- Sep 24, 2017
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I'm a 32-year-old guy who spent roughly 32 years as an atheist. And not just any atheist.... for most of this time (especially in my teens!) I was the very obnoxious kind, the one who read Dawkins and Hitchens and took delight in trolling boards like this very own with the same old arguments I'm sure you've all seen a thousand times before.
But now? Now I find myself.... extremely confused and more than a little terrified. The proximate cause was a series of books I read over the last couple months: The (extremely profane) novels of Michel Houellebecq which first began cementing in my mind the emptiness and hopelessness of the atheist/materialist mindset, and this was shortly followed (by pure chance!) with Elizabeth Prentiss's Stepping Heavenward, which expounded on the benefits and comforts of Christianity in a way I hadn't ever experienced before. And it was shortly after that I read the big--and more common!--one: CS Lewis's Mere Christianity. For the first time, the world began to make sense: what before seemed full of chaos and despair suddenly became orderly and hopeful. For the first time in my life I have begun reading the Bible with an open mind and an open heart.
And.....that's where I am at now. (This has all been very, very sudden.) I am in the position of the man who oh so desperately wishes to believe in Christ, but whose lifelong background in "rationalism" is making such a conversion very, very hard.
(This was all copied form the Introduction thread--sorry! This next part is new though!)
I suppose I will zero in on the current specific issues I am having, though I urge you to consider this within the wider context of my biography:
One part of Lewis that hit me especially hard was the section on Christian marriage. Specifically, the realization that the Vow to "love" one another isn't describing the "feeling" of love--it's describing the decision to love, the active choice every single day to value and respect your spouse and your family. (Indeed, we can't promise to always experience the feeling of love towards our spouse, no more than we can promise to never have a the feeling of a headache.)
And... up until recently, I've always understood Faith to be a "feeling." That Christians do not make the active decision to (I will phrase this very delicately, as I do not mean to offend) set their traditional reasoning abilities aside and accept Christ into their hearts; rather, it's a "feeling" they have, a "feeling" that Christ is with them and wants them to accept Him.
Which one is closer to how actual Christians feel?
(Perhaps a specific example will clear things up: in Mere Christianity, CS Lewis employs his famous "Lord, Liar or Lunatic" argument to explain why he believes that Christ was literally the Son of God. Now, when I read that, I find his argument to be logically unsound--poor, and unconvincing. However, of course, to be a Christian (which, again, is something I desperately want) I would need to get past these mental roadblocks. Can I just say "No, I will make the decision to ignore these misgivings, and accept Christ on faith" or is this terrible theology (and worse psychology)? And if that's not the answer....then what is?
So: How can I get past this? How can I get to Christ from my current miserable state?
But now? Now I find myself.... extremely confused and more than a little terrified. The proximate cause was a series of books I read over the last couple months: The (extremely profane) novels of Michel Houellebecq which first began cementing in my mind the emptiness and hopelessness of the atheist/materialist mindset, and this was shortly followed (by pure chance!) with Elizabeth Prentiss's Stepping Heavenward, which expounded on the benefits and comforts of Christianity in a way I hadn't ever experienced before. And it was shortly after that I read the big--and more common!--one: CS Lewis's Mere Christianity. For the first time, the world began to make sense: what before seemed full of chaos and despair suddenly became orderly and hopeful. For the first time in my life I have begun reading the Bible with an open mind and an open heart.
And.....that's where I am at now. (This has all been very, very sudden.) I am in the position of the man who oh so desperately wishes to believe in Christ, but whose lifelong background in "rationalism" is making such a conversion very, very hard.
(This was all copied form the Introduction thread--sorry! This next part is new though!)
I suppose I will zero in on the current specific issues I am having, though I urge you to consider this within the wider context of my biography:
One part of Lewis that hit me especially hard was the section on Christian marriage. Specifically, the realization that the Vow to "love" one another isn't describing the "feeling" of love--it's describing the decision to love, the active choice every single day to value and respect your spouse and your family. (Indeed, we can't promise to always experience the feeling of love towards our spouse, no more than we can promise to never have a the feeling of a headache.)
And... up until recently, I've always understood Faith to be a "feeling." That Christians do not make the active decision to (I will phrase this very delicately, as I do not mean to offend) set their traditional reasoning abilities aside and accept Christ into their hearts; rather, it's a "feeling" they have, a "feeling" that Christ is with them and wants them to accept Him.
Which one is closer to how actual Christians feel?
(Perhaps a specific example will clear things up: in Mere Christianity, CS Lewis employs his famous "Lord, Liar or Lunatic" argument to explain why he believes that Christ was literally the Son of God. Now, when I read that, I find his argument to be logically unsound--poor, and unconvincing. However, of course, to be a Christian (which, again, is something I desperately want) I would need to get past these mental roadblocks. Can I just say "No, I will make the decision to ignore these misgivings, and accept Christ on faith" or is this terrible theology (and worse psychology)? And if that's not the answer....then what is?
So: How can I get past this? How can I get to Christ from my current miserable state?
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