Hi everyone,
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 very first time in my life I began reading the Bible with an open mind and an open heart.
And.....that's where I am at now. I am in the position of the man who oh so desperately wished to believe in Christ, but whose lifelong background in "rationality" is making such a conversion very, very hard.
Now--this place is supposed to be for introductions, and I will stick to that.
I just....I know how annoying it can be to get smug atheists here, and I just wanted a place to show that I am posting in good faith, and if I do offend any of you here it is most assuredly not my intent.
Oh, a few other things about me:
* I'm married and have a 3-year-old son.
* I'm an American. Politically I lean right on cultural issues but very far left on the economic side.
* I will cop to being a "film snob"; I am obsessed with the medium as an art form, which frequently results in my hating popular Hollywood movies. Among my favorite directors are two who I hope will be familiar to some here (as their work is frequently and explicitly Christian-themed): the Dardennes and Robert Bresson. (That said, I'm not a total snob--I do think some of the most interesting films in the world right now are coming out of the American micro-budget indie scene.)
* I suspect I read more books than the average person, though I stick pretty exclusively to literary fiction. I love Edith Wharton, Knut Hamsun, and Gustave Flaubert, particularly . Among the modern writers I admire include Neil LaBute, Lionel Shriver, and the aforementioned Michel Houellebecq.
* Huuuuuuge baseball fan. (Go Royals!) Not a drinker or a smoker. I have only been to church twice in my life (both due to being invited to weddings. Therefore, I've not been baptized and neither has my son. My wife is not religious either.) Prefer cats to dogs. Do not believe pineapple belongs on pizza.
....That about covers it. I look forward to joining your community....and hope to someday join your faith.