I have been a blogger for three years now. To date, this is the most personal post I have ever written. I debated about writing this post but I felt compelled to share my experience in hopes that it will encourage Christians to take apologetics seriously, because there may come a day when it may be the difference between remaining a Christian or walking away. I know it was for me.
September 16th, 2012, is (to date) the darkest day of my whole life. The short and simple account of that day was that, out of the blue, the woman who had said she wanted to marry me told me that she her changed her mind. Devastation, humiliation, and brokenness came in mere minutes. My life fell apart, and my faith in God was nearly destroyed.
All I will say about the backdrop of my relationship with this woman (who I will leave nameless) is that it was unique. Birthed from serving together at a Christian camp and coupled with a healthy dose of the remnants of the courtship and let-God-write-your-love-story movements, our relationship was not average by any stretch. Explaining what I mean by that, as well as the crazy story behind how we fell for each other, would take too long and really isn’t worth your time. All you really need to know is our relationship was openly headed to marriage…and that I loved her. I loved her very much.
Nearly two weeks later, I was slated to go out of town for training for my new job (which I got solely for the purpose of providing for my then-future wife). Even though I was numb and dead on the inside, I resolved to get over the pain as quickly as possible. However, the Friday before I left, an unpredicted one-two emotional punch blindsided me with a force nearly equal to the breakup itself. Burying the pain and moving on quietly was now impossible. The details of that particular night aren’t worth your time, but at the end of it I realized that the numbness was gone, and I could feel again. I was angry. I was furiously, passionately, vengefully angry – not at her, but at God.
While it is a mystery to me, I firmly believed then (as I still do) that somehow God’s sovereign decree and the human will work together to accomplish the will of God. This left me with the question of why. Why did this happen? Why did God allow this to happen? Why did it seem that God was leading us to marriage and then let the exact opposite happen? Questions like these gave my anger a place to take root, and that next morning, I began my 45 minute drive to work with those questions burning in my soul. Soon, I found myself in a position I never imagined I could be in: my mind raged with a desire to rebel against God. I was done. I couldn’t continue believing in Christianity. I thought I was walking in faith, and it led me to ruin. Never in my entire life had I felt such a strong, compelling lure to unbelief. It appeared to provide relief from the unresolved questions, the disappointment, the feeling of being betrayed, all with a simple premise: there is no God. I was one conscious decision away from affirming that premise.
And yet I couldn’t. I was angry, angrier than I had been in my whole life, but as I drove to work that day preparing to bury my faith, I found that I was doing so as an act of anger against God. My desire to walk away presupposed that God was there and could be walked away from, just as a jump presupposes some surface under your feet to push off of. My study of atheism and agnosticism as an apologist kicked in, and I found myself questioning the worldview I was about to embrace. Realizing that I couldn’t accept a form of unbelief, I began to pray. It was not a mild, meek prayer. It was a tearful, enraged, and bitter prayer…but it was the start of something that would eventually make me into who I am now.
One year has now passed since that day, and I am still a Christian. In fact, I now see what I went through, as painful and scarring as it was, as part of God’s sanctifying work in my life. It was for good that he broke me and brought me to my life’s lowest point. As God began rebuilding my relationship and trust in him, I began to see Jesus in a way that I had not seen him. I began to truly understand what it means to be one of his followers. Idols and sins in my life were revealed so that I may repent of them. My understanding and faith in Christ prior to the day it fell apart is completely different to the understanding and faith I have in him today, and I don’t think it could have happened without going through a very dark season. By the grace of God, I am more devoted to him than ever before.
My point in sharing my story is that, in that period of time where I felt my entire worldview shake, I needed something external to my worldview – facts – that could ground me while my emotional and spiritual condition crumbled to the ground. In the days and weeks that followed the 16th, when my anger and pain led me to contemplate walking away from Christ, my apologetics training and studies provided a voice of reason against the backdrop of unrestrained emotion. As much as I wanted to disbelieve in God in a foolhearted attempt to make the pain go away, the flaws in the atheist and agnostic worldviews were still there. I knew what they were, and I could not ignore them even when I was seconds away from adopting one of them. If I had not been trained in apologetics, I would not have written this post. I would not be Christian. One year ago, apologetics saved my faith – and hence I believe it is urgently needed in the church so that whenever that day comes where you question everything you believe, you can have something solid to stand on. By the grace of God, I was able to stand – and remain standing today.
Thank you, so much Austin! It was refreshing reading your post. Particularly what you wrote about idols and sins revealed through this experience.
I am an MK who became a missionary myself. I come from a line of forefathers who had, on more than one occasion, to flee from religious and/or political persecution. They were Christians and, in spite of untold sufferings, their lives glorified God. I should have known better, but I found myself at a point where I felt unloved of God because of personal suffering. I have experienced a number of valleys in my life, but this one seemed particularly terrible.
God used that experience to do the same for me – He showed me very clearly that, although I would never subscribe to the teaching of the prosperity gospel preachers, I still believed it. I thought that, as a Christian and as a dedicated missionary, I should somehow be exempt from suffering. I didn’t realise I thought like this until I was confronted with it in a very real way. Only when I confessed as sin my belief that God did not love me as much as other “non-suffering” Christians; as well as my focus on the “blessings” as a reward (rather than on Christ) was I set free.
Of great help to me was reading from 2 Corinthians 4: “Jars of Clay”. How can we reach out to a broken world if we have not ourselves experienced the suffering others go through?
Once again – thank you!
Why did she change her mind? What steps did you take to work through your
pain?
You believe that one minute God was leading you toward marriage and the next minute allowed it to end? Did he orchestrate the ending in order to sanctify you?
What were your thoughts when you were lured toward unbelief? Why did that seem attractive? Why couldn’t you accept unbelief? What are the flaws in the atheistic worldview?
How did your view of Jesus change?
Thank you Austin…Im glad I heard you on the radio..and that I read your post. My faith is bolstered tremendously by your vulnerability in sharing your story.
..After our beloved 17y old daughter moved in with a 37y old man while still a senior in high school, what was left of my faith was almost unrecognizable to me. I too came ‘this close’ to walking away from believing in God anymore. Why should I? Where were the dividends for “all my pouring into my child on a daily basis for the last 17 years?”
My idol was strangely, “good parenting” and obviously our daughter. I grieved as if she had died….I still feel the tears well up….
Im still not where I was …but Ive learned that if all I do in life fails…God is still on on the throne and deserves my faith and love JUST BECAUSE HE IS GOD….I KNEW THAT (regardless of how i felt) in the depths of my soul from all my years of studying apologetics…
Our daughter has since moved out. She has since reaffirmed her faith in Jesus…
Someone once told me that “She is just working on her testimony…”
.I guess so am I….and you are too.
I thank God for what He has taught you…in turn it has greatly helped me.
And for that, I will praise Him.
Hey man, thank you for your honesty. Stories like this are the reason I am an apologist and promoting apologetics.
Thanks for the comment! Keep up the good work!
Cool, I too am working on a bachelors in with an emphasis in “electronic media” (RTV).
What part of electronic media do you enjoy the most?
Radio.
Austin,
That’s quite a profound story. Sounds like you’re doing much better.
Question: when you were at your lowest, did re-accepting god provide comfort, or would rejecting him outright have provided more comfort?
Thanks for the comment, Frank. That’s a very good question – I would say that I would be trading one comfort for another. Rejecting him may have given me emotional comfort, but intellectually I would be uncomfortable with atheism’s implications and accepting those implications as true. On the flipside, accepting God left me emotionally uncomfortable but intellectually the Christian worldview was still satisfying. Does that make sense/answer your question?
Austin, your article left me wondering and this helped clarify… it sounds like you’re choosing between political parties based on their platform and your agreement/disagreement with; not because you met the candidate personally and have heard from him directly. And if that’s your foundation, intellectually resting on the facts… the party’s platform… It’ll be just as easy to fall through should something else more tragic occur.
While I appreciate your concern (and I commend you for expressing it) I can personally assure you that’s not the case. I’ll admit that my post could have carried that implication (even though I did say that “I am more devoted to him than ever before”) part of my healing included understanding who Jesus is. For the first time in my life, as God began rebuilding my relationship with him, my understanding of knowing Jesus personally *clicked*. I am not resting on the party’s platform – I am resting on the candidate, even if it didn’t come through in my writing.
…the flaws in the atheist and agnostic worldviews were still there… as is your atheist and agnostic ‘flawed’ worldview regarding every other belief you do not hold.
There are no flaws in my views about every other belief I do not hold.
If you claim there are, please show me.
Neither is there in mine. This is point: our non belief is identical.
Are you trying to suggest the “We-are-all-atheists-I-just-go-one-more-God-further-than-you” approach? If you are, thanks for the laugh. If not, can you rephrase your comment?
The fallout you assign to being an atheist – and the ‘flaws’ non belief in gods or a god apparently possesses – falls squarely on your own shoulders as much as it does on the shoulders of non believers. You bet you are a non believer in exactly the same way I am… because you have no compelling reasons to believe. It is you who makes the single exception to this default position. It is you who then tries to avoid being labeled as an equivalent non believer not for the 99.99999999% of god claims neither of us believe in but for the .00000001 you choose to make an exception for.
I don’t know why you would find this funny when it’s true other than to use the notion of a ‘laugh’ as a rhetorical device to try to dismiss this telling point without actually doing so. Is this because you are unwilling or unable?
What is the definition of atheism that you are working with?
Very moving.
There is healing in the words of God.
In Christ alone, my hope is found. Christ has never failed me.
Amen, Lion. Thanks for the comment.
Austin, profound thanks for this. I have read a great many articles on the issue of ‘why your church needs apologetics’ etc. This is the best apologetic testimony I have ever read! I’ll be sharing & using this, if that is ok with you!
Thanks for the comment Robert! You are definitely free to share this as you wish!
I find myself in a similar situation. My Christian wife divorced me and now 2 years later I am still adjusting to being a part time dad, child support, and getting over foreclosure. I Am still very angry at God, and myself For all my mistakes. Apologetics is the only thing that has kept me trying to hang on to faith. Im still in the battle though, still depressed, and still hoping God will reveal himself to me again. Been eatching lots of debates too. My cycle is in the evening I feel some hope, but I wake up without any. Anyway, thanks for sharing your story.
Hang in there James. God bless you. I hope & pray to read a testimony of yours one day like Austin’s above!
Thanks for the comment and your own honesty James. My heart breaks for you – I cannot even begin to imagine the pain you are going through, and based of what you’ve said I know that mine was but a mere fraction of yours. I don’t want to offer up some vain cliche or platitude (all the ones I heard in my time of suffering didn’t help me at all) to you, but I would encourage you to not give up and to keep on wrestling with God. He does not reject you for your anger or your depression – if you have accepted the Gospel you are found in Christ and covered in His love. God bless you sir.
That is heart touching Austin. I am sure it will help others who are at the edge of leaving God for the world. I’m sure God will bless you to do his will.
Thanks for the comment Krishnam!
Hey, great post, thanks for sharing that part of your life with us.
Thanks for the comment Ethan!