Izdaari
Mar 30th 2009, 02:13 PM
I became a Christian in late childhood independently. My parents were nominal Christians, and didn't mind that I went to church, but didn't encourage me to. I went anyway. I heard the Gospel story in Sunday School. I believed it and asked Jesus into my heart.
But I was the stony ground of the parable: my faith sprang up quickly and joyfully, but had no roots... and after we moved, I had no support group. By my mid-teens, I'd drifted away from my faith, just gradually stopped going to church, stopped thinking about it, and went with what my peers were doing, not all of which was good.
Sometime in high school, I woke from my intellectual and spiritual slumber, turned my brain back on, and became curious about the big questions: why am I here?, what is it all about?, etc. But I had no answers. I began to look for them.
I explored and dabbled in Eastern religions, New Age and Pagan paths, and several secular philosophies, including Existentialism and Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Eventually I became a deist (because I had come to believe in the Tao and in Locke's version of Natural Law) but called myself an agnostic (because I really had no idea about a personal god).
From there, C.S. Lewis showed me it was possible for a rational, intelligent person with a skeptical turn of mind to become a Christian without abdicating reason. That made Christianity a possible option for me again. So I began to study Christian apologetics. From there, my way back was roughly the same route McDowell and Strobel followed. (And I still believe in the Tao and Natural Law... but now I see them as just aspects of God.)
I do count it all as a gift from God: I needed to learn some things by straying, but I can see God's hand every step of the way in my return.
But I was the stony ground of the parable: my faith sprang up quickly and joyfully, but had no roots... and after we moved, I had no support group. By my mid-teens, I'd drifted away from my faith, just gradually stopped going to church, stopped thinking about it, and went with what my peers were doing, not all of which was good.
Sometime in high school, I woke from my intellectual and spiritual slumber, turned my brain back on, and became curious about the big questions: why am I here?, what is it all about?, etc. But I had no answers. I began to look for them.
I explored and dabbled in Eastern religions, New Age and Pagan paths, and several secular philosophies, including Existentialism and Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Eventually I became a deist (because I had come to believe in the Tao and in Locke's version of Natural Law) but called myself an agnostic (because I really had no idea about a personal god).
From there, C.S. Lewis showed me it was possible for a rational, intelligent person with a skeptical turn of mind to become a Christian without abdicating reason. That made Christianity a possible option for me again. So I began to study Christian apologetics. From there, my way back was roughly the same route McDowell and Strobel followed. (And I still believe in the Tao and Natural Law... but now I see them as just aspects of God.)
I do count it all as a gift from God: I needed to learn some things by straying, but I can see God's hand every step of the way in my return.