Former atheist Dr. John Studebaker viewed religion as boring and inconsequential until he encountered surprising evidence about God and meaningful experiences with Christians.  Over time, his quest for truth led him to a profound personal relationship with Jesus.

John's Resources:

• Book, John Studebaker, editor (2023): The Quest of World Religions, An Introduction and Anthology
• BMI Oasis website: a service of Bridge Ministries, Inc., which has helped thousands of people find and fulfill their God-given life calling
• www.lemaseminary.net

John's Recommended Resources:

• Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict
• C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
• Anthony Flew, There is a God

Listen to more stories from skeptics and atheists who investigated Christianity.

Brought to you by the C.S. Lewis Institute and eX-skeptic.

Transcript

Hi, Jana. It's great to be with you.

I would love for the listeners to know a little bit about you as we're getting started. Can you introduce us to yourself, maybe your education, where you live, the kind of work that you do, maybe the things you're passionate about?

Sure. I'm in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, area, and I actually grew up here. I moved away for about twenty years, when I was involved in various ministries and working on a couple of different degrees. I graduated from Michigan State University in engineering and then went on and pursued a seminary degree. This was all after my conversion from atheism. I never thought I would pursue seminary. I didn't even know what that was. And I was such a glutton for punishment that I ended up working on a PhD in theology.

Wow!

Actually, I enjoyed it completely. It was a chance to do something unique and distinctive. Along the way, I've worked with three or four ministries. Now, I am the director of the BMI Oasis, which stands for Bridge Ministries Incorporated. No, it's not body mass index, though we do assess people's spiritual health. And so the Oasis is a place for pastors and missionaries to come that are typically burned out or just looking for a sabbatical. And I'm also a professor with the LEMA Seminary, and we focus on teaching and discipling African pastors and teachers.

And you worked for Hillsdale College for a number of years, didn’t you?

I was with Hillsdale for fourteen and a half years, and I retired from there a year and a half ago. That was a wonderful experience.

Well, let's get back to your early life. Introduce us to your family when you were younger. You mentioned earlier that you were an atheist at one time, so I want to know how that came to be, what shaped that view. So take us back to your childhood and talk to us about what your life looked like. And was religion a part of any of that?

Well, we had a great family in one sense, but in another sense, I was a bit lost, because we did attend church occasionally, but I had no sense of hope or joy in the family. I was the youngest in my family, and I experienced some trauma in the early years that what resulted was just a sense of despair and hopelessness. And also we attended a church that I viewed as a pretty much just a social club. It was a beautiful church, but as I learned later, it was quite liberal. And also I had this sense that….  and I actually met a couple of other friends in sixth grade that claimed the same. So I was pretty comfortable with that for the next five or six years.

So, in declaring that, that's a pretty strong perspective for a 12-year-old.

Yeah.

And it sounds like… church was boring, there was nothing there for you, and you hadn't heard any arguments for God's existence. Were you looking for that data? Were you asking questions? Can you tell me…. Like from the church leadership or even from your family? Were you asking questions? How do you know that God exists? How do you know the Bible is true? Or whatever. Were you asking those, or were you were just presuming?

I wasn't really asking those questions. I just came to that conclusion that seemed logical by the age of twelve.

Okay.

And

Plus you mentioned something despairing happened in your life, and I would imagine that would have perhaps added in a third reason for pushing back. 

That is a good point. Yeah. The despair of family and traumatic issues made it more challenging to believe in a sort of higher power, and I think that's also typically another ingredient for atheists. But not always.

So it was easy for you to un-check the god box and just dismiss it out of hand, really, as something not real, true, or viable for you, again at 12 years old.

Yeah.

Which is—from what I understand, a lot of preadolescents and early adolescents—12 to 15 is the age at which they start to dismiss God. So you moved on from 12 years old. It sounded like you had some friends who believed similarly to you.

I did. And at the age of 17, I had friends that—a couple of friends had become Christians, and they started to pursue me, a couple of my best friends. And also a girl that I thought was cute and I was attracted to, and they were all becoming Christians. So they all came after me, and they wanted me to attend a weekend retreat with the FCA, with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. And I took a bit of convincing, but I said to myself, “Well, I like fellowship. I liked athletics,” I was involved with sports. This was around junior year of high school. “And the Christian part, I'm not so into, but okay. Two out of three. I'll go.” And the cute girl was going. And a couple of my best friends. So I went, and during the retreat, well, first they had a movie that they showed. It was called Thief in the Night. This was popular back in the late 70s, I think, and it was about the rapture, and of course, I didn't believe any of that, but one thing I noted was, “At least we have someone here from the book of Revelation making a strong, bold prediction about the future.” I thought that was respectable because there are a lot of claims about future events, but this one claimed that events had been fulfilled in the past, and therefore these predictions would be fulfilled in the future. And also gave the people hope for a future life. Other thing I noticed was, of the thirty or fifty students that attended the retreat, they all had a certain joy about them. They sang a lot of different Christian songs that were contemporary, and I just made a note of the joy and the love they had for each other.

And the last thing was one of the camp counselors pulled me aside after the movie and explained that Christ fulfilled over 300 prophecies. And that no one had fulfilled even six of these prophecies regarding the future Messiah. But Christ fulfilled over 300. He said, “The chances of anyone fulfilling that many,” and these were detailed prophecies fulfilled in the New Testament from the old. That really got me thinking.

Yeah. It makes me wonder…. Of course, at twelve, you dismissed God, and you probably didn't think through it very well, let’s just say, and you lived your life until you came up to this retreat. But you had some presumptions going into that retreat, and one is that religion is not grounded in evidence.

True.

And I wondered what other presumptions you might have had about what religion was or Christianity was or belief in God. If it wasn't true, how did you perceive all of that, when you had just dismissed it out of hand.

Yeah. There was no personal sense, certainly not a God that loved me. And my friends took me, my two friends, including the one that, the girl I thought was cute, took me for a walk. This was probably 11 pm, after the movie and the talk with the counselor, and they took me for a walk. I mean, it’s really amazing, as I look back, how these events were orchestrated. And we went out in the dark. It was a beautiful night. I remember every minute of it now. And they explained to me that Christianity was a personal relationship with God through Christ. And they had both come into that kind of relationship. And I was stunned by that, that they believed that…. They said it wasn't a religion, that it was a relationship. And that was shocking, because I’d always thought of religion in relation to that church that seemed so boring. And now they’re talking about a vibrant relationship with God that is personal? So that was another piece of evidence that really got me to ponder further.

So you had this intellectual awakening, I guess, of sorts, that all of these three hundred prophecies that were written at least four hundred years prior to Christ somehow were fulfilled in this person of Christ, against all possible odds, and then you have a more experiential, I guess…. You call it evidence. It’s really a shift in your understanding of who God is and what the expected relationship with God is, rather than a religious act towards God, is actually a person with Whom you connect in some way.

Yeah. And both were important for me, because I needed the intellectual engagement, but I also needed to understand the personal encounter, the personal aspect, because of that despair and that sense of hopelessness and loneliness that I felt as a teenager. So I am sure every atheist is going to—if they’re going to begin to make any sort of shift—is going to need both aspects, both the intellectual and the personal engagement. And they both came early on at that retreat. But there were a couple of other evidences that I needed that came a little later.

Yeah. So it got your wheels turning, I guess. That retreat was something, would you say, that was a catalyst or a disruptor towards creating an openness in you? Or a seeking or a searching? Was it something that you wanted to actively pursue after that retreat? Or is it something you just kind of put away?

No. I did not want to pursue it. It was just an initial catalyst, but I was going to take a lot more prodding. So my friends continued to ask me to come to prayer meetings. I was on the wrestling team and the tennis team, so before each match, they would invite me to come to a prayer meeting before the match. It seems like every time I went to that meeting before a wrestling match, I would win the match. Oh, another piece that I have to point out was that, during that retreat, they asked everyone for a prayer request, went around in a circle. And I said, “We can just skip me, because I don't believe in prayer.” They said, “Oh, come on. Just mention one thing.” I said, “Okay,” so I gave them a challenging one. I was in AP chemistry, which was advanced placement, which… if you got a B in the class, then it would essentially be viewed as an A. So it was very difficult. And I said, “Okay, you can pray that I'll get an A in AP chemistry,” which would be like… even the smartest kids didn't get an A. Well, at the end of the semester, guess who got an A in the class with one point to spare on the final exam?

I mean it sounds like it could be coincidental, but I believe there was some divine intervention there, just because of that prayer, to prove to me that there is something happening here. But this was all early on. This was the first semester of my senior year of high school. And then, in my second semester, when a few more things happened that were significant.

As I mentioned was that they continued to ask me to come to these prayer meetings before matches. One time, I had a match. It was my last wrestling match. I was going against an arch rival who I had lost to three or four times, and I was just about to beat him for the third place in conference. And, in the last three or four seconds, I lost to him again. I felt this deep despair, having… I was winning the match up until the last three or four seconds. And I felt that deep despair, like, “What is life all about?” I mean I felt such a deep sense of loss. “If this is all my life is about, is winning a wrestling match? I have nothing else. Than what is life about? That's it.” So that got me really pondering the meaning of life.

Then, in my last tennis match, later on that year, I was—and this was significant. And this is what we would call the moral argument for the existence of God. I found out later. So it came to—he won the first set. You know, you play two out of three sets. He won the first one. And the second set we went to four points each in the tiebreaker. Well, back then, it was the next point wins the set. So we went back and forth. He hit a slam that… I thought it missed the line and was out, so I called it out. Well, if you know tennis, then the ball leaves a ball mark. So I saw the ball mark, and it caught that line just barely. Well, by this point, the guy started swearing at me and yelling at me that the ball was in. And even though I saw that ball marking, I did something I'd never done before. I said in my mind, “Well, if you're going to swear at me, I'm just going to yell right back.” And I said, “Hey! I said the ball is out. It's out!” So that made it my set. And we had one more set to decide the match. One set each, so far. And we have a ten-minute break before we play the final set. And I'm sitting on the side of the court. I’m thinking to myself, “Okay, the ball actually did hit the line, but I called it out. What am I going to do with this?” And now I'm thinking, “You know, I've never cheated before, but that would be cheating. And can I live with that?” And I thought to myself, “Who says that there's any rules that we have to obey to?” And, “Is society setting up these kinds of rules of honesty? Is it myself?” I thought, “No. I need some sort of standard here.” I'm amazed that I thought through this whole thing in ten minutes.

Yes.

I said, “Society, it’s always changing its morals and does not provide solid evidence for having morals, and I wouldn't be a good source for that either, because I would always change the morals to fit my own desires. So what is the basis for morality?” And all of a sudden, it hit me. “Maybe this is the God concept. If anything else, maybe God is the standard of morality that wants to get at us and make us want to be honest.” I said, “I'm not sure, but that sounds like the best explanation.”  I went over to the other player, even though he's a jerk, and I said, “Okay, I saw the ball in, barely. It was your set, your match.” And pretty much floored the guy. I went to my tennis coach afterwards, and I told him what I did. He was a Christian. He said, “Well, praise the Lord.” I couldn't quite respond the same way, but it really got me thinking about God and the idea of morality. So it was forced upon me.

The next piece of evidence was after graduation. Well, there's a couple more ones I could mention briefly. One was at graduation, or the day before, we had an event called baccalaureate, and back then, there would be a religious service the day before graduation. And I didn't know it was a religious service. I had never been in a choir before, so they asked for people to sign up for the choir. Well, the day of practice, I was sick. So I just showed up at the baccalaureate to sing the songs on the song sheet, and turns out these are all religious songs. I had no idea I was going to be singing these, but I did anyway. One of them was a song by Andrae Croch called “My Tribute,” and, if you don't know the song, the chorus is, “To God be the glory for the things He has done. By His blood, He has saved me, and by His power, He has raised me.” And all of a sudden, when I sang that line, “By His blood, He has saved me,” it hit me in some strange way with a sort of curiosity. “What in the world is that about? ‘By His blood, He has saved me?’ That is the strangest thing I've ever heard!” I’d never heard of anything regarding blood or sacrifice, and I didn't know what it meant. I just knew it grabbed me with a kind of a curiosity, and it shook me up. Well, I just went on and sang the other songs, but I was really shaken.

A week later, though, we had this graduation party in the forty acres out back of our home. And I invited my best friends to come over and have a sleepover under the stars, just to kind of celebrate graduation. Well, on my left side, I had an atheist friend, and on my right side, I had a Christian friend. And, I'm looking up at the stars, and I'm thinking about the stars and the expansion of the universe. And they started debating the existence of God, on the left and right. I'm kind of caught in the middle. And maybe I'm always caught in the middle of these things.

Yes.

And I'm listening to their debate. And all of a sudden, my mind is wandering out toward the stars and thinking, “The farthest star. I wonder how far away it is. And I wonder what's beyond it.” And I thought, “Whatever’s beyond it, I don't know, but I know that the stars don't go on forever, because if the Big Bang theory is true, then the stars are limited. So what's beyond that?” I thought, “Well, I'll just take a spaceship someday, and I'll get to the farthest star, and I'll find out, theoretically. And maybe there's a wall beyond it. Well, I'll just take my dynamite and blast through it, and I'll find out what's beyond that. I mean, something's got to be infinite in any one direction.” And I thought, “The concept of infinity can't be physical. It must be spiritual.” I thought, “That must be the concept of God, the infinite.” And that led me to… all these different pieces of evidence start adding up. So those are the major pieces, and it was only a matter of time before I made a decision on all the evidence.

So I guess the atheist didn't convince you towards more belief in naturalism, rather, or the Christian at that point, but all of these things are touchpoints. It’s a gradual process and accumulation of, again, touch points that are pointers towards the transcendent, or the need for the transcendent, in order to make sense of things. Even the A on your AP Calculus test, an unusual thing that prayed for, but yet there were all these pieces and parts of a personal God who seems to answer prayer, that there’s the grandiosity of the universe, and even the song at the baccalaureate. That would be-

Different types of evidence that were all cumulative.

Yeah. So it was kind of cumulative. It seemed like your curiosity kept being piqued, your views challenged, even on the tennis court. You felt like you… I guess, as Greg Koukl would say, you bump into reality in these different touchpoints in your life that beg for an explanation.

Yeah.

So what did you do, then. After you kept encountering these touchpoints at different places in your life?

Well, it was about a month and a half later. I believe it was August 1, 1978, that I was home alone for the day, and I was about to go off to college in two or three weeks for the first time, and I was a little scared about going to college and starting my adult life. And that question of my identity came up. “Who am I going to be in my future?” And so I said, “I need to make a decision about my future and who I am, especially whether I believe in God or not,” because I had these different pieces of evidence, but I still was not sure. So what I did, trying to be logical, and I always claimed… I did real well in logic class and mathematics. So I just said, “Well, I'm going to pull out a piece of paper,” and on the left side of the paper, I wrote down all the reasons why I thought God might exist. And on the right side, I wrote down the reasons God doesn't exist. Or maybe I wrote it the other way around, I don’t know, on the left and right. And then I wrote down all these reasons. And then I gave each one a point value regarding their strength. Like one to five, how strong was that piece of evidence? And I added up all the points, and I think they came out about forty-two points each So now I have another dilemma. They tied! What am I going to do?

And at this point, my friend that I went for the walk with him at the end of that retreat—he said, “If you ever want to check out the validity of God and Christianity, then pray this prayer. I got on my knees, and I prayed my first prayer. It was basically, “Okay, God. If you’re there, do whatever you do when someone is saved. Amen.” Yeah.

Short and sweet.

Probably the most lame prayer ever. And I stood up, and I said, “Well, I think I just wasted five or ten minutes, but oh well. We’ll see what happens.” Well, nothing happened. I felt kind of stupid. I went about my life for the next couple of days. And about three days after the prayer, I'm driving around in my car, and this boy who had all that despair and hopelessness, all of a sudden I have this emotional experience going on inside of me. It was a feeling of joy and optimism. And I couldn't explain where it came from. And it kind of grabbed hold of me, and I said, “Wow! I feel better than I've never felt. I feel so good!” And then all of a sudden I had this thought in my head. It lasted on a feedback loop for the next two or three days. It was, “You’re going to have a great life!” And it just kept going through my head over and over. “You’re going to have a great life.” I said, “This is really weird. I wonder if I’ve become a Christian.”

So I went off to college two weeks later. And first week on my new dorm floor, there is a guy on the floor talking to another guy. They’re sitting on the floor and talking, and it sounded like they were talking about God. Well, I just sat down next to them and just listened. And they’re talking about God and talking about Campus Crusade. And I didn't pick up much of it, but he just invited the other guy to go to Campus Crusade that next week. And I said, “I'll go.” I said, “I prayed my first prayer a couple of weeks ago, and I don't know what's going on, so I'd like to go and check it out.” So I went to Campus Crusade for my first time that next week. And all these three hundred Christians were there at University of Ohio, and they were all singing these Christian songs, like I was saying a year ago. And they were all so joyful, they I had a time for a few people to stand up and give a testimony or something. And I'm kind of bold, so I stood up, and I share with the whole crowd that I prayed my first prayer two or three weeks ago, I don't know what's going on, but if anybody wants to explain this to me, feel free. So the guy from the dorm floor that invited me took me aside a couple days later and explained the whole gospel, which didn't make a lot of sense. It took me three or four months to get a grasp on this thing, and around Thanksgiving, I prayed a better prayer and kind of confirmed to myself, “I think I'm a Christian now.”

Oh, wow! So for those who might be listening, John, who are wondering what the gospel thing is, can you explain what your cohort explained to you in terms of what it is?

I had to realize that, okay, first of all, God exists. God exists, and He loves us. And that was the first challenge, obviously. But once I got past that, I had to realize that my despair showed me that I was out of line with God's plan, that I was a sinner, and that's a religious term, but it really just means missing the mark. I had missed the mark of God's plan in my youth. And so salvation, essentially, is a chance to return to God. And Christ offered that opportunity to return through His sacrifice, which I had found so stunning when I sang that song about His blood. But I realized that blood was the sacrifice that allowed me to return, that paid the penalty for my sins, my missing the mark, and allowed me return to God and find salvation, find eternal life. And that's what it took me about a year to really grab a full sense of.

So you received forgiveness, and you were given a new life in Christ. And so that's where some of that, I guess, new joy came from. Or the sense of joy that you observed in others.

The joy I saw and the joy I experienced that first time came far before I really understood much of anything. And that just shows to me the graciousness of God, that he allowed me to experience that before I understood any theology, really. I prayed that feeble prayer, and I got an initial response from God that kind of allowed me to continue to pursue this. And really that’s been my journey all along. It’s just a journey of pursuit, of understanding, knowing God better, intellectually and spiritually and even emotionally.

Yeah. That’s pretty wonderful. So you had someone there who explained the gospel more fully to you, you understood it, and then once you understood the gospel and you had had all these, really so many different pieces, that were leading you in this direction, that you were trying to make sense of, whether it's morality or your identity or the despair that you had had in your childhood. How did all of those things come to make sense within your belief in God and Christianity and the Christian worldview? How did those things come into alignment? 

That’s a good question. And it was really about a journey of the first ten years. The despair I felt before my conversion, in some ways after the initial conversion and the first two or three years of kind of the excitement of this new life, it started to wane in some ways. And in the first ten years, I felt some more despair, even some depression, and I realized that I was confused about my worldview. So I ended up going to a study center in England that a friend—I was in seminary at this point, and a friend told me about this study center called L'Abri, which means shelter, and it was started by Dr. Francis Schaeffer. And I’d never read any of this books, but I flew all the way over to England to go to this study center for a month. And there I was able to engage my worldview and realize that I didn't have a strong basis for it, that I didn't have…. I was questioning whether the Bible really was true or whether God really loved me. And I was able to kind of work those through and realize that God loved me for my own sake, not just because I’d been involved in some ministries. I was trying to earn God's favor by service, and I came to realize at L’Abri that God loved me for me, not because of my service or my ministry. And I realized that the Bible is true because, not just with fulfilled prophecy, but because it was true to reality, as you had mentioned earlier. It made sense of reality. It had an epistemological foundation that was valid. And so that helped me to revise my worldview and come out of that despair as well.

So I was able to also read along the lines some former atheists, and actually, I read them early in my journey as well, like Josh McDowell. And I would recommend these to any atheist who is wanting to read some good material by those who have converted from atheism, like Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict or C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Another gentleman is Anthony Flew, who was the world's most famous atheist, who wrote… what is the book called? I believe in God?

There is a God.

There is a God! He wrote it in his eighties, after his conversion from atheism to deism, and of course, through your podcast a lot of converts from atheism. And Flew said he converted to believing in God because he followed the evidence. He followed the argument. He has always committed to that, but he finally followed it to the point where he believed in the existence of God. And that was sort of my story as well.

So, yes, you had said at the very beginning that you had actually worked somehow in the field of apologetics or teaching it or whatnot. And so I presume that, over time, that your love for just making intellectual sense of the world in relationship to God increased over time? Or that you pursued that avenue as well, in order to perhaps ground your worldview more? Or help others understand how the world makes sense with God?

Sure. Yeah. I was involved with Probe Ministries, on staff for three years in my thirties, and it helped me work through apologetics and even teach it for those three years. But what I discovered was that was not—even though I loved it, it was not my primary love. So I went on and got my PhD in theology. Because it was, in a sense I guess, more holistic in the understanding of God’s character. And my dissertation had to do with the study of the lordship of the Holy Spirit, because I really wanted to do something that helped me to grow spiritually and helped others to grow spiritually.

Yeah. So it sounds like, again, over time—your conversion happened late high school, early college, and that you’ve just been on a journey ever since. It sounds like you’ve not only increased in your knowledge and understanding and relationship of who God is but you're also

Helping others to now understand what you have learned to understand, not only with regard to reality and the relationship with God but also this personal walk with God that seems so important to you.

Life is a pursuit of growth, isn't it? It's always challenging, always growing in so many different ways. I would imagine that, if there are skeptics listening, they would be somewhat intrigued by your journey, that you had, again, so many different kinds of what you call evidences that pulled you in towards belief in God from a place of nonbelief. If someone was listening and they were open to taking a step towards God, how would you commend somebody to do that? Would it be a prayer? Would it be an intellectual search? Would it be talking with other Christians? It sounds like you just had so many different things in your life that led you.

Yep. I believe that these evidences were tailored to me and what I was needing at each point along the journey. So if someone is an atheist or an agnostic, if they're open to follow the evidence, then I believe the evidence is, I'd say, overwhelming. Like Josh McDowell says in his book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, the resurrection is the most—I can't remember the quote exactly, but it is the most attested and validated historical event of history. I believe C.S. Lewis does something similar in his book, Mere Christianity, where he tackles various different kinds of evidence as well. He was a former agnostic or atheist as well. So here are people I believe that followed the evidence, followed the argument, and they were open minded.

That’s really, really good advice, I think especially towards being open to look. I think that's huge. You became open, and you were willing to see the evidences from all different directions.

Well, I was reluctant.

Yeah.

As I mention in my story, which in some ways I think I have kind of hurt my faith along the way, being always such a skeptic and always having to begin with the evidence. Sometimes I envy those friends, like my wife, who grew up essentially believing and believed based upon the love of God and experienced spiritual experiences And then we’ve helped each other. I've helped her develop a more solid basis of evidence for her faith. She's helped me in trusting God, learning to trust God for His character, rather than just always having to rely on the intellect. And the past year or two especially, I've been on the journey of growing emotionally more in tune with God's heart. And that's really what the agnostic or the atheist, I think, is ultimately longing for, is to fill in that heart-shaped vacuum that Augustine spoke about, to fill in the despair, fill in the loneliness, because the atheist has no hope for the future except of course dying and being food for worms. That’s not really a sense of meaning and purpose for the future. But we all long for that. Lewis made that great point that every person longs for fulfillment, human fulfillment, and human hope in the future.

Yeah. That’s certainly something that the God story does provide, doesn't it? And even, you mentioned earlier, the “Who are you?” in terms of identity. Our basic identity is so solid and so loved, so known, so valued, as a child of God.

Yeah.

That society cannot change or….

Yeah. The notion that I am created in the image of God is really what I grappled with and learned at L’Abri. That's what provided a sense of value. The secular worldview, the materialist worldview, that we are a product of evolutionary chance doesn't provide a sense of value for who I am or a sense of dignity. And that's what I love about Francis Schaeffer’s writings, was the way he helped us grapple with our dignity, as opposed to the materialist, secularist, and now the postmodern worldview. Even the postmodern worldview, it sounds maybe a little better, because we can gain identity and some form of dignity from the community, it still ultimately is a despair, because that community is not going to last forever.

Yeah. And they're always changing, right? And their expectations. Yeah. That’s a really great word. And for those of us as Christians who want to see those who are skeptics in our lives come to know the love of God that you have now found, and the intellectual grounding, how can you best advise us to engage with those?

Sharing one's testimony, as I've done today, in a briefer sense, is important, because who can deny one's experience? And when my friends took me aside at that retreat and shared with me that they had encountered this personal relationship, and it wasn't ultimately a religion, that struck a chord with me. And so I would advise anyone who is looking to share their faith with others to make it personal in some sense. The intellectual aspect is important if there are questions, but don't forget to share one's own personal experience. Especially today's more postmodern culture is looking for authenticity.

Yeah. It’s a very human way to relate these deep and real truths of God, that it's not only grand and transcendent, it's terribly intimate and personal, in terms of the way that God makes sense of not only all of reality outside of ourselves, but who we are in our own humaneness, to the depth of who we are really.

Yeah. I’ve got to be real, though. The only thing that bothers me about God is He always leaves that craving within you to seek and find more. It's like you’ll get satisfied for a short time, and then there's always this craving to want to seek and the need to find more. Sometimes that bugs me.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of Christians have that same experience, because we’re never able to rest on our mores, our previous experiences.

Yeah. I mean, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.” But I guess not ultimately in this life, right? Because we have such a dependence, and He knows the more that we hunger after Him, the more that our lives will actually flourish.

So thank you. Wow! John, what a story! I love that it picks up on so many different elements. It's not just intellectual. It’s not just personal. It’s not just experiential. It’s not just moral argument or looking at the stars. I would say that your story is really kind of a cumulative case study for the existence of God, not only that God exists, but God matters. And I appreciate so much you coming on and telling your story and all the bits and pieces.

And God thinks that we matter. That's probably the ultimate conclusion I would provide.

Yeah. I love that.

I know several friends right now that are dealing with tough issues, and that's what I would lead them to remember is that God really cares about what you’re going through, even though it may not feel like it.

Yeah. Yeah. And He’s so personal, isn't He? I mean, just the way that He answered that prayer for you back in high school. I mean, He’s very personal and very specifically personal.

Very much. Yep.

And He does care, even though sometimes it seems like…. He is there. He is not silent, as you would say, quoting Francis Schaeffer. Yeah. He’s there. He’s there, and sometimes we don’t feel Him, and He feels hidden, but He cares personally and intimately about everyone. Thank you for that final note. I really appreciate you coming on today, John.

I enjoyed being with you. Thank you.

You’re welcome.