I started this series on October 6, 2012. The reason was simple. Atheists asked me why I became a Christian. I was an atheist until 1971. What happened? What changed my mind? Those were, and still are, honest questions that deserve a detailed response. That’s why I started the series. Now it’s time to bring that series to an end – a logical conclusion.
The Long Road
The road from atheist to Christian took me about five months. Some former atheists I know took longer – some shorter. Each person has to walk their own path to discover truth.
Truth to me was always whether God existed or not. I did not believe He existed, so I lived life as an atheist. I believed there was no purpose, no reason to life, so I lived it in any way that I wanted. Most atheists I knew in the 1960s and 70s believed as I did. We were all pretty hard core – what some today might call “strong” atheists. We were vocal about our atheism and pushed backed on religious people.
I’m not going to repeat much of what I’ve written on this and other blogs during the past 31 years (I started writing blogs in 1995), but I will share this from an article I wrote in 2018:
As I investigated the truth claims of theism and Christianity, I thought back to the conversations I had had with atheist leaders on my radio talk show (e.g. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Freethinkers) and the many atheist writers I had read (e.g. Bertrand Russell, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Hume). I considered the evidence for atheism they had given me along with the new evidence I was learning about from Christian apologists. The evidence for theism and Christianity was stronger.
It came down to which worldview had the better evidence. Once I became a follower of Jesus Christ many other things came into view that have changed me as a person. I found purpose and reason for life because I became connected to Life Himself.
Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’ John 14:6
That is a profound truth claim. Either it is true or it is not. I believe it is true. I believe that Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, is the Son of God. I believe that He is the way, the truth, and the life. I believe that no one comes to God the Father except through Jesus.
For Atheists and Agnostics
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. John 7:13-14 (NIV)
The road to believing in God was long for me – 23 years long. It was a wide gate and broad road that would have led me to utter destruction if I had stayed on it. Thanks to God’s love and grace, I am no longer on that road. The road that leads to eternal life begins at a small gate called faith – “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). As Jesus said, “and only a few find it.” I found that gate, not because I’m smart or perceptive or someone special, but simply because God had mercy on me.
A self-righteous religious man named Saul of Tarsus came to understand the same thing centuries ago. He wrote these words so that everyone would know how to leave the broad road that leads to destruction and step through a small gate to walk a narrow road that leads to eternal life –
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:1-6).
If God does not exist, then there is no reason for you to be concerned if you do not believe in Him. However, if God does exist and if He did send His Son to die for your sins and you reject that gift, then you should be concerned. I wasn’t concerned until I was convinced. My hope and prayer is that you, too, will be convinced.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. ‘He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’ John 3:16-18
[Podcast version of this study.]
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Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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