My Christian testimony, Part III: Heart and mind meet at the cross

(iStock photo by Romolo Tavani)

My two previous posts have been devoted to a reasoned, scientific and historical analysis of Christianity’s claims, and they probably felt a bit wooden to you. After all, isn’t this supposed to be a testimony? And haven’t I given you term papers instead?

But I ended the last essay with a question that, to me, has the air of quiet thunder: If the evidence for Christianity is so overwhelmingly sound, so stubborn in its historical, philosophical, and existential clarity, why did I only come to the faith at age 53?

Answering this question is where the testimony really begins. For what I needed — what we all need, really — is not merely an airtight argument, but a pierced heart.

Yes, the resurrection can be placed on the dissecting table and shown, incision by incision, to be the most plausible explanation of events that turned the world upside down. But this alone is not enough. God is not assembling a team of clever apologists, nor is He conducting a celestial debate tournament. He is calling children home.

That is quite a different thing.

For the truth God offers is not a concept that is to be merely understood by the brain like, say, quantum physics. It is the kind of truth that must also be grasped by the heart, like spring flowers after an endless winter.

In fact, the heart is the very point.

The problem is that for most of my life — and if I’m honest, still to this day — my heart has desired to make rules, not follow them. And as much as I want to discern truth, what I wanted more deeply was to be the architect of my own moral universe, to construct a place where guilt had no jurisdiction and grace no necessity.

Ahhh, but the notion that this can be accomplished is merely an appealing illusion.

And I bet this exercise in vain is familiar to many of you. We like to craft cafeteria-style gods of self-affirmation, picking out what we like and sliding our trays past anything that does not suit our palates. In this desire, we are in abundant company, for this has been man’s habit from Eve forward.

Because while we might say we are on a quest for truth, what we really seek is our own happiness — and we’ll take that happiness on our own terms, thank you very much.

For that matter, there’s another concept we pay lip service to, as well — justice. But what we really mean is that we want justice meted to others, particularly people we don’t much like. However, the thought of being judged against God’s standard for each of our own actions leaves us quaking.

Or at least it should.

As the venerable C.S. Lewis noted, no man understands how bad he truly is until he has tried very hard to be good.

Retort to the problem of evil

Self-deception was not the only hindrance to a relationship with God, however. I had honest doubts about His soverignty, too, like the problem of evil. How could it exist in a world created by a perfect god? And why do bad things happen to good people?

Fortunately, these questions did not entirely dissuade my brain from a theistic view of the universe. First, I could see the unparalleled human flourishing that arose from Western civilization’s embrace of Christianity (not to mention the depravity that seemed to result from its absence or abandonment). There must be something to this religion, right?

Second, no matter how much the problem of evil gnawed at me, atheism (and particularly materialism) had an even more insurmountable obstacle — the “problem” of morality. Specifically, what spares us from utter savagery if right and wrong are defined merely by evolutionary forces? Or laws of mechanics? Or personal whim? Or even societal consensus?

Under such conditions, majority rule is the only brake that keeps us from declaring whatever pleases us to be “moral.” But chattel slavery, the holocaust and abortion on demand demonstrate why the crowd offers no true comfort.

Thus, for a long while, I considered myself a deist. Evidence seemed to abound for a finely-tuned universe and for objective morality. But it seemed to me just as obvious that God was sometimes uninterested in intervening in man’s affairs, even on behalf of His most devoted children.

That is how I explained pogroms and pediatric cancer. That is how I convinced myself praying and going to church were of no effect.

You see, in my confused mind, God was merely a cosmic scorekeeper. Live a good life and do the right things, and a reward awaits you in the afterlife, even if it does not find you in this one. That sounds about right to a lot of people.

Even to a lot of professing Christians.

But if you pay attention to the blessings in your life, you know that notion is flat out wrong.

Considering the 'heart evidence'

Fortunately, God has placed more than rational proof before us. He has given us “heart evidence,” as well.

Remember Debi’s “God moments” that I noted in Part I of my testimony? Once, I would have chalked up as superstition or coincidence all those serendipitous events punctuating the search for my birth mother. But it was more than that.

It was proof God is anything but disinterested in his creation.

Consider that my birth mother was 13 when I was conceived and 14 when I was born. Had this occurred at a later time (post-Roe) or in another place (such as one of the handful of states that had already liberalized their abortion laws by 1969), I likely never would have made it to the delivery room, and you would not be reading this. Consider, also, that Lynette placed me for adoption, rather than raising me in her chaotic home environment. I wound up in the incomparable care of my Mom and Dad, with a family that treated me like blood even if I was not.

I encountered other important, godly influences throughout my life, too.

Mom and Dad raised my sister and me in a household with theistic assumptions, even if we did not always receive a lot of formal “churching.”

Occasionally, we went to services at a Free Will Baptist church in Springfield. After moving to South Carolina, Jennifer and I began attending a Wesleyan church at the invitation of a neighborhood family, who became very influential in my life. The second-oldest of their four children, Reggie Hoyle, was one of my best friends, and I spent a lot of time at his house. I saw that the Hoyles were serious about observing the sabbath, mealtime prayer, daily devotions and discipleship. They are good and gentle people.

And I loved them because I knew they loved me.

Mr. Hoyle drove me, my sister and a half-dozen or so other kids to church in a van every Sunday morning and brought us home again in the afternoon. Mrs. Hoyle played the piano during worship services. The laity was the lifeblood of that modest, little church, with a membership of only about 100 people and an average weekly attendance of about half that.

I felt at home there. I sang in the children’s choir, played a wise man (what else?) in the Christmas pageant and attended Wednesday night youth group. Even after Mom started attending Sunday worship services, too, my sister and I still rode the van to and from church – we got to cut up with the other kids during the ride and pick candy out of a box before de-boarding.

The Hoyles were lifelong friends, but as I inched toward adolescence, something in me began to drift — not from them, precisely, but from the godly lifestyle they represented and from the church. At about the time I would have been ready to graduate from basic Bible stories to deeper understanding of God’s Word, I instead chased the false idols of my heart. Popularity, baseball, girls – nothing terribly dark or atypical of teenagers, I suppose. But I quietly shuttled God to the periphery, like a book one fully intends to finish, just not today. The promises of the world sparkled more immediately.

And the problem of evil occasionally reared its head, too, as it did one morning during my sophomore year, of high school, when I awoke to news Mr. Hoyle had been killed by a drunken driver the night before on his way home from work.

Why him? Why now? Why in that way?

Doubts and distractions persisted into adulthood, when my career became my new idol. As a journalist, my ambition did not lie in working for a large publication. Nonetheless, I wanted everything I produced to seem like it came from one. And at a small newspaper, there are not many people to delegate all the tasks that go into a great product. So you do many of them yourself. The job was a big, empty vessel into which one can pour as much of himself as sanity allows.

So I poured generously, often to the neglect of my family.

I met Debi in 1997. We married in 1999, and my bonus was two step-children, who I adore. Debi and I decided we would not have children of our own. Even though I had looked forward to fatherhood my entire life, I think this decision was mostly my idea. It was based in part on concern for the confusion and distraction a third child might have brought to Ande and Tommy, who were still quite young.

But that choice also was a confession that I would devote more time to work than to child-rearing. And that was a bad reason. I have no excuse for it but selfishness. I certainly knew better — my parents were utterly devoted to my sister and me.

And although, on balance, I think I have been an acceptable father to Ande and Tommy, I know I failed them terribly (and Debi, too) in my most important duty — I was not a spiritual caretaker for them.

In fact, I might never have found my way back to church at all, were it not for Debi.

She was raised in the Episcopal church, fell away after her first marriage but always yearned for spiritual and community connections. Shame on me for resisting rather than fostering her desire. My pat excuse was that I had no desire to play at religion on Sundays while living the rest of the week as if God were a myth or a mascot. With great sagacity, I declared that I would wait until I had my theology properly sorted — until I knew exactly what I believed — then I would choose a church accordingly.

It sounded noble. Sensible, even. But it was utter rubbish.

Because in fact, I wasn’t sorting through anything. I wasn’t reading the Bible. I wasn’t researching denominational doctrines. I certainly wasn’t praying. God had been whispering to me since the beginning, but I refused to budge until I heard a thunderclap.

Boy, did I receive one.

Answers unlocked

As I’ve explained elsewhere in this blog, Mom’s struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease was hardly sudden, yet her death in 2017 brought her struggle to an abrupt and unexpected end. It was crushing.

Oddly, however, I saw in her death a retort to the problem of evil.

God’s mercy seemed to me to be everywhere, even in Mom’s demise. She was able to live at home almost until the very end. She passed without heaping financial hardship on my father. She never forgot our names – and that was a big one for me; I utterly dreaded the thought of a mother who no longer recognized me.

So as horrible as her death was for us all, I knew it could have been worse. Much worse. So I let myself be at peace knowing she was at peace.

Mom’s passing also brought another unanticipated feeling – a renewed interest in my adoption, which I also have explained on this blog. (Some might say, explained ad nauseum.) My reunion with Lynette, my discovery of my half-brother Cain and my half-sister Melissa — all of these events have been blessings. I’m confident Dad and Jennifer feel the same way.

Yet these blessings arose from one of the most unfortunate circumstances of our lives, just as my adoption arose from one of the most unfortunate circumstances of Lynette’s life.

Such salvation amidst chaos reminds me of the closing lines of Genesis. There, Joseph — despised and sold into slavery by his siblings — found favor with pharaoh and helped both Egypt and his family survive famine.

Joseph forgave his brothers for what they had done to him: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” (Genesis 50:20).

How could I not see God’s hand over my life, too, even in the midst of troubles? How could I not realize the foolishness of my prideful grope for wisdom on my own terms?

A few years ago, Debi had started attending the St. Helena’s Anglican Church contemporary service without me. I knew that many of our friends and acquaintances went there, which only heightened my discomfort. There’s something particularly humbling — if not downright mortifying — about the idea of one’s spouse stepping into a sanctuary alone while you remain at home, standing sentry over flimsy convictions.

So when she asked me one Saturday if I’d like to go with her the next morning, I probably surprised her when I said “yes.”

To this day, I’m not entirely sure why. There was no blazing epiphany, no vision of angels with flaming swords. I simply agreed. Perhaps it was guilt, or love, or the weariness of resisting. But I believe now, looking back, it was grace.

And as the thunderclap and the ringing in my ears it imparted finally began to subside, I found myself more attuned to all those whispers, too.

His saving grace

God is all-powerful, but He is not merely so. He could have made a world full of dolls and action figures, creatures robotically programmed to think and behave only in perfect accordance with his desires. But robots cannot feel because robots cannot choose.

So He gave us free will, that we might understand and experience His love.

Unfortunately, we too often use our free will to separate ourselves from God, rather than to pursue Him. We prefer instead our own comfort, our own fleshly desires, our own aggrandizement. We tell ourselves there’s nothing wrong with that; we are good people, after all.

But deep down, most of us know we will be in big trouble on the day we have to answer for ourselves before a just God. That is why fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It turns us toward His will, away from the foolishness of our own.

Don’t get me wrong. I still sin. I do not have the problem of evil licked, either. In fact, I am only beginning to understand it. I still miss Mom. I’m still deeply troubled that my Aunt Vada, my maternal grandfather and people like Mr. Hoyle seemed to have been taken before their time. That my biological mother and her mother before her endured a litany of such losses.

But I do know that the evil in this world is ultimately solved by God’s love and His offer of eternal life. That this is what our creator wants for us. That this is why He gave us the law. Why He sent His Son to perfectly fulfill that law and accept the punishment that we deserve for breaking it.

And for good measure, the Holy Spirit is here to comfort and counsel us, until Jesus’s kingdom is completely fulfilled.

We are not abandoned. Evil does not win. Praise God, He abides!