My Christian Testimony

I have become a Christian. 

Yes – as in “Born Again”.

Those who know me tell me they’re shocked.

My long journey to this point probably began at Hartwick College, in Oneonta, NY 1992-1996. I entered school as a proficient guitarist, progressing to near-virtuoso ability. But it appeared very soon after starting at Hartwick that the music major curriculum was not overly demanding, so I had to make work for myself. I picked up music composition as a skill and passion, then added a double major in philosophy. By my senior year, I had become enthralled by the analytic philosophy movement of early 20th century Germany and Austria, and its intersection with arts & music of the same period and place. I absorbed Ludwig Wittgenstein and his great (and only published) work – the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. My senior thesis paper attempted to favorably compare the aesthetic implications of Wittgenstein’s language-centric worldview with the composer Arnold Schoenberg’s aesthetic philosophy of style-vs-idea. And even though I’ve long forgotten the salient points in my decent but confused thesis paper, Wittgenstein’s brilliant aphorisms & quotes – and their heavy meaning – stick with me to this day:

• “The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world”
• “It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists”
• “The whole sense of the book [his ‘Tractatus’] might be summed up by the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence”

What convinced me of the existence of the supernatural realm was a long meditation on Wittgenstein’s methodical, mathematical dissection of language and its symbols…and then his final, confusing but irrefutable conclusion that assertions about moral and aesthetic value – which are the only things we humans care about – are, logically speaking, nonsense. His great Tractatus ended in this:

• “My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)”
• “He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.”
• “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”

To literally prove the unintelligibility of value statements like “this is good or bad” or “this is beautiful or ugly,” while simultaneously affirming their supreme importance, gave me enough evidence to believe that God existed. Wittgenstein gave me a route to understand what other philosophers have concluded from different angles – art and morality only make sense in the framework of an eternal, objective and ineffable standard, which can’t be explained by clear grammar or syllogism.

Given how amped up, well-oiled and curious my 22-year-old mind was in 1996 – and given this momentous realization I had just had – you’d think it would be only natural that I take one step further to investigate the world’s religions to see which one of them was true. Even Wittgenstein – a cultural Jew – became a quasi-Catholic later in life because of his own stunning discoveries. What in this universe could be more important?

But no – I quickly shook off these nascent spiritual tuggings, and instead looked ambitiously to myself and my own future – just like most any proud young man in modern secular America.

What followed were years of attempting then abandoning a music career, marriage, children, then business career – accompanied by the low grade distress and hollow feeling that all wayward sons & daughters of God experience. The culmination was divorce and a broken family.

But…something very interesting happened just before that. In spring 2014, my wife at the time and I were on the last of our countless attempts to renew our commitment and stay together. It was the darkest time of my life. I was on the porch one afternoon alone reading my latest self-help book or blog (I forget which) in some lame attempt to find a way out of despair. I stumbled on a reference to Marcus Aurelius. (Stoic philosophy was becoming a new fad in Silicon Valley – and I must’ve picked up on it through this.) I recalled his work only vaguely from my college years, since I wasn’t interested then in the ancient moral philosophers. But something made me go search him out online. I found an audio book recording on YouTube of his Meditations. That very day I listened to it, and the next day as well. Not only were the Meditations phrased like brilliant self-help mottos, they carried the imprimatur of honored ancient philosophy, written by the very greatest Emperor of Rome. A chord had been struck. 

Then something miraculous happened.

I immediately internalized the Stoic message of doing one’s duty, maintaining inner peace (because we cause our own perturbation), suffering fools kindly, and living only in the present moment.

It was like a shock from heaven. The daily annoyances, affronts and failures of patience I experienced that caused me such anger at work, at home and everywhere – all disappeared. What replaced them was a constant and continuous feeling of pure love, patience, peace and joy, directed outward to all people and all things.

Some examples I remember from this time:

• One morning I slowly stared at and observed the toothbrush in my hand as I prepared to use it. I wondered at it, and appreciated it as though it were a brand-new invention
• My son Peter, who at this age still asked me to play outside with him, got me up to go kick the soccer ball at the park. Rather than inwardly getting annoyed that I yet again had to entertain him, I went gladly and patiently – because it was my duty, and I loved him, and I cherished sharing that moment in time with him.
• I patiently and attentively listened to work colleagues of mine who just the week before were so boring and annoying that I would mute the phone and quietly cuss them out
• At the gym on the treadmill, I left the music headphones off and instead just watched all the other people exercising without disdain (the obese men) or lust (the well-built women) – with complete love and appreciation for them as fellow humans.

The great Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, who I learned of much later, had an identical experience:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world.”

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

This nirvana state lasted a few weeks – although it could’ve been just 2 or 3 days given how time seemed to stand still. The main hope I held onto throughout was this: I can’t change how my wife and I relate to each other, but I can stop being hurt by it. I can be the one to change, to unilaterally lay down arms in our battle, and to take joy even in our fractured relationship – because she and I are human. This hope seemed actually possible for a short time. 

But I shattered it. One night during a one-way bickering debate, I snapped out of it – and hard. It was as though a devil in me had been chained up for weeks, saw a sliver of an opportunity to get out, and took it. I shouted and embarrassed the family, and by the next day divorce was our decision.

The rebound in my behavior and attitude in the months that followed was truly awful. That devil took complete control of me and made damn sure that this divorce would be a righteous and unpleasant one. 

I made repeated though failed attempts in the ensuing years to revisit that state of bliss. None of the attempts worked despite:

• A meditation practice
• Deeper philosophical investigations
• Meeting a new woman who I love deeply
• Healing the relationship with my two sons
• Achieving civility and friendship with their mother

The transcendent experience I had had, and its loss, had left a giant hole in me. And yet again, like in college when I realized the divine, then promptly slid back into my worldly ways – I did the exact same thing this time. Just continued to muddle along.

At about this time I was working hard to launch a software startup company as a moonlighting project, hoping that entrepreneurial and eventual financial independence would give me fulfillment. It wouldn’t be transcendent bliss again, but it would be at least be some worldly success. But 5 years into it in 2018, I gave up. It’s no wonder that it failed, given the hang-dog attitude with which I began the project, as attested in this 2013 blog post. I was now exhausted and deflated at my directionless life. At age 44, I experienced a classic mid-life crisis.

So for the Fall & Winter of 2018 I just did nothing. No goal in life except to clock in at work each day, enjoy the relationship with my two sons and my lady, and be bored for a while, pondering the next step.

It was at this time that I stumbled into C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters, again on a reference from some self-help blog (ArtOfManliness.com, I think). The book is a hilarious series of fictional letters written by a Senior Demon in Satan’s horde, about the frustrating experience of having to mentor his inept nephew demon, who futilely attempts to corrupt a young English man before he can find Christ. The book’s humor and brilliant moral insights led me to want to read more Lewis – which I did next with his master work in apologetics, “Mere Christianity”. By the end of this book, I was literally spooked that Christianity might be the true religion.

In the following months, I surveyed all the apologetic literature, including the scientific and philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as the truth or falsehood of the claims of Christianity. I had to attack it all from an intellectual and psychological angle before I allowed the spiritual and moral teachings into my heart.

A summary of the topics I explored:

• Scientific Materialism – the belief that there is no objective spiritual or moral dimension to humans, and that we are all moist robots and molecules in motion
• Evolution – including naturalistic theories vs Intelligent Design vs. Young Earth Creationism vs. Theistic Evolutionary theology
• Theories of the origin of life (both naturalistic & from-design)
• Cosmology & the origin of the natural world (Big Bang, steady-state, multiverses, etc.)
• Quantum mechanical theory
• The Problem of Pain (does a good, omnipotent God allow suffering?)
• The Problem of the Un-evangelized (can God let huge swaths of humans through history not hear the Christian gospel, if believing is required for salvation?)
• The Problem of Divine Hidden-ness (why won’t God reveal himself more?)
• Psychology of Belief
• Philosophy of Mind (what is a mind, is it material, is it immaterial, what does this mean for religious belief?)
• Philosophy of Morality & Ethics (relativism vs. objectivism)
• Biblical inerrancy & infallibility
• Homosexuality, abortion, transgenderism & sexual politics
• Yahweh of the Old Testament and His apparent brutality
• Evidence for miracles
• The Abrahamic faiths: Judaism vs. Islam vs. Christianity
• The Abrahamic faiths vs. Shame & Honor cultures vs. karmic & pantheistic religions
• The historical Jesus & evidence for the truth of the ressurection
• Original sin, the “fall of man”, redemption & grace

I plan to go into detail later on all of the above topics. This will hopefully help short-cut the process of making an informed decision for or against belief for anyone else in my mostly secular circle of family & friends. I firmly believe that anyone with an open mind and (more importantly) an open heart will be convinced.

In fact, its this desire to know the truth, and follow the evidence wherever it leads, which is the one key thing I’ve learned makes the difference between most believers and non-believers. Atheist and secular non-believers can be some of the most religious people I know. As in: steadfast commitment to the idea of no-god, whatever the evidence may say to the contrary. In the bible, this is called Hard Heartedness, and its written about from beginning to end. Hard heartedness is that pride which keeps a human from letting him/herself be open to a greater spiritual force – especially the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob. And especially Jesus Christ. The message of unmerited grace and forgiveness of innate, unavoidable sins that this God broadcasts through Christ’s execution is utterly detestable to a proud, hard hearted person.

As one Christian apologist, J. Warner Wallace has said: we have to have both belief that our religion is true, as well as belief in its message. That is, our intellects need to be convinced with evidence and logic, and our spirits need to be vulnerable, attuned and willing to trust. And for this our “hearts” (our spirits, that is) need to be “softened”.

Once I had reached “belief that”, I then looked back at my mystical, pre-divorce, transcendent experience from 5 years prior. It had planted a deep spiritual longing in me. This had led me, step by step, to the point now that I believed that the evidence was overwhelming that the claims of Christianity were true. My choice then was: do I become a Christian?

This very question is put to atheists by Christian apologist, Frank Turek in debates. He astutely uses this tactic to “out” the unreasonable bias of most hardened atheists: “If Christianity were true, would you become a Christian?” Amazingly, many of his opponents blurt out “No!”. They don’t care about evidence or truth, they just don’t want Christianity to be true. They want to do their own thing, be their own masters. They would abandon reason to avoid God, if it comes to that.

So, after long a long time spent in thinking and reading and thinking some more – “counting the cost” of faith, as Jesus called it – I finally admitted to myself that I do believe in. What kept me on the fence for so long was my lack of any direct experience of God. So many believers have it easy in coming to faith – they have a shocking experience in the presence of God – and BAM – the issue is settled. They then back into belief that, if they even feel the need to go there. I had never felt this personal proof of God’s existence. Or so I thought. But if Christianity is true, then the Holy Spirit is real, and all the stories of His intervention in people’s lives, and the incredible peace and joy it can bring – must also be true.

Nothing else but the Holy Spirit would better explain the brief period of Heaven on Earth that I experienced in 2014. I was clearly visited by God. I still recall lingering on a passage from the Meditations where Marcus disparaged “The Christians” (he was an early persecutor of this then-disruptive new ‘cult’). The mention was suggestive. Perhaps The Spirit was warning me, through Marcus, that I was about to torpedo my marriage. Perhaps He was just setting up the conversion that would happen 5 years later.

Whatever the reason, I now trust God, worship Him, love Him, and accept His unearned forgiveness for all the awful sins I’ve committed. And I pray for and expect the peaceful, joyful frame of mind to return to me, in due time.

My journey now begins in earnest with this public confession.