Assignment: 600-800 words
As I’m thinking about my testimony, I feel it is important to share a little about my childhood. I grew up in a lower-class family who needed to rely on government handouts for aid with food and bills, along with having to stay with extended family at various times. The summer prior to my 6th grade year, I remember my mother and a few of her sisters falling for the false promises of the prosperity gospel. The shallow and incorrect teaching of televangelists, along with their own sinful desires, led to her enrolling me in a church school for my 6th grade year. We attended the church associated with that school. This lasted for one year, and once I started 7th grade, she had reenrolled me in public school.
I remember very little about the church. What I do remember is falling away from anything church and God related, and still being poor. I guess they didn’t have enough faith to be prosperous. Going forward, I feel that helped to mold my anti-religion and anti-God viewpoints. As I progressed throughout high school and into adulthood, my attitude grew. I enjoyed talking about religion and I loved to poke fun at believers for their views. I remained an ignorant godless pagan focused on instant gratification and materialism until my late 30’s. I don’t use the term ignorant in an entirely demeaning way, as we are all ignorant about most things, but more so to emphasize the close mindedness and lack of knowledge I had concerning the evidence for God.
I was nearly 40 when I started to ask my good friend, whom I worked with, why he believed what he believed. He was a Christian. It was during this time that I found myself becoming less close minded, having a willingness to participate in honest dialog. This had a cascading effect that led to conversations about faith with my wife, who was also Christian. Looking back, an event that helped propel the conversation forward was an online debate between Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ken Ham. I don’t recall many details about the actual debate, but more so the events that followed. My friend agreed with Ken Ham. I remember thinking “How does he believe this nonsense?”
Afterwards, I watched many hours of theist vs atheist debates on creation. I wasn’t surprised by theists not being able to prove God, or so I thought, but I was surprised by the inability of the atheist to have an answer to the following dilemma “Life cannot come from nonlife. Something can’t come from nothing. How is there anything?” After struggling with this, and being honest with myself, I had to admit I believed there was a creator of some sort. What that creator was, or if anything could be known about it, I didn’t know. During those past months I went from someone who denied the existence of a creator to someone who believed a higher power was involved in creating something where there was once nothing.
Over the next two years I continued to dialog with my friend, my wife, and study. Looking back, I recall it being such an enjoyable, yet frustrating time. I had so many questions, and answers to those questions brought about more questions. I frustrated my friend and my wife with the way I would “discuss” topics, often playing the devil’s advocate to help verify I was on the right track or arguing questions I already knew the answers to so I could be more certain of those answers. Two years after starting this journey, I realized something – before, I was seeking answers to believe, but now I was seeking reasons not to believe! The moment I realized that I humbled myself and prayed to God. I was still ignorant, I still sinned, I still sought happiness in material things, but I was no longer Godless.
Today, I still lack knowledge, I still sin daily, and like everyone else, I’m utterly undeserving of God’s Grace, but because of God’s love and Christ’s completed work on the cross, I am secure in my belief and my faith that God loves me, a sinner.