I was raised Catholic and went to CCD where I learned about Jesus and what he’d done for us but I was too young to understand before we just stopped going to church altogether and then my parents divorced. I grew up with an idea of God and a realization of the crucifixion but not a very good understanding of it. More than anything I was afraid of God, always seeing him as someone who would watch and see if I did anything bad and was only there to punish me if I ever did anything wrong. I remember a dream I’d had a couple of times where I’m in an empty well , filled with light and there’s a stained glass ceiling depicting three men just watching me and all I wanted to do was hide but there was nowhere to go and nothing to cover myself with.
The first time I reached out to someone to better understand religion was when I met this girl named Jamie in middle school. Her family was Mormon and I was really good friends with her so I would go to church with them sometimes. Her dad gave me the book of Mormon and told me it went hand-in-hand with the Bible. Thankfully I didn’t have much of an understanding of the Bible at the time so none of it really stuck. Later, as I grew intellectually I began to see the academic errors of the book of Mormon and it’s untrustworthiness as a religious text. After that I pretty much relied on science to answer my questions.

In retrospect, a lot of things make sense that would, without the realization of God, have no meaning and would just be chaotic. An example is my uncle Johnny, who passed away in October of 2006. Johnny was very funny and made family reunions bearable. I saw him as very lighthearted. We were never very close until about a year before he died. He started hanging out with me and my dad and he helped me look for the job I have now. Johnny had a very dry sense of humor and I remember a time when my sister Caitlin came to me and asked “How can you tell when he’s joking?” And I said “I never can, I just laugh at everything he says”.

After work my dad, Johnny and I would go to see movies. This was about when the movie The Da Vinci Code came out and Johnny and I would talk about conspiracy theories. Then it came up in conversation that I had never read the Chronicles of Narnia. Outraged, Johnny bought me the whole collection. When I read the Magicians Nephew it really opened my mind to the possibility of Creation. Years later my sister Caitlin started going to services here at Willow Creek.

I love debate, and my high school debate teacher told me that the best argument is prepared with it’s counter argument already in mind. So, driven by academic interest I started going with her to Tuesday night Bible study at Drake to have some questions answered. It was then that I discovered my fallacy in logic. In debate, it’s easiest to operate on a given statement, otherwise you’d have to first prove the existence of everything in the world before moving on to the actual question. Making a fundamental error in reasoning I accepted evolution as factual, instead of a “best-guess” theory that couldn’t actually be proven. I think most atheists accept evolution as factual and don’t understand that when scientists say “theory” they mean “best guess”.

Then, having razed all I believed to the ground, I let go of the pride I had. Being an avid debater I have this restless need to be correct. I let go of that and just went and listened on Tuesdays and tried to find truth. It didn’t take much convincing because I wanted it to be true. I wanted there to be an afterlife and I wanted to go to Heaven. I believe that was the Holy Spirit working inside of me. I believe that the time I had with my uncle Johnny was God giving me a chance to know this incredible person and giving me the chance to have my mind changed.

Now I know that God didn’t make me to punish me, but to bring glory to Himself. Human life Is sacred because we are made in the Image of God. I am his child and He offered me salvation through Jesus Christ, in spite of my sinful nature.