Former atheist Stefani Ruper was intellectually convinced of secular atheism, but found that it lacked substantive answers for her life. More than 13 years of scholarly pursuit of truth led her to choose belief in God. Stefani's Resources: Youtube Channel: http://youtube.com/stefaniruperInstagram: http://instagram.com/stefani.ruperWebsite: http://stefaniruper.com Resources/authors recommended by Stefani: Dominion by Tom Holland Works of William James

Negative life experiences caused former atheist Matt Bagwell to reject God and Christianity.  Change in life circumstances allowed him to find an authentic kind of belief in God that he didn't think possible. YouTube: @marksofmanhood   matt.d.bagwell@gmail.com Atheists Finding God book Rowman.com/Lexington Promo Code: LXFANDF30 Women in Apologetics https://womeninapologetics.com/

Former skeptic Joshua Rasmussen left Christianity to pursue truth through reason and philosophy. Over time, his intellectual pursuit led him back to a strong belief in God. Joshua's Resources: Defending the Correspondence Theory of Truth, 2014 Necessary Existence, 2015 How Reason Can Lead to God, 2019 Is God the Best Explanation of Things, 2019 For more stories of atheists and skeptics becoming Christians, visit www.sidebstories.com

Former skeptic Chris Waghorn left his belief in the Christian God behind to embrace an Eastern, universal view of god. After several years, he rediscovered the Christian God as the One who is both truth and real. Chris's Resources: Twitter: @CJMindBody The Bible League Australia: https://bl.org.au Resources/authors recommended by Chris for further study on Christianity: William Lane Craig C. S. Lewis Tim Keller John Lennox Atheists Finding God promo code https://Rowman.com/Lexington promo code: LXFANDF30   Hello and thanks for joining in. I'm Jana Harmon, and you're listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics slip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist or skeptic but who became a Christian against all odds. You can hear more of these stories at our Side B Stories website, www.sidebstories.com. We also welcome your comments on these stories at our Side B Stories Facebook page or through email at info@sidebstories.com. Believing that something is true enough to give your life to it is not always clear or straightforward or easy, especially when it comes to religious belief, something that is not necessarily tangible in the ordinary sense. Religion not only entails answers to the big questions of life, but by its very nature, it also makes claims regarding the supernatural realm, that it is real, that God is real. And if God is real, then He can and does interact with our natural world. When someone is considering religious claims, there is a difference between intellectually believing that something is objectively true, such as God exists or the biblical text is reliable and for good reason, and the subjective spiritual sense that God is real, as felt through a personal encounter or religious experience. That is, for some, belief in God may not come easily through arguments or evidence, although this grounding may open the door towards serious consideration of God's reality. Rather, belief comes through a wooing of the Holy Spirit, as the former skeptic describes in this story today. Although Chris Waghorn encountered a substantive intellectual reason for belief and even a touch of God's presence, setting him on a path towards following after Christ, he left that behind to explore the world and its offerings. A few years later, he found the God he had left behind as both true and real. What made him reconsider? I hope you'll come and join in to find out. Welcome to Side B Stories, Chris. It's so great to have you with me today. It's great to be here, Jana. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, you’re so welcome. As we're getting started, so the listeners can know just a bit about you, Chris, tell us about who you are, where you live, a little bit about yourself. Right. I'm a Brit living in Australia. I currently live in Melbourne in the Yarra Valley foothills. My wife is an Australian, a Melbournian, so no choice in destination, although I'm not regretting it at all. We moved over here in 2019, and I'm originally from Hampshire, Petersfield in Hampshire, a small little village outside Petersfield, a traditional sort of place with a shop and three pubs, and blink and you'll miss it. So I grew up there, and then I went up to study at King's College London. Okay. All right. So you're a Brit who lives in Australia. So let's start back, then, in your early life and your British life growing up in what sounds like a very lovely small community in Britain, in England. Tell me about what your life was like growing up. Tell me about your family of origin. Did you go to church? Was it any part of your picture growing up? Well, religion was really no part of my picture when I was growing up. I was raised as a Catholic, and my mother and my father, they went to Catholic school. My sister went to Catholic school, but I didn't go to Catholic school. I had no real interest in religion, and because of growing up in England and being a Catholic, we were always kind of relegated to the chapel down the alley. We didn't have the nice big churches that the Protestants had. But anyway, I always knew perhaps there was something a little bit different there, but I don't think it was religion…. Even at school. I don't think it was really at the forefront of anyone's minds. So, even as your mother was going to Catholic church or your sister going to Catholic school, did you get the impression at all that they had a personal or expressed faith? Or was it more of a ritual or just something that they did, more of an activity than a belief? Well, just to come back to that, actually, even though my mother and my father and my sister went to Catholic schools, they didn't go to church at all. And we didn't go to church as a family. In fact, we only really went to church at Easter time and Christmas time, which I think made us what's known as C of E Catholics. So Christmas and occasional Easter. That was our experience. So no real interest. I don't think that there was really any sense of belief. I wouldn't say that any one of my family were Christians, certainly not born again Christians. I think the kind of Catholicism or Christianity that they believed in was really relegated to tradition, that that’s something that happens in church. You can sort of believe it or not. It was kind of an optional thing. So I was brought up in a secular household, I think I could say, and there was a very vague nod to religion, but it wasn't something that was really necessarily talked about, certainly not practiced. We were never the type of family to go to church every Sunday. Okay. All right. So you grew up in a secular household, and it was a piece or a part of your life, but it sounds like relegated a little bit to the edges. So you grew up… I guess you could call it fairly non religious, but was there any discussion with regard to God or faith or any sense of what that was, other than just tradition? No, I really don't think there was. I can't remember any conversation that I had about faith or anything like that with my family, not until I started to do my own investigations and I began to want to talk about it. But that was much later on in life. As I probably went past 16 and 17, I started to get kind of more interested, I guess, in those questions. Okay. All right. So growing up as a teenager, it was just not a part of your life, but what caused you to start asking questions about religion or God or those kinds of things? Well, when I was at school, I was really blessed with some very inspiring religious studies teachers, or RE, or religious education, whatever you call it. They were very inspiring from the point that they were intellectual. They were very passionate about their subject. And I remember at school, I was studying I think it was Luke's gospel, and I was just taken aback with the wisdom that I was coming across that I was reading about. It just struck me, and I actually do remember that—at school, I had a natural aptitude to writing essays in RS, and I remember one comment that I had from one of my RS teachers in the margin, saying, “Chris, you're literally streets ahead of your peers,” so I think there was a natural—how could I say? A natural appreciation. But there was no faith at this stage. So you considered yourself somewhat secular, I would imagine. Did you ever place a label on yourself or an identity of, like, “Oh, I'm agnostic,” or, “I'm atheistic.” As someone who grew up in a secular household, did you even think on those terms? So that when you came to Scripture, too, I’m just curious how someone of a more secular mindset would even look at the Bible. I think the only tag that I would have given myself at school was rebel, because that's what I was. Yeah, so to give you some idea, I used to have long hair. I smoked. I never used to do up my top button. I always had to see the headmaster after school. Well, actually not after school, after assembly. It became quite kind of embarrassing in the end. And then, after one assembly, I wasn't actually asked to see the headmaster, and he came to find me, to ask me if everything was okay. So I think he quite liked me in the end, but I think no. I don't think I had any sort of label that I would apply to myself. I marched to my own drumbeat very much at school. And I think I was very interested in literature. I was very interested in religious studies. I was very interested in the humanities. I think that's where I was kind of heading, because there seemed to be—I mean, I think, from reading the Gospel of Luke on this specific occasion, I remember I was quite amazed at the sense of, as I mentioned just now, the sense of wisdom in the gospel. And I wanted to find out more. I think it kind of piqued my interest. That's what happened at the time. So it piqued your interest and then did you do anything with that interest? Or did you just let it pass? No, not at all. Well, what actually happened was, at the time of my A levels in the sixth form, I was looking at what to do at university, and I wanted to study law at university. I fancied myself at the bar. So I was actually applying for all the different universities, and I put, of course, King’s, Birmingham, Oxford, all these other universities, and I thought I wanted to study law. And then, when I was putting down my choices, I was quite interested in the EU and Europe and all that kind of kind of stuff at the time, which is quite ironic. And I actually thought, there's this great course at Exeter, European Law. I remember I thought I would apply for that because, being a lawyer, it would be secure. My father would have my back and everything. And then, just as I was filling in the application form, my RS teacher walked past, and he asked me what I was doing. And I told him, and he said, “If I could just give you one piece of advice, whatever you decide to do at university, always follow your heart.” And this seemed to make sense to me at the time. And I said, “Well, what do you mean by that?” And he said, “Well, what do you really enjoy doing?” And I said, “Well, I really enjoy the humanities. I enjoy history. I enjoy classics. Of course, I enjoy RS, Sir.” And he said, “Well, why don't you study theology?” And I said, “Yes, but what do you do with that? What can you do with theology?” And he said, “That’s not the point.” He said, “That’s not the point.” So I thought, “Okay, I'm going to read theology at university. Why not? It’s not as if there's anything else that could keep me at university for three years,” because I was quite rebellious at the time, and I thought kind of following your heart, it sounded like good advice at the time. So that's what I did. That is very, very interesting. For someone who was raised in a secular household. You enjoyed the humanities and literature. Of course, theology is the study of God. Now, at this point, again, as someone with a secular mind, what did you think religion was at this point? Did you think that there was a possibility that God was real? Or was this you just enjoyed thinking about these deeper issues and these issues of humanity? Well, I think all of the above, really. Okay, okay, so when you wanted to essentially demythologize the Bible, or scripture, I wonder, for those who are listening, what you mean by that. Like, for example, when you read the Gospel of Luke, and there are all kinds of things in there that seem rather supernatural or miraculous. I wonder, were those the kinds of things that you wanted to strip away from the text because they didn't make sense for perhaps a more modernized understanding or a more progressive understanding of religion and scripture? Talk with us about what you were thinking. Sure. Well, this is actually going back quite a long time. I was about 16 when I read the Gospel of Luke, so I’ll have to cast my mind back. But I think, at that point in my life, I thought, “What’s all this supernatural stuff about? Is it real? Let's look at the historical Jesus. Let's look at the Christ of faith. Let's see how much evidence there is outside of New Testament writings to the historical Jesus.” Those are the kind of questions that I was interested in. And I think those… and early church history, patristics, you know, from Irenaeus all the way up through to Nicea and the Council of Trent and going all the way through that. I was interested in early church history and how the whole thing came about. So that's what I was really interested in. I mean, at the time when I started reading theology, I had no interest in going to church, and I had no interest into the church, for example, but in the UK—and it might be slightly different in the States. It’s certainly different in Australia. You can read theology as an intellectual, as a liberal art. You don't necessarily—and you probably know this from your studies at Birmingham. When you study theology at university, you're not necessarily at seminary or Bible college. So I came very much from the outside to study faith and religion. And actually what ended up happening at King’s was the complete opposite of what I set out to achieve, because actually what happened: I went in with the demythologization mindset, but actually what happened was the case for the Christian faith, the intellectual case for the Christian faith, began to stack up. And it began to stack up because I was studying theology, all of the units, and going to lectures and writing dissertations, and actually, far from disproving Christianity or the historicity of Christ, it actually went into actually building a case for the Gospels. And that really surprised me, and I didn't expect that to happen. And, yeah, we had some really good lecturers and professors at King’s, and some of them were ministers. So I think at the time, Jana, I heard bits of the gospel, but I didn't hear the whole gospel. I did hear bits of the gospel at King’s, but then, as I think I mentioned, I did have an extraordinary experience in my third year at King’s, which left a lasting impression on me. Can you describe that experience? Yes, yes, I can. So what happened was I was in my third year and it was before my finals, before my final exams, and I'd been going through a really, really difficult period. I was a penniless student in an expensive city, as London is, and I was living in a bedsit in southeast London, in Peckham, which is—no disrespect to people who live in Peckham, but at the time it wasn't a particularly nice place, and I'd been going through a difficult period. I'd experienced bouts of intense sadness, and I was kind of becoming quite depressed and sad. I remember crying a lot at this time. I was about 20 or 21 years of years of age, so it was quite a confusing time. And I really struggled as well with theology, with reading theology, because it was extremely challenging to understand. I don't know if you've ever tried to understand Soren Kierkegaard or Hegel or Kant or Aquinas or any of these minds. And remember, not being a Christian, it was really, really difficult. And I remember drawing maps of, “What are these people trying to say? I don't understand.” Reading the same chapters and pages fifteen, twenty times, trying to understand where they're coming from, and the whole thing was just quite difficult. And then I actually related my experience of being quite sad and struggling to cope with life in London and being a student, etc., and I spoke about it with this guy on the course, this other student on the course. He was a Christian, in fact. He was from Peru originally, but he had perfect English. And I remember telling him about my life and everything, and he said, “Well, don't worry about it, Chris, because you're just being wooed by the Holy Spirit.” And I thought this guy was completely insane because I didn't understand what he was saying. It made absolutely no sense. I just thought he was another one of those idiot Christians. But, that said, some part of what he said made sense to me at the time. And I remember waking up one Friday morning in my bedsit, and I knew that I had to get to the chapel at King's College. So you take the train in from Peckham, and the chapel at King's College is on the first floor. It's a very kind of Greek Orthodox type of type of place, so it's…. It’s a really beautiful chapel, actually. And I arrived there, and I immediately got down onto my knees. I was in the pews, and I just started saying, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” and I started saying I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart. I started crying from my guts. I don't know if you ever had that experience. And I was bawling my eyes out. And then from nowhere, I heard a voice that said, “Go in peace.” It was like a command. It was like a command. And, you know, since then, I've tried to psychoanalyze that voice and think, “Well, maybe I heard that voice because I was going through a very difficult emotional time,” et cetera, but in that moment, when I was told to go in peace, I felt incredibly light, like all my burdens had been lifted, and I knew that I had crossed Lessing's ditch, and I had gone from skepticism to theism, and there was no going back, because that voice was a command. I’ve thought about it a lot since it happened, and I recognized the voice, but I didn't know who it was. It's quite strange. It's a difficult, I think, concept to get across, but it means I recognized the voice, but I didn't understand Who it was at the time. And some time after this had happened, I walked out of the lift in the McAdam building, and there was a friend of mine, Christina, standing there in front of me, and she looked at me, and she said that my face was shining. And she she started crying. She said she knew what had happened. Oh, my! So it was… So I committed to a church I went to for a period of about six months. I started going to church, and it was quite a charismatic church. And this was the first time in my life, really, I'd been to church willingly after my very dry and wooden experience of going to a Catholic church when I was a kid at Christmas or Easter. It was a very charismatic church, and there was a lot of charismatic expression. And at the time, I kind of felt a little bit uncomfortable with that, so I pulled out after about six months, and it wasn't the right time in my life to, I think, continue with that, going to church. And I was very young in the head. I still had a lot of living to do, but I think in the context of my entire journey, God is patient. I still felt that God had His hand on me. Yes, yes. So just to clarify: You went through this theological education. You were expecting to debunk it. Instead, you found yourself kind of compelled by the intellectual grounding of it. So there was some element of you were finding some truth or belief, perhaps, and then you had this religious experience, to where it felt personally and palpably real. So you grabbed hold of it. It grabbed hold of you, I guess, for a period of time, but just for a period of time. Is that right? Yes, that's right. Yeah. I just think I was too young in the head. I couldn't commit to it. I think I was very wild at the time. I had a lot of living to do, and I just wasn't ready to make that commitment in faith. In retrospect, that's where I think I was with things at that particular point in my life. I was about 20, 21 at the time, and that was that. But it never left me, it never left me, and it still hasn't left me. That was something that really did change my life at the time, and it was an extremely powerful thing that happened. And I only told a few of my friends about it because it was pretty extraordinary. Oh, I bet. Something like that would definitely be life changing. For sure. Yeah. But, like you say, you were young and not ready to commit to the fullness of what it means to follow Christ. So what happened next, then? Well, I had to go out and get a proper job after I graduated. And, at that point in my life, I think I wanted to see the world and I wanted to travel, and I did end up traveling extensively. So I had to cut my hair and put on a suit, and I really hated that. And I was told at one of the companies I worked for that I wasn't a very good cog in the machine. Okay. You were still the rebel of sorts. Absolutely. So I just said thank you very much. I said thank you because I thought it was a compliment, but actually it wasn't a compliment. And I was frogmarched out of the building, and I ended up, in the late nineties, going to India, because that's a country that I'd always wanted to visit and go to. For me, it was really exotic and exciting and different. So that's what I ended up doing. And I ended up deciding that I wanted to stay in India, and I was intent on not rejoining the rat race in London, so I kind of took the entrepreneurial route. So I set up my first business buying textiles in India, and I used to import the textiles back to London and Paris, and I had a stall on the Portobello Road, and I became very, very Indianized during this process, and that's what I did for a few years. I followed the sun for a few years, which was a wonderful experience as a young man, and I had a motorbike in India, and I went out into the villages to find these textiles and learned scuba diving, and I just had an amazing time. And actually, on one of those buying missions, in a place called Rishikesh in the Himalayas, I was introduced to yoga and yoga meditation. So, yes, so that's when I developed my interest in my studies in that. I think, from a theological perspective, because I probably didn't continue the route of committing myself to my journey with the Lord, I think because I was a theist at the time, I thought that you could find God in all things. What I didn't realize, of course, is that all these different pathways have different concepts of God, and they actually lead to very different places. But I didn't know that when I was 21. And I actually remember, when I was in India, going to my swami’s—which is teacher in Sanskrit—going to my swami's quarters and challenging him about one of the lectures that he delivered. And he actually turned around to me and said he was surprised because he was being challenged. He's not always challenged. And he asked me, “By whose authority do you come?” which I thought was a very strange question to ask because I was just asking the question, but…. I can't remember his answer because it's such a long time ago, but I should imagine that probably his position wouldn’t be able to put up with too much scrutiny. I doubt that his worldview was defensible, when push comes to shove. I think that's where that conversation would have ended up. But, of course, that's with twenty odd years of hindsight. So when you ran into, or you became invested somewhat, in another worldview, in another world, across the world, and you were considering that God was multifaceted, perhaps. That there were all these roads, but then you were questioning that. You were questioning this particular road, and you found some resistance. Did that make you think, “Well, perhaps they're not all the same.” Perhaps, like you say, it doesn't come from the same place or lead to the same god. Sure. Did that kind of stir up that intellectual part of you that said that they can't all be true? Oh, sure, yes. I mean, I never went to India to find God. Or I was never trying to find God in India, which is an extremely good position to go in, because I think, as a Westerner, if you go to India to find God, you're going to find millions. And I think, because of my experience in the chapel, more than the study of theology at university, I kind of knew in my heart who God was. So for me, yoga was only ever a physical type of practice that was done in order to be healthy, for its therapeutic value, and because I went into teaching it in the end, because of my studies in theology, I could understand what Vedanta was, and I could lecture about it. I could inform people about what it was, where it was from. And I think what I'm trying to say is that I didn't mix physiology with metaphysics, if you know what I mean, or anatomy with metaphysics. I was always able to be really clear about, “This is what this bit is about, and this is what that bit is about.” I didn't fuse them. I was always quite kind of objective about its practice. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that, because I think oftentimes there's a conflation of yoga, that you buy into its full metaphysics implications if you're practicing yoga, and it sounds to me that you really tried to separate the physicality from the metaphysic. Yes. So how long were you there in this world and teaching? And where was God or faith or the God that you had experienced back in the chapel? Where was He in any or all of this? Yeah, I think that's a really good question, Jana, because what ended up happening is I think that the God that I experienced in the chapel gradually began to dissipate. And, because I was spending so much time in India, I began to bring in other views into my understanding, which were kind of more vedantic views of God and vedantic philosophy, so that's what I ended up doing. And I went out, and I made a name for myself teaching. I majored on teaching one to ones, but when I started, I did classes, and my name got out there as a yoga teacher, and I made sure that I was well networked, and I taught various VIPs and stuff, and I had the ear of the press as well. And my kind of work, inverted commas, was kind of in quite a few of the national pages of the health press and magazines and stuff, so I managed to really scale it out there. And during this period, I developed a product range as well, which I got out into shops and national chains and kind of more at the high end. So by the time we get to 2015, I really had very little interest in the church, the Christian faith, Jesus, et cetera. The only Christians, by about 2015, that I knew was my neighbor Mike. He was a Christian, but I always felt that he was a bit too Christian, “But I'll put up with him.” And of course, the other Christian I knew in my life was Cliff Richard, but I didn't know him, but I just knew that he was a Christian, so I didn't really have any… I felt that the church was an anachronism. I thought that all Christians were narrow minded and bigoted, and I thought my understanding, by that stage, of what Jesus was all about was far more sophisticated than the Christian theological understanding. And of course, what I didn't realize is that I'd actually become quite bigoted myself, intellectually bigoted, and of course my views and my understanding were very unfounded, I think, at the time. I had to come back to London in the year 2000 because I'd had quite a serious injury, and I broke my neck in the year 2000. So I had to stop traveling and traveling overseas, and I was laid up in hospital, and so I had to recover from that. And it was after that I thought, “Actually, what I could really do now is, because I've done so much study in it, is I’ll go into teaching yoga and meditation,” which is what I ended up doing. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah. And then you had this lovely neighbor. That's right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. But you didn't think too much of Christians at that point. No, I didn't. I didn't. But I remember actually going around to his house. He lived in Twickenham in southwest London, and it was actually when I was thinking about moving into the area. I'd been living in North London until this point, and he was actually renting out rooms of his house. He had lodgers. And I remember when I first met him, we had an incredible conversation about theology and Christian theology, and I thought, “Well, I'm always going to know this man. I know I don't want to live here because I’ve kind of decided that I wanted my own place, but I know I'm always going to know him.” And in fact, he became the godfather of one of my children later on. Yeah, that's right. But he's an amazing guy, and we used to spend quite a lot of time theologizing at his house. And of course, I came from a very kind of universalist perspective, a very kind of John Hick type of perspective, a liberal perspective, I guess you could say. And at one point, during one conversation we had, and this is a long time before I'd even begun to go down that Christian path or began to commit myself, he said to me, “Chris, at some point, at some stage, you are going to have to name Him.” What did he mean by that? Well, I think, because my perspective was so universalist, kind of fluid, and that… I don't know what he meant. Well, I think what he meant is, “Chris, you're going to have to be more specific. You're going to have to…. Your lines of argumentation, you have to start being able to defend them.” You're going to have to back up what you're saying, basically. And when he said that to me, “Chris, one day you're going to have to name Him.” I don't know if you ever had one of those experiences when the whole of your world kind of becomes slightly fuzzy at the edges and stops. Well, it was kind of one of those moments. I think what happened was it was a prick of my conscience. It was just a prick of my conscience. So he challenged you. And so how did you respond to that? Well, I can't remember how I responded. I just remember being really taken aback by the question and just standing there and probably thinking to myself, “Well, yeah, gee, I think he's right. At some point, I'm going to have to think through these things properly.” So did you go back into kind of a more intellectual mode in terms of trying to look at this question and become more specific about who God is and what you believe? Or how did you approach that question? Well, actually, what happened, Jana, is during this time, my coming to faith was actually more of a process that kind of occurred between 2015 and 2017. What I'd like to do is I'd like to share some of those moments, I think, which were really kind of important moments in that journey. And what happened at the time is my wife did an Alpha course. Now, what drew her to an Alpha course? I'm just curious. Was your wife a Christian or just curious? Well, we lived across the road from the church we ended up going to, and it's St. Stephen’s in Twickenham. And I'd actually been living across the road from this church for ten years without ever stepping foot inside. And I didn't step foot inside because I smelt the whiff of evangelism, I'd read theology at King’s, I thought I knew everything, and, of course, it ended up I knew very little. Very little. So what happened is, my wife started going to an Alpha course, and she actually asked me if I'd like to join her, and I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I declined. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to join her. I had no interest in the church or the Christian faith or Jesus or anything like that. I just wasn't interested. And I started to see that her behavior started to change. When I got back into our apartment, she was listening to kind of contemporary worship music. I can't remember what else, but I remember thinking to myself, “My goodness! She’s got it badly, this whole Christian thing. She's got it badly.” I remember thinking that. Okay, so she started really absorbing Christianity and the culture. Did she take up on a personal belief in God and Jesus at that time? So at that time, when she was doing to a Christmas service across the road at St. Stephen's, and during the service. They were showing a black and white film of the Virgin Mary. And I remember thinking to myself at the time, I remember thinking—it was a very good production, and I began to think, “What if?” And I thought to myself, “Something like this probably did happen.” And then the next Sunday, we went to a service, a family service, and we were really embraced by the people who went to St. Stephen's with open arms. And we were really encouraged. And I was invited to join a Bible group, a men's Bible group, called Fishers of Men. And I remember, during a service, I remember we were singing some kind of contemporary worship music, and I saw on the screen Christ described as lovely and beautiful, and it was… and I saw, at the same time, there were a couple of the people in the church raising their arms, and I really wanted to be one of them. No longer was God an intellectual type of primary cause or first mover or those kind of things. And to get any kind of understanding that God was for me was really radical to me. It was quite insane, really. I began to think, “Why would God be interested in me?” And then I think, during that process, I came to understand who Christ is and who Christ was, and it was really, really powerful. But one of the deciding factors was my wife once came back into our apartment. I was standing in the kitchen, and we were struggling to conceive at the time. We'd waited about five years, and we were involved with IVF-assisted conception. And my wife came into the kitchen, and she announced, or she told me, that, while she was in prayer on the train coming back from King's College, where the IVF was actually happening at the time, she said that God had spoken to her and had given her the word Nathan. And she said that she didn't know any Nathan. So she Googled the word Nathaniel, and it means, Nathaniel means God has given. And it was so out of the ordinary, my wife saying that, because she's not the kind of person to say that kind of thing. I just thought, “What are you talking about? God spoke to you on the train? What are you what are you saying?” But what I did remember in that moment, Jana, is how God spoke to me in the chapel when He said, “Go in peace.” Exactly. So I knew that God talks to His creation. I knew that, because that was the experience I had. And I went to the church on the Sunday, and I spoke with this lovely American lady called Annie, who was on one of the help desks there. And I said, “Annie, you're never going to believe it! You're never going to believe it! My wife's pregnant!” And of course, I saw Annie's face, and it was just this…. This picture of awe just came over her face and amazement and reverence, and it really, really is difficult to describe, but I knew that she had been praying for us, and I knew a lot of people at that church had been praying for us. So a lot of things were happening and had started to happen. And there was another moment as well. I was exhibiting with my business at a… New Age kind of show. And I was there exhibiting with my business, and I had a look at the floor plan, and I saw…. It was about this period, and I was very, very excited because I kind of felt that things were happening, and I had this newfound faith. And I saw on the floor plan that there was this one Christian organization. It was like a prayer organization in the middle of that smorgasbord of New Age businesses. And I made a beeline for that spot. And I said to the woman—she sat down, and I just said to her… I was really excited, and I said, “Isn’t it just amazing that Christ died for my sins and was resurrected on the third day?” And I was just so enamored and passionate about it. And I think I made her feel a little bit uncomfortable, because she kind of looked away. I think she felt that I was probably one of the Looney Tunes from the trade show, from one of the other kind of New Age businesses. But what I realized at the time was that this was a new position. This was a new position for me in life. This was a supernaturally assisted position. This was not somewhere I could have got to myself. And this is what ended up happening. And yes, I was just amazed. Yeah. So your friend had encouraged you to kind of figure things out, to find your way towards God, the God. Not any god, but the God, right? And so He was finding his way towards you, and you were finding your way towards Him. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. And through your wife. And you were putting yourself in a position of really belief and coming to faith, seeing these things happening in your wife's life, in your life, and obviously you became very excited about… you were describing Christ's death, burial, and resurrection and what that meant for you. I love what you say, that you learned that God was for you. Yes, that's right. And that’s what the gospel is, right? That God is for you. And that He came to bring you to Himself. So you were coming to a place of really true personal belief, it sounds like. Yeah. That’s right. It was no longer just an intellectual thing. It was no longer He was, as I mentioned earlier, the first cause or the unmoved mover. He had become irreducibly personal in my life. And when I had this conversation with this woman at the trade fair, it became evident to me that I'd become a Christian. You surprised yourself. I did. Because I had no plans, I had no plans to become a Christian. I didn't want to become a Christian. I didn't really try to seek it out, but, yes, there I was, and it was a radically new supernaturally assisted position and an irreducibly Christian view of the world, and that's where I got to. And I remember another quick story that I'd love to tell you about was when I was with a friend, and all my friends had noticed something was happening in my life, something was going on. And a very good friend of mine turned around one day while I was visiting him in North London, and he said, “Surely you don't believe all that stuff.” And I said to him, “Oh, no! I believe that Jesus Christ lived 2,000 years ago. He was crucified. The Gospels are very, very accurate, and He most definitely resurrected. And not only that, He died for my sins.” And I said it with such weight that, when I'd stopped, my friend just turned around to me, and he said, “OMG.” I guess he was stunned. He was stunned at your passion, I presume. Well, yes, and it kind of felt like it wasn't me who was saying that. It was something else. It was the Spirit of God. Right! It was just so powerful. And then a few months later, he'd come down to Twickenham to see me, and we were walking down the road. We weren't talking about faith or Christ or anything. And then he pointed across the road at the church where I was going to, and he asked me. He said, “Is that where you go to church?” It was just really funny when he asked me, because I just thought, “Yeah. Yes, it is. That's where I go to church.” And that was it. But the point is, I knew that what I'd said had made an impact on him. Right. Yeah. I’m sure it did. And I hadn't even thought about it. I hadn't thought about it. But he was thinking about it. So it just goes to show how many hungry people there are out there. Yeah, there really are. And speaking of that, Chris, I'm sure that there are a lot of people who are listening who are hungry. Some recognize the hunger. Some actually probably don't even know that they're hungry. They just are looking for something, and they're not really sure. But how would you encourage someone who is a curious skeptic or who might be looking in the direction of God or trying to figure things out? What would you encourage them to think about or to do? I think it depends what kind of nonbeliever or skeptic that you're talking about. But if they do have a sincere heart, and they are interested, I think a really great place to start is reading. I'm an avid reader, and there's a plethora of good books out there that will help to address the issues or the questions that these people might have. And I think what a really good thing to do would be to find out the types of problems that they may have with where they're at in terms of their faith journey, even if they know it's a journey or not. And maybe just to gently put a put a book in their hands, because you're never given enough time, the time you need to really go into too much depth or to talk about it in as much detail or necessarily have all the answers there at hand to talk to someone who does have lots and lots of questions. Since I came to faith, I have to say, before I became a Christian, I heard all about when you come to faith, you become the enemy. And that's been my experience. That really has been my experience. And I'm not playing a victim card at all, but I've really, really noticed that. Because I was the one who had the business and, you know, the business had a profile, etc., etc., but since I've come to faith, a lot of my friends think I've gone insane, that I've gone crazy, and I'm stupid, or this, that, or the other. So I think there's a lot of arrogance out there, a lot of intellectual arrogance, but actually, I think the truth is it's not intellectual arrogance, because I think it really is mainly emotionally driven, because if you had a proper intellectual conversation about all of these issues, my belief is that it can only lead you to Christ. So I think what I'm trying to say is I think the obstacles people have to faith, certainly to the Christian faith, often I find that they're emotionally driven atheists, for example. So to a hard-nosed skeptic who has rejected the Christian faith out of hand, I'd always say to them, “Well, you have to consider the evidence no matter where it comes from, because if you're not willing to consider the evidence wherever it comes from, then this effectively will make you intellectually dishonest, so you have to be able to consider these things without dismissing them or rejecting them out of hand.” And I've had a lot of those types of conversations, and I enjoy asking people questions. I've never been the kind of apologist who tries to preach at people, but really just to ask some very, very gentle questions. Because often I find that skeptics, or certain types of skeptics, are often just repeating caricatures of Christianity or the Christian faith or repeating slogans without actually ever really truly understanding what it is they're talking about. I would consider myself to be quite a new Christian still, but that's been my limited experience so far. And when I get into a conversation; I love getting into these sorts of conversations. I often say to people who are curious about Christ and the Christian faith or religion or whatever, I'd always say, “Look, I'm not an expert, but I'd love to share my story with you and see what you think. See if that helps.” Yeah. Have you found some reception to that? Oh, yeah, very much. Yes. That’s right. Yes, I have. But I've also been—because, you see, when I came to faith, I expected the whole world to come to faith, which of course, didn't happen, because you realize something's true, and you're so enthusiastic about it. I've learned the hard way, obviously, but when I first came to faith, I was picking people up on social media and saying, “Well, you can't just say something like that. Have you considered this?” And hoping that people would start to question their assumptions, etc., but kind of in a gentle way. And I think a lot of the time people just need to be able to be given permission to be able to even ask these sorts of questions, I think especially in the scientific communities and people who consider themselves to be of a scientific mindset. And you mentioned putting a book in someone's hand. I suppose it may depend on the kinds of questions or objections that someone might have, but are there any particular books that come to mind, just off the top of your head, that you like to give? That you feel are helpful? Yeah, yeah. I mean there are tons of great books. I love Bill Craig. I think he is a fantastic apologist. He's just so clear and succinct, the way that he puts things across. And what's really great these days is that you've got tons of Bill Craig on YouTube. So if you've got a quick question to ask about, well, you know, suffering, even in suffering, for example, well, see what Bill Craig has to say about it, because for all the questions that you have, someone has probably answered that question. Just do a bit of research. So, yeah, you've got Bill Craig, you've got C.S. Lewis, you've got Timothy Keller, who I think is just wonderful, the way he speaks into that cultural space, and how he grew the Redeemer in Manhattan in a very secular environment. What did he do? How is he addressing his audience? And he's written some great stuff. He's very accessible. He's not too intellectual, but he's just intellectual enough for those very educated people of Manhattan who are very similar to the people that you meet in London, who are very similar to the people you meet in Melbourne and Sydney. John Lennox is great. Gosh, who else have we got here? Yeah, we've got lots and lots of people. Yeah. So I think those are good people to start with. Yeah. I think those are really great recommendations. Now, for the Christian to engage with the nonbeliever, you’ve already given a lot of advice about asking questions and offering resources and just listening. Is there anything else there?  I think never underestimate the power of a good question. I think the question, “Why would you say that?” is a really powerful apologetic question. Because if you ask that question, people will start to question their own assumptions. And usually those assumptions are only one or two or three in line for their argument to fall down, or certainly their position to fall down, because they realize that their position is vacuous. There's nothing there. I don't know if that made any sense, by the way, but- No, it makes perfect sense. Yeah. It helps someone to think about why they believe what they believe, rather than just throwing out a slogan or a caricature, like you were saying before, of our faith. But, yes, I think you can't underestimate the value of a question. I think it's tremendous for everyone to think about why they believe what they believe, Christians and non. I was just going to say as well, I think, when you ask a question, it's never about winning the war, especially in the job that I'm doing at the moment. I've met all sorts of Christians now, and it's never even about winning the battle, it's just about giving people the permission to ask that question. And maybe just making them feel a little bit uncomfortable. I think it's Koukl who refers to it as just putting a stone in someone's shoe. Right. And I think that's where you want to start. And then pray and let the Holy Spirit do His work. Yes. The Holy Spirit would woo them as he wooed you. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Oh, what a beautiful story, Chris. I would say it's a very circuitous story. It takes all kinds of twists and turns, a little bit unexpected, but you found your way back to the one God Who is true and Who is real, Who had revealed Himself to you earlier in your life, and now it's obvious to me that he has transformed your life. And you work now, actually, for a Christian ministry, don't you? Yes, that's right. When I came to Australia, I wanted to explore my Christian convictions. I've actually stepped out of my business. And yeah, I've stepped out of it. And I work for an organization called Bible League, and Bible League resources the under-resourced global church through the provision of Bibles and biblical resources. It's actually a mission that started in Illinois in the 1930s and came to Australia in the 1970s. And what I do is I work as a development officer in Victoria. So I support our supporters. I visit them and make sure everything is okay. And then on the other side of things, I go into churches on Sundays, and it can be at any denomination. So we work right across the spectrum. One Sunday, I'll be talking in a Baptist church, the next Sunday I'll be talking a Presbyterian church and then an Anglican church, and then Christian Reformed, Pentecostal. And I'm often asked to share my testimony, and sometimes I do messages and sermons as well. So it's been an incredible transformation and change when I think about what I was doing just a few years ago, and I think one story kind of encapsulates this very, very well. I was on my way to actually delivering a sermon on a Sunday morning, and when it's morning in Australia, it's the previous evening in London, and I was having a conversation with my friends, who were all out together in a pub somewhere, and my friend asked me, “So what are you doing?” And I said, “Well, I'm actually on my way to a church to deliver a sermon,” and he just said, “Oh, wow!” It's a silly story, but it kind of shows you the difference between what I was doing five years ago as compared to what I'm doing now in my life. Yes. Dramatic transformation. Totally unexpected for him, I'm sure. And that will probably not be the last time someone looks at you and says, “Oh, wow! I can't believe where you are now.” But thank God for your story, for your life, and for the change that he's made in your life. It's so obvious. And too, how wonderful that he brought both your wife and you at the same time. What a blessing that would be, that you came to Christ together and that your family obviously gets the blessing of that. But thank you so much, Chris, for coming on today. Thank you, Jana. And for sharing your story and your insight and your wisdom. And I just am so thankful for what He’s done in your life, and I'm just so pleased to share it. Thank you for coming on. Yes. Thank you so much, Jana. I really enjoyed sharing my story with you today. Wonderful. Thanks for tuning in to Side B Stories to hear Chris's story. You can find out more about his work at the Bible League, as well as other contact information, in the episode notes. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can contact me directly at our email at info@sidebstories.com. Also, if you're a skeptic or atheist who would like to connect with a former atheist with questions, please contact us, again through our website, our email address, and we'll get you connected. I hope you enjoyed this episode and that you'll follow, rate, review, 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 see how another skeptic flips the record of their life. 

Former atheist Mason Jones thought Christian belief was an overly simplistic view of life and reality until he began to recognize its depth and complexity, its ability to better explain reality. Mason's Campus Outreach Page: https://cocentralil.org/mason-jones Atheists Finding God book promo code LXFANDF30  valid at https://Rowman.com/Lexington Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I'm Jana Harmon, and you're listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist or skeptic, but who became a Christian against all odds. You can hear more of these stories at our Side B Stories website at www.sidebstories.com. We welcome your comments on these stories on our Side B Stories Facebook page or through emailing us directly at info@sidebstories.com. As a reminder, our guests not only tell their stories of moving from disbelief to belief in God and Christianity, at the end of each episode, these former atheists give advice to curious skeptics as to how they too can pursue the truth and reality of God. They also give advice to Christians on how they can best engage with those who don't believe. I hope you're listening in to hear them speak from their wisdom and experience as someone who has once been on both sides. We have so much to learn from them. Also, please know that many of these former atheists have made themselves available to talk with anyone who has questions about God or faith. If you'd like to connect, please email us at info@sidebstories.com, and we'll get you connected. Christianity is often associated with a cross and with Jesus, who died on a cross outside the city in first century Jerusalem. Christians believe that Jesus not only died but rose from the dead and appeared to hundreds of people over 40 days, until He returned to heaven. They believe that these events, among others, confirmed Jesus' claims to be God, to be truth, to be the way to heaven. Christians believe that these were not merely historical events in history but that they take on spiritual significance for those who believe, that it is good news for themselves and for the world. For those who don't believe, this story can seem like childish superstition, just another myth, wishful thinking, a psychological crutch to give comfort or hope for something better than this world alone can offer. It seems completely out of touch and disconnected with anyone or anything reasonable or rational. It is an overly simplistic understanding of reality, they think. Skeptics believe it is severely out of step with scientific and sober-minded reality. It makes no sense intellectually or morally, until it does. Former atheist Mason Jones once found himself rejecting the Christian belief he now embraces, and more than that, advocates. For him, the cross of Christ held the key to him making sense of himself, of his own values, and of reality itself. I hope you'll come along to hear his story of moving from disbelief to belief. Welcome to Side B Stories, Mason. It's so great to have you with me today. Thanks. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Wonderful. As we're getting started, so the listeners know a little bit about you, Mason. Tell them perhaps what you're doing now in terms of your ministry and your recent history. Yeah, so I graduated from Eastern Illinois University back in May 2022, and right now I'm working with a campus ministry called Campus Outreach to plant a new region in Michigan. So right now I'm living in Illinois, learning how all of our financial systems and everything works, so I can then go and build everything basically from the ground up in Michigan, and I'll be moving this summer to go do that, and I'm really pumped about that. You're in ministry, and that's a long way from being or calling yourself a former atheist, so I'm curious how that happened. Let's get back into your story. Let's start at the very beginning, Mason. Why don't you talk with us a little bit about where you grew up. Tell us about your family life. Was there religion there? Any references of God in your world? Yeah, so I grew up…. When I was really little, my family probably would have said they were Christians, all of us, just, I think because that was the default assumption. But the God we believed in was pretty superficial, at least for myself. I think I viewed God as kind of a fairy godparent who just existed to basically take care of me, watch out for me, and make sure everything went smoothly. And yeah. I grew up, and my parents, especially my mom, really tried to shelter me from just the messed up stuff in the world, I think like most mothers do. So at least for the first few years of my life, I didn't really have anything to challenge that view of God, and I think my family didn't have a whole lot of that, either. But when I was about eight years old, some stuff happened in my family that my mom just couldn't shelter me from, just a lot of hard stuff. Family deaths, sickness, broken relationships, just yeah, some hard stuff. Over the span of just two years, one of my grandmothers got breast cancer, my grandpa got lung cancer, one of my uncles died in a motorcycle accident. Actually, a year before that, another grandparent died of a brain aneurysm. Then, like, two weeks or something after my uncle died in a motorcycle accident, my other uncle took his life in our driveway. And really, that event was kind of where it really hit me hard. Like, the questions, “How can a just and loving God be reconciled with a world that seems so devoid of justice and love?” And yeah, I questioned that for a while, just to myself. Oh, sorry. No, I was just trying to consider, as an eight year old boy, what that must have felt like. Experiencing that kind of loss in such a short period of time and especially so graphically in your own yard. I suppose, like you say, any semblance of faith in a God who exists to protect you would have…. It’s like the rug would have been pulled out from underneath you, I would imagine, sending you reeling in a sense, of where was this good and protective and powerful God? I can't imagine, as a child, really, what you must have undergone, and I'm so sorry. Thank you. Yeah. It was definitely hard, and I definitely didn't have the resources to understand what was going on. Did your parents try to help you talk through that, or was that something you were observing and processing on your own? As far as I remember, I don't remember really talking about it very much. I think we tried to avoid the reality of it as much as possible. And to this day, I don't know if my mom knows how much I actually saw, because my parents are divorced, and I was visiting my dad when my uncle took his life and yeah, I just never really talked about it with my mom and didn't really talk about it with my dad, either. That was his brother, and so he was going through his own process of grieving and a whole lot of pain there. So I think our solution a lot of the time was just not to talk about it, but I definitely asked a lot of questions to myself and just didn't verbalize them very much. Just questions like, yeah, how could a loving God let this stuff happen? At one point, I'd gotten to the point where I think I was asking, “All right, maybe God is good. Maybe I'm just not on His good side. Just the question of, like, “How good do you have to be to be good enough for God?” kind of was replacing the question of, “Is God really good?” And so I was wrestling with that. And that was when I finally did ask my parents. I asked my mom as we were… I still remember it. We were pulling out of a grocery store parking lot, and as we were pulling up to the stop sign, I think I asked my mom, “How good do you have to be to get to heaven?” And she, I guess, at some point herself had become an atheist. I don't think she was before all this stuff happened, but she just turned around and said to me, “Oh. You know none of that stuff's real, right?” And that was first time I had realized my mom didn't believe in God. But at that age, it was still, I think, anything especially my mom said was, “Oh, my mom is where I look to for truth.” And so it was, “Oh!” From that point on, I think I was an atheist and just was like, “Oh, I guess God isn't real.” It was devastating, but it was just kind of, “This is the authority figure in my life. That’s I guess the way things are.” Wow. And again, that's a pretty sobered view for a young child, really. As you were processing through all of that and walking through all that. I’m also presuming, by your story…. You were surprised at her revelation. I guess that means that you weren't actively going to church or involved in any kind of Christian community at all during any of this period of time. No. Like I said, all growing up, my understanding of God was really superficial. I didn’t even have really a category for what function church could serve, other than, “Oh, man, you must be really devoted if you go there.” I don't know if we even owned a Bible in our house. So I just really had a truncated, simplistic view of God that was pretty easy to take apart. So it wasn't like…. When my mom told me God didn't exist, it wasn't super hard to reconcile with just the information that I had, because the understanding of God that I had seemed like a contradiction, and it was. Yeah. It was really superficial, which—I was nine years old. Right. In your world, too, did you have any friends who were Christians or believed in God at all? Or was it a fairly nominal faith or at all in any of your friends that you had association with? Yeah. I don't know. It's hard, looking back then, because I wasn't even asking questions that would have gotten at the genuineness of someone's faith. But as far as, at least, I can remember, as far as conversations I've had with friends growing up, none of them ever said anything that would indicate a deep, rich understanding of Christianity and the gospel. I think there was a lot of nominal Christianity, which again, we were eight, nine years old. So some of that's just we weren't old enough to really have rich, deep understanding of the gospel. But also, I think, even just growing up after becoming an atheist, that was a common trend, was the religious friends I had seemed to have that truncated view of God that, at that point, had left a bad taste in my mouth. I think I thought little of them for it. Christianity or God or belief in God left a bad taste in your mouth. There are some people who experience pain and dismiss God and say, “Okay, I guess He’s just not there. He’s not real.” And then there are some who feel it, I guess, a little bit more palpably and can even develop almost a bitterness or a distaste or a contempt for religion, for religious things, for, in an ironic way, the nonexistence of God. Did you feel that sense of contempt in yourself? Or was it just, “Okay, I guess He just doesn't exist. I really don't care. Let’s just move on.” Yeah, I think I definitely wouldn't have said I had a contempt for Christianity as such. I think I just had a contempt for the simplicity which I did attribute to Christianity. I didn't realize there was a more comprehensive nuanced worldview out there under the banner of Christianity. But I had, again, friends that were professing Christians that… I wouldn't have said that I was hostile to God, that I was angry at God. Although of course, examining myself in the lens of the Bible, of course I was hostile to God. I was alienated from him. But at that time, I wouldn't have presented myself as such. I think I would have at least framed myself as objecting on purely rational grounds and rejecting the idea of God as a contradiction, not as an emotional hostility. So it was a rational decision, in a sense, that God didn't exist, and I presume that you're saying that it contradicted the idea that He was there, that He was present, that He was protective, those kinds of things. You've couched or used the word simplistic a few times with regard to your understanding of Christianity at that time. Can you flesh that out a little bit more? Because you're contrasting it between a simplistic understanding, but yet you're saying there was a deeper complexity to it that you didn't understand. But just, at that time, what did you think Christianity or belief in God was? Yeah. I thought the essence of Christianity was, “Believe in God and do enough good things, and you get to heaven,” and that way of ordering the universe and understanding how objective morality and God's goodness and sovereignty, how all that fit together, it seemed like, and I still think today, it is a contradiction. If you come in with the assumption that people are basically good, like I did, and with the right notion that God is both perfectly loving and sovereign over all of the universe, then there is no rational explanation for what goes wrong in the world. So that's what I mean by simplistic. I had kind of a one plus one equals two understanding of Christianity. Okay. Okay. I think that that is fair, a fair analysis, I think, in terms of your own, and many, I think, think in those terms. So I appreciate you kind of spelling that out for us. So you're eight, nine years old, and you've decided that God cannot exist rationally with what you're observing and experiencing in the world. So then what happens from there? Yeah, for the next few years, honestly, I didn't think about it very much. It was just kind of, “Oh, this is the way it is.” At least, I didn't think about God as such that much. I thought about the implications of my atheism pretty often. I remember, as early as fourth or fifth grade, just sitting in the classroom and just having like, existential dread, realizing, “Man, if  something happens and if I die today, then that's just it. There’s nothing!” And being terrified as a grade schooler, and yeah, that wasn't a normal thought for people in my classes. No! Right, right. That's, again, a fairly mature perspective or understanding as a boy, really, that you understood what you were rejecting, but you also understood what you were embracing, in terms of what it means for there to be no God is that there is no life after death, as it were. That can be pretty frightening for a child, I would imagine. Yeah. It was definitely a hard time, just because there was, I think, an instinctive fear of death. I think as I got older, it got easier for me to make the—or at least convince myself that, “Oh, it's okay. It’s just like a really long nap, or a forever nap.” But at that age, I think, just instinctively I knew better, that death really is a tragic thing, that it is sad, it's hard, it's devastating. And, yeah, I understood it better than I did, I think, when I got older. Well, you had been very close to several deaths to people close in your life. So I would imagine it would be a much more palpable reality for you, to consider that you would just watch people that you love die. So of course, there are other implications to a naturalistic or a worldview where God doesn't exist. You had spoken of objective moral values and duties and things, and just knowing things that are absolutely right or wrong. Were those things that you wrestled with as you were trying to come to terms with this godless world? Yeah. I think I realized pretty quickly, just on an intuitive level, that if—I was a physicalist atheist, so I was the most common, but also the strictest form of atheism there is. It’s there's no phenomena that can't be explained apart from what's physically observable and just the principles of physics that you would learn in science class. So I think pretty early on I realized the implications of that, that if physical phenomena and physical properties are the only properties and phenomena that exist, then there really isn't a place for objective and transcendent moral values, because a physicalist worldview traps you within the immanent. You can't reach out to the transcendent to grab resources. And I recognized that. And from as early as I can remember, that was hard, because I couldn't live as if that was actually true. Like I, at random points in the day even, would just recognize, “Oh, if God isn't real and what I do doesn't matter, then why would I not cut in line at lunch?” Or, “Why would I care about not skipping school?” But almost invariably, I wouldn't do those things. I would do what was really a contradiction, but what I would say is the moral thing. And that perplexed me. It was confusing. My stated beliefs weren't lining up with my practiced beliefs. And that was causing some tension even from, again, like fourth and fifth grade. Did you talk with others who shared your worldview, how they seemed to reconcile those moral intuitions, if you will, or things that didn't seem to line up with the atheistic worldview? Not that I can remember. I don’t know. Maybe part of it was growing up in Texas. Even if you are an atheist, I think a lot of people aren't very vocal about their atheism because it's still at least a very nominally Christian area. But I remember in English class, especially English class, we would read things that just started from, I think…. They weren't atheistic, but they were the same presuppositions that undergirded an atheistic worldview of, morality arises from social constructs, like it is a construct of society to order society. And so I was engaging with those thoughts that… they provided the only alternative to a morality that was based in God that I could think of. But I think even engaging with those, I realized they were kind of shallow. Like if morality was just a construct that just naturally arose from evolutionary processes, there was no reason for me as an individual to follow those restrictions. Those constraints, if they served an evolutionary purpose, which is the hypothesis that people put out, then I should disregard them when my own self interest goes against those constraints, because that would actually be advantageous for myself, which would then pass on those genes to future generations, but I didn't. And so either I was the worst piece of Darwinian machinery on the planet, or something wasn't adding up. Okay, wow. So something wasn't adding up in your atheistic worldview. Were there any other points of tension that were causing you to step back and consider maybe this isn't…. Just as your belief in God became, in a sense, non-rational or irrational because of what you were observing and experiencing in the world, with the deaths and all of that, it seems to me that the pieces are falling apart a little bit with regard to your atheistic worldview, that there were points of tension that were, again, not adding up, not making sense with regard to the whole of your worldview. Were there any other points of tension? Or was this enough for you to turn and really question what it is you were believing? There were probably other points of tension, but I don't think—even the points of tension that I felt, I was pretty content in my atheism, as far as, it was like, “All right. Yes, parts of this stink.” Like, “Man, the fact that me dying is just the end, that is not something I'm excited about, but it's just the way it is. It's the best way I can order things that I can think of.” And so I was pretty settled in my atheism. It wasn't like I was reaching out for something else. It was just, “Oh, I've got to find some way to either find meaning and find an orderly account for reality, or I have to just push that problem off to the side, which that ended up being kind of what I did, is I just pushed the whole morality problem off to the side, because I was like, “All right. I don't have the tools to figure this one out right now, so maybe someday, but for right now, I’m just not going to deal with it.” It seemed like within my framework, I didn't have the resources to deal with it. But the only other option seemed so implausible that it just wasn't even worth considering. And again, it was fundamentally because I had misrepresented Christianity, not because of any flaw in Christianity itself. And I would have said, again, my objections to Christianity were rational, but it was, on a deeper level, much more pre-rational, having to do with the basic assumptions about life. Again, starting from the assumption that people are basically good, that was the unstated assumption that led to all the conflict and tension in what I perceived was the Christian worldview. So you're in this sober minded, more rational understanding of reality, or so you think, within your atheism, and you're going along, you were not completely satisfied with it, but it's the best of all possible options on the table for you, or so you think, again, at the moment. So walk us along. What begins to happen or change? Yeah. So when I was 15, about to go into my sophomore year of high school, my mom—she was in the military. She was a cardiologist in the military. She got re-stationed in Augusta, Georgia. And when she moved from San Antonio to Augusta, I moved in with my dad in Illinois. And my dad had just relatively recently started going to church, and when I moved in with him, he started taking me with him. Interesting. I wonder what had caused your father to go to church. I'm not entirely sure. I think part of it was he, unlike my mom, had never stopped believing in the Christian God. He always would have called himself a Christian. We have actually talked since, and we, I think, both kind of agree he probably didn't really understand the gospel and become a Christian until around the same time that I did. But he felt, just kind of on a deep level, just from his upbringing, that like, “Church is something that we should do,” and he had not been going for a long time, but just hard stuff happened. And whereas my mom's response and my response, both of us was to pull away, his response was to lean in a little bit, and it was a bit of a delayed response, honestly, but eventually it happened, and I'm really thankful, because otherwise I would have never heard the gospel. So I went to church- So he had you go to church. Did you resist that at all, as a professed atheist? Did he know that you were an atheist, as he was trying to bring you to church? I don't think he did. Again, my family, we just never really talked about that stuff. I think because we know crossing that line hurts, that it brings up all the pain of that stuff, and so our default was just, “All right. Let’s just operate as best we can without dealing with that stuff, crossing that line,” so I don't think he knew I was an atheist, but also I wasn't… because, again, in my mind, it wasn't that I just was super angry or anything. It was more so like, “As an atheist, it's illogical to be angry at God,” and that was my thought, was, “Why would I be angry at something that didn't exist?” Right. So I was like, “Oh, I love my dad. This is an hour a week. I can do it.” So I'm curious, what were your first impressions of going into a church? You really hadn't been much of a church goer, so I'm curious, as a self-perceived atheist, what you thought of the service and the people. I honestly think the first time I just fell asleep and didn't think much about it. Okay. Yeah. That’s honest. Yeah. But I think gradually it kind of was…. I think the biggest thing was running into other people my age who were going to church, and the biggest thing, the single biggest thing that happened was…. It was probably the second time I went to church because again, the first time, I fell asleep. The second time, I actually do remember. I just actually heard the gospel. And I heard that the world was made good and was a reflection of God's goodness and His perfect sovereignty over that creation, and that He made man in His image to enjoy that creation and to in that creation enjoy Himself. And that was the first time I heard that purpose statement for creation. But then it was also the first time I had heard an explanation, a consistent explanation, for what's wrong with creation, that we messed it up, that it was our own free choice that brought the curse of sin on creation, that we’d chosen finite, broken things instead of the infinite, eternal God to try to satisfy us. And that was the first time there was even a category given for what's wrong with the world, other than God has to be what's wrong with the world. Instead it was, “Oh, what if we're what's wrong with the world?” And then the gospel was the good news, that's what euangelion means is the good news, that God was committed to redeeming His people, that He was committed to pursuing them, and so He sent His own Son, again eternal, infinite, perfect, and all His attributes, and He suffered the full weight of the curse that we had subjected creation to. And so I heard basically that the world is far more messed up than I had ever thought and that I even had the categories to think of, because as an atheist I only have whatever categories fit within the immanent frame. But I also heard that there is a God who is far more committed to restoring and redeeming that universe than I had ever thought to imagine. And so again…. Or not again. This is the first time I'm saying it, but I wasn't immediately converted right then on the spot. But I did realize at that moment that I had really oversimplified Christianity and that I at least really needed to engage with its claims more seriously. So it caused you to take a step back and take another look. How did you engage the claims more seriously? What did that look like? As far as what I did intentionally, I think I realized pretty quickly that ground zero for this was the resurrection, because it was the claim that the entire…. Every doctrine within Christianity and the whole of Christianity hinged itself upon the reality of this man, Jesus of Nazareth, rising from the dead 2000 years ago. And so I realized, “All right, if that's true, Christianity is true. If it's false, Christianity is false.” But also it was something that no other religion has. It's a falsifiable historical claim. Every other religion makes claims and builds its foundation on abstract principles, things that you can debate, you can argue about, but you can't falsify them. You can’t ultimately disprove them if they're wrong. And so I was not a full-on, full-blown logical positivist, which is basically—I guess I’ve got to rewind now. Logical positivism. I’m sure you're familiar with it, but for those of you who may be listening that aren't, it's basically the idea that the only statements that even have meaning are those that are empirically verifiable or analytically true. That's true in and of themselves. And here was an empirically verifiable claim. And that was, for an atheist, an atheistic physicalist even, like me, that was gold. It was like, “Oh, I can engage with this!” But I think also through that, through engaging with the historical data, I realized, on a much deeper level, there needed to be some deep challenging of the fundamental assumptions that I brought into my reasoning about the world. Because I realized my worldview, the basic assumptions I had, the presuppositions that inform how I think about everything, they precluded the very idea of a resurrection, because that's necessarily a supernatural imposition on the natural order. And if I'm a physicalist, I don't have a concept for that. Right. And so if that's just a claim that I believe, then that's fine, but it has to be something that can be broken down and falsified. You have to be able to prove me wrong, that physical phenomena is all there is. And that wasn't the case. Instead, it was a presupposition. It was something that was baseline taken for granted, taken as just an axiom, and it was what informed all of my reasoning. And so it was an invitation into the worldview of the gospel, which is where my friends were super helpful, because I, if just left my own devices, would have been trapped with the basic assumptions and the way of thinking that I had always held. But through engaging with my friends, I for the first time really saw people who actually believed the gospel. And so they had fundamentally different baseline assumptions about the world around them. Instead of doing things to get something or just as a functional process of, “Oh, this will give me this good,” there was something that instead, on the front end, drove their decisions. And that was that they were justified by the grace of God alone, through faith in Jesus Christ alone. And it actually produced real change in their lives. It affected and informed all of their decisions. Because, like I said, I had met at least nominal Christians beforehand, but I hadn't seen that before. And so, through my friends being able to actually imagine a different worldview and see how those assumptions would just fundamentally change everything, that was a huge part in how I became a Christian. So it sounds like it was a combination of, not only as an empiricist, at the time of your research, just looking for the evidence for a falsifiable claim of Jesus's resurrection, and then adding to that an embodied view of Christianity that was not only attractive, but it also had, like you say, completely presuppositions about the world and how you see it and how it drives your life. And you could sense a palpable change. So I'm just curious, for those who are listening who are saying, “I can't go there with the resurrection,” but how did you study? Did you have particular books or authors or claims that you investigated? And how did you pursue that? Yeah, I think my starting point was Google, and I just looked up Jesus’ resurrection, historical facts, case for, case against the resurrection. And I realized there were good and bad arguments on either side. But especially the arguments against the resurrection only worked if you started with assumptions that disproved the possibility of the resurrection. And so that's where I realized, like, “All right. That only helps you get from point A to Z if point A is point Z. If you start with, ‘The resurrection is false,’ you can end up back at, ‘The resurrection is false,’” but I wanted to see, like, “All right, if I was a Christian, could you actually convince me that the resurrection wasn't real?” If I was a thoughtful, informed Christian, if I believed that the supernatural can impose itself on the natural order, is there anything about the resurrection that's inconsistent? Is there any conflicting data? Is there any of the earliest eyewitness or historical documents that would go against this? And the answer was no. Basically the best argument people could give for why we shouldn't trust the biblical documents, which are eyewitness documents, was that because they validate Jesus’ resurrection. It’s like, “Ah! We know that can't be true.” And I was like, “That doesn't make sense.” I actually gave a talk on the resurrection one time, and at the start, I was like… I basically gave an example, like, if I was talking with my friend Brock, and I said, “Man, what would happen if I dropped this mic right now?” And he told me, like, “Oh! It’d fall to the ground.” And I said, “Yeah, well, that's only because you believe in gravity.” You'd be like, “Yes, but the question is, do I have a good reason for believing that?” And so if all the eyewitness documents were saying that Jesus rose from the dead, in my mind it was, “All right, there has to be a pretty high burden of proof to the contrary to show that every single eyewitness is false, rather than they're actually reliable. That's pretty impressive, I would say. As someone who really wanted to investigate what you believed… as someone who held rationality and evidence in high regard, that you were willing to take a look at evidence that perhaps went beyond your presumptions that only the natural world exists, that there is no supernatural. I'm just so impressed that you were willing to take another perspective, the Christian perspective, to grant the possibility, “What if?” and then look at the data. And obviously you were convinced by it. You're sitting here as a Christian. I presume that you believe that the resurrection occurred, that Jesus, because of the resurrection, it verified His claims to be God and His claims towards redemption, that all those things you talked about at the beginning, that God, or even through the gospel rather, that God really wants to redeem not only the world, but His people and all the brokenness in everyone, and that He does that through Christ on the cross, and then verified those claims through the resurrection. And then, again, you say you saw your friends who lived in an embodied way, with a different set of presuppositions, that God exists and that He actually accomplished the gospel through Christ and that He produces redeemed lives. And you saw that palpably in the lives of your friends. So I presume all of that came together and that you were able to move beyond your prior presuppositions to embrace this new view of reality and that it was applied to you yourself, that you personally took on that redemption that Christ accomplished on the cross, that the gospel was made true in your life. Yeah. How did that happen? Well, I think, just fundamentally, in order to actually believe the gospel and to be able to make that shift from atheistic physicalistic assumptions, presuppositions, to Christian presuppositions, there had to genuinely be a heart desire change. And I think, even up until recently, I would have recoiled from that, because I've just by default, and I think probably a lot of people listening can relate, just think of myself as a rational, intellectual being. The Descartes, “I think. Therefore, I am.” Not realizing that, fundamentally, at least if, as Christians, we listen to the Bible, and even if you're a postmodern listening to this, you listen to your own philosophy. We are teleological beings drawn to an end, one end or the other, and so my telos had to be at least shaken up and then progressively changed for me to even have the option to consider different presuppositions. There was a movement from the baseline heart level of where my worship was, up through the pre-intellectual level of the baseline assumptions that inform how I think about the world, through the intellectual level. And so, before the gospel could be intellectually viable, it had to be intellectually, and more than intellectually, actually just practically appealing. That's why, in showing a different way to live out reality and to understand reality and to do so in a consistent way, my friends didn't just stir up my mind to think about it but my heart to genuinely desire it. And an objection that someone might raise is like, “Oh, so you're just a Christian because that is what you want to believe.” In a sense, I'd say, “Yeah. No one ever believes anything they don't want to believe.” But the question is, is that correct? Is that right? I think, just on a fundamental level, I don't want to believe anything that's a contradiction. But also, reality, from a Christian worldview, can't just be an abstract set of propositions. It has to be something that's lived, that's glorious, that's beautiful. And so, as Christians, yeah, we need to reclaim the aesthetic, the beautiful, the joyful, because that's what made me a Christian, was the beauty of the gospel, not just the rationality of it. And the rationality is part of the aesthetic appeal. It's part of the beauty. It's part of the joy of the gospel. But if we reduce it to just the intellectual, then we miss out on entire dimensions of the gospel. Sorry, I don't know if I answered your question, but- No. No, no, no. I think that's really quite beautiful, and I love that you're saying that, because we are not just parts and pieces in our humanity. And I think it's interesting, too. Part of the reason why you rejected Christianity and God was because it was too simplistic and it didn't seem to fit or match with the reality that you were experiencing at that time. And you were experiencing something very deep, and it was more than rational. And I think we're all looking to make sense of our lives and what we think. And I think that, if you can find a worldview that's, like you say, not just superficially simplistic, but deep and complex and beautiful—it's good and it's true—that it is a good place to land. And it seems to me—and maybe you could talk a little bit about how you have been transformed in your ways of thinking and living since you found Jesus and the gospel applied to your life and that you believe that it is true and for good reason. All of those things together, that, once you find that, that it is transforming, like you observed in the lives of your friends. You're sitting there as someone who is a campus minister wanting others to know Christ. Obviously, your life has been fully transformed. Well, not perfectly, right? But in a grand way. Why don't you talk with us a little bit about how your life has changed since you took on Christ, as it were, as your Savior? Yeah. I think again, because I recognized, even before coming a Christian, pretty early on, wrestling with the claims of Christianity, that if Jesus Christ really did die and rise from the dead, that I realized that that demanded every ounce of my being, that that demanded to redirect my thoughts, my affections, everything that I was pointed towards and the end for which I lived my life, had to be captivated by that. And so, once I became a Christian, I didn't really know what that would look like, but I knew, “All right. If I ever come to the realization that there's a claim that Christ could make on my life that I am not living in light of, then I need to drop everything and follow that claim that Christ demands of me.” So for me, my freshman year of college, that meant dropping my dream of becoming a software developer and instead just devoting myself to ministry. That doesn't mean that for everyone, but for me, I realized both that I had a passion for teaching the word of God, for evangelizing and for discipling people in their faith, and raising them up as laborers to go evangelize and disciple and then mobilize other people. I realized I had a passion for that. And then I also realized that that's probably like the single biggest need that the world has right now, is not enough laborers in the harvest. And I could have done that within computer science. I could have, in a workplace, shared the gospel with a ton of people, honestly, especially with the high turnover in the technology industry, just could have made a lifetime of faithful witness. But I think, with campus ministry, and especially eventually I want to go into church planting, I realized there was a unique opportunity to not only share the gospel with many people but build people up in their faith through just a life long of intentional discipleship, which is my full-time job. Like, I don't have other stuff to do. There's unique sacrifices that go into a job like this. I don't have a steady salary. I support raise for my salary. So if people drop off my support team when COVID hits, then I'm in trouble. But there's also unique opportunities that, man, I have no other job than to pour into these Christian brothers and sisters and to equip our staff. I'm in the primarily administrative role, so I also get to really just do everything that our staff need to be able to do their own ministry. And so I'm ministering to both staff and students, and I just have a unique opportunity to pour my life out for the gospel without any other obligations. And honestly, I got the easy way out. It's, I think, a lot harder and takes a lot more intentionality to devote your life to serving Christ in a secular workplace than it is in a Christian workplace. Yeah, that sounds very full. And, in thinking back in your story, too, in terms of the desire to make sense of some of these big issues in life, whether it be objective moral values and duties, knowing that something is right and wrong and that there's a transcendent source for that, or that there is something after death, that there is purpose in living all of the things that might not have perhaps made sense as an atheist. Within the Christian worldview, this complex and deep worldview, do those things seem to come into alignment, that there's more sense making, I guess you could say, as well as meaning making within the Christian worldview, that you're not at those points of tension that you're trying to wrestle. I mean, we’re all wrestling, especially when bad things happen, right? When there's pain and suffering in the world and someone close to you dies, there's a problem. How do you reconcile that within your own worldview? And I would imagine as a Christian now, reconciling those issues, issues of death and pain and suffering, are a little bit different than where you were as a child, understanding it from a godless point of view. Yeah, actually a really hard but powerful example is my grandpa that got lung cancer when I was younger. He actually just passed away this past year, and it was painful. It was really hard. But when I was an atheist, there was no outlet for that pain. There wasn't any solution to it, other than, “There is no meaning to this. This is meaningless, senseless, chaotic suffering,”  and there was no firm basis for grief. But under the Christian worldview, there is. In the same foundation in which we find hope in grief, there's also the foundation that gives the basis for grief. And that's that the world's not made to be this way. There is a good God Who has made us in His image and cares deeply about all forms of suffering and is committed to redeeming and restoring it. And so there's a place for sorrow. There’s a place for wrestling with the pain of a world that's not the way it should be, and at the end of all that wrestling, it should lead us to a deeper and more full hope in the God Who has promised to redeem this world. Because it's not that God is cold and distant from the suffering. That’s the reason why it still exists, because God Himself took on flesh and entered into that suffering. Jesus Himself bore all the burdens of this world. Isaiah says that He was despised and rejected by men. He has borne our sorrows and carried our griefs. He's walked in every kind of suffering that we've known. He had every form of pain. He faced sickness. He faced sorrow at the loss of others. He wept at Lazarus's tomb, and He walked through death Himself. He walked through the curse of sin, all the brokenness in the world, taking it on Himself on the cross and in His death. And then He conquered it. It's not just that, “Oh, God understands. He knows how you feel.” But no, He walks through that for a purpose, and that was to redeem it and to give victory over it. And so, if the gospel was just, “Oh, Christ died for us,” then maybe there'd be comfort in that. Like, “Oh, whoever is running things, He’s been here.” It's like having a boss that has also worked your same job. It's like, “Oh, He knows what's going on.” But we have far more than that. We have the promise that God not only walked through death, but He came out the other side, that Jesus rose from the dead and conquered it and reigns at the right hand of God the Father. And so there's the resources to more fully deal with the tension and the pain and the sting of death and grief. Yeah. Well, what a change you have made. What a change God has made in you. It really is palpable. And I'm considering those who might be listening, Mason, who… they can feel that things aren't quite right in the world, quite right with themselves. They're feeling a little bit broken, maybe curious that there might be something more than what they're experiencing and what they know. And I'm wondering what you would say to someone who's curious, who might actually, like you, be willing to take another look, open their mind and their potential horizons to something different, consider other presuppositions. How would you advise someone who might be open to the possibility of looking closer at God and Christianity? Yeah. I think step one is engage with the claims of Christ, engage with eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. A great place to start for just who Jesus is, a historical compilation of eyewitness accounts, is Matthew. He's a meticulous collector of historical accounts, and he's super committed to taking detail because he knows that people he's writing to are going to want to fact check him. So he's very careful in how he writes, but he also writes with a warmth and a joy in knowing Jesus personally that just shines through. So it's not just a mere academic… he's not just writing a paper that's seeking to make a point. He's writing a genuine account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that is thematic and carries the weight of what Jesus has done, not just as historical realities, but deep and transformative truth that this is what Jesus has done, and this is what that means, this is what that offers you. And so you get both at the claims of Christ and you can compare those with people like Pliny, Tacitus, other first century, second century historians, in the case of, say, Tacitus, and other influential people at the time of Jesus's resurrection, in the early Christian movement. And you can compare them to Matthew. But I think maybe even more important than that is just find some Christians who actually genuinely believe the gospel, who believe that the Bible is actually real. They believe that Jesus did rise from the dead. And not just who say that but who actually live as if that's the case. And make friends with them. You don't have to commit to, you know, “These people are my life,” because obviously, if you're skeptical about Christianity, you probably don't want to do that, but commit to inhabiting their worldview for a little bit. And invite them to inhabit yours. Let there be a healthy dialogue there. And I think just be patient with them, because I sure found this out, hanging out with a bunch of teenage, college-age Christians, you’re probably going to find a lot of inconsistencies in their faith. There's a lot that was inconsistent about my life, even when I was an atheist. It's just we often don't live consistently with our values. But I think if you're patient and you let them really show by their actions what they fundamentally most treasure, what they believe, and what commands their hearts, I think that'll be a really powerful testimony alongside the Bible of the gospel's truthfulness. That's good advice. And I'm aware of also the reality that atheists and Christians don't often socialize. They're often not in the same space. And it may be, I wonder, a little bit hard for an atheist to find one of those genuine authentic Christians that you're talking about, just because they don't run in the same world. But to that end, I wondered how you would commend a Christian to engage with skeptics, to engage with atheists. How can they be in relationship? How can they get to know atheists? How can they best interact and share Jesus? I would say just actually spend time with non-Christians outside of a church context. It sounds really simple. And you might ask like, “Well, how do I do that?” But reality is there are plenty of ways. We are social creatures, we will spend time with people, and it's good to spend time with other Christians, but if our view of the Christian walk is just gathering up in a holy huddle and singing worship songs to Jesus all the time, then I think we're missing an entire dimension of the gospel, and that's that it's fundamentally outward focused, that Jesus's prayer, when He sees the brokenness in the world, is, “Lord, raise up laborers to go into the harvest, because the harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few.” And I think that'll always be true in a sense. Even if every Christian was committed to sharing their faith, there would still be just a lot of work to do, just because there are a lot of people in the world. But I think just, for example, on Saturdays, I'm joining a run club here in Peoria, and I'm just doing that because I work in a church office right now. I live with Christians. I'm still working on getting everything set up for a Michigan region, so I'm not spending a bunch of time on campus to spend with non-Christians. So this is just a chance for me to just actually, on a regular basis, be around non-Christians and have conversations. I think it's so easy for Christians to get caught up in all the other things we do that are part of just the spiritual disciplines, of growing in Christ, of reading the Bible, praying, spending time with other Christians, going to church, that we forget that, if we're really believing the gospel, it should have also an outward dimension to it, too, that evangelism is as much a spiritual discipline as any of those other things, that it's good for our souls to really live as if the gospel is true, and that people around us really do face the reality of hell apart from God's grace and the Person of His Son, and that God really is committed to saving people. And that, if we have those conversations with people, if we really commit ourselves to just laying down our lives for the kingdom of Christ, then God will do stuff, that God is more committed to evangelism than we are. That's a good word for all of us, Mason. I am so appreciative of everything that you've said today, all that you've brought to the table. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up? Or do you think we've covered everything? I would just say, hey, if you're listening to this and you haven't shared your faith in a long time, then I think the thing you most need to hear is not, “Go get out there,” but Jesus came, lived a perfect life on your behalf, died a sacrificial death on your behalf, and has called you to Himself, is committed to sanctifying you, and is now sending you out to be a part of the work He’s doing in building this new creation, as a gift, not as an obligation. So embrace the reality of the gospel. I love that. I think you are such a beautiful example, Mason, of having embraced the gospel, and again, the gospel has embraced you. And that it's obvious to me that this is something that you didn't have, that you didn't understand, that you didn't know in its fullness, and that you lived without, but yet you found it, and Christ found you, and yours is a life change, that you are passionate now towards others finding what you found. And I think we can all grab a glimpse of that and be inspired by that and are just so thankful for the work that He’s done in you, because we know that He is working so much good through your life and through your ministry and your obvious heart that has been surrendered to that kingdom purpose, towards bringing others to know what you've known, to know what you know. So thank you for coming on today, for sharing your story, for really sharing your life and your heart and your mind for all of us today. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. It was a great time. Just sweet to talk about this stuff, how God's just been really faithful in working to save me and to just work on my life since saving me. I hope the gospel gets ever sweeter and hope the same for everyone listening. I'm sure it will be. So thank you so much. Thank you so much, Mason. Thanks for tuning into Side B Stories to hear Mason Jones's story. You can find out more about Mason and his ministry with Campus Outreach in the episode notes. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can contact me through our website at www.sidebstories.com or through our email at info@sidebstories.com. I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll rate, review, 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 see how another skeptic flips the record of their life.

Former atheist Stu Fuhlendorf felt no need for God, achieving high level of success and power in the business world.  However, his achievements were tainted by emptiness and addiction which helped him become open to his need for God. Stu's Resources: book:  Wall Street to the Well:  A Story of Transformation from Fortune to Faith church website: redemptionhills.com Lifeverse website: www.lifeverse.com

Former atheist Will Witt presumed atheism was true until his beliefs began to fall apart under the weight of scrutiny for grounding of his values. It opened him towards a search for God. Will's Resources: website: theflstandard.com book:  How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies social media: @thewillwitt

Former atheist Pedro Garcia grew up in a secular culture, making it easy to leave his nominal religion behind.  After encountering serious, intelligent Christians, he began to question the possibility of God. website: askandwonder.com translator for Christian organizations: askandwonder.com/translations email: askandwondernashville@gmail.com church: The Donelson Fellowship To learn more and hear more stories of atheists converting to Christianity, visit www.sidebstories.com

Former atheist Malia grew up in a religious home but she never personally believed in God.  When she followed atheism’s rational end towards nihilism, it led to her to question what was true. For more stories of atheists and skeptics converting to Christianity, visit www.sidebstories.com Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist or skeptic but who became a Christian against all odds. You can hear more of these stories at our Side B Stories website at www.sidebstories.com. We welcome your comments on these stories on our Side B Stories Facebook page as well. You can also email us directly with your comments and feedback at info@sidebstories.com. We’d love to hear from you. It’s sometimes thought that religious people believe in God not for any rational or evidential reason, but on blind faith alone. Some skeptics have said that religious people believe in God in the face of no evidence or oppositional evidence, evidence that actually leads away from God. Most atheists say there is no evidence for God, nor could there ever be, since He does not exist. But there are many who believe in God for what they deem to be good, solid evidence. There are many Christians who contend that Christianity is a falsifiable belief, that it is true based upon good evidence, arguments, and reasons, and that they would not believe it if they did not truly think it was the truth. Their intellectual integrity would not allow them to buy into a belief system to satisfy anyone or anything else unless they were genuinely convinced it was worth believing, and for good reason. In today’s story, former atheist Malia once thought belief in God was not compatible with reason, with evidence or science. But she changed her mind. Now she studies the rational grounding for the Christian worldview, something she once thought an irrational and impossible pursuit. How did her paradigm shift occur? I hope you’ll join in to find out. Welcome to the Side B Stories podcast, Malia. It’s so great to have you with me today. Thank you so much for having me. I’m very grateful to be here. Wonderful. As we’re getting started, Malia, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself? My name is Malia. I am 20 years old, I live in Colorado, and I am an apologetics student. An apologetics student, okay. Where are you studying apologetics? I first started studying at the University of the Nations, and now I study at the Lee Strobel Center for Apologetics at Colorado Christian University. Okay, terrific. Wow, a 20-year-old who’s studying apologetics. That’s an interesting pathway for someone really young. You must be very passionate about what apologetics can bring. Just for the listeners who may not be familiar with what apologetics is, can you describe for a moment what you’re studying? Yeah. So apologetics at a base, it’s defending your faith with reason is the simple way to explain what apologetics is. And I’m focusing on practical apologetics, so that means I’m focusing on using tangible evidence like science, archaeology, history, really modern things to defend the Christian faith in a way that people may not think that they should complement each other. Wow. That sounds fascinating, and maybe we’ll get into that as we pursue your story. I’m sure it’s intriguing, too, for those who don’t think that any kind of Christian belief is based on evidence. Yeah. Yes. I know there are some who think that way, but obviously you’re studying a whole curriculum that is moving in the direction of a profound intellectual grounding for the Christian faith. All right, so let’s move back into your story, Malia. Why don’t we start where you grew up. Tell me a little bit about your home, your family. Did you pray? Did you go to church? Did you have any semblance of belief in God at all in your home?  I grew up in Denver, Colorado, specifically this little town called Littleton. I’m actually adopted, so I was adopted into a very big family of four older siblings. My parents were originally Catholic when I was growing up, and I was going to a very small private Catholic school. When you grow up, you don’t really have an understanding of God or anything of that sort. And so for me, it’s kind of just where I was. It wasn’t my belief. It was my parents’ belief. We’d go to Catholic church, and I’d have to sit through church on Fridays at my school. We’d pray in class, but God wasn’t a common topic in my household. We never prayed together or talked much. It was kind of just, “Let’s go on Sundays, or if we can’t go on Sundays, let’s do Christmas and Easter.” And so, yeah, I kind of grow up in that sort of setting where there was God, but He wasn’t really there, I guess. As you were growing up, were you praying to God? Did you have a belief that there was a God out there? Or was it just something that you did, more of an activity? It was more of an activity. I think the influence came from my grandparents to my parents, and it wasn’t a belief. It was more of just an activity for us, to get dressed up all nice and go to church. But I can’t say I ever really prayed when I was younger, nor did I ever see my parents pray. But you said you went to a Catholic school? Yeah. And I would say that was kind of…. When you’re in a setting like that, you kind of are forced to do that thing, but I think there’s a difference in choosing it and just going along with it. Okay. And I get the sense that you were just going along with it. So how long were you just going through the motions of this Catholic faith? I would say till about maybe fifth grade. I think I started to understand as I got slightly older, that it just personally wasn’t something I believed, especially when you have…. A lot of young kids have questions such as why do bad things happen to good people? And what about natural disasters? What about these things? And growing up, there were a lot of really bad events for me, especially leading up to fifth grade. And so at that point, I had kind of decided that God just didn’t really seem real to me because I hadn’t seen Him do anything. And I don’t want to get intrusive, but were the bad things that happened in your life, or were they just kind of around you, in the world at large? Was it more of a conceptual pain and suffering, or were you feeling that very personally? I would say both. I think, conceptually, outside, looking at the world. Around that time when I was younger, that was when the Arapahoe shooting happened. And so kind of seeing that. And in myself, too, I was picked on a lot as a kid, essentially, for being slightly different from everybody else. I grew up in a town that was marginally all Caucasian, and being the only Asian, very small, very petite, I would say that there was a lot of judgment and a lot of insults thrown my way growing up. So this good God Who was supposed to be there, Who was supposed to care, didn’t seem to, I guess, show up in the ways that you thought He probably should have if He existed. Is that the kind of thing that you were thinking? Yeah. You hear all about how good God is and all the things that He did in the Bible, but when you kind of take a step back, sometimes you see, “Oh, well, why hasn’t God done anything good in my life? And I think that’s the question I had that kind of led me to be like, if He hasn’t done anything good in my life, He hasn’t done anything, therefore He’s not good, and He’s not there. And you said that was when you were about fifth grade, around ten years old or so? Yeah, ten or eleven. Just around. So then you started doubting God at all, but you were still going through the motions, I guess, of church attendance. How did that work out? When you began doubting, were you still required to do all these kind of religious things? Well, actually, after fifth grade, I had moved to a STEM school, a science, technology, engineering, and math school. So I was no longer required to go to church, and I no longer went with my family to church. We actually stopped going because my parents kind of dropped off from the faith after I left that school. And so I was in a new setting, and we had kind of stopped going to church. And if it was just an activity, you can just stop an activity, because it wasn’t really a belief. Right, right. Yeah. Activities can come and go without much change in living, right? Or in life. And that was just something that dropped off your radar, it sounds like. So then you were moving into middle school, high school, and a STEM program, which is obviously science and technology oriented, why don’t you tell us what the view of God was perhaps among your fellow students, your peers, or in your education? What was the sense of whether or not God existed with regard to any of those things? Or did it even come up? When I was going to middle school and high school in a setting that was primarily dominated by scientific and intellectual minds, God wasn’t a topic, but you kind of just knew that it was irrational. Because we go to science, and they talk about evolution and the Big Bang and all of these scientific theories that state how exactly the Earth and the universe were created, and there were no outside questions. It made sense to you at that time, and so when I was going to school, there were a couple of people of different beliefs that…. We never talked about what we believed. If somebody was Mormon, they never really said they were Mormon. If somebody was a Christian, they never really said they were a Christian. So it basically became a nonissue for you. Yeah. It was something where I didn’t have to think about it, because nobody was bringing it up, and I was already pretty set in what I thought, and everybody else was pretty set in what they thought, and so it just wasn’t brought up. And what did you think around that time? Were you in coherence with the things that were taught at STEM, that we live in a world without anything supernatural, that science explains everything? That kind of thinking. Is that what you basically adopted through that process? I would say yes. I would say I was pretty firm in the… if God isn’t good, He’s not real. And so I kind of said, “Well, there’s not a God, so there has to be something, another explanation.” And at that time, science was really appealing. And so that was kind of where it was, like, “Oh, there’s a scientific reason. There is something tangible. There’s tangible evidence to why we exist like this, and there is no need for supernatural intervention by God or whatever,” and whatever else there was. Like angels weren’t real, things like that. Yeah. And it just sounds like that was the world that you lived in. It was a presumption that was made, and it was comfortable for you, and it allowed you to pursue science or technology in the way that you wanted without any complication. During that time, did you ever identify or label yourself as an atheist or an agnostic, or was it not something that you gave a lot of thought to? I think I didn’t really put a name on it until I got to high school. And that’s when I started calling myself an atheist, because I wanted to make sure I had all the information to be informed of what I was calling myself. And so when I was going through this technology school in middle school, I wouldn’t say that I was an atheist or agnostic. Technically, you could say I was probably an atheist, but I just didn’t put that label on until I was able to understand what that label meant. But yes, I would say at that time, I probably was. Yeah. And atheism is described or defined by a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. How did you conceive of atheism at that time? How would you have described what that is? I think my understanding of atheism has changed a little bit, but at that time, I would say it was just the nonbelief in anything spiritual or supernatural. I didn’t think God was really a tangible explanation or reason for everything that exists or was going on in our world. And so I just assumed and kind of moved on to the path that there was an intellectual reason, like reason being an intellectual term, like there’s evidence, and there’s something tangible, and things like that. And so I didn’t think God was there, in the realm of intellectualism. And so the way I thought, atheism was essentially intellectualism. Okay. Okay, good. Yeah. It really buys in a bit into the way of thinking that atheism is the rational way to believe, it’s what the intellectual people believe, it’s what the “brights” believe, all those who are scientific. I think there’s a very common mantra in that, and there’s a comfortability and a confidence in that as well. And I presume that you were confident in this worldview without God. When did you start doubting? Or what happened that allowed you to question your own sense of atheism or naturalism? So It was right around when COVID hit actually. I was still in high school. I believe I was a junior, and I was just fine not believing in God. I had a whole plan. I wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to study biochemistry in college. That’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to graduate, go to university, study that, and then get a great job. But COVID hit, and all of a sudden, I was stuck in my house, and I had a small little screen where I would talk to my professors, and that’s all I did for months. And I kind of was like, “Huh. I wonder what happened. What do I do now?” And my grades kind of started to tank because of being alone in your house and not being able to go out and see people. My biggest thing was being able to ask questions and interact with teachers and stuff like that. And I wasn’t able to do that. And so I didn’t know a next step. And I actually decided to finish high school early. So I finished high school early, and I didn’t know what to do. And my sister had sent me a text that kind of just said, “Hey, I know you don’t have anything to do right now, but I think you should go somewhere, take a gap year before going to college. There’s this really great program that you should look into, and they have a location in Hawaii. They have locations all over the world, and it’s called YWAM.” And I looked up YWAM. It’s called Youth with a Mission. It’s a Christian organization. And I thought she was insane. I bet! Was she a Christian at that time, your sister? Is that why she sent you this information? Yeah. When I was in high school, my family, so being my two older sisters and my parents, started transitioning into Christianity. So after a couple of years of nonbelief, they started transitioning to believing in God again, but in a different way. And I thought that was weird. And I distanced myself. I didn’t go to church. I didn’t do youth group. I was like, “I don’t believe in God. I don’t need to do this.” And so she sent me that text, and I thought she was crazy. I was like, “You know I don’t believe in God. Why are you telling me to go somewhere to essentially be with other people who believe in God?” Yeah, that’s really unusual. So did you look into it at all? Yeah, so I looked into it a little bit, and I assumed, because in every place like that, there’s a little group of atheists that are just there because their parents wanted them to be there. And so I was like, “To start, there’s probably a group like that, but I don’t really want to do this.” And then I got a contact from one of my sister’s friends, being two twins, who I was familiar with. And they said, “Hey, we want to talk to you about why YWAM,” and it was completely unprompted. From my memory, it was unprompted. And I was like, “That’s kind of a coincidence, and it’s kind of weird, because I don’t really believe in coincidences.” And so I agreed to talk to them, and I did my research, and strangely, I felt like I should go, because when I looked at it… yeah. Yeah, that is strange, and for those, again, who are not familiar with, YWAM, Youth with a Mission, what does that typically entail? Isn’t that some form of global travel and commitment? Yeah. So YWAM, it’s a missions organization, Christian missions. And when you go there initially, you do something called a DTS, which is a Discipleship Training School, and you spend three months at the base. There are hundreds of bases around the world. And then you spend three months going to an unknown location doing missions work. And so that’s kind of what people were trying to buy me into. They were like, “Oh, you could go stay in Hawaii for three months and then travel. That’d be a really cool experience for you!” Right. Yeah. So do you think that this was your family’s way of trying to get you to become open again to some sort of belief? Yeah, I believe so, because around that time I was going really deep into philosophy and epistemology and kind of tangling myself in a couple of webs. Tell me about those. So my parents ended up sending me to a Christian school for my junior year in high school. For whatever reason, I was there. And I had a teacher, my Bible teacher, who I was really familiar with. He understood kind of where I stood intellectually, and I learned what the term nihilism meant. And again, for those who aren’t familiar with the term, can you describe what nihilism is?  So nihilism is… Everything is true. Everything is right. I can have my own view on what is right and what is wrong,” you start to go down this path that eventually leads to nihilism, which is if everything, if every opinion of every person is right and wrong, nothing’s right and wrong. There’s no intrinsic value or intrinsic right or wrong. Therefore, there’s no point to your existence, if there’s not one sticking point. Right, right. So there’s no objective truth. If everything is relative to a person or a group, there’s nothing to call anything absolutely right or wrong, like you say. So what discussion did you have with your teacher about nihilism? Well, that’s actually where I put myself for a year. Because I had gone so deep into science and philosophy and all of these intellectual things, I really couldn’t find a tangible explanation to one question, and that question is… it still is at the forefront of my mind. And that question is: What is truth? My teacher asked me that question because we were discussing it in class, and I did not want to answer it in class, and so he asked me in a private conversation, “What is truth?” and I genuinely couldn’t answer that question. There was nothing that I could go through that would give me that answer. And so, when you go down the truth route, then you realize, “Well, if truth is all subjective, there is no point to truth, and therefore there is no point to you if there’s nothing to hold onto, no core value.” And so I went down that. I was like, “Oh, that’s actually where I am.” How did that feel, coming to that place of realization and even admission? It’s a worse feeling than you think, because, when you start to go down that route of values and the lack of, it’s depressing, and I’ll be blunt. It’s like, “What is the point of being, of living, if you have no value, if there’s nothing for you to gain nor give?” So that’s kind of where it was, and it kind of sucked because that kind of put me in a hole where I no longer… I didn’t want to be at the school where they talked about God because I didn’t believe in God. But I also wanted to avoid all of the intellectual conversations and the books that I had kind of spent a lot of time reading into, because both of them kind of drove me down this hole of truth, like, what is it? Does it exist? If it doesn’t, there’s no point. So these philosophy books that you were reading, were they from atheist authors or were they from another worldview? Most of them were from atheists, because they were a lot of the older philosophical texts, which most of them back then were all atheists. Like Bertrand Russell or some of those. Yeah. Or Friedrich Nietzsche or some of the existentialists? Yeah. A lot of Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a frequent of mine. Oh, okay. A companion of yours in your reading? Yeah. If you read those books enough, I think that you do realize that, at the end of the naturalistic or atheistic worldview, there is nihilism. It can lead to a point of despair when you realize the underbelly, as it were, of a godless worldview, when you lose all of the things that are important, that make you you, and then all of your values and your dignity and all of those things that substantiated it. So what did you do when you were in this place? You said you were kind of in a hole at that moment when you realized what you had essentially reasoned yourself into believing, into this rational, but almost irrational belief when you look at some of the outcome, or like I say, the underbelly of the belief. Yeah. At that time, there really wasn’t an open door for God. And so for me it was kind of just sitting in that and trying to come up with reasons, so trying to read a bunch of stuff about epistemology and find logical reasons to describe truth. But in reality it’s like the realization is truth isn’t… it’s not inherently an intellectual logical title. Because where I was, people were just like, “Oh, well, truth is the Bible. Truth is God,” and I thought that was stupid. I thought that that was the most cop-out answer, I guess, to that question. But when I weighed it with mine I was like, “Well, mine doesn’t make sense either.” And so I was wondering, “Where do I go from here?” So you didn’t want to believe in God, you didn’t think there was any substance to belief in God, but yet you found yourself in between this rock and hard place and allowed you to sit with it and study it about how you know things and how you know truth. And you said that there was a glimmer, there was a breach in the wall as it were, that allowed you to reconsider the possibility of truth, it’s source, it’s grounding. What happened? What was this little glimmer of light that came through that allowed you to shift and become open toward the possibility of God? Well, it was the fact that I just could not answer the question. And then that teacher that I was familiar with had asked me a question and said, “Well, does every question have to be answered intellectually? Does, ‘What is truth?’ does that question have to have an inherently intellectual answer?” Like, “Can’t it just be that the answer to, ‘What is truth?’ be, ‘It’s God.’ Can’t that just be the answer? And how do you navigate that?” And so I sat and thought, and we had to write reports on this question, and I read a couple of people, and I kind of started to see where maybe I needed to start reasoning less. I needed to kind of take away this worldview that everything had to make perfect sense, everything had to have an intellectual answer. And that’s kind of when I started to be like, “Okay, well if truth can’t be explained by logic, it has to be something outside. Well, maybe it is God.” I kind of circled back around. I was like, “Well, maybe it is God. If it’s not the Christian God, maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s Buddhism. Maybe it’s Judaism. Maybe it’s Hinduism.” Like, “One of them has to be true, because something has to be true. Nothing cannot not be not true.” So then did you just start looking at and investigating worldviews? Or what path did you go on next? So I started investigating worldviews, exactly as you said. I had a lot of friends who were Buddhist, so I started with Buddhism, and that didn’t really make sense to me. It’s kind of a hard concept. So was Hinduism. Hinduism is very complicated and needlessly complicated, and I just didn’t see validity in everything else I was looking at, Mormonism. I even looked at some pseudo-Christian beliefs that were just not… they didn’t look good on paper, nor did they look good when I was kind of looking at them, and circling back around, I landed on God and Christianity. And at that time, leading up to when I had decided to finish high school and move on, it was perfect timing because I had said, “Well, God has to be an answer. I might as well spend some time looking at it,” and then that invitation to go to YWAM came up and I said, “Well, it’s a perfect opportunity to do some investigating.” So you said yes to YWAM then? And then you went into that three-month period of training. Is that where you started looking at the question of God a little bit more seriously? Yeah. It was possibly the worst three months of my life. Not to be over dramatic, but it was such a different setting, and with everybody who—I was wrong, actually. Everybody there believed in God. I could not find one person that had one stray disbelieving thought about God. Yeah. So that little group of atheists you thought you might find on the road there did not come to fruition. It sounds like you were alone in this. Yeah. And it was hard because nobody thought like me. I was kind of like, “Oh, well, what about this and this?” and, “Why does this happen?” And, “Why isn’t God there in that?” And people just completely pushed away my questions. And they were like, “Oh, well, you don’t need to even worry.” Oh! So they didn’t really take your intellectual questions seriously? No. The people that I was with, I was with a group of people that were very strongly evangelicals, and kind of the impression I got from this specific group of people was that they thought intellectualism was invalid when it came to God. Wow! So that, I’m sure, was not attractive to you in terms of… I know you were looking a bit beyond reason, but not anti-reason, right? You were looking for something a little bit more solid than, “Just believe,” or, “Don’t worry about that.” That’s not satisfying to someone who is intellectually curious. No, it’s not. And really, if you think about it, it doesn’t make sense to put blind faith in something. You don’t put blind faith in something. You have a reason for it. Nothing is ever blind in that way. There’s always a reason that you believe. You have to have a reason or else that faith can begin to feel unreasonable. And that was the case for me. And so I had to go. Now, I kind of say God sent me down this path by myself because I had been so dependent on other people and other people’s theories and opinions that I had to go down this six months by myself, where I had to find this middle ground that nobody else was really believing in. But I had to find a middle ground that could say that God and reason do go together. So what did that six months look like for you in that journey? Obviously, you’re not finding affinity with the Christians there in terms of finding answers. So what did you do? How did you solve this seeming conundrum or the tension that was produced by the cognitive dissonance you were feeling? How did you navigate this? So going through that program was tough because they have a lot of belief in miracles, a lot of belief in spiritual gifts, like prophecy and healing. And that was hard for me to get a grasp on, because Catholics don’t believe in that kind of thing. Most Catholics don’t. We don’t really believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And so it was even harder for me because I could look back and say, “Oh, well, belief in God. I know what that is because my parents used to have it when I was younger.” But the spiritual gifts thing was really hard for me to grasp, so I went through the six months being surrounded by constant talk, like speaking in tongues, healings, seeing a lot of different things that were really hard for me to get a handle on. And then kind of towards the end, I ended up going to the Dominican Republic. And firsthand, whether you believe in miracles or not, I believe that I witnessed them when I was in the Dominican. And I think that was the moment, where I was like, “Oh, wait! God actually most likely probably is real,” when I tangibly saw evidence. I needed tangible evidence, and I hadn’t seen it yet. And I saw it. I saw a miracle performed in front of my face. And that’s for somebody who prides themself on basing all of their thoughts on tangible evidence, I had to take that into consideration. So I’m just curious, what kind of miracle did you see that caused, again, for you to consider that possibly God is real? Again, whether you believe or not, this is like a personal experience of mine. I saw a woman in a church. She had a really horribly bad gash on her foot, and it was infected, and it was deep, and it was ugly, and she couldn’t walk, and she was going to have to get it amputated because it was climbing up her leg. It was very bad. And a good friend of mine, he was kind of like the glue for me, I think. When I had the most doubts, he sat with me. Even if he didn’t understand my thinking, he just let me talk. And he prayed with me even when I really didn’t want to or when I didn’t know how to pray. He really kind of guided me through the six months, even though it was really hard. And he had said, “Hey, I want you to see something. Let’s go pray for this woman.” And I was like, “Oh, well, I don’t really know what we can do for her. She should go see a doctor, but let’s go pray for her.” And I think it took maybe 5, 10 minutes. And I watched her stand up and walk, and I watched the gash close. Oh, my! That would be very unsettling in a good, surprising way. Unsettling, though. It was unsettling, because she went from having to hop her way in and sit down and not be able to even stand on her leg to jumping around, dancing, walking, and it was completely fine. And again, whether you believe in miracles or not, to me that’s evidence. That’s evidence right in front of my face. And it happened immediately, after the prayer? Yeah. It took a couple times, and this miracle healing, I saw a couple more of them when I was in the Dominican, and that was the evidence I needed and that I was asking for from numerous other types of faith, but especially from God. When I had first circled back to God, I was like, “I need tangible evidence, because if not, I don’t think this is something I could believe in.” Wow. So you weren’t convinced of the truth of God so much as the reality of God. It wasn’t through a rational argument. It was through an experience of watching the miraculous. Yeah. So, in some ways, I guess, what the YWAM people were telling you is, “Just believe. Look at the miracles. Look at what’s happening. Don’t look at the intellectual arguments and evidences.” But like you say, that is a kind of evidence, what you witnessed with your own eyes. So take us from there. You were trying to make sense of what you were seeing. You were admitting the possibility of God. Where did you go with that? Well, now that I had tangible evidence, I was like, “Okay, now I have the belief, but now I need a reason piece.” Like I need some sort of logical reason to believe in God other than He performs miracles. That was hard for me, and I think that was the first step. I walked away from that experience with that initial belief, being like, “Okay. Nobody else can do this. This is obviously God.” So I ended up going back home and then going back to Kona to be involved in a program that was more intellectually based. And so it was studying the Bible for three months, studying classic worldview for three, and then studying apologetics for three. So I guess you could say that’s kind of where I got my attention kind of piqued, because, reading the Bible, I’d never read the Bible all the way through. I read it all the way through at least twice, maybe almost three times, in that first three months. And I started to understand the character of God, and I started to ask questions. And there was a teacher at this school who was… he had a degree in biblical studies, and so I asked him questions, and he was able to answer them. Not only did he answer them, the questions that I had since I first came to YWAM, he also told me to keep asking questions. And that was the first time that I heard that encouragement, that curiosity is really important. Wow! I bet that was refreshing for you, because you hadn’t found, I guess, a community of Christians who were willing to ask the questions or answer the hard questions or to value reason as you did. So I’m sure it was encouraging to you to actually run into someone who’s saying, “Yes, ask the questions,” that there are actually answers for these. Yeah, and he also said, “Keep asking questions, because if I can’t answer them, eventually there will be answers, because God will answer those questions for you.” And that kind of changed my whole opinion on Christianity, because originally the thought was, “Oh, it’s just belief. There’s no intellectualism because they don’t like people who think intellectually.” But this teacher, he changed that whole thought and got me kind of back to where I was, but in a different way. So now I was asking questions and doing research, but now I was doing it in the direction of Christianity. So I was writing down questions and looking them up and reading the Bible and trying to find these answers because they were so important to me, because I needed these questions and answers to explain why I believed. And I really think I owe my current belief to this teacher and his wife, who actually is an apologist. And she started pushing me towards apologetics. So now I was answering the hard questions, and I was asking them, and I was understanding where God stands in all of that. And so I went from this, “Oh, well, I guess God exists because He can do tangible things. That’s really cool.” And then coming back to be like, “Oh, well, there’s now a reason to believe in God. God is actually intellectually true,” when I thought about it. And I think that was kind of… yeah. Yeah. So just for clarification, subjectively there is truth that we decide in ourselves, but objective truth is that there’s truth outside of us, whether we believe it or not, something is true or not true. So when you’re saying, you were believing in God and you were choosing to believe in God, there is, in a sense, a subjective component to it, that there is a willingness there to see what you perhaps weren’t able to see or didn’t want to see before. But yet you’re telling me that there is an objective reason to believe that God is true and real and the things that you were learning with regard to truth and reality and Christian belief are, in a sense, objective, that they are objectively true and rational and reasonable, and that there is a worldview there that seems to match with your intuitions and with reality. It’s not just faith that you want to be true. Yeah. I think it’s your choice. Your belief is your choice, but with that belief, you need to have a personal reason. The question is, “Why are you a Christian? Why are you a blank? Why do you believe?” And if you were to ask me that question, I would say because I believe there’s tangible scientific evidence for God when compared to the classically naturalistic theories that we have that explain the Earth. If I were to weigh them against each other, I would say that the creation story makes way more sense when you look at the specifics. It makes more sense when you look at science. I don’t like the separation between science and God because I think they go together. I think science, logic, and God actually do cohere. And I think it took first a choice to say, “Okay, well, if truth is subjective maybe I do choose to try to find a different truth.” And then you come to what is actually true, which there is one objective truth. Whether you believe that or not, there is one. You just have to choose to find it first. Because you had become open, you had chosen to really see the evidence for what it was, it came to a place where it actually was rational and reasonable, and like you say, all the pieces came together. It made more sense, even scientifically, which is a far path from where you were in your high school days, when you thought that science and God were incompatible, or at least belief in them were incompatible. But you were able to see actually the reality of God helps us make more sense, even rationally, of the world around us and how we make sense of ourselves. So it sounds like that, through your study, you were able to make sense of things intellectually, rationally, that the worldview seemed to come together in a way that made sense for you and what you had observed, even in the miraculous events in the Dominican Republic. Did the pieces start falling together for you as you were willing to pursue the evidence and the logic and the rationality of Christianity? Yeah. It’s hard to describe in words the exact process that happened for me, but I started to realize there’s not a separation in what I believe and what I think intellectually. And so I was able to start taking the things that I thought and putting it towards my belief. And I think when I got rid of that separation, that’s when I begin to really believe in this cohesion together, that it’s not just feelings and thoughts separate, but they’re together. And when you put them together, you can make sense of it so much more. And I think I had this separation and so, again, it’s kind of hard to put into words, but I began to take what I knew and apply it towards a Christian worldview and a belief in God and kind of merge them together, and they made more sense together than they did apart for me personally. And so that’s when, as you say, the pieces fell together, and that’s kind of when I really called myself a Christian, when I could actually believe, know why I believe, and had a reason to believe in God. So you had confidence that what you were believing in was true and for good reason. That’s what you had been looking for all along, I suppose. It wasn’t worth believing in something that wasn’t true, so I wanted to make sure something was true before I believed it, essentially. Right, right. Wow! It sounds like you have a very confident belief now and you’re pursuing more in terms of your study of the Christian worldview because you obviously have not only believed it intellectually, but I presume personally as well. Truth is also a person, right? And Christianity is intellectual belief and assent to certain things that are true about reality and history and about the person of Christ, but it’s also knowing the person of Christ, right? And the Christian story really of putting our trust in Him. So I imagine that was part of your conversion as well? Yeah. That was. Yes. Yeah. That’s beautiful. Malia, you know what? I really appreciate your honesty and your struggle. It seems like you were alone for a lot of your life in terms of not only just believing as an atheist and coming to that conclusion, but also in your path towards God. It wasn’t as if you were surrounded by a lot of people who were able to answer questions, who were able to come alongside and deal with not only your intellectual angst and your cognitive dissonance, but eventually, eventually you found your way. I think there’s something to say about perseverance, intellectual longing, and curiosity to make sense of your life and the world around you. And you weren’t willing to give up on that. I commend you for following that, even though it was a very difficult path for you at times, and even though you put yourself in very uncomfortable situations, even with a group of Christians who didn’t believe the way that you did, that you were willing to go to an unknown location in the world and to really figure out this question. And there’s no bigger question than the question of God. Yeah. I would say that, for me, it was important for me to do it alone. And I did have people. Whenever I needed it, somebody came into my life to kind of prompt me to go a way. But I really think, for me, it was a personal understanding I had to come to without falling into what other people believed, without falling into the norm. I think that’s why I was put in such uncomfortable situations, to essentially be isolated even in a huge group of people, because I think that’s what I needed, and I think it was worth it. And I think I did find what I needed because of it, because I was kind of forced to be by myself with my thoughts. If there is someone who’s curious, he’s skeptical or she is skeptical, and they’re thinking, “Well, I don’t know. I wish I knew what was true,” that they may be in that place where you were, in kind of a conundrum of trying to figure out what life is about, where to find truth. How do I know it? How would you commend the skeptic? What next step would you encourage them to take? I know Bible reading was part of it for you, but that was a little bit later in your journey. You were willing to read the atheists, but you were willing to sit down and read the Bible. You were trying to engage questions with Christians. How would you encourage someone? First of all, I want to say it’s not about age. I think people think there’s a certain understanding that comes later in life or earlier in life. I’m really young, but I came to that understanding, and I’ve seen older people come to that understanding. I’ve seen teenagers come to an understanding of God and belief. And I think the first thing I would say for a skeptic is just be willing to ask questions. I think questions are always the first knock on the door. I think when you ask a question, you’re begging curiosity and allowing yourself to follow those questions, So to find answers, to consider all the possibilities. I’m not going to say you have to read the Bible first to do all this, but if you have a question, ask the question and see where it leads you, because it might lead you down a route that you never thought you’d be down, but a route that gives you more satisfaction than the one you were down before. I think asking questions is critical, really. And I appreciate that for you. And I do also appreciate the fact that, you’re right, anyone of any age, as long as they’re willing to ask questions and pursue truth, it can be brought to them, or they can find it, basically. They can discover what’s real and true. And if you could think back in your young life, perhaps of the Christians who impacted you on your journey along the way, like you say, God sent someone in your life here and there when you kind of needed it, what would you say to the Christian who wants to engage with those who don’t believe? Something that I’m very firm in my belief about is that every Christian should be asking questions and not in a way that leads to…. Questions are healthy. Not every question leads to doubt, but it just leads you to strengthen your belief. And I would say for Christians trying to engage with nonbelievers is encouraging questions from people who don’t believe, willing to have conversations where they sit, and all you do is ask questions. I mean, that’s the biggest part of apologetics, what I’m studying, is just asking questions and prompting somebody to ask a question that leads them down a path that is going to lead them to an answer that they essentially need. And so I think just learning to kind of defend with questions, but not offensively. I think there’s something to trying to understand a nonbeliever. Rather than telling a nonbeliever they’re wrong and that they need to read the Bible, that they need to go to church, ask the nonbeliever questions like, “Oh, well, why don’t you believe?” “Oh, well, if truth isn’t a God, what is truth then?” Like, “What do you think?” Asking very prompting questions, really I think ultimately that is a better approach to helping people believe than trying to really hammer in the idea that Jesus died for you and that you have to read the Bible. Because that comes next, but you have to let somebody go down the curiosity and the belief first before they can start nailing down the details, if that made any sense. Yeah. That absolutely made sense, and again, I come back to thinking about your journey and that you were, I guess, there for a while, perhaps in high school, you were presuming that the atheistic worldview was true and you really weren’t interested in the question of God. But you eventually became interested. For those who aren’t even willing to engage in questions, I mean, how would you have… thinking back again to the time period in your life where you really weren’t interested. How would it have affected you if a Christian would have tried to engage you in conversation at that point? In question asking? The thing is, I was always asking questions. Whether I believed it or not, “What is truth?” was a question in the back of my head for a very long time. It just wasn’t candidly an issue until later. And I think at that time, if I would have been asked those questions, yes, I might have gotten a little defensive, but I think it still would have prompted me, because I had a couple of conversations like that that always prompted me to kind of look more into, “Oh, I wonder why they thought that way. I wonder why my thoughts contradict theirs or why theirs contradicts mine.” And I think, if somebody gets offended, it just means that they’re probably going to think about it, and they’re going to think more about what you said. And so I would say asking a non-offensive question that might offend somebody, I think, does more than it does to try and shove the gospel down somebody’s face and be up front about it. I think I would rather give a question that’s prompting and deep that might offend them, but it means they’ll go look at it later, and they’ll come back to it. I think that’s really great advice, Malia. As we’re wrapping up here, is there anything that you think that we’ve missed in your story or in what you’re advising us? Is there anything else you want to say? I just think the last thing I’ll say is curiosity is important, and I think that’s the whole point, that I would say my journey is curiosity is important, and guided by the right things, it leads to a place where I’m very firm in my belief in God, and I have a reason for it. If it wasn’t for curiosity and somebody asking me questions or letting me ask questions, I don’t think I’d be where I am. And so, if anything, I think everybody should learn how to ask good questions. I mean, whether you’re a Christian or not, everybody should learn how to ask good questions, and maybe you’ll be led to an answer that is more true than what you originally thought. Yeah, that’s true. Curiosity. Like you say, questions for ourselves or questions for others. That’s how we grow, right? Even if we’re challenged in our own beliefs by what we read and what we seek, we’re always wanting to be led towards truth. So that’s a good encouragement for us all, Malia. Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story today. I so appreciate it! Of course. Again, thank you so much for letting me come on and tell my story. Wonderful. Thanks for tuning in to Side B Stories to hear Malia’s story. You can find out more about some of the books she read that led her towards a solid belief in God and Christianity, as well as where she is studying apologetics, in our episode notes. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can contact me through our website at www.sidebstories.com or again directly through our email address at info@sidebstories.com. Again, if you are a skeptic or atheist and you would like to connect with a former atheist with your questions, please contact us at our Side B Stories website or email address, and we will get you connected. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Malia and that you will follow, rate, review, 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 see how another skeptic flips the record of their life.

Former atheist Ben Clifton thought religious belief was for the weak-minded, for those who didn’t believe in science.  His caricatures of Christianity began to break down as he encountered authentic, intelligent Christians who challenged him to consider the reality of God. Ben’s Resources: www.apologeticsonmission.org Resources recommended by Roger: Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis Fingerprints of God, Hugh Ross, https://reasons.org William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, https://www.reasonablefaith.org Biola University, Masters in Apologetics program, https://www.biola.edu/degrees/g/christian-apologetics-ma Tactics, Greg Koukl For more stories of atheists and skeptics converting to Christianity, visit www.sidebstories.com Episode Transcript   Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist or skeptic, but who became a Christian against all odds. You can hear more of these stories at our Side B Stories website, located at www.sidebstories.com. We welcome your comments on these stories on our Side B Stories Facebook page as well as you listen. We all seem to possess a deep intuition about what is really right and wrong. There’s no question about that. When someone cuts in line in front of you, it feels that it’s not fair, that some unspoken rule has been violated, and that someone should do something about it. Why do we feel this way? You may recognize that example as the one given by C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity, pointing out the inherent tension we feel when some commonly known and often unspoken standard is broken. We know that it’s wrong, but we may not be able to say why it’s wrong. We just know that it is. But if you ask the question why, it’s a problem, especially if you don’t believe in God. Lewis reminds us that we would not be able to call something wrong or crooked without some sort of standard of knowing what is right, without knowing what was straight to begin with. We would not be able to tell that a wall was not level without a plumb line. So it seems that some sort of standard is necessary for us to call something good or bad, right or wrong, straight or crooked, fair or unfair, of what ought or ought not to be. Without such a standard, there’s no way to make a judgment about anything for anyone except for ourselves. Somehow, this deep intuition is an unavoidable pointer to the need for a transcendent standard, for the need for God. In today’s story, former atheist Ben Clifton did not want to want to believe in God, but he felt backed into a corner by this seeming conundrum, convinced that he would eventually be able to explain our real sense of right and wrong without resorting to some transcendent standard, without believing in God. Was he able to do it? This was one of the pieces and parts of his atheism that began to crumble as he began to take a closer look at the reality of his own worldview, the reality of God, and the truth of Christianity. I hope you’ll come and listen to his story. Welcome to the Side B Stories podcast, Ben. It’s great to have you with me today. Great to be here, Jana. Wonderful. As we’re getting started, so the listeners have an idea of a bit of who you are, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Absolutely. So I guess the pertinent thing is that I was an atheist until I was 33 years old, and God performed a miracle in my life and changed my heart and led me on a path of seeking answers for why I should believe this change that happened in me. And so that led me to apologetics. And now I’m here many years later and pretty much full time in apologetics. Okay. And you have a ministry as well? And what is that? I do. Yes. It’s called Apologetics on Mission. And in a nutshell, we take apologetics, we take these great resources that we have in the west, and we take it to regions in the world that don’t have much visibility or access to apologetics, and we train up emerging leaders, so that they can equip their communities with great answers for why Christianity is true. Okay. Wow. Okay, you’ve come a long way on your journey. Yeah. Let’s get started at your childhood, though, because we want to hear the full arc of your story. So take us back to your childhood, your family, where you grew up, whether or not religion or talk of God was any part of that. Yeah. So I was born in Eugene, Oregon, to parents who were not quite hippies because they were a little bit too old, but they were hippy wannabes. If you know Eugene, Oregon, it was a bastion of everything about the sixties. So they were living there. Both of my parents are teachers, and so we lived in that context until I was seven. Pardon me. Did your parents believe in God? You said this is kind of the culture of the sixties, which there were a lot of things going on around the sixties. Absolutely. In short, no. Especially my dad. So my dad was a hardcore English major, and in the sixties, that really embraced a lot of philosophy and had to do with theology. And he was pretty down on the whole Christian story, the whole idea of God the Father sacrificing His Son. It’s the typical God is a child abuser, cosmic child abuser. And so he really didn’t like that story and remains antagonistic against it. My mom, I think, just culturally went to church a bit in her childhood, so she had some influence there, but none of them practiced any kind of religion. If anything, my mom would embrace kind of a new agey, back to Mother Nature, kind of spiritual aspect to her life, but it really didn’t manifest in a way that I saw much of. She was more of a hippie. I guess my dad was pretty well informed religiously, but again rejected particularly the Christian story. If anything, he would embrace a kind of Eastern… he would take a happy Buddha over a suffering Christ any day. So I take it then, there was no going to church on Sundays or even Christmas or Easter, nothing. Well, we would culturally celebrate those things, but not in any kind of a religious aspect. I will say—fast forwarding a little bit—later on, again culturally, I did have some exposure, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Okay. So you said you were about to turn the page when you were seven years old. Yeah, when we were seven years old, my parents decided, because some of the backdrop is my grandparents on my dad’s side were some of the very first Peace Corps volunteers when Kennedy created that program. And so their first assignment was out in Micronesia. And my grandpa was a retired judge from LA County, and he went out to Micronesia to help the judicial system. At the time, Micronesia was a trust territory of the United States. So that really intrigued particularly my dad, and so they didn’t join the Peace Corps, but they applied for jobs just as teachers, and they got accepted. And so when I was seven, we moved out to an island called Yap in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and we were only supposed to be there two years, it ended up being a total of six years, and we lived on progressively smaller islands. We only lived on Yap one year. Then we moved out to what are called the outer islands, and these are little atolls with a population of at most 300 people. We were the only foreigners on the island. And so my childhood from seven to thirteen, right before going into high school, was I was an island boy. I bet that was an amazing experience in many ways. It was. In retrospect—and I knew this at the time—it was a boy’s paradise. I like to say that when I came back to The States, I discovered that what oftentimes is…. The kids in the US, in my group, we would pretend to do stuff. In Micronesia, we would do it. So we would build a fort, and then we’d live in it. I literally lived in a fort for the last, like, two and a half years when we were out there. We would go fishing for real out in the ocean and catch real fish. I mean, big blue water fish and go spear fishing and just all that kind of stuff. What an extraordinary experience! And culturally, I imagine, too. Religiously, was there anything? Yes. So this is where I did have some exposure to church. Throughout the history of Micronesia, there’s been various influences, but the Catholic Church, they had a strong influence there, and they actually had planted some Catholic churches on the outer islands, and they would have a priest that would come out about once a month. And it was kind of a weird combination of Catholicism and any kind of traditional spirituality that the islands embraced. And again, they would have services Sunday, but when the priest wasn’t there, it would mostly just be singing. And yeah, that was about it that I can remember. That wasn’t like sermons delivered. And even when the sermons were delivered when the priest was there, it was always very, very short. So I don’t know, honestly, and at that age, I really don’t know how many people actually heard the true gospel in that context. But that was my idea of church growing up. Okay. So you actually attended? Yeah, we did, because everybody did. I mean, the entire island would just… that’s what you did on Sunday. Okay. All right. So it was just kind of a ritual, in a sense. It was a ritual, very much so. A community ritual. Yes. So then you moved back to the States, I guess. Is this when you went to Oregon? So we moved back to Washington State, and again, my parents were following kind of the no t quite hippy but really back to earth, kind of back to Mother Nature. So we bought some property and ended up building a house, literally with our own hands. We built our house outside of Port Townsend, Washington. And that was a great experience for me because I learned how to do all that stuff. And I think it was formative in setting my path to ultimately engineering, So you moved to Washington, and you’re still in this very, maybe vaguely spiritual, not religious, home? That’s right. Yeah, very vaguely spiritual. At this point, there was no religious activity. I would say the closest we got to it is my parents decided to join a community choir. And so, of course, they would do seasonal things, and they would do… they did The Messiah, so they performed The Messiah. And so I got exposed to that. But until I was a Christian, I never made the connection of what The Messiah, the piece of music. I never made the connection between that and the Christian story, which is like, how did I miss that? Yeah, and I guess I should clarify. It wasn’t a church choir. It was a community choir. Oh, a community choir. So it was a secular… but they would perform sacred music like The Messiah. So, again, maybe that’s a little bit of a reflection of the way our home was, is that it was completely secular, but culturally, interweaving is hard to avoid. Maybe today it’s easier to avoid bringing in that cultural aspect of Christianity. But, long story short, I did not understand. I got to tell you this, too. Where does this start? At some point in my walk—this is before I was a Christian. I think it was even in Micronesia—my mom had a cassette recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. And so it was a big thing to have one of those little cassette recorder things back there, so one of the few things that I was able to play was Jesus Christ Superstar. So I kind of put that together with the Catholic Church island service and listening to this, so a lot of my understanding of… my false understanding of what Christianity was, was that mishmash of Jesus Christ Superstar and island church, and my dad thinks the Christian God is a moral monster, blah, blah, blah. So that was the mix that I was in. Yeah, that’s quite a mix. Yeah. Ultimately, so as I progressed through high school, it became clear that what I wanted to pursue as a career was engineering, and a lot of that was because I got very fascinated with science and technology, and I liked the image of myself as being this kind of techie science geek kind of guy. So that’s what I ended up pursuing. And during that time, I’m sure the messages for you were a little bit confusing, especially if you have a father who has this antipathy towards Christianity but yet singing sacred songs. What was your idea of what Christianity was? Was it something simply social? Did you have any contempt? Did you carry any of that from your father? Or was it just something that was there? Yeah. I wouldn’t say I carried contempt. Maybe part of what I wanted to be is very tolerant, so I wanted to be like this techie…. So in retrospect, it was a lot of arrogance. So it was like, “Oh, well, I’ll tolerate these backward thinking people, but I know the truth.” But it’s like, “I want to be a nice guy, and I want to be very accommodating. And that’s wonderful for you. I’m so glad.” But honestly, Jana. I had no idea. You can live a long time of your life, even in the United States, and have no idea really what the Christian story is really about. You get a lot of cues from culture, like I said, Jesus Christ Superstar. You see Christmas movies or whatever, Charlie Brown Christmas. So you get all this kind of influence. But if you don’t go to a good church and if you don’t go frequently and hear it over and over again and start putting the truth together, you can come away with really ignorant views of what the Christian story and Christian truth is really all about. And that’s honestly where I was. What I was dismissing was not true Christianity because I had no idea what that was. So there were no what you would consider to be authentic Christians or references to Christianity in your world growing up? No. And if there was somebody who was Christian, in the circles, because of my parents, they would have been most likely very liberal, borderline, not even know if they would really be Christian. So if there were any of those that I can’t remember, that’s the flavor I would have gotten. Yeah. So it just wasn’t on your radar at all growing up and through high school. It wasn’t. So you said you became interested in engineering, and I suppose you went on to college from here. I did. So I went to Washington State University and went through a four-year program there, which was great. I loved it. And came out of that and got a job in central Oregon right out of college, and couple of years later met my my future wife. So that’s where my story takes another turn. So at this point, after college, did you even identify yourself in any way, like, “I’m agnostic,” “I’m atheistic.” Did you…? Yeah. I started thinking about spirituality things, and I got enamored a little bit with some bizarre stuff, like, I don’t know if you remember Carlos Castaneda. I think it is, A Separate Reality? No. Okay. Well, for a time, he was a popular author, and his thing was kind of ancient Aztec or something, and it involved taking peyote, which is a hallucinogenic drug. And so it’s a very Native American kind of religion. And so this guy wrote a bunch of books about his experiences. It turns out later they were all fiction, but it was presented as nonfiction. And I kind of got enamored with that idea. Not that I was a drug taker or anything like that, but that idea of spirituality kind of intrigued me. Again, it was very like Southwest Native American kind of indigenous religion. That was about as close as I got. So you were not totally dismissive of the possibility of something spiritual in nature in terms of reality? Yeah. I wasn’t totally dismissive of the possibility, but I definitely thought that the Christian story, what I understood of it, especially as it intersected with science, I thought was totally bunk and did not jive with reality. So, on that basis, the whole thing must be false. Okay. And I think I probably just, osmosis wise, absorbed some of my dad’s attitude towards it and thought that it belonged in the realm of backwards thinking, and I didn’t want to be in that camp. I wanted to be in the modern, science has truth, and that’s where I wanted to be. And before I leave college entirely, there was an experience there that impacted me only years later. So one of my good classmates became a Christian during his college experience. And his story involves a lot of struggle, so he struggled through college but turned to Christ for comfort during those times. And so he invited me to his baptism, and so I went, and I got to witness his baptism. And again, I had that attitude of, “I’m a really tolerant, understanding person, so you do your thing, Carey, and I’m applauding what you’re doing. I’m happy for  you. I know it’s not true, but I’m happy for you anyway.” So, Carey, when we graduated and parted ways, he gave me a Bible, and he wrote a little inscription in it, and it was fairly simple. He said, “I pray that someday you will encounter Christ in the same way that I have, and I’ve found that Jesus has been the thing that has sustained me and given me purpose and meaning in life, and that’s my prayer for you.” So I squirreled that away, and every well informed person on their bookshelf should have a Bible, right? So that was my Bible. Okay, so now I’m a couple of years out of college, and I meet this wonderful lady that was to become my wife. And so I discovered fairly soon that she was a Christian. At the time, she wasn’t really walking in the Christian life, but she was definitely a committed… I mean, she was a believer. And I thought, “Well, this is kind of awkward, but I really like her. And it should be no problem to free her from these archaic ideas once we spend some time together. We’ll have the conversation, and I’ll straighten her out, she’ll abandon those ideas, and then things will be fine.” Right. Well, that didn’t quite go that way, and she held pretty strong to her faith, and in fact, she was pretty conflicted with the way we were with our relationship and her relationship with Christ. But we were in love, and she really felt like I was the guy. So she made some fairly timid attempts. She gave me a couple of books. One was Mere Christianity, and the other one was a book called A Severe Mercy. And I don’t know if you… it’s not a super common book, but it’s the story of a couple who go through a lot of grief, and C.S. Lewis happens to walk them through that and was very influential. So I got to say, this is probably something you hear a lot, but Mere Christianity, I actually read it, and as Greg Koukl likes to say, boy, did that book put a stone in my shoe that I didn’t want. So his argument from the reality of morals, so his version of the moral argument totally painted me into a corner that I didn’t know how to escape. As I’m reading, so I can remember reading he predicted all of my, “Yeah, buts,” and got to the end, and I ran out of, “Yeah, buts,” and he nailed every one of them. And I was like, “Ooh, I’m going to put this book away.” Right, right. So, anyway- Ben, for those who are listening here who are not familiar with Mere Christianity or the moral argument that C.S. Lewis makes, can you give us an abbreviated version? Yeah. Sure. So Mere Christianity is by C.S. Lewis. Aside from his fiction, it’s probably the most well known of his writings, and it’s been influential to so many people like myself, because it’s basically arguments for the existence of God, arguments for Christianity kind of distilled to the most basic elements. But one of the key arguments that he gives, and it’s a very powerful argument, is the reality that there are these things called morals. There are these things that are truly right and truly wrong. They’re moral duties or moral values. They’re obligations, and we know it, and we can’t escape their reality. So the question is how do we explain the existence of these moral duties and values? And when you think deeply about it, it is a compelling argument that there must be an authority, there must be a source that grounds, that provides the foundation to make those moral realities true. They are objectively true. And so that, of course, points to a moral law giver, which points to an aspect of Who we call God. So there’s many formulations of that. William Lane Craig does a great job. He always incorporates the moral argument in his list of arguments for God’s existence. But the way C.S. Lewis formulates it, and I probably couldn’t recite it again, but the way he presents it is just wonderful, because, like I say, it predicts everybody’s objection, like myself as an atheist, and answers it before you raise it, and lands you. My best description is like, I’m going along and then I look and I’m painted into a corner. He’s trapped me, and there’s no place I can turn. So how did that make you feel, when you felt like you were trapped in a corner? It’s hard to dismiss the moral argument there. Yeah. It made me feel like, “Ooh, this is uncomfortable because it’s rocking my worldview.” And whenever our worldview is challenged, that makes us feel uncomfortable. But I had faith that I’d figure it out. It’s kind of like one of those puzzles, like, “Oh, that seems like a contradiction, but it’s really a paradox, and I’ll figure it out. I’ll solve this someday. But today is not the day,” so I kind of just ignored it. But again, that’s why I love the description of it’s a stone in your shoe, and you feel it whenever the topic comes up. So whenever the topic of anything spiritual came up to me, it’s like, “Oh! I feel that stone.” My attention was just drawn directly to that argument, and it kept bugging me that I still haven’t solved this problem, and someday I’ve got to solve it. So she was allowing you some space to read and to process and not to push, I presume, but you were open or willing in some regard to actually receive and like you say, process the information, with the confidence that you would defeat it in some way. But that wasn’t- Yeah. Interestingly, my reaction was, not to her, but to myself, to go on the defensive. So I started reading more and more to affirm my atheistic worldview. I wanted to know all about evolution, and I wanted to understand better maybe what the Christian perspective was, so I could go and defeat their arguments. Right. So I was kind of like…. This was all for my own personal comfort because I didn’t like that C.S. Lewis argument, so I was going all around, trying to fortify my own worldview against that, with the hopes that at some point I’d land on the perfect counterargument that would free me from C.S. Lewis’s argument. So that was all happening. And then we had kids… We got married, we had kids. And then my wife suffers from clinical depression, which thankfully, she’s pretty much been cured of. Wonderful. But for many years she went through some tough times, So she started going to church, and to make her happy, I would come with her. So I would accompany her and went fairly faithfully to a medium-sized church. And what I discovered there is that, number one, the senior pastor there was like super people person, very loving. His people ness just infused the whole congregation. So they were very loving and receptive of me. They knew that I wasn’t a believer, but they still… I mean, they didn’t care. I mean, they did care, but it wasn’t like, “Oh, well, come back when you have cleaned up your act.” It was very welcoming. And the teaching pastor, and then the subsequent pastor after that, these were actually—it sounds terrible now, but they were pretty smart men, and they rocked my… I had had the intelligence of C.S. Lewis, but I hadn’t intentionally known people who were in leadership and were expressing intellectually really challenging stuff. And I was like, “Wow, these guys are like my professors at university!” And I didn’t know Christians were like that. And so it started changing my attitude a little bit, like, “Okay, well, they’re not all idiots. These guys seem pretty smart.” And of course I got the gospel message preached all the time. So I sat there with my wife for like four years, I think, and it was a Foursquare church. And part of their tradition is, at the end of every service, pretty much, they would have an invitation to receive Christ. And I would always kind of have an attitude of I’d peek a little bit to see who raised their hand. If somebody did raise their hand, I’d have an attitude internally of like, “Well, there goes another sucker.” And I know it’s terrible. Now that I think about it, I was really terrible. I was such a nice guy, but inside, ooh, I had a really nasty attitude that I’m embarrassed about. Well, so one Sunday morning, there I am sitting in church, and there’s the altar call, and it’s not an audible voice from God, but it’s an understanding in my soul that God is saying, “Hey, Ben. This is your day. You got to decide. I am talking to you.” And I’m sitting there feeling like… I just felt this weight of, “Today is your day of decision.” And so I raised my hand, and it was like, “What? Whose hand is that? Is that really connected to my body?” Right, right. And people around me were kind of surprised, too. It was like, “Whoa! Did Ben raise his hand?” So anyway, a very nice gentleman came and prayed with me, and that was my transformation. Wow! Okay, so just backing up for a moment here, because the last I knew, you were trying to disprove Christianity by reading atheistic books, but yet you’re sitting in this service for four years, and I guess by osmosis, and I’m sure you were listening and thinking. Were you being intellectually convinced of Christianity at all through this period? Or no? You know, Jana. Yeah. I wish I could say that, yeah, some great apologist came and gave me all these arguments, and I finally put it all together and, like, ding, I figured it out, and then I made this decision, and it was a very rational decision. I’m an apologist. That’s kind of the story I like. It wasn’t that way for me. And theologically, the reality of it is that God took my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh just sitting there. And I can’t explain how it all happened, but that experience was the thing that then my soul cried out for God, and my hand was raised because of that. And so my journey from then on was trying to make that connection between what I knew happened in my heart and the intellectual basis for that. Absolutely. And you had mentioned the word gospel earlier, and just because something isn’t a syllogism, a rational truth, doesn’t mean that there’s not truth in the gospel, which at its basis talks about who God is, who we are, and how we can reconcile with God. You’re an apologist on a mission, and I just wondered if for a moment, if someone has not heard the gospel, could you just tell them maybe what you had heard over those past four years that also helped persuade you that this is true, that God is real? So the intellectual assent to the truth of Christianity came afterwards. And I know that there are people for whom their experience has been different. It’s like they’ve really had somebody work with them on the intellectual side for a long time, and then that is the mode that the Holy Spirit works in that person’s life. For me, it was kind of the reverse. And I should add, too, that, in retrospect, I do believe that the challenges that my wife faced with depression often put me in a position of helplessness. One of the experiences of people who are caring for people who are suffering from depression is helplessness. There’s nothing you can do. As an engineer, I’m like, “Okay, what’s the problem? Let’s design a solution. Let’s fix this thing,”  right? And I can’t. There’s no way. And so I think, again in retrospect, that put in me a realization of, like, there are some things that I am helpless against. And the way people are built is that, through that, we cry out to God. And so my soul was crying out to God even if my head wasn’t letting that happen, because I was like, “Intellectually, that’s crazy. Don’t do that. Don’t give in!” I think. And so yeah. Back to your question, the gospel. So the gospel is actually really simple. It’s the most complex thing in the world, but it’s also the most simple. And that is simply that we as human beings are helpless to really do what we’re called to do, what we’re supposed to do. And we feel the weight of the guilt of our failures, and we try to make that up by doing this and that good thing to try and atone for the things that we’ve done that are wrong. And we can never do it. We can never get there. We can never earn our way back from the things that we’ve done. And so we’re hopeless. In ourselves, we’re hopeless. But the good news, the gospel, is that, unlike us, Jesus is God. He came in the flesh. He became a human being, and He, unlike us, did live a perfect life, and He took what we deserved. That is death, eternal death. And He made a great trade. He said, “I will trade My perfection for your imperfection. All you have to do is say yes, and I’m going to go to the cross. I’m going to die on your behalf. I’m going to take the penalty that is really supposed to be yours, and I’m going to take it on Myself. I’m going to give Myself up for you, Ben, for you, Jana, for anybody who places their faith in this reality,” and it’s free. It’s a gift. You don’t have to do anything. In fact, that’s the whole point. You can’t do anything. The only thing you can do is say, “Yep, I can’t do it. And Jesus, You did.” And my goodness, it’s like it’s the best deal ever. Why would anybody say no to that? And the reason we say no to it is because we want to be in control. We want to say, “Actually, I am good enough. I can do this.” And that’s pride, and that’s the root of all sin. But the good news is that Jesus took on what we couldn’t take on and gives us eternal life, which is just unbelievable. It starts here, but goes on for eternity. Right. You know, it’s funny, your story is reminding me a little bit of, is it Carey? Is that the name of your college friend? Yes. Who went in a moment of felt need and found the Person of Christ and the sustainability of Christ. But for you it seems like that, in a way, is a parallel kind of action of feeling hopeless and helpless and yet finding Christ. Now, at the time that you left, and he gave you a Bible, did you ever, through that four-year journey, were you curious enough to open the Bible and read it for yourself? Okay, so there’s a good story with this whole thing. So my wife did. So my wife would say, “Hey, this is your Bible! Hey, wow! Who’s Carey?” And so there was some conversation around that, and my wife Joey said, “You know, you should read this, maybe.” “Someday. Yeah, it’s on my shelf. I’ll get to it someday.” Anyway, so years after I became a Christian, I ended up, thanks to Facebook I think, thanks to Facebook. It has some redeeming qualities. I I found my friend Carey, and this was probably maybe 15, maybe 20 years after college. I connected with him and I said, “Hey, Carey, you won’t believe this. I’m a Christian now.” And so that little prayer, I sent him a picture of the little prayer. He said, “Well, God answered that prayer.” And I still have that Bible. That’s wonderful. And I’m sure you read it now. I do. So then you became a Christian, and you accepted Christ. And then you say, in order of events, which is true for many of us, is that you come to find that it’s not just an uninformed belief, but that it actually becomes a worldview that is the best explanation for reality, as compared to other world views, when you actually start looking at it. But why did you and how did you pursue this intellectual aspect of your faith? And how is it that… I’m hearing skeptics saying, “You know, you just believed it, so you wanted it to be true, and then you found arguments to sustain your your so-called faith.” How would you respond to someone like that?  Well, so again, my experience was a transformation of my heart, my soul, and then it was truly faith seeking understanding. And I didn’t know really what any of this looked like. So I said, “Well, I’m going to go into a Christian bookstore, now that I’m a Christian. I’m going to start learning about this thing,” and some of my biggest intellectual hangups remained in the area of the sciences. Like, how do I integrate this understanding I have of the universe and Big Bang and evolution and all this stuff with what I’ve just embraced? So I went to this local bookstore, and there on the bottom shelf, there was a book that, in retrospect probably shouldn’t have been in that bookstore. And it was called The Fingerprint of God, which is by Hugh Ross from an organization called Reasons to Believe. And so I open this book, and I start reading it, and it’s like, “Wow, this is by, oh, an astrophysicist? Wow!” At the time, he was still, I think, a practicing astrophysicist. He’s got a PhD. And I started reading about cosmology, and I go, “What’s this doing in a Christian bookstore? And how is this related to Christ?” So I started reading it. It turns out I had a business trip to Asia. It was like a two week long business trip. So you got a long flight. So I get this book, and I know God providentially put that copy of that book there in that bookstore for me. And so there’s another miracle. So I’m reading this book on the plane, and I’m just like, every page, my jaw is dropping. And I’m like, “Oh, my gosh! He’s addressing all the issues that I had,” and not only addressing them, but now taking all of the stuff that I had used to disprove Christianity. He’s turning it around on my face and he’s saying, “Oh, this actually points to God.” And I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding, right? And I’m just loving this stuff. It was the very, very early days of the internet, and they just had got their website. So through that, that was the first crack in the door of discovering the life of the mind as a Christian, but particularly apologetics. I didn’t know what apologetics was. So once that happened, and I started becoming aware that there’s this entire world of not only good answers to the challenges that Christianity is confronted with, but there’s this immense domain of intellectual pursuit of this Christian worldview. And so I started taking classes at a little Bible college that were part of our church. Again, it just happened that Bible college started up right when I became a Christian. The timing was such that I could go and take the 8:00 in the morning class before I got to work. And my first class was a survey of the Old Testament which started with Genesis. And so I’m reading Hugh Ross and reading Genesis and in this class, so I got super stoked to discover that this is an amazing area of the life of the mind and applying so much of my previous life, my previous objections, but now seeing it in a completely different light. And so that sent me off on a trajectory of apologetics. I started with science apologetics. I became an RTB apologist. I took their little course. I still have the cassette tapes from that. And joined with the team, ended up being the chapter leader here. So now I’m going to fast forward up to the present. And I continued to take classes at Canby Bible College, had opportunities beyond my qualifications to speak, to debate, to engage at a ministry level, so in 2008 I had the opportunity to fulfill what was a growing dream, which was to go to Biola and get my Masters in Apologetics. So I did that. It took me about three and a half years. Awesome experience. Anybody listening, if you have the opportunity to go to Biola through that program, it’s really life changing. So I graduated from that in 2012 and all this time I’m working as an engineer, doing startup businesses and having a great time doing that as well, but growing in my faith and equipping myself with apologetics. Then, in 2015, my wife and I decided it was a time for a change of churches, and we joined this little startup church called Missio Dei that turned out to be… had been birthed out of a ministry called Eternal Impact. So I started getting engaged with Eternal Impact. Turns out that Eternal Impact would take small missionary teams to East Africa. So after I was engaged with them for a while, I said, “I better go on one of these to see what it’s like.” So I go, had no idea, no thought at all about apologetics being connected to that, and the ministry is not an apologetics ministry, is more of a leadership development ministry. So I go there, and I share my testimony out in the middle of “nowhere” in western Uganda. Part of it is a little bit of what I’ve said about my conversion story and how apologetics really played a role. And after the service, after my testimony, this young lady comes up to me and said, “Hey, Ben, what you were talking about apologetics and especially your degree, I’m really interested in that. Someday I would like to pursue such a program. Right now I’m kind of busy. I’m completing my PhD in molecular biology, but later I would like to pursue a degree like yours.” And I’m going, “What?” This is bad, but that was my reaction. It’s like, “How are you getting a PhD in molecular biology out here in the middle of nowhere?” It turns out that she actually was, and her name is Monica. She features prominently where I was awakened to like, “Oh, my gosh! These people, they might be interested in apologetics, too.” And so then, from her prompting, we got some students together. We talked a bit, and it’s like, yeah, they were all for it. I said, “Wow, this is cool! I wonder what’s going on.” So, long story short, I went back the next year and did a series of four apologetics conferences in Rwanda and Uganda, in different parts of Uganda, in churches and on campuses, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh! This is awesome! I got to do this more.” So then I went back in 2019. This time I got to partner with Greg Koukl, so he and I went to the very place, western Uganda, and they got to hear the Colombo Tactic from Greg Koukl and a little bit of a translation, cultural context translation, because they don’t know who Columbo is. But anyway, that was great. COVID hit. It gave me the opportunity to…. By the way, I had moved from student at Canby Bible College to professor, so I was teaching apologetics there now and honing my skills there. One of the things they let me do was to include about ten Ugandan students, by Skype at the time, into our apologetics class. So that was great. Then 2021, I went back, did more work, and at the end of 2021, Eternal Impact, the ministry that I was involved with, said, “You know what? We’re going to commission you. You’re going to start a ministry dedicated to taking apologetics on mission to places where it doesn’t exist hardly at all.” So that was the formation. We started as Adventurous Apologetics. After about six months, we discovered, boy, we really need to be Apologetics on Mission. So that’s who we are now. We’re a small, growing ministry with way more opportunities than we can possibly deal with. So we’ve already taken a total of four missionary trips, both to Africa and Latin America. We’re going to be going to Brazil here at the end of this month, and that looks really exciting. We’re going to be going back to east Africa in May and hoping to start some activity in west Africa, primarily in Nigeria, in the latter part of this year. Wow. So that’s what we’re doing. That’s fantastic. And we will put a link to your ministry and any contact information you might have. We’ll include those all in the episode notes. Great. Yeah. So thank you for sharing that. That’s very exciting, very, very exciting. As we’re closing, Ben, thinking about yourself in younger years, when you were agnostic, atheistic, not believing that Christianity was true. Now you’re one of its biggest advocates. What would you say to your younger self? Or to perhaps a skeptic who is curious enough to maybe open Mere Christianity, like you were willing, or something. How would you commend someone who is willing to take a closer look at God? Yeah. Well, I guess the first thing I would say is don’t be overly confident that you understand the Christian story, because if you’re not a believer, you probably don’t really understand it very well. So work on that. It’s a different era that we live in now because there are so many resources that you can access, good resources. So I would say listen to, A, what the Christian story is, B, listen to I mean spend 20 minutes listening to, say, William Lane Craig in one of his debates. His twenty minute preamble. He’ll give you five super solid arguments for the existence of the Christian God right there. Spend 20 minutes. As my younger self, I had no exposure to that. I had no idea, and in retrospect, I had no idea what I was saying no to. And so that would be my advice, is like, get off your high horse. Don’t think you understand this idea, and make sure you understand what it is you’re saying no to first. And there’s no excuse for not doing that, because there’s great resources. Listen to the stories of other atheists. Listen to Side B, listen to Jana’s other interviews of similar stories, and you’ll hear probably a real consistent theme there. So know what you’re saying no to, and then just trust from many voices that the Christian worldview is the most intellectually robust worldview out there, bar none. And so if you’re like me and you like engineering, you like things that all fit together, then go for Christianity. And you’ll find, compared to any other worldview, especially atheism—atheism is the most—at root, it is the most incoherent worldview out there. I take that as almost a challenge for someone who might listen to that statement and look at things more closely and scrutinize- All the atheist has to do is say that Christianity is bad. And boom. I mean, when you dig into that, it’s like, “Well, what is bad?” Yeah. And again, you’re right into C.S. Lewis’s moral argument. Right. And you’ll find yourself, if you actually embrace intellectual, be honest about it, you’ll find yourself in the same corner that I was painted into however many years ago. Nice. Full circle. Nice. So when I’m thinking about your story, Ben, and I think about the Christians who influenced you or in some way or another, beginning with Carey and then, of course, your wife, who you said was solid and did not compromise despite her relationship and her love for you. She didn’t just compromise on her faith. Or when you went to the church, you found embodied Christians who were intellectual and could communicate ideas in a robust way that was so surprising to you. And I think of the church, too, that was so loving and welcoming to you and did not put you off even before they gave you a chance to even hear what the gospel was. How would you commend the Christians who are listening to engage others for the sake of Christ? Well, yeah, of course I’m biased, but my one complaint is that, in general, I wish our churches embraced apologetics more. And that put it, you know, put it in my face. Why wasn’t there somebody at the church that I was sitting at for four years saying, “Hey, do you have doubts about Christianity? We have a blah, blah, blah program. Come and we’ll answer all your questions.” I discover in the developing world there is a lack of awareness and lack of accessibility of apologetic stuff. But I’ve got to say, even here, there’s no lack of accessibility. It’s everywhere. But the awareness, particularly within the church, is not nearly where it should be, in my opinion. And I would encourage our churches and our church leaders to embrace apologetics as part of our responsibility as shepherds of the flock and shepherds of those who are not yet of the flock. Give the person like I was a forum to go in and ask those tough questions. I know it’s challenging because it means that we’ve got to be equipped. But to the church leaders there that are overwhelmed and thinking, “Well, I’d love to do that, Ben, but I can’t.” Well, you personally don’t have to do it. Find people in the community that, for them, doing that is like their heart’s desire. They would like nothing more than for a pastor to invite them to the church to do an eight-week thing on apologetics. There’s lots of people that are well equipped out there to do that. Be discerning, but yeah, I’d love to see more of that. More apologetics in the church. Yes. Even great resources these days, too. Absolutely. That are in book or in DVD form or that are wonderful for using as teaching tools. And thank you for that really exhortation, because I think we all need to appreciate those who come to church who are actually looking for answers and not finding it. I would imagine that four year period might have been a little shorter had you been engaged in that kind of way. So thank you for that. Yeah. Just because you graciously plugged my ministry, I’m going to plug both your ministry but also another ministry that I’m really excited about and I know you’re involved in. And it’s a great example of what you’re saying is that we have an embarrassment of riches in apologetics resources. Women in Apologetics. My goodness, I don’t know how old that is, but it’s like five years old. And you guys, those ladies are going gangbusters. And that’s just a wonderful example of like, boy, there’s no excuse to not get informed on the Christian worldview, to get informed on the answers to the challenges. And so, yeah, everywhere we turn, we’ve got great resources to grow from. Right. And we’ll include, again, all of the things that you’ve mentioned and maybe even more so in our episode notes, too. Well, Ben, this has been a very rich and full story and episode, just filled with twists and turns, and I think it’s always wonderful to look back in someone’s life, and you can see the way that God orchestrated your path, despite kind of the nebulous upbringing, how yet He brought you to Himself through very strategic ways. And I’m always encouraged to see that. Plus, your life transformation is amazing. And the way, obviously, Christianity is not just checking a box. This is something that has become your full heart and life and that Christ is the center. And you found something so rich, you’re willing to travel to other parts of the world to demonstrate the truth of Christ and this worldview. So it’s such a privilege to have you on, and I know that everyone listening is going to be so encouraged by hearing your story. So thanks for coming. Well, thank you, Jana. It’s been great. And it’s fun to get the opportunities to recount. I think you said it well. God really…. He’s telling his story, yes, through people, like me, like you. And so I just… sometimes it’s good to step back and like, look at it and say, “Wow, what a miracle!” Yes, yes. God is still doing miracles. He still is. He’s in the miracle working business for sure. Well, thank you again, Ben, and I just so appreciate your coming. Thank you again. Thanks for tuning in to Side B Stories to hear Ben Clifton’s story. You can find more about Ben, his ministry Apologetics on Mission, and the resources he recommended in this episode in the episode notes. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can contact me through our website at www.sidebstories.com. Also, if you’re a skeptic or atheist who would like to connect with a former atheist with questions, please contact us on our Side B Stories website, and we’ll get you connected. I hope you enjoyed it, that you’ll follow, rate, review, 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 see how another skeptic flips the record of their life.