Hi folks. I've been meaning to write this for quite a while. I've shared bits and pieces of my personal story in various threads but I've never gathered the entire things in one place, so here goes.
I was born in 1982 in Lexington, Kentucky. My parents were both atheists at the time, although my mother converted to Christianity while I was a teenager. My parents were and are both good people who gave my brother and I everything that we needed in terms of food, clothing, health care, education, and the like. However, they gave us very little moral instruction, perhaps because they themselves were rather confused on the issue. Instead, I picked up my worldview in bits and pieces from school books, the media, and various other sources. Following my parents I took up very left-wing political positions. The ultimate enemy was "the religious right", and of course I knew that I was vastly better and smarter than any Christian because I had logic, science, and reason on my side, rather than primitive superstition and fear.
I left for college in 2000, going to Harvey Mudd College in the Claremont system in California. While there, I participated with a number of left-wing political groups, including Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. Of course Nader flopped utterly, and most of the other groups that I participated with tended to be rather stagnant. The more I watched them, the more I noticed signs of insincerity and hypocrisy, until by senior year I finally gave up on political activism.
As my identity had been tied up with those groups during my college years, I needed something else to replace them. I entered graduate school in mathematics and decided to throw myself into my work, seeking to find a sense of purpose there. While I succeeded with that for a little while, I eventually began to doubt that the work itself had much meaning. The particulars of the research I was doing had no meaning in the real world, and eventually I found that I couldn't do it any more. Also, while in college, some of my professors had introduced me to the despair-inducing works of Nietzsche and the schools of thought that saw all morality as relative, meaning as non-existent, or reality itself as being unknowable. All of this combined to sink me deeply into depression and suicidal thoughts, and I felt as if death had to be approaching because I couldn't see any reason to go on living.
Around this same time I had been hanging out online with some members of several different Christian groups. (I actually encountered them first because I tried writing a few science fiction short stories and I met these people through the publishing industry.) They impressed me with their intelligence, kindness, and humility. At some point someone introduced me to the British author G. K. Chesterton. After reading a few of his fiction books, I read his apologetic work Orthodoxy, and about halfway through I knew that I was going to become a Christian.
Of course at that time I still knew very little about Christianity. Only after I started going to church and joined a Bible study did I actually read the Bible. I particularly remember reading the Sermon on the Mount for the first time, and as the words of Christ revealed God's true desires for human life, all the bad philosophy I had taken in over the years simply melted away.
I wish that I could write down everything that Jesus Christ has done for me since that time, but unfortunately this forum limits me to only 15,000 words and that's just not enough. So I'll just have to say that while I used to be a small-minded and hateful, depressed, fearful, and even suicidal person, now I wake up every day thanking God for the neverending joy and love that he's brought into my life.
If you are reading this and you need someone to talk to about Jesus, or just some to talk to generally, please feel free to send me a message. Sometimes I'm away from the internet for a few days but I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
I was born in 1982 in Lexington, Kentucky. My parents were both atheists at the time, although my mother converted to Christianity while I was a teenager. My parents were and are both good people who gave my brother and I everything that we needed in terms of food, clothing, health care, education, and the like. However, they gave us very little moral instruction, perhaps because they themselves were rather confused on the issue. Instead, I picked up my worldview in bits and pieces from school books, the media, and various other sources. Following my parents I took up very left-wing political positions. The ultimate enemy was "the religious right", and of course I knew that I was vastly better and smarter than any Christian because I had logic, science, and reason on my side, rather than primitive superstition and fear.
I left for college in 2000, going to Harvey Mudd College in the Claremont system in California. While there, I participated with a number of left-wing political groups, including Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. Of course Nader flopped utterly, and most of the other groups that I participated with tended to be rather stagnant. The more I watched them, the more I noticed signs of insincerity and hypocrisy, until by senior year I finally gave up on political activism.
As my identity had been tied up with those groups during my college years, I needed something else to replace them. I entered graduate school in mathematics and decided to throw myself into my work, seeking to find a sense of purpose there. While I succeeded with that for a little while, I eventually began to doubt that the work itself had much meaning. The particulars of the research I was doing had no meaning in the real world, and eventually I found that I couldn't do it any more. Also, while in college, some of my professors had introduced me to the despair-inducing works of Nietzsche and the schools of thought that saw all morality as relative, meaning as non-existent, or reality itself as being unknowable. All of this combined to sink me deeply into depression and suicidal thoughts, and I felt as if death had to be approaching because I couldn't see any reason to go on living.
Around this same time I had been hanging out online with some members of several different Christian groups. (I actually encountered them first because I tried writing a few science fiction short stories and I met these people through the publishing industry.) They impressed me with their intelligence, kindness, and humility. At some point someone introduced me to the British author G. K. Chesterton. After reading a few of his fiction books, I read his apologetic work Orthodoxy, and about halfway through I knew that I was going to become a Christian.
Of course at that time I still knew very little about Christianity. Only after I started going to church and joined a Bible study did I actually read the Bible. I particularly remember reading the Sermon on the Mount for the first time, and as the words of Christ revealed God's true desires for human life, all the bad philosophy I had taken in over the years simply melted away.
I wish that I could write down everything that Jesus Christ has done for me since that time, but unfortunately this forum limits me to only 15,000 words and that's just not enough. So I'll just have to say that while I used to be a small-minded and hateful, depressed, fearful, and even suicidal person, now I wake up every day thanking God for the neverending joy and love that he's brought into my life.
If you are reading this and you need someone to talk to about Jesus, or just some to talk to generally, please feel free to send me a message. Sometimes I'm away from the internet for a few days but I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
