, I’ve seen a lot of Christians who rely on authority, specifically of their pastor. And that’s not inherently wrong, but if you’ll dig through your scriptures, you’ll see that the Apostle Paul actually told us to test everything and hold onto the good. And he was addressing the internal teachings of the church in Thessalonica. So that’s an impetus we have from the Apostle Paul, and he actually praises the Bereans in Acts 17 because they did check the things out that Paul was teaching. So our Apostle Paul, this guy who writes more of the New Testament than any other author, is telling us we should check things out. He even praised people for checking out his own teaching. So I think we need to be more careful about being critical thinkers and really we shouldn’t take every question about what we believe as an affront to our faith or as a personal attack. And I think that’s been a problem in the church, so that’s one thing. I would say the other thing is we have to remember that, in our church history, there have been people who have used the church, its teachings, and their authority as a weapon for wealth, power, and control, and that has damaged our testimony about the love and grace of God and about the self sacrifice of God through the incarnation, death, and resurrection, so even though… Let’s say you and I, as Christian believers, we might know about the amazing sacrifices and love the church has shown across the world in humanizing various people groups through our offer of medical aid, education, food, water, shelter, fighting for basic human and civil rights, people tend to remember the bad things about us and the bad things that have happened more so than the good, so as Christians, we can’t forget this idea that people are remembering our sins. So be up front about it. And you said a great word earlier. We need to show authenticity. That we’re sinful people, we still have all the same problems as other people in the world, and we’re trying to conform our lives to something better. We’re trying to be Christlike. Yes. We are. We are. And the shame of it is that Christian hypocrisy turned you off even as a Christian, almost caused you to doubt and to lose your faith, and we’re all called to a life worthy of walking after Christ. Wow, what an incredible story you have, Mary Jo, and just the wisdom and the advice that you’re able to give just pours out of you because of your thoughtful journeying from atheism to Christianity. I appreciate so much you being on this program, and I hope that everyone listening will take a look at her website, maryjosharp.com.  

Many people think the stories in the bible are mere myth and legend.  As a historian, so did Frank.  In today’s episode he talks about moving from a skeptical view of Christianity to one which changed the whole of history as well as his own life. Episode Transcript JH: Podcast will listen to the story of a former atheist to change their mind and came to believe in God the culture today it’s hard to find places and spaces where you can listen to two sides of a story but for the guests who come on this show they have not only listened to both sides they have thought and lived as atheists and they have thought and lived as Christians so this puts them in a unique position to give us insight as to what motivated them to become atheist but also what changed their mind we can listen and learn from both sides of their story. Today we’ll be listening to Frank Federico who lives in Sydney Australia is a former atheist who came to Christian faith something he thought he would never do.   Welcome to the podcast Frank.  It’s great to have you on the show.   As we’re getting started, tell me a little bit about yourself. FF:  Thanks for having me on.  My name is Frank Federico.  I’m a high school history teacher in Sydney, Australia. JH:  Tell me about the religious or secular culture there in in Australia. FF:  It’s really a highly secular society.  It’s not common for people to openly talk about their faith if they have one.  There are a lot of people in Australia that do have a faith.   In the census that we had a couple of years ago, over half the population said that they were Christian of some sort and then there are other faiths as well.  We’re quite a multicultural nation.  But generally speaking, we’re not at a culture that is open in terms of religious belief.  People are tolerant and people are welcome to have different faiths but it’s not one where we overtly talk with one another about what we believe JH:  So backing up then as you were a child, what was your sensibility about religion and Christianity or God or any of that?   Were you raised in a family that had any  religious beliefs at all? FF:  I was raised a Catholic.  I went to Catholic schools all my schooling.  I also regularly went to church until the age of 14 or 15 when I didn’t want to go anymore.  So I had an understanding or limited understanding of Catholicism and certainly had experience in that.  Both my parents were strong believers and regular churchgoers. JH:  I know you went to church.  Did you have a belief in God?   Did you believe that God was real or true or was it  something that you went through the motions? FF:  I definitely believed it as a little kid.  I remember going to church sometimes on my own and praying.  I had some rosary beads that I would pray through.  I remember having my confirmation and believing that.   I was ten when I had my confirmation.  But it was around the age of 14 or 15 where I started to drift away from that and refused to go to church with my parents.  I was a bit too old for them to force me to go and if I did go and  the back of the church and listen to the radio through an earpiece rather than pay attention what was happening.  That may have embarrassed them a bit.  In the end ,they  gave in and  let me stay home while they went.  So, it was around that age 14, 15 when I really started to rebel against it and dislike it. 4:36. JH:  That rebellion – did it come from a place of doubt like you didn’t believe what they were saying or you  didn’t like it?  What was it that made you push back against what your parents were trying to show you or teach you? 4:55 FF:  It was a long time ago.  When  back upon it, it was a combination of frustration at school because we had religious education at school.  I was reaching an age where I was starting to question what I was hearing.  So, my experience of Christianity as a child and a young young teen was that I learned what we were meant to believe and I learned what we had to do but I was never taught why these things were true.  And, I remember particularly when I was in year 10 around the age of 14-15 where I had a particular religious education teacher that year.  He was very passionate and I found his passion interesting but also a bit grating.  And, I wanted to ask him questions about why he held the beliefs that he had.  I didn’t find the answers that I got from him particularly satisfactory and that became my experience also when I started asking my parents. 6:12 My parents didn’t have much of an education and they had a simple faith.  They couldn’t answer the kinds of questions I was asking.  But also  it was coinciding with a time in my life where I was becoming more and more influenced by my peers and most of them had no interest in religion.  We were interested in aspects of culture, music, TV, film that was very far removed from the kinds of things that Christianity wanted from us.   it was a combination of those things. 6:52 that lack of any  rationale for why I was doing these things as a Christian and also at the same time that culture that I was part of – that teen culture that I was part of that  had no space or time for God.  And that’s what began a fairly rapid moving away from any  belief.  So, by the time I finished high school which was the age of 17 I really had no belief at all.  And, I was quite hostile to it.  People wanted to raise it with me, I was very negative and I would argue back. 7:40 7:40 JH:  You didn’t  take God off the table.  You were really hostile towards those who did believe.   What do you think fueled this hostility? FF:   that I felt people who believed was stupid because I had never heard any  rational reason for believing.  To me it  seemed like some  superstition that people are born with and they don’t let go of.  When I was studying science – this is probably another factor actually in what shifted me – when I was studying science again around that 9-10 period of my education, I kept on seemingly hearing things that contradicted with the faith.  The perception that I had, that many had or still have, is that there is an incompatibility between what science has taught us about the world and religious belief.  So, I felt that Christianity and religion in general was belief without evidence.  It’s faith and faith has no evidence.  You believe in spite of evidence.  You believe despite the fact that there is evidence that contradicts what you believe.  And that for me was annoying . That made me angry because I was someone who is interested in reading.  I was always a lover of history for a very long time.  I was quite academic at school and this  religion and religious beliefs seemed very non-academic.  So, if people wanted to raise it with me I would ask hostile questions or I would make hostile statements because I  felt they had nothing to offer me at all of any value or any credibility. 9:37 At the same time there is that aspect of my life where I  don’t want to know. I’m now drawn into teen culture.  I finished school and I’m at University and I start living the typical  hedonistic type of lifestyle – pubs and clubs and all that  scene. So, there’s not much place for God in all of that I  didn’t want to know. 10:05 JH:  That raises a question for me.  When you were having these doubts and questions and you did ask your parents and they didn’t seem to have any answers.  Anyone else that you approached,  even if it was in a hostile way, did you ever encounter any Christians yes that seemed to have an answer or have some  a rationale and or not underlying their belief? Or was it  they would shrug and it  confirmed your superstition? 10:47 FF:  I asked my teachers at school in my senior years or particularly the man I mentioned earlier the one I had in year 10.  But at University there were quite a few Christians on campus and I did notice them, I noticed their groups.  And actually I remember a few times where I’d be I could see them from a distance   like they were doing that  evangelism to people as they’re walking by and I could see them.  And I was watching them and as I was getting closer to them and I was saying ‘Please don’t stop me.  Please don’t stop me. Please don’t stop me.’  And, they did.  I didn’t engage.  I  didn’t want to engage because I felt like there was nothing that they could possibly say that I want to hear.  I really had this feeling about Christians that it was almost cultish.  And I  didn’t want to know.   Obviously, eventually I did find someone who I engaged with and had an ability to answer questions but that was unforeseen.  That was a scenario I was forced into,. not one that I was seeking.  It was one that I couldn’t avoid. 12:06 JH:  Why don’t you tell me about that? Is this something that might have opened you up towards the possibility that there was something more?  Did you meet someone?  What happened? 12:12 FF:  This is the turning point.  So, this happened in 1997.  I was responsible for a youth group at school in year seven.  I was the coordinator and I was organizing a camp for these kids and I was trying to find teachers to come on the camp with me. I had a few people in mind and some friends that I wanted to ask and a couple of friends in the science faculty that I wanted to come but their head of Department refused me.  She said look they always go on camps.  You can’t have them.  It was getting to one or two days before the camp and I was getting very desperate.  I really needed another male to come on the camp and I said, “Look, can’t I even have one of them?”  She said “No, but you can have this guy called David” who had  started that year.   we were towards the end of the first term and I had never really met him but I’ve heard about him.  And, what I’ve heard about him was that he was a Christian and that was enough for me to not really want to have much to do with him, right?  Such was my negativity towards Christians so I  tried to avoid them. 13:32  So, I had never had a conversation with him at all but I was that desperate to find someone to come on the camp that I asked him because I had no alternative.  He was willing to come.  I thought perhaps I don’t have to have much to do with him on the camp.  I’ll be too busy anyway so it should be okay.  But the way things worked out was that there were three buses transporting these kids to this campsite and I end up boarding the last bus because I had to  sort out payments and that  thing.  So two buses had left there was only one bus left.  I get on that bus.  There’s only one seat left on the bus and the seat is next to David. This bus trip is going to be about an hour and I’m going to have to talk to this guy for an hour.  This was totally unwanted and unplanned. 14:29 After saying, “How are you finding school ?” because he was a beginning teacher.  It was his first year of teaching and I was in my 4th year of teaching and  getting through that. After 5 minutes, I was stuck for things to talk about and he was quite introverted.  So I  went at it.  I said, “I hear that you’re a Christian.  How does that work?  You’re a science teacher.” Something like that.  And, that was the beginning of the conversation. 15:00  For the first time in my experience, I met someone who was clearly intelligent and who could answer some of the questions I was asking and also who would say that he didn’t know everything.  And also, the things I didn’t like that Christianity he didn’t like about Christianity.  For example, I had issues with the institutional church, particularly at that point in time – the papacy.  I actually had  been to Rome and the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel.  I saw all this  opulence and all this wealth and I found such a disconnect between what I saw there and what I understood the church was meant to be doing.  And as a historian, I knew about the Crusades and the horrible violence down there in the name of God.  So I asked him about this.  “How can you ify this and ify that?”  He was saying that “I don’t ify it.”  He could see problems with those things.  I thought, okay. 16:18 And, I had never encountered a Protestant Christian before.  My idea of Protestantism was some  cult.  I really knew very little about it.  This was my first experience with someone who was Protestant.  I  want to say this point, by the way ,I’m not anti Catholic at all and I’ve got many good Catholic friends and I have a deep respect for them and I know well and truly there are good things in Catholicism so I hope this doesn’t come across as anti Catholicism.  It’s  my experience at that point in time – that’s where I was and that’s what I saw and perceived. 16:51  So meeting someone from a different branch of Christianity and someone who could actually answer some of my questions and recognize some of the problems with Christianity was very different.   that conversation and then other encounters –  we actually shared a room on this campsite as well as it turned out.  I didn’t want that either, but we spent a bit of time talking.  That was a very important point for me because it broke down some barriers.  I would never have spoken to him voluntarily. I would never created that conversation voluntarily. I was forced into it by circumstance.  And, I certainly didn’t become a Christian from that conversation but I was softened by it. 17:39 Then the next week something strange happened.  I was in this reading club, a history books reading club .  Every month you get this brochure of history books that you could buy.  On the cover page there was a book of the month that they wanted to really promote.  And, the book of the month  happened to be a book called Jesus, the Evidence.  There’s no way I would have even contemplated reading or buying that book if it wasn’t for that conversation with David.  I bought it actually thinking that this book will have no evidence that it won’t be much at all and then I’ll read this and I’ll be able to go back to David and be able to point out a few things that he’s got wrong, basically demonstrate that he was incorrect in his beliefs. 18:40 So, I got this book.  It arrived a few weeks later and it was about 300 pages long or something like that but I read it very quickly.  This was really an eye opener for me.  I was stunned by what I read in this book.  I did not expect to find the things that I found in there.   that really was the real catalyst for me to progress to pursue this further.   I can tell you a few things that I got out of that book. JH: Sure! What did you find in the book that was so surprising? 19:21 FF:   One of the things I thought about the New Testament was that the stories of Jesus were written hundreds of years later.  I had this idea that it was like a mythology that had developed.  I believed that there was probably some person called Jesus but the stories were like tales that developed over time and got warped and they lacked all  historical credibility.  Well, what this book to my surprise taught me was that that actually wasn’t the case, that the New Testament sources on the life of Jesus were written within the lifetime of people who actually knew him and were based on the testimony of eyewitnesses or possibly even written by eyewitnesses.  That really surprised me.  I did not know that.  And, the fact that there was so many of them also surprised me.  Why were there so many texts about this guy?  Knowing a bit about ancient history, there aren’t that many texts from the ancient world and if there are there they tend to be about the rich and powerful, the great emperors and the like.  But, to have so many written about this particular individual perplexed me. 20:45 But of course as an historian, the fact you’ve got multiple sources testifying about him and they’re early obviously made me think because, well, why is this here?  Why had they written this?  And, they are in agreement with each other to a large extent.  So, I had to think about that.  And then, the book had information that archaeological finds.  And, that confirmed a lot of the place names and the people that are mentioned in the New Testament.  Again, that surprised me because if it was written centuries later I wouldn’t have expected that.  But, archaeology has confirmed a lot of what we find in the New Testament. 21:30 And then the resurrection event itself and the fact that there were so many accounts about that.   I remember reading about Paul and what Paul said about the resurrection.  He said that if the resurrection had not happened then Christian is a waste of time, the faith is futile.  He basically staked everything on this event being true.  And, you read it.  You read this text and you can see they really believe what they’re saying.  Not only do they really believe it, they were actually willing to die for it.  I found that hard to understand because it wasn’t  that they died for a belief because people will do that.  People have always done that.  But, they’re actually dying for something they claim to have seen with their own eyes – that Jesus actually died on the cross, that he was buried, that he rose again, and that they had numerous experiences with him.  Then when given the opportunity to shut up about it because they were going to get persecuted, they chose persecution.  They chose suffering.  They chose death.  And, that needed explaining.  How do you account for these people testifying to this dead man this and making this particular claim? 22:45 So, I found all this quite troubling because I didn’t actually know how to answer it.  My instinct was not to believe it, but it was hard.  It was hard not to believe it.   And, I had lots of questions still, a lot of questions about it.  I wasn’t A Christian because of that, but it made a big difference reading this  material.    for the first time I understood that for Christians or at least for thinking Christians, their faith is not blind.  That’s what I understood faith to be,  blind belief without evidence, right?  But they’ve got this evidence and then their faith follows from that.  That was a shock to me and I had a huge number of questions that I wanted to pursue. 23:39 So I went back to David at school and asked him if he was willing to meet with me and answer some of those questions.  Then, we did that at school but we found the time wasn’t enough. So what ended up happening we went to a local Bowling Club after work one afternoon and that’s how it started.  I  bombarded him with questions and this happened for weeks – week after week after week for several months.  In the midst of that, I found a Bible that my dad had and I  started reading from Act of the Apostles because I thought I knew it was in the gospels.  I didn’t, but I thought I knew!  But, I started reading from Acts and I  got a red pen. I started scribbling questions or underlying things that made no sense or seem stupid.  That’s what happened.  That’s how it began. 25:14 JH:  So as an historian, you wanted to know what grounded historical reality.  It’s interesting to me that you went from a place of really not wanting to know to really wanting to know.  It took you on a pursuit of an investigation of your own to discover what was true.   Was David able to answer some of those questions that you were red marking and outlining and circling and writing down? 25:48 FF:  He could answer some.  He couldn’t answer all and that was okay because I’d rather that than pretending to know an answer when you don’t.  When he couldn’t find or didn’t know the answer, he would find out for me as best he could.  But, he’s an intelligent guy and he was able to answer a lot of questions that I had.  Obviously, it really helped me.  But also the thing about David was he was the first knowledgeable, well-thought Christian that I’d met or at least I’ve had an opportunity to talk to at length with.  And, as I got to know him also  I could see in him something different that I had not really seen in in other people.  There was something about his character that was a bit different to what I knew.  He is quite a humble person and he’s obviously very patient to put up with my questions.  And a lot of my questions were coming from a point of hostility was he was able to listen to that and handle that graciously. 27:06 I was very fortunate, blessed to have had this interaction with someone of his persona because if I’d met with someone who was perhaps more dogmatic or a bit aggressive or not so well thought through,  quoting Bible at me for example, I don’t think that would have worked.  that would have had a negative impact.  So, the fact that he was a science teacher as well made a big difference to me because I didn’t understand how they could be reconciled but he clearly was able to reconcile them.  Later on I met his fiance and wife who’s also a science teacher.  A couple years later another Christian science teacher joined the science faculty at school so it became very obvious to me that there is no incompatibility between a scientist or science and Christianity.  28:09 It was a combination of factors in my case of meeting the right  person that suited the person that I was but also I’m finding out for the first time the historical foundation for Christianity and that’s been important to me ever since. 28:35 JH:  Obviously you are an historian and seeking after foundational truths about whether or not something actually really happened.  But as you said, the resurrection – if that’s an historical event – if that didn’t actually happen, then the Christian faith is in vain.   So, I can see why the pursuit of these issues is not only important but actually essential in terms of belief or nonbelief in Christianity.  You said that you started reading the Bible.  What was your view of the Bible before you started reading it? 29:19 FF:  I didn’t trust it.  As I mentioned earlier, I felt that it was unreliable in the sense that whatever was written there would have been written long after the events that it purported to describe.  I thought it was a lot of mythology I didn’t know a lot about the Old Testament but I thought it was all mythology.  And with the New Testament I didn’t think it was all the same type, but it was a  mythology or at least a serious distortion of what happened.  I felt that the people back in the ancient world really wouldn’t have known what they were talking about, that they were more gullible, that they were more likely to believe anything.  I didn’t treat it seriously at all.  I found the ethics and morality of Christianity to be inhibiting.  I had this view at the time that whatever I felt to be right was right.  Why should I allow anything to constrain me?  That’s how I lived so I felt like it would be a burden to follow this religion and then stupid to follow this religion given its poor basis.   The text of the Bible itself I had no regard for. 30:49 I actually remember when I was in high school, I literally did tear pages out of the Bible that we had in class when the teacher wasn’t looking and I’d throw it around the room.  I remember being really amused when the teacher would tell someone to ‘pick up that rubbish and put it in the bin.’  That’s how I was.  That summed up what I thought this text was.   Not good.  I was very negative about it. 31:22 JH:  When you started reading the bible for the first time, what were your impressions of it? It seems to me that your story seems to be one of perpetual surprise – an expectation of some sort that when you entered into it seemed to be almost disappointed when you found something so totally different than what you were thinking it would be. 31:45 FF:  Initially I was finding what I was expecting because I started with Acts and Acts starts with the ascension of Jesus.  Supernatural things were happening pretty quickly in in in the book of Acts and I was struggling with that.  And there’s the story of Ananias and Sapphira in chapter 5 which I’m not sure how familiar with that but that’s an old one.  It  seems too far-fetched.  But at the same time as I was reading Acts, it was written in a way that clearly was not of a mythological genre.  It clearly was written as a kind of history.  It was narrating events.  It didn’t feel like the kind of mythology that I was aware of from my own teaching and study that you would get from the Greco Roman world.  It had a different feel about it.  And being an historian I quite enjoyed Acts because it was written in a way I quite enjoyed reading it.  I actually found it quite stimulating.  At the same time I’m looking to pick it apart. 33:24  But, at some point David  directed me to look at the gospels.   that’s really when this spiritual transformation began.  As I came to read more directly about Jesus and what he did and what he said.  This process between the first meeting at the Bowling Club and becoming a Christian was about four months of these meetings.  I felt that gradually I was changing or becoming more accepting of what I was reading and also coming to like what I was reading.   34:07  When I came to understand what the gospel actually was, that is that we are saved by grace, that is not through anything that we do, that salvation and forgiveness is free, that I don’t have to earn God’s favor, that God already favors me – I was astonished by that!  I had no understanding of that as a Christian as a child.  That was not at all part of my understanding.  My understanding as a child was that when you do the wrong thing, you’ve got to go to the priest.  You’ve got to make a confession then you’ve got to say certain prayers as penance and you’re going back and forth always trying to make up for the wrongdoings that you’ve done.  That’s an endless process – one that you can’t win.   But, reading and understanding actually what the bible teaches about forgiveness and God’s love –  that was really beautiful and actually liberating.  I never knew Christianity was like that.   I thought Christianity was  more rules.  But, Christianity is actually liberating.  It liberates you from that pressure.  You don’t have to try and work for God’s favor.  You have it already.  That really moved me. 35:54 When I was able to articulate that to David, I know it moved him because it finally clicked.  That’s what this is about!  And given that I’d reached the point where I thought historically this has got a lot going for it, and given that the message of it is actually really beautiful, it happened!  It happened!  I can’t pinpoint the moment or day, but without me realizing it, I actually become a Christian.  I really believe this.  And it’s so strange because I never went looking for this.  I never wanted it. I never imagined this could ever happen.  And, in many ways this was going to cost me.   I recognized and believed this was true.  So, if it’s true, if I were to walk away from this then I would be deliberately living a lie and that would not be good.  I couldn’t do that.  So, I was convicted and that was the turning point in my life.  And, 20 years later I’m still meeting with David every week.  He is my best friend!  I never mentioned that one! 37:13 JH: Who would have ever thought that guy you avoided could be your closest friend?  That’s pretty amazing!  Tell me how your life has been since that major turning point over the last 20 (no 23) years?  How has your life changed from atheism to Christianity, being a Christian? 37:36 FF:  A lot changed.  Initially it was actually quite difficult because most of my friends obviously were not Christian and I was so different in my interests and even how I was behaving that it was quite uncomfortable for all of us.   The kinds of activities that we used to do I, I  couldn’t do them anymore.  I used to like gambling.  I used to like clubbing.I used to like drinking to excess.  I would take drugs. I was sexually active. All of that didn’t fit with the  person that I now wanted to be as a Christian.  It was very uncomfortable for me to continue to go to those places.  I continued to hang out with my friends and some of these friends I’ve had for over 20 years.  It was very difficult.  One particular friend who I’ve known since  kindergarten absolutely savaged me for this. He took shreds off me on the phone and basically asked me the kinds of things that I would have asked as an angry atheist and I was not in a position back then really about to answer those questions.  So, that was really it was very hard. 39:00 At the same time, I was withdrawing because I wanted to know more about God and I wanted to spend more time with Christian people.   It was such a massive turning point.  It was quite dramatic in a sense.  The friends that I had for so long, we drifted apart so quickly and permanently.  The only friend I had from my school days was the one friend who was a committed Christian and we still are friends which is good.  But, that was hard.  So, in terms of good friends, I had only David for that point in time.  But then I joined the church and I met some really lovely people in that church and got to meet more Christians over time. One thing that has changed is what I view as being important.  My priorities in life shifted.  I was overwhelmed with enthusiasm for wanting to know as much as I could about Christianity.  I’m one of those people who have always got questions and want to always keep asking.   The first minister at the church where I went was getting a little bit overwhelmed with all my questions but he did a really good thing.  He put me onto this theology course for laypeople that was being offered by Moore Theological College in Sydney.  It was like a correspondence course.  It wasn’t like a high academic level course, but it was good for people  wanting to know more who were in the pews at church.  So, I took that on and I absolutely loved it.  It was 21 subjects.  I spent 11 years doing it.  David did it with me as well so I was doing that while we were working.  I loved it.  I couldn’t get enough. I  wanted to know more and more and more. 41:22 FF:  At the same time, I would question things.  I didn’t accept everything that I was told. It’s not as if I stop the skepticism. I had reached the point where I did believe the history and the evidence is strong for this being true, but it didn’t mean that I accepted everything that I was told.  I wanted to learn answers to all the questions that I had and I kept on pursuing them.  Then when I finished those subjects, I wanted to keep going, so then I actually took a year off work and pursued theological study at a higher academic level and I’ve done that a couple of times.  I’ve taken a couple of years off of work to do that. 42:08 For me, knowing what’s true – this stuff didn’t bother me before.  I wanted to live a good comfortable life and have fun and be happy.  For me now what’s most important is knowing what is true and then trying as far as much as I can to live by that.  That’s a real shift in my mentality and in the way I think.  The way I view things like the purpose of life – What am I here for?  Where is it all going?  That completely shifted.  For example, thinking about death a lot more.  I never used to think about that very much but then I started to think about that more as a Christian but in a positive way because the resurrection hope is so amazing – there is more to our existence than what we have in this life and that when we die there’s going to be a new creation.  We’re going to have new bodies and we’re going to have eternity.  Knowing there is that end goal changes the way one thinks about ‘What are we doing here?’ 43:33 I used to be very materialistic.  I’m less so.  Not that I’m not entirely but I’m less materialistic.  I’m much more interested in knowing truth.  I’m seeking wisdom.  I’m seeking knowledge. I’m seeking stuff that has permanence and eternal value rather than transitory things. When my father passed away in 2016, having a faith made such a huge difference to the way I experienced that as it did for my dad because my dad was a strong believer right at the end. Knowing that my father was a believer in Jesus meant that I knew I would seem again. I knew that he was in a good place.  Sometimes at funerals people will say things like ‘I know he’s looking down on me’ or ‘I know I’ll see him again’ but how do you know that?  How can you be sure of that?  Well, as a Christian I can say that and mean it. Jesus raised from the dead and he showed us that that’s what’s awaiting all of us.  Although that was a very painful experience, having that knowledge really impacted the way I viewed my father’s passing and the way I still view it.  It’s a good thing. 45:14 My character changed. I was a racist. I really was.  I was pro-abortion. I remember one of my friends at school I’ve got a girl pregnant and very much encouraged him to push to get her to have an abortion.  I was very hedonistic.  I wanted pleasure of any kind no matter what. That’s all changed.  That’s all changed because as a Christian I now understand what human beings are because God made us with a purpose and he gave us great dignity.  The Bible says we’re made in his image.  There’s something special about us.  Not only that, God lowered himself to become one of us and then died for us.  We’re precious.  We’re precious from the womb to the tomb.  And everyone is precious.  Every human being is precious. Every life is important and I never used to think that way. I never used to think that way.  I know you don’t have to be a Christian to think that way, but it was my conversion to Christianity that led me to think that way.  So, there were really big shifts in my character and in the way I was thinking about the world and looked at the purpose of life. 47:42 JH: It seems that, listening to you, I’m impressed with how everything in your world is changed –  your perspective about who God is, who you are, your relationship to others, your relationship to how you think about things in the world, how you experience life.  It seems like a change, a turning over in about every area of your life.  That’s amazing!  As we’re as we’re wrapping up our time, Frank, what would you like to say to those listening to the podcast who are a bit sceptical about God and religion and Christianity as you once were 48:30 48:30 FF:  I’d encourage people to explore the evidence for themselves and to ask questions.  I know in my own case I had a lot of presuppositions about Christianity that proved to be well and truly false.  I’m wondering whether other people would be the same.   Ask yourself whether it is possible that what you think about Christianity might be flawed or actually skewed by something that you’ve heard before, some experience that you’ve had. I encouraged people to be open and to examine themselves and to seek answers to questions they might have. 49:24  I also encourage people to actually question what they actually believe themselves.  I don’t think I did that very much when I was an atheist.  It became my default position without thought.  But now I’ve thought about what I probably needed to think about much more when I was an atheist – like if I was an atheist then I need to answer questions like How is it possible that life comes from nonliving matter and energy? How is it possible that the universe came into existence out of nothing? How is it possible that consciousness can emerge out of matter and energy? Why is it that human beings actually have significance if the universe is without purpose or without a creator? How can we trust our reason and our minds if it’s product of biochemistry? How can we say that people have human rights when humans aren’t actually that special or have got no eternal value? All these kinds of things I never thought about. 50:35  What about suffering and evil? What does atheism offer in the face of suffering and evil? Nothing.  There is no answer.  There is no hope. Whereas, in Christianity God gave us his Son as the answer to suffering and evil. 51:06 I would encourage people to think through what you believe right now.  Does your worldview answer these big questions satisfactorily?  If not, consider Christianity.  One of the things I was amazed with on my journey was how many other people far brighter than me, far smarter than me who became Christians.  So many academics and scholars who are Christians in all kinds of fields.  These are thinking people.  Why have they come to these beliefs?  I really encourage people to look into that. 51:40  One other thing I would say is that when you do meet Christians, don’t judge them.  You’re not going to find any Christian who’s perfect.  No Christian is perfect.  I know I used to hold Christians up to higher standards and expect more of them and then  accuse them of hypocrisy when they didn’t live up to them.  But, please don’t judge Christianity by the behavior of Christians.   Christianity is either objectively true or it’s false regardless of what people do.  If you do encounter Christians who annoy you or who you don’t think are behaving particularly Christianly, bypass them and get to the core.  Look at the sources and see what you find there. 52:37 JH: Look to Jesus, right? and see what you find in him.  He defines himself as the truth.  So, if you’re looking for truth, look to him.   Frank, that’s stellar advice to those who may be skeptical or curious about Christianity.  What would you say on the flip side to Christians about perhaps the way that they’re projecting themselves to those who don’t believe or how would you encourage Christians you are quite the learner how would you encourage Christians to go deeper in their faith perhaps and their understanding of their own worldview? 53:26 FF: It’s really important that Christians do spend time not just learning what to believe but why they can believe it.  In I Peter 3:15 it tells us to always be ready to give an answer to those who ask us.  In my experience as a young boy and young teenager, I did not find those kinds of Christians and that put me right off because I didn’t think they actually were answers.  You never know who God might bring into your life and they might come up to you asking all kinds of questions and you need to be ready to be able to answer some of those questions or at least know where to lead them to get answers to their questions.  Today, there are so many resources available.  There are so many Christian thinkers and scholars, philosophers, apologists.  The resources online are amazing.  YouTube is a great resource. I still get got a great thrill out of watching Christians debate non-Christians and hearing both sides of an argument. I love hearing what atheists is have to say and how they challenge Christian belief.  And, I love hearing that there are answers in response to those challenges.  So, I do encourage Christians to be learners and never stop because you’ll never ever, ever learn at all.  That’s something to do right to the end. 55:04  I would also encourage Christians to listen to people. I was guilty of this myself actually as a new Christian when I was talking to people that I was so enthusiastic about sharing everything I knew that I didn’t actually stop to listen to the kinds of questions were actually being asked or listen to the stories that people had.  You can’t treat every person exactly the same way. Their particular issues, their particular experiences will need different answers or different approaches so be flexible in the way you are interact with people. 55:43 One thing that I encourage Christians to do is to actually engage in dialogue in the sense that you don’t have to be the only one to actually answer questions.   Ask questions about the person’s beliefs.  What do they think about certain things, about how the world came to be how we can know whether something is right or wrong.  Perhaps there are people out there who haven’t really thought through those issues very much and once they’re made to they might find that their ideas aren’t particularly well founded.  You don’t always have to be the one answering the questions.  You can ask and perhaps help people to think through what they believe and then be more open to thinking about Christianity after that. 56:31.  In my case it this wasn’t good and I assume for other people it might be the same, but I wouldn’t recommend  quoting scripture at people.  In my case that would never have worked because if you don’t actually believe the scriptures are reliable in the first place, quoting scriptures is not going to make any difference whatsoever.   Try and work on showing why the scriptures can be trusted first before sharing the scriptures.  That may not be applied to every person but there might be for some people . 57:28  Also don’t pretend to know answers when you don’t.  I’ve actually noticed on some  forums online watching how Christians interact with atheists and I cringe at some of the answers that I see there.  They’re not thought out.  They are just cliched.  They are very vulnerable to attack and it’s a little bit awkward and embarrassing to see that.  Sometimes it’s  better to say,  ‘Look, I actually don’t know the answer that question at the moment but I’ll find out for you.’  Sometimes it’s actually probably better to do a lot of reading first before you engage in apologetics if that’s what you’re going to do so.  Just be aware of that. 58:19  The final thing –  as far as possible, it’s important to be authentic as a Christian and that’s not easy because we’re all sinners but I know it can make a difference if people see that you’re actually living out what you say you believe.  I was very fortunate to meet someone who was incredibly gracious, generous with his time and very humble. I hadn’t really met too many people like that.  It made a difference .  It made be more willing to listen.  The Peter 315 quote it also says be ready to have an answer for everyone who asks you but to do so with gentleness and respect and I think that’s important too. 59:00 JH:  You have certainly given us a lot to think about Frank.  So much wisdom there not only from your knowledge but also your life experience.  One of the things of course that I love that you said is that we need to stop to listen and I appreciate so much your coming on today that we could really listen to both sides of your story.  There’s so much that you said, so much that we can learn from listening to you.  and again thank you so much for coming on for telling your story.  It’s going to be insightful for those who are curious you’re seeking, for those of us who have been believers for quite a while.  We’re all inspired and encouraged by your story so thank you so much for being on. FF:  yes  I really enjoyed it thank you

We hold beliefs for many different reasons.  In today’s episode Peter talks highlights the combination of motivations he had for disbelief as well as belief in God. Episode Transcript Hello and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Each podcast, we listen to the story of a former atheist who changed their mind and came to believe in God. There are lots of reasons why we believe what we do. We don’t hold our beliefs in a vacuum. We’re not purely rational beings. Our beliefs are wrapped up in a story. A story of how we got here and why we believe the way we do. Sometimes we believe things because we think it’s the rational intellectual thing to do. Sometimes we believe things because it’s what our friends and family and culture believe. And other times we’ve decided on what we believe because of what we’ve experienced or perhaps what we feel. Still other times, we believe things just because we want them to be true. Most of the time, it’s a combination of a lot of different things, a lot of different motivations, memories, experiences, and desires, and you have to look in a lot of different directions to tease them all out, and oftentimes, you hear them when you hear someone’s story, when you hear them tell their story. Today, we’ll be talking with Peter Byrom, he’s a former atheist who came to Christian faith a few years ago. Welcome to the podcast, Peter. It’s great to have you on the show. As we’re getting started, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Certainly, yes. And thank you. It’s really great to be on the show with you. So tell you about myself, where to begin with that? Well, I think, given what we’re going to be talking about today, it might be worth starting from university years, really. I graduated from the University of Kent, and that’s in Canterbury in England, United Kingdom, doing drama and theatre, of all things, and so that was things like sound design, performing classical texts, Shakespearean stuff, and multimedia theatre. And then, after that, after a fairly windy journey that I’m sure we’ll get to talking about, then went on to do things like video editing, graphic design, editing, including for a number of Christian ministries, and now I work for SPCK and IVP, who are Christian publishers, doing digital production and workflow and those sort of things, and I live with my wife in our children in the rural southeast of England. So that’s a quick summary of where I’ve come from over the last decade or so, let’s say. So, Peter, in setting the context for your story, I always like to understand about the place where you grew up and the people who surrounded you. Were there any religious references in your world? Well, I was raised in a Christian home, and I have and did have Christian parents, and so, yes, you could say that I started with those influences, and even around teenage years, I thought that I had a religious conversion experience and would’ve called myself a Christian then. I even went to the point of getting confirmed in the Church of England, I think, round about the time I was probably about 17 years old. So started with Christian influences, but they didn’t really last beyond leaving home. That was the key turning point there. It’s one thing to grow up with them, but when you leave the home and start doing your own thing, that’s when the real test begins of whether you really own those beliefs or not. So what happened when you left home? What was it that made you start to doubt your own Christian upbringing, your Christian faith and belief? I think, at the time, there was just… I think it was quite gradual. I think there was a sense of gradually thinking it didn’t make sense or that it didn’t fit my particular experiences or that it wasn’t particularly relevant. It just seemed to gradually be falling away into the background, and I think also the people I was associating with and the kind of experiences I wanted to have at the time had an effect. I mean, let’s be honest, if you’ve been brought up under your parents’ authority and then leave that authority, the idea of having a continuing authority over your life isn’t particularly attractive a lot of the time, and I think that’s how I saw it, which was, “This is my chance to do my own thing.” I think, more specifically, during my gap year and at university, the friends and the people that I mixed with, I think I very much became part of a culture that liked to think of itself as being quite expressive and sophisticated, because remember this is the arts and the drama, acting crowd, you know, and students in general, anyway, right? And it’s easy to get into conversations, and it’s easy to join in with people that might dismiss religious belief. I just have memories of being in the pub, having drinks with student friends of mine, and people casually attacking the Pope and saying, “Oh, he’s an idiot. He’s against condom distribution in Africa, and they’re all going to die of AIDS because of what he’s done.” All that kind of stuff. And then… I mean, there are all sorts of… I think there were a lot of cultural influences as well. Even just things like hanging out with people, listening to the late comedian Bill Hicks, who was hilarious but scathing as well and very, very critical of religion and institutions. And so, one way or another, I think just the general culture that I was mixing with, I came to see religious belief as something that was for close-minded people, simplistic people who were afraid of gray areas, of ambiguity, of exploring what it is to be human, and I saw the more secular, artistic world as being a better fit for that kind of stuff. So it just, I think it just gradually fell away into irrelevance in my own experience and my own thinking. So dismissing God seemed to be the attractive thing to do, the thing that just fit well with your world at university. Yeah. Yeah. It did. I think it did. And I think what then really started pushing it was then I was explicitly recommended, at the time, Richard Dawkins’ latest book. You know, the new book. You’ve got to cast your mind back to, I think we’re talking 2006 here. That’s when The God Delusion came out, and at least one friend of mine, he’d started as a Christian, and then he lost his faith, and he was recommending this book to me, saying, “You’ve got to read this. It’s brilliant! It’s amazing!” And this was actually the great new atheist, Dawkins, taking on religious belief and not just being content with saying, “Oh, well, you believe what you want, and I’ll believe what I want.” He actually went so far as to say, “No, this is wrong. It’s irrational. It’s harmful, and you should not believe it.” And that just really got me curious as well, and so then I just started reading and looking into the New Atheists, Dawkins, Hitchens, and those people. So I think it was partly the culture I was mixing with, but then eventually it became explicitly being recommended the New Atheists’ books. So then it really became a combination of a lot of things. Just Christianity wasn’t attractive. It wasn’t relevant. You’re telling me, it wasn’t plausible. That it was really for the simpleminded person. Was it hard at all for you… I know this seems like a strange question, but was it hard, after being brought up as a Christian, believing in God, was it hard to let that go? I know sometimes you can just untick the God box and just live your life, but was there any kind of tension with that? It’s funny, really. I think, in terms of living the way that I was living and what I would say and do, it was easy to let go of it. Because I was doing a lot of things that you certainly wouldn’t associate with someone who held to Christian values and beliefs. It was very easy for me to just be behaving in all sorts of different ways. I think the interesting thing about being confronted with atheist books like Dawkins and Hitchens was that that’s when you have to be more conscious and more aware explicitly of the fact that you are challenging and denying these beliefs, and I think some bits of beliefs were harder to let go of than others. I mean, I wanted to really challenge the beliefs that I’d been brought up with, and I think a lot of the arguments that the New Atheists were giving, a lot of the evolutionary arguments, why Darwinism was meant to disprove God, and even just listing the atrocities of religious people and just the various arguments that they were making, I think they quite naturally started to replace whatever Christian beliefs that I’d started with. So I think it was… The best way I can describe it is that it was a very conscious process. I had to be very deliberate in denying the belief that I’d been brought up with. I had to remind myself consciously, “Remember, you are denying this.” “You are denying that there is a God,” or, “You are throwing this away.” And I wanted to. I definitely wanted to. I lost the attraction to it, but I was aware that it took a certain degree of effort in doing so, if that made sense. Yes, it would seem… Especially if you’re looking at things conscientiously, that there would be a sense of a subtle tension, at least in letting go of a long-held belief, but I guess, because like you said, you’re surrounded by people who are very like minded and that gave you permission to do what you wanted to do, so at this time where you were letting go of God and Christianity, what did you think Christianity was then, if it wasn’t real or true? I think at the time I probably would have characterized it quite harshly, and I probably would have put it as something for people who were afraid of the complexities of life and who were afraid of dying, who didn’t understand the evolutionary paradigm, who didn’t have philosophical sophistication. I think I probably just lumped it in with a general nature or an assumption about what it is to be a religious person, and it was very much about the people or the type of person that you needed to be. So I think it was very much just to do with, “Look, this is one of a number of different beliefs that people come up with, but ultimately it doesn’t hold water. There are religious people who do all sorts of stupid things, who contradict each other. If God existed, then they would be behaving a lot more coherently, sophisticatedly. Yeah, I think that there was a kind of snobbishness, I think. It was, “This is something for people who can’t handle the gray areas of life.” So Christians were just the type of person you did not want to be. So it makes me very curious about what it is that changed your mind to open the door to even consider being that kind of person again. What started you on that road? Yeah. Well, that’s the strange thing, because, you know, a moment ago I said that it was the likes of the new atheism and Dawkins and those people that really got me denying Christianity more and sort of fighting against it more and sort of reaffirming my thinking about wanting to get out of it. You could also say that it was actually Dawkins and those New Atheists, ironically, that actually started me on the route to becoming a Christian as well, which I’m sure they wouldn’t like that, but I think that is partly what happened. Because it was all about the debate being stirred up, about the questions being asked. I mean, for example, one of the big light bulb moments that I had when I was reading The God Delusion, for example, was, in that book, Dawkins defines faith as being belief without evidence or belief in spite of evidence, and he was saying, “Look, you should only believe things that have evidence for them.” And the very first time I read that, I completely bought that definition that he gave. Now, of course, I think that’s a totally false definition. It’s a caricature. But at the time, I bought that, and I sort of latched onto that principle and thought, “Yes, that makes sense. Of course. Why would I ever believe or accept anything for which I cannot say myself, ‘I have investigated this. I can point to a body of evidence.'” And it was one of those moments of making myself conscious of a process that seems to be obvious. It seems obvious that I ought to investigate things and find evidence for them, so that became what seemed to be the first ticket, if you like, to sort of getting rid of Christianity. Because I thought, at the time, “Well, if I just investigate this stuff, there will be no evidence. There will be nothing. It’ll all fall apart.” So in a way, I started by taking Dawkins’ recommendation, “Look for evidence,” and that led me onto the path of actually… I would watch debates on YouTube, I read various books, and I would talk to different people. Initially, they were Christians and religious people who were doing a really terrible job of debating against people like Dawkins and Hitchens, Sam Harris, the New Atheists. Really embarrassing, and I would be cheering for the New Atheists, you know? Defending science and reason against these religious bigots and idiots and that kind of stuff. And then gradually, though, that led me on to discover Christian apologetics, so that’s people like John Lennox, William Lane Craig, those sort of people, who had a much more robust set of arguments and a way of interacting on this issue. So it was really about discovering the debate. The other side of this, I should say briefly as well, is that, in terms of the people I was surrounded with, I mentioned already there was one friend who began as a Christian and then became an atheist and recommended that I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. At round about the same time, another of my best friends at university, who had not come from a religious background of any kind—I think he basically was an atheist to begin with—he then had a big conversion experience and became a Christian. And I was living with these two people. That was massively inconvenient. It would’ve been so much more convenient to just not have to be confronted with the reality of people becoming Christians and God working in their lives and to have that other side of the debate fleshed out in front of my face, it made me need to confront the issue. And I wasn’t just confronting it as a hobby or academically, reading books and watching debates, I was living with two people that were living this stuff out. So again it’s what you read and what you listen to, but it’s also who you’re with. Right. Did you have some lively debates with them? Did you all participate together in discussing these big issues? Oh, yeah. You bet. We absolutely did! Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is university, where there’s scarcely any boundaries on alcohol consumption or when the sensible time is to go to bed or whatever. You know. And there would be all sorts of things. And I would take different sides a lot of the time. I would begin being really, really hostile towards the Christian stuff, saying, “How can you believe this? Are you anti-gay?” All that kind of stuff. But then, things would emerge that were challenges for the atheist point of view as well, questions about the grounding of moral truths, for example, and can you strip away all of the history of the influences of Christianity on moral thought in Western culture and come up with your own foundation? All sorts of debates would go back and forth. Scientific debates, that kind of stuff. Yeah. We would lay into some really good debates and challenges among each other. So during these times of debates, would you say that you were open to another perspective? Or were you just adamant about atheism and weren’t really listening to the other challenges? That’s a really good question. I was really keen to hang in there and throw away the Christianity that I’d been brought up with, and at the time, I think there were lots and lots of holes in the Christian belief that didn’t make sense to me. There were things about the atheist view that seemed to make it a more comfortable default position. I think the turning point, for me, was… There’s a part of me that is quite attracted to defending the underdog or the victimized, and I think the way that religious people had been characterized, including by people like the New Atheists, was that they were the bigots, they were the crazy right wingers who wanted to destroy people’s liberties and that kind of stuff and enslave people under a theocracy and dismiss all the efforts of science and that kind of stuff. But I think the real change started happening was when I discovered the Christian apologetics. And I mean the really good ones, the ones that were philosophically, academically trained, and the one that I think really did stand out the most was William Lane Craig of Reasonable Faith. His debates were all over YouTube. There were all sorts of videos of him debating atheists and really putting up a very, very strong set of arguments, and then I would go to his website. I would read more of his materials, start listening to his podcasting, and gradually, I got the sense that, okay, if you really want evidence, and you’re meant to use reason and logic, it looks like he’s using it. He’s breaking down his arguments very clearly. He’s spelling out the different premises, you know premise one, premise two, conclusion, that sort of stuff. There was a way of him making his arguments vulnerable to criticism, in the sense that he articulated the arguments in such a clearly precise, logical fashion that it would be easier to attack and refute them than if it was just dressed up in rhetoric. So it was discovering the strength of the Christian academic apologetics, and then I started to perceive things differently, I think. It was when… One of the things there was Dawkins was persistently refusing to debate William Lane Craig. He debated all sorts of other religious people, but he was persistently running away from this. People were inviting him to do it, and he kept just making all sorts of excuses that were rather insulting, and I thought, “This doesn’t quite make sense, because I’ve started living my life on the principle of challenging ideas and looking for evidence, and yet it seems as though William Lane Craig is very well matched to have a really good discussion with Dawkins,” and yet Dawkins was just running away from it. And there is actually… The funny thing here is, around 2009, actually, I attended a debate that Dawkins was speaking at. It was called, “Is Atheism the New Fundamentalism?” And in that debate, Richard Harries, Lord Harries, had stood up and said that one of the characteristics of fundamentalism is that it never seeks out and attacks the strongest arguments of the opposition. It always tries to focus on the weakest ones, on the straw men, and that really made me think, “Okay, this is my opportunity, and it would be a relevant question to ask in this debate,” and so in the Q&A, when I got the microphone, I just asked Dawkins to his face, “Look, lots of people have been inviting you to debate William Lane Craig. You’ve repeatedly refused to do this. Why is this is not an example of what Lord Harries was just saying about the New Atheism or fundamentalists avoiding the strongest possible arguments for the opposition?” Now somebody took that clip, and they put it on YouTube, and I think it’s had about nearly 300,000 views to this day. It became a viral clip of Dawkins basically just, on video, dismissing William Lane Craig, saying he’s not worthy of his time, and the line that, of course, really went round the blogosphere was him just saying, “I’m busy!” “I’m too busy to debate this person,” you know, and just dismissing him. And that, I think, was the turning point. There was a sense of disappointment with Dawkins that didn’t fit the regard that I’d held him in until that point. Something started to look like New Atheism was intellectually weaker than the kind of stuff that people like William Lane Craig were offering. That was probably quite a revelation to you, to find that, going into this search for evidence, you presumed that the substance and the strength was within the naturalistic worldview, but that’s not what you found. The more you searched, the more you found strength in the Christian worldview and weakness in the atheistic worldview. I bet that was disappointing, to find Dawkins in that kind of a sensed retreat of sorts to the challenge of debate from William Lane Craig. It was. Yeah. I mean, you’ve got to be careful at this point. Obviously, Dawkins refusing to debate doesn’t mean that atheism is false, but it, nonetheless, was one of those things that shook me up, into asking, “Well, why would he refuse? I’d better look at this more closely,” and it spurred me on to look at it more closely. And when I saw the critiques that William Lane Craig was making of The God Delusion, and indeed when I saw him debate Christopher Hitchens. I mean Christopher Hitchens was my favorite New Atheist of all of them. He was just an incredible character. But when pitted against somebody with really good philosophical training, who really knew the arguments, he turned out to be very weak when they had their debate at Biola University. That was also 2009, I think. And so it opened up all those questions about, look, okay, what do you do with the fact that the universe had an absolute beginning? Does that logically deduce that it has to have a cause which is transcendent and would actually have all the characteristics that we describe as God? What do you do with the fine tuning of the universe? What do you do with the apprehension of moral truths, or at least it seems as if there are moral truths. How do you account for those? And then, when you look at the historical evidence of the resurrection, how do you explain it? All of those arguments, it was becoming very uncomfortable, and I should say, as well, there were other arguments about the nature of what it means to even be able to have rational thought in a universe that’s purely governed by mechanical physical processes as well. All of those things. It was becoming very uncomfortable, how the more that those kind of arguments were investigated and those questions were probed, the weaker the atheistic worldview appeared to be under that scrutiny. I’d hoped that it would come out head and shoulders above Christianity. Right. And I know that it would be somewhat disappointing or disheartening in some way. How long was this process of looking and searching and considering? If we say that it kicked off at the time of reading The God Delusion and consciously looking into this issue, which I guess that had to be around 2007, 2008. The whole process, I think, went on until round about 2011. So yeah, we’re talking, what? Must be somewhere in the region of around three to four years. I think gradually… I think what I need to say as well is that… I mean, this stuff, I’ve been characterizing it quite a lot as sort of intellectual argumentation and that kind of stuff, and that is an important part. It’s very big and it’s crucial. You have to use your mind on this stuff, and you have to be very, very inquiring and critical of all the different sides of the argument. But of course it’s never entirely 100% about the intellect or about the mind in that respect. It’s the whole person and everything else that’s going on with you in your life, whether that’s emotionally or in terms of your own agenda and your plans and your own desires. Because, at that time, I had very particular desires to live in certain ways, to embrace particular lifestyles, and I think I had to be shown that some of the more hedonistic ways of living that would be perhaps more licensed by a naturalistic worldview didn’t live up to what they were recommended and how they were promoted, really, so I think it was a mixture. As the intellectual side of it became stronger. That is to say the fewer arguments I had against Christianity and in favor of atheism, the less I could use intellectual objections like a kind of shield, so to speak. I couldn’t use them as an excuse for staying away from belief in God and Christianity. The more that the intellectual questions were being addressed and answered, the more exposing it was of the other reasons, perhaps, why I didn’t want to embrace this. Because it does mean that you move from a muddle of a universe where there’s no purpose, no design, which means you basically get to set your own course and just make up all your own rules and call the shots completely by yourself. It does mean that you end up moving an omnipotent, all-good, all-knowing God into the picture as an authority again. And that is something that, on it’s face… Yeah. Well, that was what put me off it in the first place, and so, to move back to that, it can’t just be about whether you’re intellectually convinced. There needs to be change happening emotionally as well, and I think that was going on, too, through various life experiences, while doing this investigating. So it is a bit of the whole person, like you say. I’m glad you brought that out, because belief is definitely more than just intellectual assent. When you essentially buy into a worldview, it affects not only your beliefs, but it affects all of your life. So how did you come to make that more total kind of conversion towards not only the truth of the Christian worldview intellectually but the truth of the Christian worldview for what it meant for your life? I think it was… Well near the end of university and having graduated from university, the choices that I was making were very foolish, frankly, and I wasn’t going on a good direction with what to do next. I got into a relationship that I really shouldn’t have got into at all, really, and that just put things down a very wrong path, where I could just see that a lot of these ways of living that I wanted to live wouldn’t work and wouldn’t stand up, and then actually, it’s funny. The more that you investigate the apologetics, you can start from arguments that are quite abstract and philosophical or scientific, but then gradually, you have to confront the identity of Jesus. You have to ultimately look at, “Okay, look. Who is He? What did He come to do?” And I think through the apologetics, listening to the podcasts and investigating that gradually, I was being exposed more to biblical content, understanding more about what it actually means to become a Christian. The actual change that that brings and the fact that it does mean that you end up embracing a totally different view of reality, which is that you are a sinner, you are guilty of all sorts of crimes and wrongdoing, but the penalty for that has been paid, and you get to live completely free of that in what would then be unconditional acceptance in God’s eyes, and it just as seems as though the alternative to that, every other alternative to that way of living, seems to be something where you have to be the one who achieves, you have to be the one who makes sure you never, ever, ever screw up. And that doesn’t just apply to other religions. That applies to other secular views as well. There’s a survival game being played out in atheistic views. Whether you’re a humanist or a nihilist or a social Darwinist or whatever you want to call it, there is still a burden of, “You have to make it. You mustn’t put a foot wrong,” whereas with Christianity, that was the only thing that was actually saying, “No, it’s not about what you do. It’s about who you’re related to. What is your standing with God?” And I think the apprehension of that was making itself clearer in my mind as to what would be involved if I actually joined it and became a Christian. I think the real thing that really did push me over the edge, though… It was a gradual process. I think the strange thing that happened was that—I said that it took a number of years, so my allegiance was changing. I wasn’t a Dawkins fanboy or anything like that. I wasn’t a New Atheist supporter anymore. I think I probably intellectually was ready to become a Christian about a year before I actually converted. That comes back to what I was saying about the difference between the intellect and the deeper, more volitional things that go on within somebody. I got to the point of… It was 2011, and I’d got to know some people that were working on bringing William Lane Craig back to the UK to do a speaking and debating tour. These were people like Justin Brierley at Premier Radio, and there’s Dr. Peter May, who used to be the chair of UCCF, the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. I got to know those people and that they were organizing to bring William Lane Craig back over to the UK, and I just found myself getting more and more involved with them and actually helping to try and sort of promote the tour. I was making videos and putting them on YouTube, sort of drawing attention to the fact that Bill Craig was coming to the UK to do speaking and debating, and this was around about the time as well that Dawkins’ refusal to debate was really kicking off. He’d already refused a number of years ago, but now four different organizations were inviting Dawkins to debate William Lane Craig. He was just refusing and throwing out all sorts of ad hominem excuses, and I was feeling let down, maybe even betrayed, I think, and conned almost at this point. And actually this great New Atheism just was a sham, really, the way I was looking at it. And so I was making videos that were probably more provocative than if I were making editing choices now, but… And putting them on YouTube, trying to sort of stir up the discussion about, “Will Dawkins debate Craig? Look at all the excuses for why he’s not doing it,” and sort of trying to add a little bit to the drama, I think, of what was going on, and they went viral as well, actually. They got shared quite a lot, videos like “William Lane Craig, Dawkins, and the Empty Chair,” those kind of things, and eventually doing things like helping to design the adaptation of a parody for a bus campaign that was advertising the event at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, where William Lane Craig was going to refute the arguments in The God Delusion, and Dawkins had been invited to attend that debate. This was in October 2011. He was invited to debate William Lane Craig, and when he refused, they said, “Look, what we will do is we’ll make it a lecture, where William Lane Craig will refute the main arguments in The God Delusion, and then he will interact with a panel of opponents. But I got involved, basically, in trying to promote that, and I think, in 2009, the British Humanist Association had made a bus campaign that said, “There’s probably no God. Now, stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Well, we flipped that round to say, “There’s probably no Dawkins. Now stop worry and enjoy October 25th at the Sheldonian Theatre.” Oh, my! So basically a bit of a dig… Basically saying, “Look there’s probably no Dawkins showing up to the debate. He’s not going to do it.” And this was also backed by at least one other atheist philosopher from Oxford, Dr. Daniel Kane, who’d published an article in the Telegraph as well, saying that, “Look, this could be interpreted as cowardice, Dawkins. Because you’re debating all sorts of other low-hanging fruit, but you’re not debating one of the most academically capable people here.” So I just got really involved. I made the graphics adaptation for that bus campaign, and they went around Oxford, and I think that got under Dawkins’ skin a fair bit, and he was publishing an attack article in The Guardian, and all of that was heating up, and I think we got to the point of the tour, where Bill Craig was over and doing his debating, and I think one of the last things that pushed me over the edge… Funnily enough, it was talking to his wife, Jan. Because she was incredibly welcoming and was just keen to understand a bit more about who I was and how I got to this point and why I had confronted Dawkins, and where am I now, you know? And I said, “Well, I guess I’m sort of agnostic,” and there was a point where she basically said, “Look, if you don’t think you could give up everything to follow Jesus, if you don’t think you could give your whole life to this, don’t do it.” That’s what she said. She said, “If you couldn’t actually really give everything to it, then actually you shouldn’t do it. That is what this is really about. It’s a total commitment and a total change,” and I think that was just one of the last things that I was mulling over. And it just got to the point, during that tour, where I just realized, “I think I believe this. Why am I not a Christian yet? I’m following this. I’m defending Christianity against atheism and all these arguments. I’ve not actually signed up to it yet, but I think I sort of have, anyway. I’ve sort of morphed into this Christian.” And so I think I just made that decision. It was October 19, I think. Yeah. I think that’s when it was. Of 2011. And I made that decision. It was in a bed and breakfast in Cambridge after William Lane Craig had been doing a response to Stephen Hawking’s book, The Grand Design, and also when Dawkins had published one of his biggest attack articles in The Guardian, trying to smear William Lane Craig for being morally unfit to debate and all those kind of things. I just got to that point of, “Nope. You’ve got to get on your knees and pray and just get on with it. You are a Christian, Pete. You can’t escape it now. This is what you’ve become.” So it was surprising to you, probably, in a way, but in another way, it was a very conscious… like you said, a very conscious, conscientious journey. It was a very thoughtful journey of exploration, of looking at both sides, of debating both sides, of listening to both sides of the issue, of thinking about what that might mean for your own life, and all of those things, but now, it’s been nine years since you’ve made that decision to go ahead and just believe. So how has your life been affected or changed? I know it was a morphing through that process. I would presume that that morphing continued in your maturity, as your understanding as a follower of Christ. Yes. It certainly has. When you start out, you know that something has changed, but there’s still a lot of stuff that still needs learning and discovering, and you discover a lot more about yourself in the process. And there’s also a lot of dependency on the help of other people and guidance from other Christians as well when it comes to your own being discipled and being taught. Yeah. That’s huge, really. And you’re right, it is about nine years. It’s been a very long trajectory. The way I would sum it up, I think, is I think I started my journey and coming into Christianity mostly through the head, in that kind of maybe academic, intellectual sense. I think it started there, and then it sort of reached the heart or the emotions or the more deeper part of my being afterwards. It sort of went from the outside in in that way. It’s extraordinary, really. It’s a real comparison to the life I was living before that, because it really should be said, the more that my conviction of the apologetics and the arguments for Christianity was going up, my personal life and the decisions that I was making in that very hedonistic lifestyle that was very much informed by that naturalistic model, sort of, “Eat, drink, be merry. Tomorrow we die,” that kind of stuff. I mean, that was plummeting. And I think that way of living had to collapse, and my own desperation, I think, had to be exposed as well. If you were drawing them on a graph, the academic or the apologetics conviction would be sort of on an upward curve, whereas my own personal situation, I think, was going down, and I had to basically restart my whole post-graduate life in terms of what do I do next? What job do I get? And that kind of stuff. So almost from scratch, really. It was a real restarting, and that just meant confronting all sorts of… I use the expression inner demons, but I think we can probably use that word metaphorically, but it’s been a huge trajectory of reconciling things with my parents and then getting a new journey of where to go with life from that point onward. I would say that the biggest transition was moving beyond apologetics into theology, in the sense of really needing to get good discipleship and biblical teaching. People like Tim Keller, for example, listening to his sermons, as well as the church that I was going to. It’s been a process of discovering more about myself, and I think the biggest journey has actually been one that took me into a whole different area of Christian ministry, so up until this point, it’s all been about apologetics. It’s all been about academic stuff. This was when I had to basically encounter biblical counseling. This is the sort of stuff that’s produced by CCEF in the United States or Biblical Counseling UK in this country, the United Kingdom. That was founded by the late David Powlison, and that’s all about how the truths of the Bible and the truths of what happens to somebody once they’re saved and once they’re in Christ, what that actually means for people and their own identity, and for living their life and for all sorts of issues, like anxiety, depression, addiction, and all those kinds of things. It’s a biblical model of counseling and psychotherapy, basically. The reason why I mention those sort of ministries, biblical counseling ministries, was that I’d moved to London and was freelancing, doing video and graphics work, at this point actually doing work to help Christian apologetics. Video, PowerPoint slide production for William Lane Craig’s debates, Premier Christian Radio, helping out with them, and I actually got into a time of acute anxiety, a ferocious battle with anxiety, and that was debilitating. It was extremely intense, and it got to the point where I actually started seeing a biblical counselor, somebody who was trained in taking the Bible and discipleship and applying it to what that means for people who are struggling with those sorts of things. And that was a big year of learning, a really big learning curve about myself, and growing a lot more in discipleship and understanding what it really means. If Christianity is true, if there really is a God who we are accountable to and we are morally guilty before, but yet He has made that escape route of coming down in the person of Christ and being that sacrifice, paying for the sins and the crimes that we have committed, so that we can actually be reconciled to God and be counted as one of his children, as if we were as totally perfect and blameless as Christ… If that’s really true, then that has all sorts of implications on the everyday life and on these kind of issues. And what I’ve basically learned from that was that I was just suffering from an acute perfectionism, massive, massive perfectionism, making me very controlling and sort of enslaved to that kind of illusory pressure of never… “I must never inconvenience people.” “I must never make mistakes.” That sort of stuff. “I need to be in complete control of what I’m doing. Otherwise, everything’s a disaster.” That sort of stuff. And that’s when the truths of the Christian worldview really hit home, when you learn that stuff, and you come to discover, no, actually, your identity does not sink or swim with your achievements, with mistakes that you make or successes that you have. You are not in control. You cannot be in control. God is the one who’s in control. It’s about what he wants to achieve, rather than what you want to achieve. And that God can use all sorts of things in your life, including suffering, to refine you and help you learn and even to bring you into a closer relationship with him. And so I think that’s been quite an astonishing trajectory. You said over this last 9 years. I’ve been learning so much more about myself and what my own inclinations are and actually learning that actually, if you grow in discipleship as a Christian and grow into what it really means to be in Christ, then actually the outlook is so much better. Even if you’re in bad life circumstances, what those circumstances mean for you is radically changed. And it truly is. It’s a new type of freedom. Because it means that, again, you’re not living for performance. You’re not living to justify yourself. You’re living for genuine relationship, whether that’s relationship with other people but ultimately God himself. And that means that the relationships that matter the most and your self identity cannot be destroyed by… well, death for a start. But it also can’t be destroyed by your failures or wrong choices. So that’s the existential, I think, significance. I’ve gone from accepting that it’s true to having that lived understanding, I think, of what it actually means for your life. It sounds like you’ve made an enormous transformation in your life, as you said, just going from your head to your heart to your life, and understanding who God is, who you are, and all the freedoms that come with that, even though it seems constraining from the outside, that when you are a Christian, you see actually it’s extremely liberating, because you’re living in the reality of an unconditional love and acceptance and belonging and an immensely valuable identity when you’re in God. So I think that there’s something paradoxical about that, something very ironic, and as you were looking from the outside as an atheist, seeing that belief in God was a control that you did not want and now it’s a control that you actually love because you see that it’s out of love for you that you live. And you live in an incredible freedom. Thank you for that vulnerability and that transparency, Peter. That’s quite amazing. Well, I think it’s… Well, you’re welcome. I think it’s important because I think the other thing that I’ve been learning as well, and it goes back to what I was saying before about, it’s never just intellectual. There are all these issues. I mean all that stuff I was saying about perfectionism. I mean that will have been true right the way back at the beginning of my university years or even earlier. All of that would’ve still been going on. That would’ve been part of my reasoning process or why I went one direction rather than the other, and I think that it’s the same for everybody. There are unlikely deeply, deeply personal issues that are always involved in this process, and I think… Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s certainly a mistake to say, “Oh, just have a simple faith and don’t think about this stuff. Don’t ask questions.” I mean that’s a lethal thing to do. If you live a life where you don’t question anything, and certainly if you want to be a Christian or whatever. I mean, if you just try and stick your fingers in your ears and don’t grapple with questions, all sorts of things are going to start falling apart at the slightest challenge, and it’s vital to do that. So I think the intellectual side needs to be included, but it’s never only about that. It’s the full dimension of what it is to be human really. The best summary I’ve heard is, my friend the philosopher, Peter S. Williams, describes it as it’s your head and your heart and your hands. It’s what’s going on in your thinking, whether that’s consciously or assumed, perhaps unconsciously, but then there’s the heart as well. What am I actually wanting and desiring? What are my passions? What’s driving me? Or conversely, what am I afraid of? There’s all of that going on, and then, with hands, it’s just, okay, what do you do? What are the actions that you then end up taking? It’s the interaction of all of those, I think. All of that is going on at any one time, with everyone I think. Again, it’s just beautiful to me how you have had such an intentionality towards not only searching for what is true and real and life giving but you’ve really made it your own, and you continue that discipling process, which is really critical in whatever stage you are. That we’re always looking towards growth and understanding. And I just appreciate that with you. In closing this today, Peter, because you have been on both sides of the fence, as it were, as an atheist and as a Christian, you understand it from the inside out, I’m looking for some advice as to what you would say to the skeptic, perhaps who, as you once did, had perhaps a very negative stereotype of Christianity but hadn’t taken time to take a closer look. What would you say to someone like that, who may be curious? Yeah. Well, it’s just fascinating to imagine and try and think of who might be listening to this and what it must sound like to them. I can remember being at university and being in a particular mindset where, unknowing to my friend, I’d snuck a copy of one of his sermons and was just listening to it on my MP3 player while I was out on a walk. And I heard one of them say something critical of one of the New Atheists, and I just got so angry, I think I was in a field, and I shouted and tried to tear down a tree branch or something. That’s one of my more turbulent moments, you know? So I do want to be very aware… And equally, there’ve been other times when it’s just been a pleasure to interact on these things and just have the discussion, in a very relaxed way. So I don’t want to make any assumptions about where people are in terms of their own journey. I think generally… What would I say to somebody who’s skeptical but may be curious about Christianity, belief in God? I think, by way of reassurance, I think I’d want to say I think we’re living in a time where views get very polarized, where it’s very easy to think that, because somebody is a member of one group or one set of something, that therefore a load of other characteristics must be true of them as well. So, for example, if someone’s a Christian, then they must be some kind of Bible-thumping, far-right-leaning,-Trump-voting person or whatever. Or if someone’s an atheist, then they must be some sort of horrible leftist heathen. You get all this just pathetic, really, really sad stuff, unfortunate stuff going on, where people just caricature people and put them in groups, and I think that an important thing to do is to really try and be careful about separating out what things really imply which. It’s not true, for example that, if someone’s a Christian, that therefore they’re necessarily going to be politically right wing, for example. There are people that are Christians that think that more socialistically ways of managing countries or societies work better, for example. It’s not true that the only people involved in the arts and performing worlds are secular. There are Christians involved there as well. I think the important thing to do is really just to be able to separate things out and enjoy the process of asking questions and inquiring about particular avenues of exploration. Asking questions about, you know, so when it comes to things like the historical question of whether Jesus existed, just engage with that as a question in its own right, you know? Who was Jesus? What are the arguments on both sides? What does it say about Him in terms of what He did, what He achieved, what’s documented? I think make a point of just trying to identify what the different points of view are and just try to explore them. I think asking questions is crucial. There’s not enough question asking going on at the moment. It’s always good, I think, to… If you find somebody with a different point of view, just keep asking them questions about it. Get them to unpack it and explain it in as much depth as you can get them to. Especially if it’s an argument or especially if it’s a disagreement. A lot of disagreements just fall flat on their face and turn into silly arguments where people are talking past each other because you think, “I have to jump up and basically be on the defensive immediately and tell the other person immediately that they’re wrong.” But actually, one of the most valuable things you can do, if only as a sort of recon exercise I suppose, is just keep asking people. So get them to clarify exactly what they mean. This is a great Koukl thing from Stand to Reason, his principle, which is get people to really spell out what do they actually mean by what they’re saying. Don’t just assume that you know what they mean when they use a particular word or talk about an issue. Check with them, what do you actually mean by that? So if somebody says something like, “I don’t believe in evolution.” If somebody actually says that, you need to ask them, “Well, what do you mean by that? What kind of evolution are you talking about? Are you talking about any change of any kind in the animal kingdom? Or are you talking about something different or what?” And conversely, if somebody says, I think the Bible is fairy tales. Again, ask them, “What do you mean by that? Do you think it’s untrue? Inaccurate?” And ask them for the evidence. It is actually, funnily enough, that Dawkins principle, which is ask them for the reasons about why they think what they think. So I think just be curious, I would say. Take individual lines of exploration and just question them. Do the questioning process. Get as much data as you can by being intrigued by the other person, and ask them to explain more of it to you. And I think that has to involve—it also has to involve questioning your own assumptions, though, as well. You’ve got to ask yourself, “Okay, what am I believing?” Or even, “What am I holding as most valuable to myself? And if there’s any logical train of thought going on here, what would the logical outcome of that train of thought be? Am I living consistently with things that I say I believe, or are there some holes there?” So I think just be curious. Ask loads of questions about specific issues instead of letting it fall prey to the polarization that we’re surrounded with in our culture. I think that’s fantastic advice all the way around. If there’s anything you would like to add even for the Christian. The Christian needs to learn to ask questions as well. But there’s always this… Seemingly, at least in culture today, there’s this cursory understanding and this misreading of Christianity, that it’s not good, it’s not true. Sometimes it’s earned and well deserved, and sometimes it’s unearned, but how would you speak to the Christian who is trying to present Christ in a positive way to those in culture who seem to misread? I think I’d say pretty much everything I’ve just said for the atheist. I think those apply as well, because equally, Christians can jump the gun and think that they need to jump in and be on the defensive or run away scared. Fight or flight, either of those two. And I think there needs to be… We need to really put our money where our mouth is in terms of showing that we’ve got the confidence. If this is true, if we really are saved and in the care and the wisdom of an all-powerful, all-good God, with a redemptive plan, who knows what He’s doing and is in control, then it just seems crazy, the idea that there would be any questions that would be something to be afraid of. I think actually… I mean, there was a poll conducted, I think it was a Gallup poll a number of years ago. This is something that the Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland was pointing out. He was saying that apparently the biggest reason why people left churches and left the faith was because they had questions that either nobody could answer or weren’t being taken seriously. They were just being given a superficial faith that wasn’t being exposed to the difficult questions and the challenging questions, because every difficult question and every challenging question is an opportunity to grow in more depth in your faith. I mean, think of it, if your faith is false, you’d better find out as soon as you can, so you can ditch it, get rid of it, or if it’s true, well then, it’s going to be an opportunity to grow even deeper in it. And so there has to be a real willingness to ask questions and expose ourselves to questions being asked of us. I think that’s very important. And I think when it comes to communicating Christ and engaging with people, again I think it’s the same stuff about you need to ask them questions, you need to find out where are they starting from. Don’t rush to assume that you know the person that you’re talking to or what their issues are or their questions are or even what the emotional baggage is. You need to take the time to get to know them and find out. Get to know… I mean why should we expect them to want to get to know us or get to know Christ if we’re not willing to get to know them? We have to show that we’re willing to engage. And I think that… Yeah, just take the time to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who doesn’t believe what you believe and just think, “How would I explain this? How would I explain what I believe in a way that doesn’t presuppose any particular special words or jargon or anything like that? And that can actually be understood by the other person?” And you’ve got to be able to find out where they’re beginning at and just see where to go from there. You shouldn’t pressure yourself to leap into, “Oh, I have to make sure I crowbar in a Bible verse and a really, really quick summary about Jesus and the atonement, so I can tick the box and say, ‘Look, I’ve been a good Christian. I’ve done my job. I’ve left them with a Bible verse. Now, the Holy Spirit will do everything else.'” Because that’s basically using… I mean it’s true the Holy Spirit uses our conversations. He uses God’s word. And He ultimately is the one that brings about the changes and brings people to faith, but you can’t use that as an excuse for not having a conversation where you actually want to try and help the other person understand something. The whole point of using words is that the understanding of what the word means is supposed to happen in the head of the person you’re talking to. It’s about what are you helping them to understand when they hear it? Rather than just words coming out of your mouth. So just take that time to understand where the other person’s coming from, and think, “How do I communicate in light of what’s going on with them?” That’s tremendous advice. I think we all need to step back and take time and listen seek towards understanding. That is just tremendous. Peter, thank you so much for being a part of this program, the Side B Podcast. I loved hearing your stories and your insights and your fabulous voice, your theatrical voice. You’ve given us so much to think about it, and it’s just been such a pleasure to hear you. Well, the university drama degree was good for helping me be clear on the podcast, I suppose. Yes. Definitely. I think, early on… I think I gave a definition of faith that was Dawkins’ definition. That he said that faith is believing in something for which there’s no evidence. I think the only thing I would just say to round it off is that now my understanding of faith is very, very different. It’s not that… When someone says I have faith or you have faith in God or whatever, it’s not saying, “I believe in something without any evidence.” The whole point of it is that you’re saying, “I believe in something because there is evidence, and I’ve made a judgment that that evidence is strong enough for me to trust it,” so that’s what I would say. Or you could look at it the way that C.S. Lewis put it, which is that faith is… I think he said that faith is holding to what your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. I love that! Yeah. So by that, he’s actually saying… It doesn’t mean that you believe and commit to something without reason. It’s the opposite. It’s when everything about you, when your feelings are all over the place, you cling to the solid stuff, which actually is the reason and what you’ve learned and what you’ve experienced and what you have judged to be reliable. So if I say I have faith in a certain person, I don’t mean that I’ve just blindly never met them before and suddenly trust them. I have a ton of evidence about my experience with that person, and I say therefore I can trust them. Or if you’re getting on an airplane, for example, people sometimes say you have to have faith to go on an airplane. And I think that’s true. Because you need to have a good basis for trusting it. You’re not just going to step on any old piece of plywood. I mean, there is evidence to say that airplanes are generally very, very safe, and the risk of an accident is very, very low. You can’t guarantee that it won’t happen, but still you have to make the judgment call. Is there enough reason for me to step onto it and trust it? So I think that’s what I would say, which is… it’s not about committing to something because there’s no good reason. It’s because there is good reason, and that reason is strong enough for you to trust it, so it’s all about trusting and having a good basis for that trust. It’s very personal in that respect. Yes. We trust people, don’t we? And thank you so much for clarifying that. That’s extremely clarifying. Yeah, it’s extremely clarifying. Thanks for tuning in to the Side B Podcast. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and share this new podcast with your friends and your social network. I would really appreciate it. For questions and feedback about this episode with Peter, you can reach me by email at thesidebpodcast@cslewisinstitute.org. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next time, where we’ll be listening to the other side.

In today’s episode author and scholar Dr. Carolyn Weber tells her story of moving from a busy place of survival to a place of contemplation at Oxford University.  There she met authentic Christians and was able to investigate Christianity on its own merits for the first time. You can find out more about Carolyn’s work and writing by visiting her website at www.carolynweber.com. If you’d like to read more about her story, Carolyn’s award-winning memoir describing her journeying from atheism to Christianity is  Surprised by Oxford (2011) https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Surprised+by+Oxford&ref=nb_sb_noss. And, her newly released book  Sex and the City of God (2020) explores what life looks like when we choose to love God first.  https://www.amazon.com/Sex-City-God-Memoir-Longing/dp/0830845852/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Sex+and+the+City+of+God&qid=1607450263&sr=8-1 Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. We talk with people who have believed and embraced atheism as the best explanation for reality but then changed their minds and came to believe in Christianity. From childhood, our beliefs about God, whether or not he is real and what God might be like or not like, are often shaped by our family experience. It works both ways. Some families teach their children to believe in God. Some teach their children not to believe. And some just don’t talk about it at all. For others, their childhood experience of their family or perhaps with their father may shape the way they may or may not believe in God. Whatever the case may be, there are several different theories about if and whether a child’s relationship with their parents affects whether or not they’re drawn towards or away from God. In my research of over fifty former atheists, about one in every five rejected a God imaged as a heavenly father because of a negative or even a positive experience with their own earthly fathers. That wasn’t the only reason for their disbelief, but it was generally part of their narrative. Again, that was true for some but certainly not for all. Here, I believe it’s important to recognize that, although theories are out there regarding the nature of atheism and the reason for disbelief, it’s important not to broad brush an assumption about anyone before you actually listen to their story, and that’s what we’re going to do in our time together today. I’m so pleased to have on the podcast today Dr. Carolyn Weber. She’s a bestselling, award-winning author, speaker, Oxford University scholar, and literature professor. She’s also a former atheist who came to belief in God. Her book, Surprised by Oxford, talks about her journey from atheism to Christianity. It has won several literary distinctions, including the Grace Irwin Award, the largest award for Christian writing in Canada, and I must say, on a personal note, that Surprised by Oxford is truly an excellent piece of writing, beautifully crafted, a compelling story that’s just hard to put down, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly. She also has another book, her fourth, just being released called Sex and the City of God, and we will hear more about that today on the podcast as well. Welcome to the podcast, Carolyn. It’s great to have you on the show. Thank you so much, Jana, for having me here and for the very gracious introduction. As we’re getting started, Carolyn, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your new book that’s just being released. In a way, the title’s really quite serious, so it pokes fun at our culture, and many of us have heard of Sex and the City in terms of that notion of how we see sex in the media, but I wanted to contrast that with Augustine’s idea of the two cities, the City of God and the City of Man, and how that really is the ultimate line in the sand of our citizenship. Which city do we belong to? Do we choose to belong to the City of Man and the temporal or do we choose to belong to the City of God and the eternal, and those cities are called to live in peace, as Augustine identifies in his famous work City of God, but they also have very different ends, and that kind of teleological difference makes all the difference, really, in the world. And so I wanted to set those two side by side and explore that concept in terms of how I’m trying to live that out and use personal story to look at relationships but also looking at how, when we choose to be citizens of the City of God and we’re extended grace and we receive that grace, we’re also married to Christ first, regardless of our relationship status. So it doesn’t matter if we’re single or married or whatnot according to the world, we’re married first to Christ and how are we ordering our love, as Augustine would say, according to that first love, that first commandment of what we love first. And so that intrigued me, bringing those kind of two, what might seem like very much a metaphysical conceit, actually kind of bringing them together and holding them together in that title and then exploring that throughout this new book. That sounds fascinating, Carolyn. I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Thank you. Yes. And much success to you there. But today, as you know, our focus is on story, on your story, on the story of your journey from atheism to Christianity, and I want to set that, as a literary professor and understanding the value of context, you’ll value this question, and that is: I want you to set the context for the story of your life. What context were you raised in that formed your atheism? What was your community? What was your culture? What did they think about God or religion or those kinds of things? Let’s kind of start broadly, and then we’ll narrow down to your family. So yes, I would’ve defined myself as agnostic, in that I couldn’t disprove God but I didn’t really believe in a god, and I didn’t have any sort of structure. I didn’t attend church, anything along those lines, and having grown up in a home with a father who had ended up being quite absent from my life, and when he did return, he was sometimes really violent or aggressive. My father had been a self-made man. He had grown up in a lot of poverty himself and had become quite successful, and then due to some circumstances in life, he lost that, and he really sort of lost his rudder and his sense of self, and he ended up having a significant breakdown as well, and so my mom largely raised us as a single mom, so I was also really hesitant about trusting fathers in general, let alone a Heavenly Father, and so that really also, I think, informed, as it does, that sense of trusting that kind of figure or wanting to explore that kind of figure. I had a lot more anger than I probably would have admitted to and nervousness about depending on anything or anyone other than myself. And in the sense that things could be achieved if I just worked hard enough, pushed hard enough, pushed through hard enough, things could be achieved, security or whatnot. And so, by the time I had gotten to college, I think I would be the perfect example of someone who had gone through twenty years of public education and had never cracked open a Bible, which I find really stunning. That we’re not taught it even as a book or as history. Right. And when I finally did read it, I was really amazed at it, actually, as a piece of literature and just as a story that unfolded from Genesis to Revelation. I couldn’t believe how intricately the story worked itself out, and as a lover of literature and a student of literature, I could see not only all the literary devices but also just how amazingly, beautifully put together this book was. Overall, but also in it’s phrasing, and that you just couldn’t make this stuff up. And once, I think, the gospel is planted, you can’t unhear it. Even if it really bothers you, it’s like this big elephant in the room, and so by the time I was approaching graduate studies, that door had been kind of knocked open for me, and I had this longing. I was studying world religions. I was studying world religions as part of my M.Phil. thesis, so I was looking at all sorts of different religions, but I was drawn more and more and more to Christianity because of really how unique it was and it’s emphasis on grace and this Bible that just blew me away when I finally read it cover to cover, that it was life changing. Wow. And I didn’t grow up with any of that. So, Caro, you’re telling me that the read the Bible for the first time when you went to college, and I want to get a little bit of a retrospective on that. What did you think the Bible was before you read it the first time? You said you had had very little exposure. Had you never been to church? Or your culture hadn’t introduced you to much about the content of the Bible or anything like that? Very much so. I had been to church on and off, a couple of times a year, Easter and Christmas or whatnot, as a child, and I tended… My grandparents that I was closest to were Hungarian, so I would actually go to a Catholic church, but all of the services, the Mass, were in Hungarian or Latin, so basically it was my sister and I sitting in a pew trying to stay awake until we got to the desserts. Oh my! Okay. I didn’t understand much. And I knew bits and pieces, I’d heard bits and pieces of scripture, like you would in maybe mainstream media even now, but I think so many of us cite scripture or hear it. We don’t really even know that it’s come from the Bible. I teach now secular students all the time that say that. And so there really wasn’t a lot of room for thinking faith questions. I was going to school, trying to get good grades. I was enjoying school. I was busy there. I was working several jobs to help support the family, which is also I think very common in North American culture, to be working a lot as well while you’re studying, and I felt like the first time I heard the gospel it was like I was a hummingbird that hit the glass hard. Kind of how I put it in my book was I had been so busy up until then that I had never really thought about who God was to me until someone posed that question to me. So you had very little exposure to the Bible. What did you think the Bible was? Or God or religion or Christianity? As an agnostic, what did you think it was? Was it just something made up by man to satisfy some kind of psychological or social longing or belonging? Well, for a long time, I didn’t really hold any sort of opinion either way. Religion didn’t seem relevant, and I think people are always drawn to, “How is Jesus relevant to me?” or, “How is faith even relevant to me?” As I got older, I guess my main exposure, Jana, would have been to just Christianity through the media, which is horrible! I sort of thought Christians were big haired TV evangelists who took your money. Right. And that you would make fun of. I didn’t grow up with Christian friends or knowing a lot of Christians. The few that I did at school seemed to be socially awkward or they seemed to make these life choices that seemed very, very alien to mainstream thought. I hadn’t ever really had someone articulate the gospel to me, and I always am amazed at that. I remember William Drummond saying, “Never give people a thimble of the gospel. Give them the whole thing,” and sometimes I think we hold back sharing the gospel because we think, “Oh, it’s going to sound ludicrous,” or, “I don’t want to alienate people,” or “They won’t be able to take it all in,” but that’s really quite condescending. Because I think the first time I just had it explained to me, just very objectively, I thought, “Wow! No one’s ever said that to me before. I’ve never actually thought about that as a viable truth that I can either roll around and accept or reject.” A lot of times, we think we know what Christianity is, but it’s this watered down or undiscussed or media version that really has nothing to do with the clarity of the gospel, and so it really wasn’t until I was in graduate studies and that had been presented to me, where I thought, “Oh, okay.” You know, the old liar, lunatic, or Lord, right? This is either crazy or this is ridiculous and unfathomable, or, “Wow, if this is true, I’ve got something I need to think through here.” And so I didn’t… in my upbringing, is anybody actually overtly trying to keep me away from faith or anything like that. I would have described my family as loving enough to get by, Jana, but broken enough not really to deserve God’s attention. And my mom had turned to drinking to manage a lot of her depression, and my father, as I said, was in and out of our lives, but you know, I was happy enough at school and I was close enough to my siblings, and I wouldn’t have described myself as really despondent or really joyful. Very, very busy as well. I think very sort of everyman. I’m open to all of our journeys and stories, but there was this longing, which was why I was drawn to that notion of longing in this last book I wrote. This longing, this desire for something. I guess later when I read Lewis’s description of it as sin-soaked, I was like, “Wow! That’s it.” This longing in us that’s human, and that’s why I studied the romantic writers. Before I became a Christian, I was even drawn to that period of writers in the 18th and 19th century that are drawn to the notion of infinite longing. That’s planted in us. That makes us very human. And as I began to explore Christianity more, it was definitely more in line with that longing and explained why I had that longing and fulfilled that longing, or pointed me towards why I had it. And so I would’ve said it was a long percolation. I was really resistant to the faith for a long time, too. Because I felt that… I think it’s very scary to think you don’t have control over something. Grace is a real leveler. It’s not karma, and it’s not something you can mete out or control or work hard enough for, and it blew apart all my categories of being self sufficient, particularly so as a child of my circumstances. And when you strip that away, it’s quite terrifying, really, to trust in that way and to also realize where we fall between sin and redemption, but I do remember reading Genesis and thinking, “Wow, this just makes sense.” The fallen world made complete sense when I looked around at me. And there were so many things in the Bible I was prepared to knock against them cognitively and to take them down intellectually, and yet, they rang really true. Not because I necessarily agreed with them but because I really could see the evidence for them around me and in me. So once you became open to the Bible and you were really taking it in, reading it, perhaps seeing what was in it for the first time with open eyes, and you stumbled upon Jesus and you stumbled upon the gospel, you say, can you, for those listeners who really don’t understand what the gospel is when you refer to that, could you perhaps talk a little bit about what the gospel is? I know you mentioned something with regard to grace but perhaps paint a clearer picture for those who don’t know the term. Oh, absolutely! Well, I didn’t know the term. I didn’t even know what the Old and New Testaments were. I had no idea how many books were in the Bible. All those kind of things. And I remember my grandmother praying and my grandmother talking about Jesus in Hungarian, so going back to that felt a bit like a homecoming, but the gospel itself just means the good news, which I thought at first sounded awfully condescending. How does somebody have the good news and that means I must have the bad? But to really understand, when I was asked the question, “Who is God to you?” I had never really thought about answering that question, and I love how invitational questions are, and it made me think who was God to me? And the gospel shows God as a being that is close to us, that cares for us, that loves us, somebody who’s entered into our state of being, who brings us the good news that we have been saved by Jesus coming and being here with us, by Jesus giving His life for us, that death is not the end, death is not all, that we have an eternal life and a whole life made for us, offered for us through grace, through God coming and dying for us and extending His life to us in that way. And to reconcile us for the ways that we can’t measure up, the ways that we can’t be perfect, can’t ever measure up to his holiness. And I was amazed at that kind of love. My grandmother’s favorite Bible verse. I mean, we didn’t talk about the Bible a lot, and she didn’t speak much English, but her favorite Bible verse was “Love one another.” Those were actually her dying words, and when I began to learn where those words came from and what they really meant, “Love one another as I have loved you,” I was blown away at what the gospel is. It is so different from any other religion. No other religion has this God that has fully entered into what it means to be human and every element of suffering and has died for us and walks with us and restores us to being whole with Him, and within all of creation and with the vastness of everything. And it’s really mind-blowing to hold that in one’s thought but also to know that it’s really also not complicated. It’s one of those paradoxes. It’s immensely complicated and mysterious and it’s not. And we can’t earn that grace. We can’t make that grace happen. It’s not in our control. It’s not ours to give. But it’s entirely ours to receive for having done nothing except believing that it’s being given to us and who’s giving it to us. And that’s incredible. And it changes everything. It gives you a whole different lens through which to see and hear. As someone, obviously again, a literary scholar who understands story, this is a wonderful story. It is good news, and you said that it rang true. It seemed to ring true to who you were in your human condition, but was there something more than an existential sense of felt truth about it? I mean, we’d all love to believe something that we want to be true or that sounds true. Did you do any investigation in terms of its historical veracity? Or how would you know that the story of this person of Jesus and the story of Jesus is actually true beyond just a story? Right. Or just a feeling. Or just a… Yeah. I mean I wouldn’t underestimate the power of knowing something is true in a way that you can’t quite explain the knowing, and that sounds like a cop-out, but I think that’s why it’s such a powerful word in the Bible, knowing, because I remember when I did first hear the gospel. It was like a little combination lock clicked on my heart and sort of clicked open, even though I never in a million years would have wanted to admit that. But I think that’s the reason why it does get people’s attention. People get their knickers in a knot over Jesus and no one else, really, to the same extent. If you want to get people’s attention, right, you say that name, and you know, people are mad or they’re joyful. It’s definitely the line-in-the-sand word and name. There’s no other name like it. And so there was something knowing about it, but I did do a lot of research. I was, at the time, researching world religions, and I was looking particularly at different theologies that were shaping 18th and 19th century British and European thought, so I was really interested in the development of the church, as well as other… I was actually working on metempsychosal and transmigration theory in the East because of how it was influencing this group and writers, and it did, it really threw into my face a lot of doctrine. I did read a lot. I really wanted to poke holes in it. I remember when I read Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ, I thought he and I would’ve gotten along great on a bus ride. I was absolutely going to poke holes in it, and it irritated me, and the Christians I knew, they had something I wanted, but I also just really wanted to take them down. And I realized that that was coming from a place of great wounding for me, that if I really wanted to be objective and thoughtful here, actually much of the historical and biblical, let alone Holy Spirit, just leaving that element out, was very, very convicting around the faith. Ultimately, there is a leap. Ultimately, you can only reason yourself so far into a corner, and it does come to a leap of faith. There’s no way around that, but I think that that’s actually one of the most powerful and convicting things about Christianity, is that we can’t put God in a box. He won’t stay in it, and he doesn’t operate in that way, and we can’t even control how it all works, and there still is a supernatural element that defies our understanding. Yes, there certainly is. I find that actually quite convicting, intellectually convicting. They don’t have to be at opposite ends at all. There’s a lot to be said about believing wisely or spiritual thinking, and the two are not contradictory at all. A paradox is only a seeming contradiction, an apparent one, not a real one. And I’ve always found that the most powerful truths lie in those two being held together. And that’s really eventually what drew me to make that leap. It’s the difference between everything. You’ve said a couple of things I want to explore for just a moment. One thing that you inferred was that, when you were pushing back against Christians and Christianity, you were doing so because it was a place of great wounding for you, that you felt there was something that was causing you to push back. Can you… Or would you mind talking about that? The relationship between this push and perhaps whatever that was deep inside of you that didn’t want it to be true. You know, Jana, I actually think, deep inside of me, I wanted it to be true, and I just felt that that would be too dangerous to allow that to happen. In what way? In that this incredible love story that has been written for everyone in the world, and nobody is exempt from it, nobody’s beyond it, it doesn’t belong to just a certain group of people and it doesn’t just come through generation or adoption. It’s entirely open to everyone. It rang so true, and as I began to realize that it shaped my lens of thinking, that transformative thinking, that at first it was easy, for example, to think, “Oh, these crazy Christians. They’re touting chastity. They’re touting not sleeping with someone before you get married. And really how believable is that? And how practical is that? And have they never really been in a moment of temptation? And have they never really woken up and smelled the coffee, as to what needs to happen in this day and age?” and blah, blah, blah, and, as a feminist, you know, “We’re no longer property or chattel or anything along those lines,” completely unaware of a concept like my body being a temple. That had never been taught to me or shared with me or even discussed with me among friends that there might be something holy about my body, as well as Spirit-filled and connected, that there might be a larger design and a larger purpose and a larger plan that I was part of and all my decisions affected not only me but others in that, and that there was a tremendous beauty and responsibility and investment and the distinction between new wine and old wine, and the old wine tastes better because of what’s gone into aging and experience and wisdom. And our culture doesn’t… It gives us a lot of information but not much wisdom, and I think that that’s the big arc, the big journey between Eden and heaven, is experience and wisdom, the accumulation of wisdom, and as I began to think about, “Wow. What if I did think of my life as the Bible talks about? What if these things are true? What if my body is a temple? What if God wants me to be holy as He is holy? What if there’s actually something really beautiful and design filled and purposeful in that, as opposed to all these other messages that are really quite empty? What are the repercussions for me in that?” And I began to see that it had nothing to do with high-handed purity or the politics of the body or being chattel or any ways that the world has twisted things from the fall, which just makes so much sense. Obviously, the first sin to me just seems like consumerism. Yes. You know? Consumption of other. In terms of preferring the love of self. And I was really moved at that deep, deep love of God for us, that if we put it first, that helped us love ourselves and others, and it was transformative. Transforming your thinking. It was transformative. And it just seemed like, when you started to look at things from that access, I began to realize, “Wow! This is a different way of thinking. This is a different way of being.” We’re not taught this in schools. We don’t turn on the news, and it’s available. It’s often… If you don’t have Christian friends or Christian community, it’s not even talked about at all. But there is another way of being. And we talk about it, as Christians, as the way, Christ being the way, but it’s another way that isn’t often shown or talked about or discussed. And I was really amazed at how it made me really, truly see so many things differently. And that there’s a heart and mind and soul connection in all of that that no other path really shows or calls you to combine. So those really deep longings and those desires that you had early, you found as you were exploring Jesus and the Bible and the gospel, you found something that was true and good and beautiful and, like you say, life transforming. Something that would give you a very different way of thinking about your own life and the way that you live and the way that you understand it. Were there people… You’ve spoken about maybe dots or interactions with Christians throughout your upbringing, but did you enter into a time in your life, as you were exploring, where you actually encountered those Christians who embodied what you’re just speaking of, this other way of living, this different way of understanding life. Absolutely! I think those were the people that really drew me to the faith to begin with. Just like Hannah Whitall Smith said, the best testimony is living the Bible, is looking at your life as a living testimony, and being a lover of literature… I really think, Jana, that God speaks to us in our various love languages, that He knows are most beloved to us, and I love literature. I love words. And I remember reading the Bible, and there was just nowhere to hide. Every stripe of person is found in the Bible. Every stripe. And I remember reading the New Testament, too, and thinking, “Wow! Here’s the guy… He doesn’t have enough belief, and he’s praying for belief.” “Here is the person with immense belief, and he’s wanting someone healed on his behalf.” “Here’s a woman who’s bled for 12 years, and that’s being healed at the same time that Jesus is traveling to another girl, who’s 12 years old and about to enter the exact opposite time of her life.” It was just so intricate. There was something for everybody. Every type of person I knew, but also every type of person within myself, that I felt in scripture I kept meeting facets of myself in all of those people. And then, the “real people” I was meeting, I was meeting Christians who were willing… First of all, they were really good at asking questions. And I think questions are so important. They invite you to the table. Jesus uses them all the time. Parables and questions, stories and questions are so important. They’re so inviting. There’s lack of judgment. There’s opening of conversation. And I was moved by their genuine interest in hearing where I was at, what I was thinking, what I was longing for, instead of hitting me over the head, as I feared, from maybe what I had seen on television or whatnot, with trite phrases or rote swirls-for-eyes passages from the Bible. Yes. They were very real, genuine conversations. People who were really interested in meeting me where I was at, which is how Jesus is in when he interacts with people in the gospel. He never walks up to anybody and says, “You suck,” or, you know, “Pull your life together. Too bad you had a difficult childhood.” He doesn’t do that to anybody. He entirely meets them where they’re at, and I really had the blessing of meeting Christians who were, not perfect themselves, by any means—no one’s perfect. But they were inhabiting that, that were incarnating that essence of Christ in their conversations with me and in their welcoming of me to the table. And that really genuinely spoke to me. And it’s a very powerful thing to be met in the real. And Jesus is the real. Yes, He is, and to be met with people who actually live like they know Jesus and live like Jesus is in and through their lives, it can be surprising. Your book is called Surprised by Oxford. I presume a lot of these changes or revelations were happening as you were on that campus. Is that a place where you actually were able to move from this place of busyness and survival to a place of contemplation and study and pursuit? Exactly. On a very pragmatic level, I went from the very, very busy, typical North American student life of lots of spinning plates, with studies and with jobs and things, even more so with the background I came from of having to provide for my family and myself, and my father, as I said, had struggled with mental illness and had, as well, a lot of debt. A lot of financial pressures and concerns. I grew up with times of immense poverty, and I have a heart for students in that in that way. A lot of times, we don’t know what someone is facing when we meet them. We have no idea whether they’re hungry or not. We have no idea. And again, that’s where I love the Bible, the symbolism of poverty, all sorts of different forms of poverty, and I think, when I got to Oxford, for one, I wasn’t allowed to work.  And so I finally had this time, and at Oxford, they want you to have this time, to percolate your ideas and to make friendships, and I would go to tutorials, I would go to lectures, but then I would have time to go on a walk through a garden with a friend or go to a pub and talk about ideas, and there was much more of this contemplative, conversational lifestyle that was expected, and it was not just this elitism. It was actually considered very much part and parcel of studying, and it seemed very alien to me at first for a while. I actually felt really strange. I felt like I had all this time. I wasn’t running to these two or three jobs or everything else, but then you realize, “Wow! It’s actually this breathing space, about being still, and about thinking through your ideas, and actually thinking through why you’re here,” and a lot of that, we’re not allowed to do and it’s not cultivated. I think, actually, many powers that be in the fallen world would prefer that we don’t meditate and we don’t contemplate. And distraction is, I think one of the devil’s greatest tools, losing that traction. And I think being able to talk with people, people whose example I grew to trust more and more. They were really living their walk and talking their talk, and they were sincere and open, and the more I was reading and studying myself, it was a whole difficult experience than the harried white rabbit. Right. And it can sound idealized, but I think, actually, Christians, even in a very busy culture, know… We now know, we on the other side of the looking glass, now know that that’s actually a very important spiritual discipline to have in my own life, regardless of how busy it is. But when you’re coming from the other city, when you’re traveling from the City of Man towards the City of God, it’s a very alien thing to put aside time for devotional or time for scripture or to read hermeneutically or to pray. Those are not things that the greater fallen world teaches us to do or wants us to do. And so I think that shift was really life changing for thinking through. Because, for a while, I went through the cynicism, and I thought, “Oh, I’m sure I’m just being drawn to this Christianity because I’m now here, and I’ve got all this time to think this through, and isn’t this great? And when I actually go back to real life, it’s not going to be relevant at all.” Or is it a crutch? I was wary that it might be a crutch for things I had wanted in my life that had fallen through. And instead realizing, “Wow, those epics run deep.” Those mono myths that search for the father run really deep for a reason. Which is what led to this last book, writing it after losing my father, because I think our cosmos tilts when we lose our parents, regardless of our relationship with them. And it’s just… I think that having that chance to look at, in retrospect, those points of light and how God has been there for you or connected them for you, having the time… Not that you have to always be thinking or that it’s a crutch, but I began to see that it wasn’t a crutch at all. It was actually something I very much not only needed but would be nothing without. It was a total juxtaposition of your prior understanding and perspective of God, especially God as father. That’s quite amazing. So, along your journey, I guess all of these pieces started coming together. You were reading the Bible. And you found yourself in the scripture, that there was really nowhere to hide. You were finding truths about Jesus, about the historical nature of the Bible and how it’s not only historical, but it matches and meets every longing and desire of your heart, all of these things were coming together. You were meeting Christians who were embodying this authenticity, a life that was attractive, which was again just such a surprise, so you… I guess all of these threads started becoming woven together in a sense into a tapestry towards a place of belief. Was there like a tipping point in which you said, “Yes, I believe this is true, and I can’t go back”? I love your use of the word tapestry. Because very much so, I feel that’s how all our lives are, and you know, with a tapestry, the design is so beautiful and clear on the top, and then underneath you see all the knots and everything else. Yes. And the handiwork, right? The hard work that goes into it. Yes, I would say all those things worked together. A lot like Lewis. Feeling like, in some ways, a very reluctant convert, and yet, there is this moment… For me, there was a moment. I remember it was actually Valentine’s Day back in 1994, where I got to a point where I thought, “Okay, I’ve kicked against this.” I kicked against this, and it wasn’t necessarily that they were all intellectual answers, although many of them were. As I mentioned before, the Bible just makes common sense oftentimes, or even the things that are complicated or difficult, there’s a lot of practical feedback, but as an academic, I also get frustrated with people who denounce the Bible or drive around with their Darwin inside of their Christian fish bumper stickers, and they probably never cracked open a Bible. And I think, “You know, I’ve been like that, too,” so just read it. Just read it, cover to cover, and then see. At least you’ll have the fodder to make an argument. That’s probably the academic in me, you know. Know your sources and at least have read the book before you criticize it. But you might have something that you respond to or your heart responds to. But I think… Yeah, it eventually got to this point where, at least for me, there had been this slow recogning and reckoning, and a lot of things sort of graciously answered for me because my love language is words and literature and probably argumentation, even. But getting to a point where I thought, “Okay, is this true or is it not?” And I think it comes down to that point of light, Jana, a lot like… I’ll give you an example. One of the stories that really irked me in the Bible was the thief on the cross, when Jesus is crucified, and there’s a thief to his left and a thief to his right, and the one that denounces and the one that asks Him to remember him that day. And before I was a Christian, that story used to bug me like crazy. It drove me crazy, because I used to think, “Gosh! There’s that guy. He’s been a sinner his whole life. Now, he’s asking to be forgiven. What a jerk!” And of course I love him now, you know? Things are looking desperate, and he’s probably thinking, “I’ve got nothing to lose,” and Jesus is right next to him, and oh, my goodness! And I remember saying this to someone who had actually really articulated the gospel to me and was somebody that I very much cared for and respected their opinion, and I told them how much this story irked me, and he said to me, “Well, thank God for that story!” And I said, “What? Are you kidding me?” and he said, “No, absolutely thank God.” He goes, “We’re all that thief on that cross.” We don’t deserve it, and we can receive it at any time, but we never deserve it. And there’s that moment where you have to be accountable for your soul. No one else can be. You can’t slough off that responsibility. You don’t stand before God at the end of time and say, “Hey, what about him?” You know? And that’s when the penny dropped. I was like, “Wow! That’s personal relationship.” And not that it’s necessarily just heavy handed and… Phrases like “blessed assurance” used to bother me because it always appeared in a heavier font. Just all this stuff that Christians throw around that seems so trite and empty or canned, and I was like, “Wait a minute!” It’s like Shakespeare now. We all think, “Oh, everybody quotes Shakespeare,” but there’s actually such immense beauty in it. We’ve lost sight of it. We’re looking at the wrong side of the tapestry. And it seems threadbare to us and not relevant, and I do remember thinking, “You know, it’s game time. Do I say, ‘Remember me,’ or do I mock him?” Because that’s really the only two answers that there are. And even saying nothing isn’t going to be the truth and the grace that I desperately need and I know is there for the taking, and so I do remember, late at night on that evening, accepting the Lord. And all those phrases used to make me really uncomfortable. “Accepting the Lord as my Lord and Savior,” all those kind of phrases I would hear tossed around or used, but they’re really so deeply entrenched with meaning that sometimes I think all we can do is feel like we mock them because we’re so afraid of them, of what they might really mean if they’re true. And they change everything. Because they are true. And then I think there are times in our walk, our spiritual walk, where faith is a form of sacrifice. Obedience is a form of sacrifice. We choose to believe even when we feel empty or when we feel we can’t. We still put that on the altar, and He always blesses it. Like Lewis said, “The driest prayers please Him most.” The prayers from that really dry place are still forms of trusting. Well, it sounds like, in your life, everything has changed, and your place of trust is in Christ and that it is something that is not something to be afraid of but something to embrace, something that is life giving, that is true and good and beautiful and all of those things. You express it with such grace and with such wisdom. It’s obvious to me that you’ve been living in this, what you call the real, for a while. I hope we all are. I think that’s the wonderful thing about Jesus is you don’t know… I love the fact that we can pray for wisdom and it’s given to us, but that we can speak like this, Jana, as sisters in Christ, that there’s a whole other level of communication and understanding, and I think the big one for me is to know that I’m not alone. Even when I do feel very painfully alone, I know, as a Christian, I’m not. No matter what. And that makes all the difference. In a spiritual walk. It is. It’s an amazing gift. It is. This community of those who are, in Christ, as they say. As we’re kind of winding this down, it’s just been so rich. I wondered, Carolyn, since you are so wise, if you could. Gracious company goes a long way. Yes. If you could speak to perhaps a curious skeptic who might be listening to this podcast, who might find themselves where you were at one time in your life, skeptical, pushing back for whatever reason, what would you say to that person to encourage them to perhaps listen to the other side, to give Christianity a chance, to perhaps take a moment to actually consider those big issues, like you have. That is such a wonderful question. I mean almost, thinking what I would have said to myself years ago, is first to really sit with what is the reality of you being all? If you are all that there is, where is that getting you? How is that working for you? How will that always work for you? E.M. Forster has this wonderful line that says, “The reality of death kills a man, and the idea of death saves him,” and as Peter Kreeft says, “Life is fatal.” It’s fatal for every single person, and the great philosophical question is, “What happens to us when we die?” And I think it’s so easy for atheists or whatnot to say, “It doesn’t matter. Nothing happens. I’m gone,” but it’s so connected to so much more purpose. Not just this existential anxiety but so much more about our worthiness and our dignity and our being made for and in love and to love, and I would just sit with that question. What if it is all about me? And what if it begins and ends with me? Where does that leave me? And then what? And is that a reality that I want to ascribe to and believe in? Or is there another way? And if Jesus calls himself the way, what does that mean? And I would really challenge someone who hasn’t read the Bible to read it, to just read it. Even if they read it objectively, cynically, whatnot, read it. And there’ll be tough parts, and there’ll be boring bits and all sorts of things, but actually who knows what speaks to whom. Just read it. And see if you are unchanged by the end, which I highly doubt. Because I think we’re changed by everything we read. But once you hear the gospel, you can’t unhear it. And how is it going to sit with you? And then is that going to be a full rejection that you can package up and set aside? Or is there something there that you want to explore, that speaks to you, that you feel leads you to a more abundant life and death and life again? And will change the way that you love yourself and will change the way, dramatically, that you love others, even when you’re not in the mood and will have a place in an eternal story and purpose. That is so much bigger and more profound than our own little selves. And I think I would just challenge someone to do that. And not to have to do it in an overwhelming way, but just to give in to that longing. I’ve never met anyone, Jana… Just like I’ve never met a child who as an atheist, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t shaped by some sort of longing. Who didn’t long to be loved or long to be accepted or long to be cared for or long to matter. It’s the essence of every enduring work of literature, right? Everybody, like Harry Potter, wants to get the letter that says they’re special. Yes. Hence, that’s why I think the Bible is so full of missives, but there’s… Where does that longing point us? And I do agree with Augustine that it’s a longing that can only be fulfilled by God. It points us to God to be fulfilled by him. And that’s actually a really beautiful and freeing thing. It replaces terror and panic in the empty world with the fear and reverence of holiness in the eternal one. And it’s a different type of fear. And it’s a different type of fulfillment. And it’s one that lasts and endures, and it’s immensely rich. And it’ll wane, and it’ll be consolation and desolation, and you know, you could feel close to God and as far from God as you can get, but the line is always open, it’s always there, in spite of ourselves, and I just think that’s an immeasurable gift, and a gift becomes a real gift when you appreciate it, when you recognize what you have. Yes. If someone were to take your advice and pick up the Bible, where would you recommend that they open it for the first time? Would they start at the beginning? Yep. To cite my favorite musical again, the beginning is the only good place to start. I always say just start at the beginning. Just read it through. Okay. I mean, maybe because I’m a literary person, I always read things through, and I trudge through chronologically. I can certainly see… For me personally, the book that was most influential, I think, in my ultimate conversion was John. I just loved the Gospel of John. And when I was reading John was when some things really became very clear for me, when I finally sort of made the leap. I’m sure that there’s some kind of scripture verse that speaks to everyone in some sort of special way, and there are probably more efficient ways at kind of dropping it to encourage people where to read or whatnot, but I’m always an advocate of just go through the whole thing. You never what’s going to speak to you where. You never know what’s going to tick you off. I tell my students, when they’re writing essays, always write on something that bothers you. Because that’s something that’s got your attention. Yes. Something that you’re trying to work through. So I’m always amazed at friends of mine, when we read the Bible, and somebody will be completely bothered by something, and somebody will be completely fascinated by something else. I always thought the genealogy, for instance, was so boring, and it went on and on and on, and I remember Bono, one of my favorite rock stars, saying he loved the genealogy. He thought it was really fascinating, and it’s one of his favorite parts! And that’s what made me start to think about, even a theme like Sex and the City of God and our relationship to relationships and being married to Christ regardless of our status, but also, why is there genealogy in the Bible? And adoption and whatnot as well. Who knows what will speak to you, but I think if you can read the whole thing, you’ll also get a sense of the story, the moving from Genesis to Revelation, the absolute intricacy of the overall larger story and all the smaller stories within it, like ourselves, and I think everyone wants… They do want… A happy ending makes up for a lot. They do want the white stone with their name on it that only God knows. Everyone. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be known. Fully and truly known. And acquitted and loved and loved in spite of and fully safe and known. Yeah. Yes. And the last question for you, Carolyn, is, again, a bit of advice for Christians who might be listening in who… What would you tell them in terms of… You obviously witnessed some embodied Christianity that was very attractive, whether it was intellectually or their way of hospitality or the way they engaged you. You spoke of them inviting you to the table. How can we, as Christians, make Christianity more plausible or more attractive? What would you say to them. Oh, that is a good question, too, and I feel I need advice on that. Because, by grace, we all go. I would really encourage people to not throw the baby out with the baptism water. And what I mean by that… Christians are humans, too, and we disappoint each other, and we fall short all the time, and we talk about all sorts of things, divorce rates and whatever, being just as horrible among Christians. All these ways that we tremendously hurt each other, and sometimes the pain is even worse because we think, “Oh, we should be answering to a higher bar.” There’s a lot of hurt and dissension among Christians as well. But to protect that initial first commandment between yourself and God, to really protect it. To guard our hearts. As Milton says, to have the upright heart and pure. Guarding our hearts, having that protection of our hearts, I used to think was really naive and innocent, but there’s actually… It takes a lot of work cultivating an upright heart and protecting it and protecting that inner garden, so that, even when other people hurt or disappoint us, regardless of their faith or lack of faith, our first and primary relationship with God is there. It’s nurtured. We have that line of communication open with Him. He is Emmanuel with us. He understands that hurt. He’s held it Himself. He’s borne it Himself. And He’s also borne those same joys and things, too, and to just really cultivate that first relationship, because that’s what a personal relationship is, it’s something that… It’s actually a great relief.  You’re not responsible for anyone else. And sometimes that’s actually very hard. I grew up in a very codependent home, and I want to be responsible for everybody, and you’re not. You’re not actually ultimately responsible for the other thief. You’re responsible for your own heart and how you cultivate that relationship with God and how you treat and answer to other people, and no one can take that white stone away from you. No one, as we’re told, from any depth or any place can remove His love for us. And so focusing on that first relationship, regardless of what else you’re going through or have been dealing with, but you wouldn’t get to a place where you just think, “I’m going to toss that baby out with that baptism water,” because it’s all bad. Or it’s all frustrating. Or no one’s there. Regardless to keep that primary commandment, which is why I think it is the first commandment, to love God first alive. Yeah. That’s beautiful. Sometimes that commandment is seen, especially by those who don’t believe or even those who do, it seems to be a difficult one, but at the end of the day, it’s in keeping that first command where life is actually found. So thank you so much. Thank you, Carolyn, for your story. It’s very inspiring. I love to hear someone so thoughtful, so pursuing and intentional about the big questions of life, and just to see where it led you. It led you to a place… I wish I could be underneath your teaching all of the time, but I do appreciate that you have books. Sex and the City of God, I can’t wait to read it all. Thank you again, Carolyn, for joining us today. Thank you so much, Jana. I appreciate you, too, so dearly. And I think mutual admiration is a foretaste of heaven, so praise Him. That’s wonderful. Thank you. You’re so welcome. Thanks for tuning into the Side B Podcast to hear Carolyn’s story. If you’re interested in finding out more about Carolyn and her work, I’ve included her website in the episode notes. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can reach me by email at thesidebpodcast@cslewisinstitute.org. If you enjoy it, subscribe and share this new podcast with your friends and social network. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next time, where we’ll be listening to the other side.