I grew up a confident and happy atheist.
Dad's side of the family was Jewish, but of the cultural vs. religious variety. Mom had attended a Methodist church as a young child, but notions of God or Christ simply weren't part of our household zeitgeist. My father is one of those 'bigger than life' personalities: an engineer and inventor who was brilliant, passionate, adventurous, and generous. He would never, ever be unkind to any individual, but he had an underlying attitude toward Christianity that bordered on disdain.
Naturally, this influenced my own attitudes well into adulthood. I went through life proclaiming, "I believe in science, not religion!" But
hubris can blind us. For someone who claimed allegiance to science and
reason, I had never actually explored the science and reasoning behind
atheism; I simply
took it on faith (ironically!) that Dawkins,
Hitchens, and Harris were right, and never thought to consider
otherwise. I drank in the secular worldview, then sat back to bask in
the positive reinforcement pouring in from all sides: music, television,
movies, college professors, newspapers, and more - all telling me how
smart and enlightened I was.
I also believed that Christians' ethics were
imposed upon them, whereas atheists were free to choose
their own values based on reason and science. It wasn't until middle-adulthood that I realized how wrong I was; that atheism is not only a religion in its own right, but an aggressively evangelical one at that! I realized my choice wasn't between dogma and free thinking. It was between competing dogmas (atheism and theism), and which one I chose to align myself with.
The laws of inertia state that something in motion will continue on its trajectory until acted upon by a force. So it was with my belief system as a young adult. My best friend in the world became a born-again Christian, and knocked my worldview completely off it's axis.
This particular friend was the smartest person I knew. At the time she was a PhD candidate, played every conceivable instrument, and had traveled the world. She was also a truthful person, and I could see that she was sincere. Try as I might to dismiss it I couldn’t
shake the question, “How can someone so brilliant actually believe in that
stuff?" I knew there had to be a substantive answer, otherwise people like her would never become believers.
So I got curious. I sought out the
best contemporary Christian thinkers I could find, people like C.S. Lewis and Dinesh D'Souza to see what they had to say about the case for God. I found them surprisingly cogent; their claims were based on compelling evidence across
historical, scientific and philosophical disciplines, and their reasoning and logic were impressively tight.
Next, I set about studying the preeminent atheist thinkers: Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris. To my surprise and dismay, their works were comparatively flimsy and rife
with errors. Even with my rudimentary understanding of logic, the ad hominem remarks, non sequiturs, straw men, circular reasoning and false dilemmas jumped out at me.
I also couldn't help noticing a marked difference in tone: Lewis and D’Souza were calm,
rational and respectful whereas Hitchens, Harris and
Dawkins were often condescending, evasive, even snarky at times. This didn't help since I knew that when people resort to those tactics it means they have no real substance to anchor on.
I
came away unsatisfied and dejected; it was rather like
seeing your home team fail miserably in the most important game of the
season. Over time, the more I dug in the less confident I became in my home faith. It seemed that in the bright light of serious inspection, atheism was all bark and no intellectual bite.
Mind you, this dawning realization didn't happen over one sunny weekend. Atheism had burrowed its way deep into my psyche and old habits die hard, especially for those of us cursed with stubborn hearts!
C.S. Lewis shared of his own conversion, “I gave in, and admitted that God was God - perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
Likewise, despite years of searching diligently for empirical grounds to justify my atheism I finally, reluctantly had to admit that God was God. While atheism and theism both require a measure of faith, the evidence was in - and it pointed overwhelmingly to God as the far more rational choice.
Not only did the Christian worldview ultimately satisfy my need for intellectual fulfillment, it was, to quote Greg Koukl, "the best explanation for the way things are." To the eternal mysteries of human nature, good and evil, the fine-tuning of our own universe, and the infinite cosmos beyond, Christianity offered a uniquely beautiful and elegant response.
I
wish my conversion story were more romantic or emotionally compelling,
but we all come to truth in different ways. For me it had to come
through my mind first, and the heart would follow.
In a way, becoming Christian was like becoming a parent. From that moment on, every thought, decision, action and point of view could only be seen through the lens of my new
paradigm. Entire worlds opened up in my heart, and suddenly everything made sense: why we’re here, why we
matter, how precious we are, and the glorious shared purpose of humanity.
25 years after my conversion the
journey continues for me - and I pray it continues for you, wherever it leads. May
the Lord our God grant us humility to listen, wisdom to recognize truth, and courage to follow it to the end of our days. Amen.
Postscript: in the interest of brevity I omitted why I chose to follow Jesus of Nazareth rather than perusing a different religion. Perhaps someday I'll expand on this. For now suffice it to say that this was another collaboration between my heart and my mind. Jesus alone fulfilled the deepest yearnings of both, and opened my eyes to a purpose and joy I found unique to the faith.