eX-skeptic

English gentleman, actor, and former atheist Nigel Goodwin was raised within a Marxist worldview.  He saw church as fabricated theatre until he found the real God. Podcast episode notes: Nigel’s Resources: Biography of Nigel Goodwin written by author David Porter – Arts and Minds: The Story of Nigel Goodwin Resources/authors recommended by Nigel: Francis Schaeffer books The God Who is There Escape from Reason He is There and He is not Silent Atheists Finding God book Rowman.com/Lexington Promo Code: LXFANDF30

Former skeptic Neil Placer was apathetic about the question of God until his own dissatisfaction in life led him to search for something more.   Neil's Resources: Podcast: A World in Tension -This podcast explores the universal struggles of life. Externally, we encounter conflict with others. Internally, we engage in a constant debate between our hearts and minds.  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-world-in-tension/id1647690656 For more stories of atheist conversions to Christianity, please visit www.sidebstories.com Side B Stories YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@sidebstories416 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 sidebstories.com. We welcome your comments on our Side B Stories Facebook page about these episodes, and you can also email us directly at info@sidebstories.com. We always love to hear your comments. As a reminder, our guests not only tell their stories, but at the end of each episode, these former atheists and skeptics give advice to curious seekers as to how they can best pursue the truth and reality of God. They also give advice to Christians as to how best to engage with those who don't believe. I hope you're listening to the end to hear them speak from their wisdom and experience as someone who has once been a skeptic but who is now a believer. Also, please know that many of these former skeptics and atheists have made themselves available to talk with anyone who has questions about God or faith. If that's you, just please connect with us at our email at info@sidebstories.com, and we’ll get you connected. If there's something common to us all, it's that we want a life of meaning and purpose, to know and be known, to love and be loved. We want a life that feels important because it is important. It is valuable. The inevitable question before us though is how do we find that kind of love, that kind of life, that kind of meaning and value? Can it be found on our own in a world without God? Or do we need to look beyond ourselves to find what our hearts truly long for? C.S. Lewis is a former atheist who recognized the important difference that it makes to live with and without God. He knew that if God was real and Christianity was true, there was nothing more important than that, saying, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” In other words, God makes all the difference in the way that we can and do experience and see life. For those who believe, it should mean everything. In today's story, former atheist Neil Placer moved from being completely apathetic about the question of God to now holding Him as of infinite importance. How in the world did that happen? I hope you'll come along to find out. Welcome to Side B Stories, Neil. It’s great to have you with me today. Thanks, Jana. It's great to be here. Wonderful. Tell us a little bit about yourself, so the listeners have an idea of who you are before we get into your story. Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Neil Placer. I'm 46 years old. I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I'm trained as an engineer, so I'm a mechanical engineer, but I would say that I'm probably an atypical engineer, in the sense that, well, number 1, I like communication. Although I consider myself an introvert, I do like to communicate. I do like to think deeply about things and really communicate those truths to others. So yeah. I've just always been someone who likes to consider topics, and part of what we're going to talk about is how I came to faith and how that was a bit of a journey for me, very analytical, yet also leaps of faith. That sounds intriguing, Neil. Why don't you start us back at your story, at the very beginning. Tell us about where you were raised. Were you always from Tennessee? Tell us about your family. Was religion or God or church any part of your family life? Yeah. So I think if people are tuning in from Tennessee, they'll pick me out instantly and say, “That guy's not from Tennessee.” So I actually grew up in the DC area, which is kind of the international, cosmopolitan land where there really isn't an accent. So Northerners think I'm a Southerner, and the Southerners think I'm in Northerner, so I can't win. But, yeah, I grew up in the DC area. My father was Spanish. I say, was; he recently passed away. So his background, being from Spain. If you're not familiar with that, you're basically born Catholic, right? It's just part of the culture. Everyone kind of just connects themself to it, but from a spiritual perspective, that really didn't mean much. So they took us when we were kids to Mass, and we participated. I think they wanted the influence of it, but sooner or later, as my brother and I were getting older, we kind of became like Easter and Christmas Christians, if you will, right? So we just showed up for the major events. And they were… it was more like an event, so there wasn't really a strong focus on that, even though there was a religious component to my life. Okay. So it was just part of the tradition or ritual, I suppose, of your family. It was something you did, not necessarily, I presume, something you've believed? Or did you have any kind of a tacit belief in God because this was part of your life? No. I mean, I didn't really think about it much. I was thinking about this. I didn't really have… Growing up middle class, upper middle class, I didn't have a need for God, right? I had everything that I wanted materially. My parents kind of let the rope out pretty long, so I felt like I could do whatever I wanted. I was an athlete. I played soccer. So I just felt like I didn't… that was kind of for a goody goodies. And I was, by definition, truly just agnostic. Like I didn't care. I wasn't an atheist. I wasn't against it. I just didn't care. I didn't detect any need for it in my life. Yeah. So just, I guess, what they might call apatheism, right? Yes. Yeah. You just don't care. It wasn't important to you. You obviously didn't need it. So, was this the case throughout your growing up years? It sounds like you were very occupied, had a great family, great life. And did you have any touch points at all of what you would consider to be authentic Christianity in your world? Yeah, it's funny how, when you reflect back in the past, you kind of see where God was working. So I think the first moment was, my senior year of high school, I remember going back to the Catholic church on my own. So my parents weren't going, my brother wasn't going, but I wanted to just kind of explore. Instead of being the kid that just sat through it and said, “When is this over?” I wanted to actually seek. “What are they talking about? Is this a viable pathway of life?” My parents didn't even understand it. They said, “Are you going to impress some girl?” like, “What are you going for?” But I just said, “I just want to find out. What are they saying?” And I did that for a little while, and my conclusion, and I think it was a shallow search to be fair, was, “Yeah, this isn't really for me. Now I've actually listened to it with open ears, and yeah, this is not for me.” But that was kind of the first moment of considering something outside of myself. What made you… I'm just curious. What sparked that curiosity? Was it some kind of dissatisfaction in your life? Was it just some intellectual curiosity? Or something that your friends were doing? Or it just kind of came from nowhere? I honestly don't know. I mean, of the categories you just gave, I think probably intellectual curiosity was probably the answer. Other people were not doing it. I don't think there was some major gap. I think I was just curious. I've always been a curious type and willing to explore things, even if the crowd's not doing it. So, again, I think looking back, I think God was working on me. I just didn't realize it that way. So I don't really have a great answer. No. That's fine. Sometimes we just do things without real, deep thoughtful considerations to something we're motivated to do. I'm also curious. You went to go see what it was, and you felt like it wasn't for you. What did you think religion was at that point? You knew it wasn't for you, but what was it, did you think? Was it just a place where people gathered. They needed community. What was it, did you think? Being that it was Catholic, I thought it was very ritualistic, right? So it was just very, you know, up and down, knees. Liturgies, there was a lot of formality to it. But in the end, I just kind of thought it was empty. I just felt like people were going through the motions, checking the boxes for whatever reason, to make themselves feel good. I mean, it's kind of connected to my background. Like, why did we go as a family? I don't know. It’s just because that's what we did. That was the culture, right? So that was my conclusion. It just kind of felt a little bit empty, although, again, I'll say my search was shallow. I don't know that I was on a truly deep search at that point. Okay, okay. So you tried it as a high schooler, which is admirable. Before you went to college. And so walk us on from there. How did your life look? Then you left high school, went on to university, and what happened? Yeah. So my first year of school… so I played soccer in college. I went to Virginia Tech. And I would categorize my life, my first year of school, as kind of living in the joy of sin. And now that sounds funny to say. But like I really… I enjoyed the sin, right? I felt like I had all things going for me, right? I was studying engineering, so I was doing things hard with my mind. I was an athlete, so I was working my physical self. And I was also partying, so like I had all elements, I thought. And so I enjoyed sin. But the thing is sin has a season. Sin has an ending, because sin's pathway is alluring at first, but as Scripture says, it's sweet in the mouth, but then it's bitter in the stomach. And sometimes that bitter takes a while to realize. So I would say I really… I'm not going to say sin isn't fun. That's why people do it, right? Right. But I think that whole freshman year was kind of like that. And then, after that, I started to realize…. I didn't make the soccer team the next year. School was much… the first time I struggled with school. Like, “Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am.” The whole partying scene became empty and old. “What what am I doing? What's the point?” So I would say after that was really the journey of struggle of, “What am I here for?” So God kind of pulled it apart. But I'm kind of saying it that way because there's people that just don't want religion because they think it's oppressive or it's going to wreck their lifestyle. But I would say, “What is this lifestyle that feels free and sinful really giving you?” Because, at the end, it doesn't give you much. So you were feeling empty and spent and challenged, and life wasn't as pristine, I guess, as it had been prior. There were challenges coming in your path. So it caused you to introspect, I guess. And I think sometimes those difficulties are disruptors that cause us to step back and take a look at our own life, the way that we think, the way that we live. And so what did that disconcertion or tension or challenge do for you in terms of what were your next steps? Well, it got me thinking and wrestling with things. I mean, I said earlier I'm kind of an introvert, and in terms of, like, to recharge, I need to go off to the side, and I need to think. So I just thought about topics, and, like, “What am I here for?” I mean, college is just kind of a good season for that because there's a bunch of people around you also that are going through that. And I don't remember all the bumps and turns, but I do remember concluding that it must be about love, right? All this other stuff is superficial. So it must be about love. And in the context of no God, then that means a human relationship, right? Like another person, that must be kind of…. The holy grail of happiness is that, which involves also kind of a, “It's not just about you. To make a relationship work. You have to mutually bring that joy and benefit to one another,” so that's kind of where I landed after sort of years of struggling through it. And guess what? Surprise, surprise. That pathway became empty, too, right? There were some relationships that you thought would be going in a good way and they didn't. And so it was at that moment—and this is just to kind of walk you through the timeline. So freshman year was all about fun. Then, I would say it was closer to… I did 5 years of school because I was an engineer, and we did a co-op, so it's just kind of built into the program, but it was right around kind of that senior year or right before it that I just kind of said, “Okay, relationships don't work either.” So now I don't know. Now I'm like… I'm really lost. I don't know what the answer is. And I'm about to graduate. And I'm about to get some job. And I kind of, for the first time, maybe categorized it as hopeless in terms of a deep meaning of life. I could have gone and done the job and done what everyone else does, but that was the moment where it was just like, “All right. I don't know what the answer is.” So I guess you knew that religion, at the time, wasn't for you, prior to all of this. And you understood…. Did you, I guess, understand the logical [17:00] implications of atheism, that it does not bring objective meaning? I mean, were you that thoughtful about it? Or was this just something you were experiencing because you were just doing life without God? Yeah, no. I wasn't thinking about sort of those apologetic arguments about atheism at all.  v And I think that's where the story gets interesting about that's where God's hand is… like God's hand was always working, maybe more subtly. We don't know how God works, but He kind of lets you get to a place where you're ready. And I feel like, at that point, I was ready. And then He really started to press in, and again, I think the story becomes interesting there. Yes. I've heard it said. Well Os Guinness said, actually, “When someone becomes dissatisfied with their own worldview then they become open towards another.” And it sounds like you reached that point of dissatisfaction, so that you became willing or open to see, “Is there something more than this flat immanent frame,” I guess, as Charles Taylor would say. Is there something more? Or is there something more that I'm missing? I guess you felt that kind of earnest need or that angst in a sense. So what did you do with that dissatisfaction? Again, it sounds like you were willing to look for something more. What did you do? Yes. So like I was saying, it got interesting. There were kind of three distinct people in my life. So I had my friend John, who I went to high school with, that he actually was kind of a professing Christian in high school, and then once he got to college, he kind of fell away from it. So I had him in the circle, this buddy who kind of knew faith and now doesn't have faith. So he kind of becomes more important at the end. But then there were two other people, and they were both ladies on the soccer team. So one was just a good friend of mine. And ironically, believe it or not, her name was Trinity. Now, she wasn't a believer, but what was really interesting about our relationship is that we both reached this point that, as friends, we were pushing each other towards faith, and we didn't believe it. So I'll give you an example of just kind of one of these moments: I love these pause moments that God gives us to kind of just reflect. So we're out to breakfast, and again, I told you I studied engineering. It's a lot of work, a lot of reading, a lot of homework, and so we're talking about faith and religion, and she said, “You know, maybe we should pick up the Bible every once in a while and read it.” I said, “Look, I don't have time to read the Bible. I have all these tests. There’s no space for it.” And she said something that was profound. Again, she's not a believer. She said, “Well, if you think about it, if God is really true, then there's nothing more important than knowing about Him and you do that by reading this book,” like nothing else matters. What else is worth as much devotion of your time? And I just kind of thought about that and said, “It’s kind of weird that you're saying that because you don't really believe this, but number two, you're right. Like, just from a logical perspective, if that's true, you're absolutely right about that.” So it was kind of moments like that where God was working or like other times when…. And we started to go to church. And so mornings where, like, I'd call and say, “Hey, are you going to church?” “No. No. No. I'm not going.” “Come on. Let’s go. Let's go.” We were pushing each other. And so, like I was saying, God was really working. So- Wow! That was a key element. And then the third person is another girl named Kara, which I was more of an acquaintance with, but she was actually a firm believer in faith. And so what was unique about her is she… you could see something different. So there was a smile on the face. There was a joy. But not only that, there was…. We’d go out and play soccer together, and her work ethic was different. I remember going, “Why is no one else trying except for her?” And it was just kind of a fun game. But she demonstrated something different about Christ. So think about that. You have this guy that kind of fell away involved. You have someone who's challenging you who's not a believer, and then someone who really is a believer, all kind of in the picture together, kind of working at the same time. And I remember going to a church service, and my eyes were still blind. They kind of gave that classic picture of like you have the two cliffs, and the only thing that can split the divide is the cross splitting in between. You probably heard that at some point, right? Mm-hm.  And so they're, like, giving this clear gospel message. And I remember Kara looking over at me and going, “This just doesn't get more clear than this and, they were like ‘what do you think about the message?’” And I was like, “Oh, it was great. Loved it!” But I had no clue. It went over my head. I had no clue what actually was going on, so it was really interesting. My eyes were starting to open, but they had not been fully opened at that point. So, for those who are listening who may not be familiar with that reference that you're speaking of, the sermon reference, can you explain that a little bit more and what that means, what the gospel means? Yeah. So imagine there's kind of two big cliffs, and basically, what it's trying to say is that our sin separates us from God, and we can't ever cross that chasm. There's nothing we can do on our own power, but that there's a clear separation. And the only thing that can split that divide, or really fill that divide, and they drop a cross in there, is the cross of Christ. Which that’s not about the cross. It's about the fact… not the cross itself. It’s Jesus. It's the fact that Jesus paid the cost for our sins and basically became a mediator for us to God the Father, who is going to judge us for our sins. So that cross allows you that pathway. So it's basically saying you need Jesus to become your Lord and Savior, and He is the way to get there. So again, it's a very clear like, in that service, “Hey! You, Neil, need to surrender to Christ,” but I thought it was a great message, but didn't get that I needed to do that. That it wasn't for you, but evidently Trinity was being taken in by this message. Was it something she responded to at the time? So, well, let's…. She and I, we actually…. Let me finish the story, and I'll tell you about it. She and I actually came to faith at the same time. Okay. And so where this all led to was actually a moment in time where I gave my life to Christ. And so let me just give you the build-up. It was like an exam week, and so I was really busy. And Kara and my buddy John were actually going to go to this Fellowship of Christian Athletes retreat. It was a few hours up the road. And they said, “Hey, you want to come?” And I was like, “Look, I just can't think about this. I need to focus on my tests.” So it's literally Friday. I've finished my last exam, and I'm driving home, driving to my apartment at school. And I'm thinking, “Well, I could spend another week here and kind of just go downtown and drink and do whatever else I was going to do, that I’d done over and over, and it's getting old. Or I could go hang out with these wacky Christians.” And I thought they were kind of wacky. I mean, at that point, I'm like… And I was always up for a new experience. I was like, “You know, what do I have to lose?” Right? So I called them, and they were literally about to go. I said, “Look. Do you still have room for me to come tag along with you guys?” And they're like, “Yes, absolutely,” especially Kara, who was the firm believer. She's like, “Yes. Yes.” And I think Trinity had already decided she was going to go. So anyway, we get there, and that was the moment where I had really never exposed myself. It was like a little world of Christianity, right? Everyone there was a Christian. There was no one like… I was surrounded by something I've never been surrounded in. So I was just kind of like this foreigner, right, in this town of Christianity. I was an outsider. And so you participate in all these Bible studies, and I'm just listening the whole time, because I have nothing to add. I have no clue what they're talking about. But I'm- [27:08] Can I interrupt you for a moment? Obviously, so Bible studies, and you had mentioned that Trinity thought that reading the Bible would be the most important thing if God was real or true. Had you read the Bible prior to coming to the retreat? Did you take that as an invitation and start reading with Trinity before any of this? Maybe we were reading a little bit, but not too intently. Okay. So the whole thing with the Bible was a little bit intimidating or you hadn't really gone there yet. Okay. Yeah. And I remember I was carrying around, now that you mention that, like some old seventies Bible, and the people at the retreat were like, “What are you? What are you carrying? What is that thing?” Because they didn't know what my what my story was, right? I think they just assumed that I was some Christian, too, right? Because I wasn't sharing anything. I was just listening to what they had to say, and it really just kind of blew my mind to see something different, that people were living for something purposeful. And again, God was then really, really working on me. And so the end of the story is, like, at the end of the weekend—and the speaker was some…. It’s the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, so they usually have some sort of athlete. But he was actually some kickboxer, professional kickboxer. And at the end of the weekend, he said, “Does anyone want to give their life to Christ?” the classic sort of altar call, if you will. But I remember that moment, like, everyone's eyes are closed, and it's like just raise your hand, and I remember that there was this war inside me like, “No! You can't do this. You can't do this. You're going to give up all the things you like.” There was this war. But at the end, I just stuck my hand up. And that was the moment. I really did give my life to Christ. And what's cool is…. It’s just so funny. I think God has this kind of cool, humorous, awesome way of working. That was Valentine's Day weekend, so my search for love, right? Like, He gave me love on Valentine's Day weekend. Yes! Yes! So I'll always have this marker there of that conversion. And I remember, at the end, they're kind of sitting in the circles, and they're like, “So, what did you think about the weekend?” And everyone's kind of like, “Ehh, normal weekend. Okay,” and I'm like… the first time I spoke. I’m like, “I think I just gave my life to Christ. I'm not even sure what this really means. But I just did it.” And one guy there, who I'm actually still friends with today, had the wisdom to say, “Number one, that's awesome. Number two, come get plugged in.” Like, here’s the FCA president or soon-to-be president at that time. He said, “Come get plugged in. Come join the community.” Very, very wise and good advice. Wow. So I'm sitting here thinking you were someone who didn't care about God growing up. It became an issue that you actually started caring about, that there had to be something more in life, and then you found that something more in the person of God and Jesus and that He’s worth it. And you found, in a sense, the love that you had been longing for and searching for, and I presume the meaning that comes along with that. It sounds like you felt there was this internal wrestling and this battle of kind of laying down your own life for being part of a grander story. At any point, did you question or doubt, is this really true? Or does it just sound like a good story? Something that I can give my life to? Yeah. So what was really cool about my conversion experience is that I think it was really out of character. What I mean by that is I'm a pretty analytical person. I think when I was giving my testimony at college, I’m just remembering this now, when I actually got baptized at the church at school, I said, As an engineer, you have these…. There's this green graph paper that we used. And it's like, “given,” “find,” “assumptions,” and then it's like, at the end, you double underline the answer. And so I wanted that sequence with Jesus Christ double underlined, but I kind of just jumped right to the end, and so it was very much a leap of faith for a very analytical person. And I think the impact of that is that I describe it as kind of Jesus… Or like being held by a father, like a baby being held, because I literally had no real Christian knowledge, no Christian experience to lean on, not even people. I was just getting…. There was nothing. And so, I viewed it like I was being held like a baby, like you do everything for the baby. I was just on cloud nine. I was loving it, so there wasn't really a period up front of me kind of doubting what did I just do, because I was experiencing something amazing. And the people around me even, they said stuff like, “Your face looks different,” which… The Bible talks about your countenance, right? They’re like, “You literally look different.” Like, instead of a grimace or weight, you have a smile. So people even saw what I was experiencing. So what’s cool about that, Jana, is that not everyone has…. I don't think everyone needs to have that story. Like for my kids, I’m like, “You don't have to go through a lot of chaos. You really don't have to.” But the good thing about that is like I'll always know, pointing back, what happened, and no matter what argument anyone throws at me, if there's ever seasons of doubt, something miraculous happened, and I cannot deny it. It's undeniable. And others saw it, too. I didn't just make it up in my head. Right. So I remember coming back and my roommates, nonbelievers, they were like, “So did you find Jesus?” like as a joke? And I'm like, “I think I did.” And then they got freaked out like, “Oh, my gosh! What does this mean?” Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that is the question. What does that mean? What did that mean for your life? I mean, you were, in a sense, a meaningless empty existence. So what did knowing Jesus, having Jesus, mean for your life? I mean, it ultimately over time, you realize what it does, or what the value of it is, or just kind of… And I got off cloud nine, right? Eventually, you realize, “Oh, wait. Life is actually tough,” and this isn't a straightforward… it’s not just like a…. Christianity is actually not an easy path. I mean, Christ says that not if we will face struggle, but when, right? There is struggle. There’s tension. It's just part of it. But I think, to answer your question, Christ talks about building upon a firm foundation, not on top of sand. And I think that's really real practically. No matter how tough life may be. Sometimes I’ve felt like all areas are not working well, right? Like my relationship with my wife, my work, my friendships, my church environment. I can feel like all those things are not working well for whatever reason at a given moment in time. Yet I always have this security to know, “Wait, but I'm sealed in Christ. I know what my ultimate destiny is, and I know that He is seeking to bring me comfort and peace and joy and that I can rest in the confidence of what He did.” It’s not just experiential, but there's historical validity and logical validity. That rock matters for me to stand on, to have that foundation. So I've realized that over time. But to think about not having that and where I was before, that chaos is really scary and really sad and empty, and I would never want to return there again. So you went from this really miraculous experience, which I don't doubt at all. I know that so many people have had just a real touch point with God that is life transforming, and they know it's true and real. Now you speak of building a foundation that's historical and logical, and as an analytical person, could you flesh that out a little bit? What does that foundation look like in terms of… even though your mind wasn't perhaps a deep part of the journeying of accepting Christ, but it sounds like there is a foundation where you love Him with your mind as well as your life. What does that look like? Yeah. And that's actually really important to me, Jana. I think Christianity cannot just be about the experience. Obviously. So what I'd say is, God created our brains and also our hearts, so the experience and the emotion matters. Absolutely. But God also gave us brains to think. I think sometimes, as Christians, we take an approach of just kind of acceptance of the truth without wrestling it. And so then when you're challenged, you don't know what to say. And I think that's a very bad…. Well, scripture urges us not to live life that way. In any season, you should be ready to defend your faith and have an answer. I mean, I think there's just a few, like if I'm talking to someone who maybe is questioning what to believe. There’s kind of a few… I call them high-level apologetics, because apologetics can get very deep and wrestling with specific issues. But if you just, first of all, just look around you, look at creation, look at the human body. There are so many examples of just wonder and how you have to think that that all kind of just came out of nothing is really illogical. It really doesn't make sense. And I think that… I mean Romans 1 tells us that that's proof enough, that we are without excuse in just seeing creation. And creation really… I like hiking, so that really does it for me, like, seeing and just… you can't even take it in, right? Anyway, so that is a really, to me, solid argument in itself. But beyond that, the evidence of it. If you go back and explore… I mean The Case for Christ is a great book where that whole story of Lee Strobel as a journalist kind of exploring the facts. But the validity, the historical validity, of the Bible is unquestioned compared to other historical texts. The fact that Christ came, was a man, did miracles, he died, he was resurrected, is all historically validated more than most any other source. And the connection of all that, the history, what we see now, what I experience, it all makes sense and logically touches all of the pieces of what we experience as human beings. And one interesting thought that I've had about that, Jana, is sort of like we have an enemy working against us, right? And just kind of as a matter of another apologetic, if you compare Christianity to any other spiritual system, every other spiritual system is about works. You have to do something to be good in the eyes of that god. Christianity flips it on its head and says, “Actually, you're saved by grace. You need a savior, and there's nothing you can do on your own.” And so the thought exercise I went down on that one is like, “Why does our spiritual enemy not try to throw at us a counterfeit kind of grace argument?” Like a religion or something that was a grace alternative, because there aren't really that many grace alternatives, if you study them, and what I think I concluded is that that's how it all comes together, is that you can't create a duplicate for what Christ did. You can't duplicate a man coming, doing miracles, dying, resurrecting, seeing Him again. You can't replicate the amazing story. So it's combining history. It's combining the emotion of what people saw in those miracles and the resurrection. Imagine seeing a resurrected man! And how that connects to the Creator of the universe. You can't duplicate it, and so I think the enemy doesn't even try. Yeah. So it sounds like it's just really fully orbed with you. It's your emotion. It's experience. It's your spirituality. It's your mind. It's actually how you're living your life. I'm curious, too. You said there were three key people in your life, in your story, as God was really pointing you or bringing you to Himself, and I'd love to tie a bow on some of those, because you mentioned the friend who was a Christian, left Christianity, but you said came back, and we haven't heard that bit of it, nor have we heard of Trinity and how she became, I guess, a friend in Christ as well. So talk to us about that. Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up, so John actually recommitted his life to Christ that same weekend. And really did. He really started walking a new path. And what's really neat about that is he and I are still friends today. Our wives actually were roommates at one point, which is even a funny connection. Our kids know each other and like each other. So we actually visit them annually. So it's a really kind of cool connection, how He brought us together on that one. Trinity, I actually have lost touch with her, but sadly enough, I think she kind of walked away from the faith. And I don't know if she ever returned. She did give her life to Christ, and that's when you kind of ask herself, “Did she really? Did she not?” So I think she struggled. It was kind of your question earlier. I think, after that experience, for her, I think she really started to question. I think it was kind of in connection to her family, and they didn't believe, and what were the consequences of that? So I hope she returned to faith. I hope it was a true conversion, but I don't know. And similarly with Kara, I've lost touch with her, but yeah, God just used those different pieces together. So it's just a really, really great story. That is great! It sounds like…. Your story has such a beautiful kind of story arc, in the sense that you were just dismissive of God. It was just not something you were interested in, not anything that you needed, and then you've had a felt need and an earnest search. I mean, it was earnest in the sense that you were willing to actually go where God was leading you, and then you found Him. You found what you were looking for. And it sounds like it's made an enormous change in your life, and for the better. You mentioned something about coming out of chaos. And I presume that you've moved towards shalom. From disorder to order. From restlessness to peace. It reminds me of Augustine, where our souls are restless until we find our rest in Him. And it sounds like you have found that and then some. I just really appreciate that. As we're thinking about those who maybe, like you were, maybe a little restless, maybe a little dissatisfied, unsure of where to go or look for something more. How could you speak to someone like that, who might be willing to take a look at what God has to offer? Where would they go? What would you recommend? Yes. So I mean the first thing I'd say is don't discount faith in Christ for some fuzzy soft reason, like not thought out reason, like just because someone said Christians are losers, and maybe you just held on to that simple…. Or they’re goody goodies. I held on to some simple, “That’s not for me.” Don't hold on to that. Or equally, I think sometimes I've encountered people that have some hurt because of some Christian connection. Someone did something, and it's pushed them away. And so now they will never go back because that hurt. I would encourage people to press through that, because the hurt isn't the truth. Truth is truth. And I believe Christ is it. And so if you are open to explore it…. Basically, don't push yourself away for either superficial reasons or even deep hurts. Press in anyway, and I think if you are, Christ is faithful to kind of… If you knock, he will open it. He will answer. He’ll show you the pathway. And the second thing I'd also say is, like… I kind of touched on, I think, on again, some high-level apologetics for people to consider that I think are valid. But then I'd also say, flip…. Instead of pointing the finger at Christianity, why don’t you point the finger at what you believe and say, “Does it have merit? Is it delivering in my practical life?” To what you just said, “Is it really bringing peace?” Be honest with yourself. Don’t just cast stones. And don't judge other systems, especially ones you haven't explored, but ask yourself about yours. Because I think you will find that there's again, like, you were talking about atheism. If you're a true atheist, you have to believe that there is no sort of system of right or wrong, law and order, of meaning for people, so we're basically… I could shoot you right now, and that doesn't really mean much, right? Because who says that that's right or wrong? And you have no value, and I don't have value. Question the impact of what that does to your thinking and your emotions and how to live. That messes you up. That's not a healthy place to live, so really question that. And explore and find…. Obviously, you can dig into the scripture whenever you want. And I think if you do that, honestly, God will work with you. But also just try to find… try praying for someone, some authentic Christian to come into your life that can help lovingly guide you through and answer your questions, because, again, I think if you pray, you start to knock and open that door. Even though you feel uncomfortable, I think God will work. Yeah. That's all really, really wonderful. If someone does open scripture or the Bible, do you have a place that you would recommend them to start? Because I know that the Bible can be rather intimidating at 66 books. So where would one start? There's probably different answers for different people, on types of wiring, but first I’ll say that the Old Testament is probably a hard place. There are some parts of that that seem dry or are hard to understand, although the exception to that is Genesis. I think I the beginning especially of Genesis is pretty awesome for kind of setting up how things originated and where we go. So I think that's important. I think if someone is kind of more emotionally inclined, like kind of that artistic and singer like, Psalms has a lot of emotional wrestling that is authentic and real that people could get into. Proverbs if you're kind of intellectually wired. It has a lot of good logical argument of how to live life and challenge yourself. In fact, that's what I actually prayed when I first became a believer was, “God, I know nothing; help make me wise. I want wisdom. I need something,” and I spent some time in Proverbs. Ecclesiastes. I love the book of Ecclesiastes! Some people hate that book because it feels too open ended, but it just kind of tells you life is a vapor. Everything you can pursue is kind of meaningless outside of God. It's a great searching book. But I mean, then coming to the New Testament, obviously, I think a place where to lead people is natural is like the four gospel accounts or the first four books of the New Testament; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John really help you to understand the story of Jesus, what happened, His work with the disciples, and then obviously His death, burial, and resurrection. So I mean, there's so many good places. But those are some things I'd say. Look into it. And just be patient with yourself. You can't fully grasp God. You never will but just be patient with your questions. Some questions I still don't know the answers to, but I'm patient with it and believe in it. So just kind of trust the process. Don’t try to get everything answered in the first day, first week, but open yourself to what God can teach you and start trying to pray. Praying is just being authentic before God and having a conversation. It really is. It’s not certain words. So just start doing those things. Don't be afraid to press in. Wow! That’s just so rich. And for those Christians who really want to meaningfully engage with those who don't believe. You’ve mentioned Kara, of course. She had evidently a beautiful embodied picture of what being a Christian looked like, and that in some ways was attractive to you or at least piqued your curiosity as to why she's different. How would you recommend that Christians live or speak? Or what attitude should they have or whatever? Well, so I think first it comes with a heart posture of surrender. I've just become more and more convinced that life is really about surrendering yourself to Christ. And either… I think there's two options: We're either trying to control things to the way we want to or we surrender them to Christ. And surrendering feels like dying, but actually that's where you're finding life. When you're dying to yourself, you're finding real life. And I say that because that's the answer to nonbelievers or that's the answer to the most seasoned believer who knows… maybe is just a genius, just has all the elements, they still need to surrender. And I'm saying that because, if you don't do that, then how you approach someone else is going to be impacted in some way. Maybe you start treating them like a project or you lack the compassion maybe just to sit there and be silenced and listen to them for a little bit and just listen and then maybe later have a conversation. I think if you're trying to strategize and do it in your own strength, “I'm going to walk them through this six-week study and then….” Really surrender yourself to what God wants you to do in this person's life. I think it's crucial because you can just mess things up. I think that is how Christians mess things up. They start spouting off on social media, and they're not surrendered. They're just taking their own approach to it. And that's very… I think people want to see authenticity, and you're not going to be your true self, the person that God designed you to be, until you surrender yourself. And so it's an ongoing day by day, minute by minute exercise, but especially as you're going to engage someone, you really should focus on doing that. Yes. I don't think there's probably any wiser counsel that you could give right there. It sounds like you have been listening to the word and reading books of scripture and Proverbs and whatnot, because you are a man of wisdom. I can hear that. And it also sounds like you really have engaged in the larger story and God’s story, that you have surrendered your life to His story, which is the best story of all, right? You have found true love. And I think that's what we all seek, is to be fully known and fully loved, and it sounds like you have found that. Thank you so much, Neil, for coming on to tell your story, for your insights, for your wisdom. We just so appreciate it. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Like I was telling you earlier, I really enjoy what you're doing here. I think helping people hear stories…. Well, Jesus taught in stories. Something about stories catches our attention. So I really appreciate what you're doing. I think this is very helpful to unbelievers and believers alike, to kind of just hear how God is really at work in real people's lives. So I hope this is an encouragement to someone to take that next step, whatever that may be. But keep doing what you're doing, and I think it’s a big encouragement. Thank you, Neil, for those kind words. It is a true encouragement. Thank you again. Thanks for tuning into Side B Stories to hear Neil's story. You can find out more about his podcast, as well as other information, in our episode notes. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can contact me directly through our website at sidebstories.com or our email. Again, that is info@sidebstories.com. I'd like to take a moment to express my deep appreciation for our amazing audio engineer, Mark Rosera, of the C.S. Lewis Institute, and our producer, Ashley Decker, also of the C.S. Lewis Institute here in Atlanta, both for their amazing and excellent ongoing work. I always appreciate them. 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 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