I Am Christian
I was not raised with any religious training, other than bedtime prayers even though I had been baptised in the Roman Catholic church. My parents were not at all religious though in their frequent arguments they often called on God and Jesus, but not in a good way. When I was young I believed in God because my relatives said he existed, but a number of my relatives, my parents included, we're not very good examples of Christian living.
As I watched TV, read books, and learned in elementary school, I learned about science and learned that science has the answer to everything. This was the 50s, and science was the solution to all man's problems.
In high school I took chemistry, physics and advanced physics, and I knew that science was the only source of truth. By then, I no longer said bedtime prayers because I was no longer a little kid who had to believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, or God. I knew these were all just games adults played with children. Science told me there was no heaven above the clouds, no hell beneath the ground. There was no such thing as miracles or angels or anything like that. Man was just a very advanced animal who was intelligent enough that he, unlike other animals, understood he would one day die, so he had to wrestle with the problem of one day ceasing to exist. For that reason, man made up fantasies about God's to ease his anguish.
I decided I was an atheist when I was a freshman in college. I had not thought earlier about finding a label for what I was because no one in high school ever discussed philosophy or religion, but we did in college, so that's when I put a name on my belief.
But after I graduated with a BS in Physics and Teaching Certificate and got a job teaching high school general science and physics, my world changed. I went from atheist to agnostic in 2 years, and 2 years after that I accepted Jesus as my Savior after learning about God and Scipture in a 8 week class taught by a Lutheran pastor.
I won't write about the details of my 4 year conversion here, because there are far too many things that happened and too many "coincidences" that convinced me that God was working on my life, but I will share that I came to Christ in 1977 and that change in my has made all the difference. Today, I am nothing like the person I was when I left college. I know my Savior and Lord.
As I watched TV, read books, and learned in elementary school, I learned about science and learned that science has the answer to everything. This was the 50s, and science was the solution to all man's problems.
In high school I took chemistry, physics and advanced physics, and I knew that science was the only source of truth. By then, I no longer said bedtime prayers because I was no longer a little kid who had to believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, or God. I knew these were all just games adults played with children. Science told me there was no heaven above the clouds, no hell beneath the ground. There was no such thing as miracles or angels or anything like that. Man was just a very advanced animal who was intelligent enough that he, unlike other animals, understood he would one day die, so he had to wrestle with the problem of one day ceasing to exist. For that reason, man made up fantasies about God's to ease his anguish.
I decided I was an atheist when I was a freshman in college. I had not thought earlier about finding a label for what I was because no one in high school ever discussed philosophy or religion, but we did in college, so that's when I put a name on my belief.
But after I graduated with a BS in Physics and Teaching Certificate and got a job teaching high school general science and physics, my world changed. I went from atheist to agnostic in 2 years, and 2 years after that I accepted Jesus as my Savior after learning about God and Scipture in a 8 week class taught by a Lutheran pastor.
I won't write about the details of my 4 year conversion here, because there are far too many things that happened and too many "coincidences" that convinced me that God was working on my life, but I will share that I came to Christ in 1977 and that change in my has made all the difference. Today, I am nothing like the person I was when I left college. I know my Savior and Lord.
70-79, M
