3.20.2013 THE ATHEIST'S DILEMMA

this testimony by jordan monge is in march 2013 christianity today on p88.

'i tried to face down an overwhelming body of evidence,
as well as the living  God.

i don't know when i first became a skeptic.
it must have been around age 4, when my mother found me arguing
with another child at a birthday party:
'but HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS
IS TRUE?
by age 11, my atheism was so widely known in my middle school
that a christian boy threatened to come to my house
and 'shoot all the atheists'.
my christian friends in high school avoided talking to me
about religion because they anticipated
that i would tear down their poorly constructed arguments.
and i did.

as i set off in 2008 to begin my freshman year studying government at harvard
(whose motto is veritas, 'truth'),
i could never have expected the change that awaited me.

it was a brisk november when i met john joseph porter.
our conversations initially revolved around conservative politics,
but soon gravitated toward religion.
he wrote an essay fro the ichthus, harvard's christian journal,
defending God's existence.
i critiqued it.
on campus, we'd argue into the wee hours;
when apart, we'd take our arguments to email.
never before had i met a christian who could respond  to my
most basic philosophical questions:
how does one understand the bible's contradictions?
could an omnipotent God make a stone He could not lift?
what about the euthyphro dilemma:
is something good because God declared it so,
or does God merely identify the good?
to someone like me, with no christian background,
resorting to an answer like
'it takes faith' could only be intellectual cowardice.
joseph didn't do that.

and he did something else:
he prodded me on how inconsistent i was as an atheist
who nonetheless, believed in right and wrong as objective, universal categories.
defenseless, i decided to take a seminar on metaethics.
after all, atheists had been developing ethical systems for 200 some years.
in what i now see as providential,
my atheist professor assigned a paper by c.s. lewis
that resolved the euthyphro dilemma, declaring,
'God is not merely good, but goodness;
goodness is not merely divine, by God.

joseph also pushed me on the origins of the universe.
i had always believed in the big gang.
but i was blissfully unaware that thew man who first proposed it,
georges lemaitre, was a catholic priest.
and i'd happily ignored the rabbit rail of a problem of what caused the big bang,
and what caused that cause, and so on.

by valentine's day, i began to believe in God.
there was no intellectual sham in being a deist,
after all, as i joined the respectable ranks of
thomas jefferson and other founding fathers.

i wouldn't
 stay a deist for long,
a catholic friend gave me j. budziszewski's book 'ask me anything,
which included the christian teaching
that LOVE IS A COMMITMENT OF THE WILL
TO THE TRUE GOOD
OF THE OTHER PERSON.
this theme-of love as sacrifice for true good-struck me.
the cross no longer seemed a grotesque symbol of divine sadism,
but a remarkable act of love.
and christianity began to look less strangely mythical
and more cosmically beautiful..

at the same time, i had begun to READ THROUGH THE BIBLE
and WAS CONFRONTED BY MY SIN.
i was painfully arrogant and prone to fits of rage.
i was unforgiving and unwaveringly selfish.
i passed sexual boundaries that i promised i wouldn't.
the fact that I FAILED TO ADHERE TO MY OWN ETHICAL STANDARDS
filled me with deep regret.
yet I COULD DO NOTHING TO RIGHT THESE WRONGS.
the cross no longer looked merely like a symbold of love,
but like the answer to an incurable need.
when i read the crucifixion scene in the blood of john for the first time,
i wept.  but beauty and need do not make something true.
i longed for the bible to be true,
but the intellectual evidence was still insufficient.

so i plunged headlong into apologetics,
devouring debates and books from many perspectives.
i read the qur'an ad richard dawkins's 'the God delusion.
i went through 'the skeptic's annotated bible
and looked up christian rebuttals to apparent contradictions.
but nothing compared to the rich tradition of christian intellect.
i'd argued with my peers,
but i'd never investigated the works of the masters:
augustine, anselm, aquinas, descartes, kant. pascal and lewis.
when i finally did, the only reasonable course of action
was to  believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

(she then relates an experience on a retreat on cape cod.
she is moved to wander in the ruff.
she kept pausing, thinking,
DO I WANT TO GO BACK?
I LEFT ALL MY STUFF BEHIND.
but kept going.
she escaped a briar patch by heading into a river
where the most trustworthy ground was
'along the middle of the river
where the water had worn the path.)

i quickly realized that my journey through the briar patch
was an apt metaphor.
i'm trying to get somewhere, but i'm not sure how to get there.
there's no clear path, so i must proceed by trusting my instincts...

if i wanted to continue forward in this investigation,
I COULDN'T LET IT BE JUST AN INTELLECTUAL JOURNEY.
Jesus said, 'if you HOLD TO MY TEACHING,
you are really my disciples.
then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. john 8.31-2
i could know the truth only if i pursued obedience first.
(note: if any man WILL DO HIS WILL, he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God or whether I speak of Myself.)
i could know the truth only if i PURSUED OBEDIENCE FIRST.

i'd been waiting for my head and my heart to be in agreement.
by the end of the church retreat, they weren't completely in sync.
many days they still aren't.
but i realized that the unity could come later....

i committed my life to Christ by being baptized on easter sunday, 2009.

this walk has proved to be quite a journey.
i've struggled with depression.
i would yell, scream, cry at this God
whom i had begun to love but didn't always like.
but never once did i have to sacrifice my intellect for my faith,
and He blessed me most keenly through my doubt.
God revealed Himself through
scripture, prayer, friendships and the christian tradition
WHENEVER I PURSUED HIM FAITHFULLY.
i cannot say for certain where the journey ends,
but i have committed to follow the way of Christ
wherever it may lead.
when confronted with the overwhelming body of evidence i encountered,
when facing down the living God,
it was the only rational course of action.

i came to harvard seeking veritas,.
instead, He found me.