Tweet
Holly Ordway
I didn’t want to become a Christian. A year ago I’d have laughed at the very idea. Last spring, I was 31 years old, and I’d been a strongly atheistic agnostic for as long as I could remember. I’d never looked for God and never felt the need to; I felt that any rational, well-educated person like myself (I have a Ph.D.) would agree that religion was a social invention and that Christianity was a particularly annoying superstition.
And now I’m writing this, a baptized Christian, witnessing to my faith and to the power of God in transforming my life.
How did I get here from there?
It all started over coffee with a friend from my fencing club. When a post-tournament conversation about favorite authors led to the discovery of shared admiration for The Chronicles of Narnia, the conversation shifted from casual chit-chat into a discussion about God. I’d only recently learned that this friend was a Christian, so I found myself intrigued to hear a very different perspective on the “big issues” of life.
In my experience, people in conversations like this usually start discussing the Bible and Jesus ... not understanding that there’s no point in talking about what God wants if you don’t think there’s a God! I’d never met someone who was willing to meet me at square one: discussing the existence of God in the first place. I’d never had a conversation with a serious Christian who was genuinely interested in what I had to say, someone who challenged my assumptions and accepted challenges in return without being defensive. For the first time, I felt that I could ask the questions I’d always wanted to ask and feel safe, to feel respected, not judged.
What did we talk about? We talked about whether it was possible to know what happens beyond death ... about where morality comes from ... about justice and mercy ... about whether the universe had a beginning, and if so, was there a creator? We talked for hours, until finally I had to go home.
“I’ll have to think about all of this some more,” I said.
And I did. I could hardly sleep that night. A gigantic crack had opened up in what I’d thought was a perfectly consistent worldview. Now that I had these strange new ideas in my head, I knew I had to follow up on them.
The next two months became a journey to answer the question “What is true?” I didn’t have an agenda. I didn’t want to believe in God. I didn’t want to become a Christian. My old worldview had its challenges, but also its consolations; I was comfortable in it. But once I’d faced up to questions that I couldn’t answer, I couldn’t go back.
As an avid reader, I found it natural to turn to books for the information and ideas I needed to wrestle with, and authors like C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright provided plenty of thought-provoking material. The conversation with my friend that had started over coffee became an ongoing one, as we talked about what I’d been reading and what it meant in my life. First we worked through the arguments about the existence of a First Cause, and I came to understand that yes, there was a Creator. Then we talked about whether that Creator would have a personal relationship with us. (My friend was careful not to push me, sticking for a long time to the neutral “First Cause.” Finally one night I said, “You know, it’s OK—you can say ‘God’ now.” We laughed.)
I vividly remember one particular discussion. We were standing outside the gym, and my friend said to me, “I bet that you know it’s wrong to kill an innocent person even more than you know that there’s a trash can behind you.” And it was true. Despite having walked past this spot every week for months, I had never paid enough attention to be certain that there was a trash can right there. But I was certain that it is wrong to kill an innocent person. Something clicked, and I started to understand how our ideas of morality have to come from a higher source—from God.
I didn’t want to become a Christian. A year ago I’d have laughed at the very idea. Last spring, I was 31 years old, and I’d been a strongly atheistic agnostic for as long as I could remember. I’d never looked for God and never felt the need to; I felt that any rational, well-educated person like myself (I have a Ph.D.) would agree that religion was a social invention and that Christianity was a particularly annoying superstition.
And now I’m writing this, a baptized Christian, witnessing to my faith and to the power of God in transforming my life.
How did I get here from there?
It all started over coffee with a friend from my fencing club. When a post-tournament conversation about favorite authors led to the discovery of shared admiration for The Chronicles of Narnia, the conversation shifted from casual chit-chat into a discussion about God. I’d only recently learned that this friend was a Christian, so I found myself intrigued to hear a very different perspective on the “big issues” of life.
In my experience, people in conversations like this usually start discussing the Bible and Jesus ... not understanding that there’s no point in talking about what God wants if you don’t think there’s a God! I’d never met someone who was willing to meet me at square one: discussing the existence of God in the first place. I’d never had a conversation with a serious Christian who was genuinely interested in what I had to say, someone who challenged my assumptions and accepted challenges in return without being defensive. For the first time, I felt that I could ask the questions I’d always wanted to ask and feel safe, to feel respected, not judged.
What did we talk about? We talked about whether it was possible to know what happens beyond death ... about where morality comes from ... about justice and mercy ... about whether the universe had a beginning, and if so, was there a creator? We talked for hours, until finally I had to go home.
“I’ll have to think about all of this some more,” I said.
And I did. I could hardly sleep that night. A gigantic crack had opened up in what I’d thought was a perfectly consistent worldview. Now that I had these strange new ideas in my head, I knew I had to follow up on them.
The next two months became a journey to answer the question “What is true?” I didn’t have an agenda. I didn’t want to believe in God. I didn’t want to become a Christian. My old worldview had its challenges, but also its consolations; I was comfortable in it. But once I’d faced up to questions that I couldn’t answer, I couldn’t go back.
As an avid reader, I found it natural to turn to books for the information and ideas I needed to wrestle with, and authors like C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright provided plenty of thought-provoking material. The conversation with my friend that had started over coffee became an ongoing one, as we talked about what I’d been reading and what it meant in my life. First we worked through the arguments about the existence of a First Cause, and I came to understand that yes, there was a Creator. Then we talked about whether that Creator would have a personal relationship with us. (My friend was careful not to push me, sticking for a long time to the neutral “First Cause.” Finally one night I said, “You know, it’s OK—you can say ‘God’ now.” We laughed.)
I vividly remember one particular discussion. We were standing outside the gym, and my friend said to me, “I bet that you know it’s wrong to kill an innocent person even more than you know that there’s a trash can behind you.” And it was true. Despite having walked past this spot every week for months, I had never paid enough attention to be certain that there was a trash can right there. But I was certain that it is wrong to kill an innocent person. Something clicked, and I started to understand how our ideas of morality have to come from a higher source—from God.
Comment