During my childhood and adolescence I was in church almost every Sunday. When I turned 12 I was baptized and I remember thinking that I was ready to accept the commitment that baptism symbolized. Looking back, I know that I didn’t have a religious experience, but I was a Christian and I knew that getting baptized was something that Christians were supposed to do.
Six years later I was off to college. I was unprepared for all the spiritual challenges that college can present. Surely I had known before that there were people who didn’t believe as I did, but for the first time I was able to interact with them and be challenged by them. I was introduced to post-modernism in my philosophy class and began to believe in relativism; that there really was no objective truth, thus Christianity couldn’t really be true, even if it was my personal preference. The protagonist in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand lead me to romanticize the idea of questioning everything I had been taught by my church. Add all of this to the sexual temptation and peer pressure found in college and it’s easy to see how I began to question the existence of God by the time I got to grad school.
Other than my spiritual struggles, things were going well for me. I finished grad school, started my dream job, got married and was expecting my first child. However, it occurred to me that I had to make a decision once and for all about Christianity. I figured my child would one day ask me why I stayed home while he or she went to church with mommy. I attended Bible Study a few times, trying to consider it anew with an open mind. Then, at one such Bible Study in July of 2011, it happened. I had an experience that to me was unmistakeable. I was suddenly struck with a thought that I could not resist; that Jesus Christ was exactly who He said He was, the Messiah, the Son of Man who existed before time began and came to save the lost, God. I immediately repented of my sins and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
I then decided that I wanted to share my faith with others. However, as it turned out, one of the things I picked up from all of my education was skepticism. I thought my conversion story wouldn’t be enough. I thought, if someone tried to convert me with a similar story when I walked away from the faith, I probably would have laughed at them while throwing out objection after objection. It was during this time I discovered Christian apologetics, the discipline concerned with the defense of the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. As it turns out, many of the so-called objections have been handled very well by theologians for centuries. I hope to pass on a few things I’ve learned to show others that the Christian faith is more worthy of belief than any other worldview.
All For His Glory,
Quasi-Paul