This Easter, April 2020, was a special time for me. And not just because I am a Christian.
On Good Friday 30 years ago at age 22, 4.20pm, just outside London on the floor of my parent’s lounge, on page 78 of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (fourth reading; didn’t get it the first three times.) I realized that God existed and his name was Jesus.
The orientation of my life and heart and relationships changed permanently because of the revelation and actual power of Jesus’ love expressed on the cross and breathed into me by his Spirit – teaching me to confess, to forgive, to love, to seek the truth wherever it be found, and to trust him and his Word. I can only say that in retrospect, both the theology of it and the experience of the teaching. Whether I’ve responded to that teaching faithfully I leave to others and God himself to judge.
I thank God – my goodness, that doesn’t do justice to the depth of my gratitude – for the honest testimony of a back-sliding American student who came to my volleyball club and, during post-game drinks one day, after noticing the cross hanging from my neck, asked me “Do you believe in God?”. I was indifferent and agnostic about the question, but curious about her! In the ensuing weeks, she spoke the name of Jesus Christ in a manner that conveyed his reality and personhood, not just a liturgical phrase or swear word which until then was the only ways I’d heard his name spoken. And, frustratingly, she wasn’t able to answer all my questions – which conveyed an authenticity to her faith.
I wasn’t looking for anything. I had everything I “wanted”: home, health, sport, friends, family, money, sex, travel. Really, I was content, as far as my shallow reflections would reveal anyway. But during one conversation, the powerful story of a young woman who’s suffering was overwhelmed and redeemed by the love of Jesus Christ cut me to the heart. Simultaneously moved and dismayed by the story, I realized I had not known a depth of anything – neither joy nor grief. But I couldn’t deny there was a depth of life to be known.
That existential moment led to the intellectual exploration with C.S. Lewis of the nature of God and the reason for a moral/ethical life. And then to the moment in my parent’s lounge. A strangely normal “a-ha” one has when one suddenly realizes something, except in this case it was the reality of God. “Huh … Wow! God exists!”. And then the conviction – it wasn’t really a ‘choice’ – that I will of course follow him, whatever that meant. There didn’t seem any reasonable alternative, then and now.
It was 2 years before I comprehended that it was faith in Jesus that saved me, not an intellectual understanding of how exactly, forensically, his crucifixion and resurrection 2000 years ago redeemed me and the world. It was a tormenting period. I didn’t understand, but had to – by then he was in every part of my thought and sense of self and purpose – but I didn’t understand, but I had to … and so on, in a spiral of despair. Then in a meeting at the Christian Union (I was a ‘mature’ student at what was then Chester College in the north of England) someone read out from Isaiah:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV
I realized trusting him saved me, not understanding him. As Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:14 ESV). Jesus is for everyone. A simple, and yes perhaps simplistic, analogy helped me then and now: a lifeboat. I don’t need to understand the archimedes principle to know the lifeboat is floating and that getting in it will save me from drowning. My intellect was freed – it no longer needed to carry the weight of my existence.
And it was 3 years before I could sign a statement asserting my belief that the Bible was the authoritative Word of God. Even though actually it had operated uniquely and authoritatively as the Word of God from the moment he opened my eyes. I can’t explain it but the Bible had a weight and authority about it unlike any other text. I can sign a statement now, more as an accurate description of the phenomena I’ve experienced than a statement of ‘faith’ as such (though it is still that). The Bible, despite the history of hubristic and self-serving interpreters, including myself, keeps proving itself to reveal the truth about me and God, resulting in greater and greater freedom, courage, and love.
I end this testimony with a few specific examples of how God changed me. I say God changed me because honestly I have no other explanation. They’re consistent with what the Bible teaches and what Jesus promised. And they started without the direct suggestion or instruction of anyone else. The changes are also incomplete. The inner experience is frankly a deepening sense of the deceitfulness and pride of my own heart, though thankfully tied to confidence in Christ’s forgiveness (1 John 1:5-10), but by God’s grace I hope I’m becoming a better man.
- God turned my moral life right side up. Until then I had almost no moral conscience or guilt about lying, deceit, unfaithfulness, sexual sin, and I was indifferent to the plight of the poor and oppressed. I’m embarrassed by how satisfied I was with myself before.
- He gave me forgiveness, confession, love and gratitude for my parents. That was pretty immediate. In recent years though, I’ve felt a need for a whole new layer to that with respect to my dad, who died 10 years ago.
- He released me from a pre-occupation with whether people liked me. Now it’s just a partial occupation!
- I had no intellectual interests before – not in history, politics, philosophy, theology, science, art, music … nothing. But God my awakened my mind as well as my heart. The existential moment of “there’s more, deeper” gave me a hunger for truth and a fascination with the world that lasts to this day. Starting a trip around the world a few months later, all I knew, as much as I could comprehend, was “Jesus Christ is Lord”. If he wasn’t true I didn’t want to believe him – so I had (and have) freedom and sincere desire to ask anyone and everyone I met around the world, and any book or philosophy: wherein lies truth here? My mind is free, and full, even if never completely sure.
- I’d been planning a trip around the world, including a hike on the Inca trail. But then I inexplicably (except for the Holy Spirit) started to think about the poor. So my fun trip to the Inca trail turned into two months in a children’s home in El Salvador during the civil war, and later working with Burmese students in Bangkok documenting the atrocities in Burma. (Bonus though: met my future wife in Bangkok). Things I couldn’t then unknow or unsee. Examples of faith and sacrifice from the very people I presumed to help. Injustices and sufferings of others too big for me to carry, along with a sense of inadequacy in how to respond. Eventually knowing I could, and had to, commit to the minimum: to love justice and mercy within the reach of my influence, however small that is. Though I’m currently convicted I’m doing less that the minimum.
Thirty years on. Never a doubt about God, neither his existence, or his nature as just, true, holy and the essence of love. I find life and reality to be what the Scriptures teach it to be: made for love, gratitude, and worship; beautiful but broken; people mistaking the penultimate for the ultimate; signs of redemption everywhere; full of joy and grief; pregnant with hope; looking for a savior.
Jesus promised life in its fullness, and that has been my experience. May I be his for another 30 years or until whenever he calls me home. Lord, have mercy. Thanks be to God.