Ideally, I would be hearing answers from people who became Christians after adulthood, and who were previously non-religious, not converted from another faith. How did you come to believe in the things that are required to believe in the Christian faith?
And maybe more people can answer this one: how do you deal with having doubts? I am talking about the supernatural bits; of course there is no doubt that Jesus was good and wise. Even if the Bible was a work of fiction, that would still be true of him as a character.
I'm asking because I'd like to be more religious so my whole family can be the same religion. I know some would say that's the wrong reason, but look at it this way: sometimes you have to start going through the motions and sincerity follows.
I've considered myself an atheist or agnostic for a long time and I'm not down on Christianity or think it's dumb or anything, I just don't see why people come to believe it, since common sense tells us that those miracles couldn't happen.
If anyone could recommend books that would be great. For example, I love GK Chesterton and CS Lewis, the grownup books...ok who am I kidding, I still love to read the Narnia books. I'm open to
non-fiction philosophy and theology too. What books helped you?
For the benefit of Tapero, yes, I did edit this post but I did not edit it for any reason other than to flesh out some of my answers.
Here's my story:
I was twenty-four years old and had a terrific life. I was a little like a character in a Jimmy Buffett song.
I made my living by playing music at night and as a sailing instructor in the daytime.
In the fall and spring, I could make enough money to support myself for several months by sailing boats down to the Carribean for older people or people in poor health, who couldn't make the passage on their own, or people who could, but just didn't have the extra time it took.
A man called me one day and asked if he could hire me to sail his Island Packet down to St. Barts. Since St. Barts is one of my favorite destinations, I jumped at the chance.
The plan was to sail down, girlfriend in tow, and fly back about ten days later. The good thing about being a boat bum is that you can pretty much go where you want, when you want.
One night, as I was looking through the boat's bookshelf, I noticed a Bible.
Now, I wasn't a Christian as a child, but I did attend a church youth group when I was about ten and I memorized a lot of Bible verses. I more or less hadn't picked up a Bible since then, but I was curious to see how well I remembered those verses.
I quoted Psalm 1 all the way through and then I looked it up to see if I was right, and I was mostly right. I was enjoying reading it and was just flipping from verse to verse when I came across Psalm 19, which told me that the heavens, themselves, testified to God's glory.
Now I had always had a vague belief in God and I was sure that, however the universe came to be that God probably had something to do with it, but sitting there under that unbelievable Carribean sky, with a million stars so close and so bright that you could almost reach out and touch them, something in my brain clicked and it was like the difference between knowing that a stove is hot, intellectually, and putting your hand on the stove and knowing that it's hot, experientially.
Before, God existed only in the intellectual information in my brain. But now, I had experienced God and seen His footprints for myself.
Continuing a little further in the book, I came to Isaiah 6, where it talks about Isaiah coming face to face with God's holiness in the temple.
Now, Isaiah wasn't just some guy off the street. He was someone who had been handpicked by God because of his faithfulness and consecrated to be a prophet of God to preach repentence to Israel. He was God's representative on Earth.
So, Isaiah goes into the temple and sees God's holiness and he becomes completely unglued. He freaks out and starts running around the temple looking for a place to hide from God because, where he had believed that he was holy, he now saw his holiness in light of God's holiness and realized just how sinful he really was in light of God's perfect standard.
This really set me to thinking. I mean, if God's own prophet was so sinful that he was this offensive to God, then how must God see me?
I had a conscience and it brought to mind all of the times I had done wrong, even if I didn't understand God's law or that what I had done was sin. I thought about these things and I just had to know where I stood with God and what I could do to be made right with Him.
So, we ended up flying into Key West and driving north through Alabama, where I wanted to stop and see some family. While I was there, my step-mother introduced me to her pastor and invited us to church with her.
Afterward, I sat on the church steps with him and told him about my experience.
He told me how God is holy and righteous and just, and must pour His wrath out on us because of our sin, but that He is also loving and compassionate and pleads with us to repent and put our faith in Christ so that we can be forgiven for our sins, reconciled to Him, and become children of His.
I really was struck by my sinfulness before God, the wrath of God toward sin, and the love of God that He would give His only son as a ransom for me, even after all of the times I'd sinned and rebelled against Him.
That night, in a little country church in Alabama, I prayed to God and repented of my sins and threw myself on His mercy by virtue of placing my faith in Christ's atonement on the cross on my behalf.
And that night, I was born again, a new creature in Christ, free and forgiven.
Now, about your wanting to be "more religious". I don't think you're quite getting the hang of what Christianity is all about.
It isn't a religious system of do's and don'ts and religious rituals that you can practice on Sunday morning and leave behind the rest of the week.
You need to come face to face with your sin, just like Isaiah did, and understand that your nature is sinful and corrupt and that it is impossible for you to please God on your own.
But by repenting of your sins and placing your faith in Christ's atonement on your behalf (that is, that He was sinless and chose to die in your place), you can be born again and forgiven and become a child of God.
