… Always be prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks you to explain the hope you have. (1Pe 3:15)
The above quote is from the first letter from Peter to the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, and to everyone else chosen according to the foreknowledge of God. This is all future Christians. I put it there because it is a tradition among some Christians to share their salvation testimony. It is a helpful tool for others who may be considering the truth of Christ. Sharing these testimonies helps us to see the wide variety of ways people come to the truth and show us that we are not alone in our conversion from the path that leads to death. Some salvation experiences seem quite extraordinary filled with emotion. Some are less fantastic but no less extraordinary than anyone else since anyone who comes to the Christ does so through a miracle. (John 6:44) Not a one of us would seek God if left to our own devices. (Romans 3:10, Ecclesiastes 7:20)
So it is my hope that by telling my story; it will help someone to give up their final doubts or perhaps lend encouragement to someone who is already a Christian but may be feeling faint in their faith.
I called this “Putting the Pieces Together” because to me, that was what my experience was like. I was born into a Christian family. I went to church three times a week but it was because we were told to. My dad had a rather fancy bible, I recall, but I never read it myself. Sunday schools consisted of highlights from the bible stories. In later years, I even found out some of the things taught to me were just false. The historical events of the bible were never tied into the history as I was learning in secular school. I want to make a distinction here about what I mean because there are many things taught in secular school that don’t match with the Bible. What I mean in this case is that no attempt was made to tie the biblical account in with the world in which we live. The world the bible is describing a part of. Some of what I was taught in Sunday school I later learned was of Gnostic teaching. Some of it was just crazy. Like snakes used to have legs.
The end result of all of that combined with what I was learning in secular school lead me to swallow the world view without question. After all, at that young age, you tend to believe your teachers because that is how it is done. It is why we are called impressionable at that age. It is why a teacher of any subject, biblical or not, has a greater responsibility than a non teacher.
I formed a view of the bible as that of a book of mythology that was a good guide for living but certainly not true. There was a point in time where I even thought that if there was any God at all, then maybe all world religions are a way to His good graces. For some it is Christianity, for some Buddhism, for others Zoroastrianism; what have you. I accepted that all religions basically taught the same thing and that truth was relative. An absurd notion, I realize now.
Naturally, as I grew older, I began to believe in the great brotherhood of man. A humanist if you will. I believed that humans were basically good and just needed to pull together. If we’d work hard enough we would soon achieve greatness. It was inevitable, or so I thought.
Not reading the Bible, what I knew was from Sunday school and from the popular culture. Such as the God of the Old Testament being so different from the New Testament is one example. He was so mean in the old and suddenly turned into a nice guy in the new. Besides, this book is at least two to three thousand years old. There have been many atrocities committed in the name of his book. Surely the multiple translations introduced errors. Add, too, that surely unscrupulous men in power would change the text to suit their own purposes. What we have today couldn’t be that accurate if it was ever accurate to begin with. At best, besides not believing the bible held truth, then the bible was full of metaphors, and very little if any of it can be taken literally.
When I was a kid, I was never really one of those bad kids. I didn’t get into drugs, or hang out with the wrong crowd or drink. I don’t say this to say I am righteous. I am not. What I am saying is that from that sort of beginning and as I spent time away from home in my older years, I began to erode. I can see that now from my current perspective but I could not see it while it was happening. I will not list the things I did here, rest assured I have brought them before God and confessed them (1 john 1:9). I can now see it was a process that was growing in intensity that would have left me in a very dark place should I have not turned around. I compare it to erosion because that is precisely what it was like. Each little infraction became commonplace and familiar until I would sink deeper until that became familiar and so forth. Again, this realization is all in retrospect.
I went to college to get a degree so I could get a good paying job and live my life. I found I was good at computer science so that’s what I pursued. I did well, so I can even now call myself a computer scientist with all the honors that go with that. It says so right on the diploma.
So I had grown up, moved out of the house. Felt that I had no need to attend church since my parents weren’t making me do it. I had no reason to do so on my own. I wasn’t having a great time out in the world, but things just happen. Randomness created the universe after all, right? There were times I had very little money to get food. Once I had forty dollars with which to get two week’s worth of groceries. I managed it. I also realize there are others who have nothing. So I’m not special here. I have been homeless twice in my life but I had a good family so didn’t remain technically so for too long. I say had not because they became a bad family just that they have passed on.
Even with all of this, I still held on to some core beliefs about Christianity. They would later serve to help bridge the gap between my learning in my younger years and the reality that is real Christianity in the real world. I believed that if one were to decide to really believe in Christianity, they had to take the bible in its entirety. You can’t pick and choose what you like and leave the rest. I also believed that if one were to believe this bible is telling you the truth then the words that are in it are all there on purpose and for a reason, every word and number. None of it can be taken as space filler. That didn’t mean I believed it, just that I believed IF one was to believe it, you had to accept it all. I also disdained the use of single verse theology. Taken out of context, anything from the bible or elsewhere can be made to mean anything else you want it to.
I never did fall into the idea that religion was there to explain that which was not yet explained. It is a popular view on religion but for some reason that never seemed to be a trap I fell into. I did know, however, that many atrocities have been and continue to be committed in the name of religion.
So I had all of these pieces floating around regarding the nature of God. I was living in California by this time and had a job with a major software company. I was in no mind to go anywhere. This was before what we now know to be the bursting of the internet bubble. There is more to this story but suffice it to say, God had a plan to get me out of Silicon Valley. The process was not without turmoil but in retrospect was probably the only way I would have left the position I had there. The end result was much better than I could have imagined.
At one point, soon after I was now in New Mexico living in a garage. All had abandoned me. I felt stupid and was looking for a job while also being technically homeless again. My aunt and uncle, they are good people, took me in while I worked to put my life back together. Things looked pretty bleak that summer. I had no job prospects. Everything I owned fit in the trunk of my car. My money was running out. I say all this because that period, I believe was important. I found that one other thing I retained from Sunday school was the promise that God will never leave you (Hebrews 13:5). Thus began a summer of change. When I wasn’t job hunting, I went on long walks in the wilderness (literally, I was in the canyons near Santa Fe). During these walks I asked God many questions about the why’s of what was going on in my life. I told him how I felt about it and even shared realizations I was coming to on the subject. No, there was no burning bush moment. I never blamed a god I didn’t know for what was happening. I went to church a few times during that period. It made me feel better. Not from anything in the messages, I have to admit I don’t recall any of them.
Eventually the darkness was lifted. I did get a job and I don’t think it was a random event. From the resume they had on file, it had to be from the first ones I sent out while still in California. I believe to this day that even then God was watching out for me. I eventually met and married the woman who is my wife today. I don’t think that was a random event either. In fact, I have come to a point in life where I don’t believe there are any consequences whatsoever. There are plenty I can’t explain but nothing is an accident even in this world.
So now, had this recent experience I learned from. I had those pieces from my earlier life floating around. My life was back together and I was doing pretty well but I have long drives to work and back and during that time, I play the radio. One day, I was looking for something to listen to on the radio and came across a talk show. Not the political ones we know about from the news. This one, it turned out, was a lecture from what I learned is an annual event put on by Koinania House. It was the lectures from their strategic perspectives conference and the speaker was Walit Shoebat. He has a very interesting testimony himself. He’ll likely never know in what way he affected one listener that very day. I have heard him several times since then so I can’t recall which lecture this was exactly but it kept me tuned in. It was interesting and offered a view to current events that I happened to agree with. I listened the next day, and every day thereafter.
Now, any regular listener to 66/40, which it turns out the radio show is called, knows that the Strategic Perspectives Conference is not the main thing they broadcast. Indeed, it was about to get much better. For the first time, I heard a biblical commenter connect the events in the bible to the real world. He also had a motto that I had come to understand living in the age of the internet. Don’t take anything someone tells you as truth without checking it out. We can all relate to this now, I’m sure. Internet hoaxes aren’t the only way people have perpetuated falsehoods but they sure make it a lot easier.
What he was saying was to be like the Bereans. This is where I got the Acts 17:11 principle. He also has a habit of telling you plainly when something he is about to say about the bible or anything else is just conjecture, but to at least consider that it might be true. I would often hear him say to let go of your preconceptions and consider what is being said. The only barrier to truth is the belief that you already have it. Here was someone who was putting together a more realistic picture of the bible. Indeed, he connects the bible to the world around us. He is very good at it. So for the first time in my life, it seems, the truth was being told to me from the Bible and I was being asked, challenged even, to verify that the teacher wasn’t making it up. So I did. I learned so much more from doing that than all the years of sitting in a pew and going to Sunday school. The pieces were coming together. When that happened, fairly quickly I completed the trip to conversion. It was clear to me from taking up that challenge to verify the truth that this book we call the bible was telling the truth and since it was telling the truth, I was in deep trouble. I gave myself to Christ right then. Yes, on highway 70 just before crossing the Augustin Pass. Since that experience all I can describe it as is like a dawning. A more literal metaphor might be to say it was as if I had been rooting around in a cave and came across a great treasure room where the light shone brightly.
At this time, I also listened to other teachers but I applied those principles I learned from Dr. Missler’s radio broadcast. Eventually I started reading the bible every day. It seemed only logical. If you are going to profess to be an ambassador of Christ, you probably should know what it is He has to say. Things that once made no sense to me started making sense. It was overwhelming and I had to share what I was learning. I wanted to do so in a way, however, that didn’t make the same mistakes teachers earlier in my life made. I wanted to and still want to tell the truth as it is. The stories in the bible need no embellishing. They tie together in ways that before I just had no inkling of and I wanted to help others who may also be falling victim to the detritus of what the popular culture tells us about Christianity. For the first time I understood what was meant by the metaphor of putting on the whole armor of God. I understood the peace that surpasses understanding. I have tossed out the fluff that I learned from popular culture and well-meaning but wrong teachers. I read the bible and use that as a basis of comparison for anything someone might say about it or Christian doctrine.
I still advise that nobody listen to me on any of these things I say about God or the Bible. To me, if God was praising a group of people for anything, it is probably a good idea to emulate them. Go look it up. It’s another excuse to read your bible every day. This is your eternal destination you are messing with. You better darn well know everything you can know about it and what needs to be done.
Since then I have been told that I have changed. Indeed, I can see some of the changes myself. I no longer believe in the humanist philosophy. I no longer believe that all religions basically say the same thing. I no longer believe in the absence of absolute truth. I go to church every week, not because I feel like I have to, but because I want to. At the least it serves as a rejuvenating experience to regroup and be around like minded individuals.
Since then, Jesus has worked within me. Most every day I find that I am being asked again if I trust Him. He finds ways to test that. I don’t always pass but I know I am not condemned for it. Things are not always rosy. Indeed, there are some troubles going on in my life even now. I struggle to trust that He will help me through them. Trust in His promises, it seems, is a big key. It wouldn’t be in the bible so much if it weren’t, but I know that now even more so than I would from just reading.
By no means am I an expert. I am learning every day. I struggle with understanding of some of what I read but then I go research it or pray for understanding. Actually, I do both. I have come to understand that God doesn’t mind you asking questions. Indeed, he doesn’t want blind followers. He wants us to think and to reason. I have learned there are multiple levels of understanding of the biblical text. That isn’t the same as multiple meanings. I have often said I wish my Sunday school teachers would have taught this stuff when I was young. However, all that has happened to me happened to shape me into what I am now and becoming. It was for a reason and that reason is for the glory of God. I trip up along the way and I am by no means perfect, but I am justified and being sanctified.