I grew up in a good home. My parents were Christians. They prayed, read scripture, taught my brothers and me to do those things, and regularly took us to church gatherings.
As a teenager, I started questioning some of our church’s teachings. Biblical and important ideas became unbiblical and unimportant. My religious tradition had taught me the value of studying for oneself, and that’s what I was doing.
For the most part, I stayed quiet about my questions. I didn’t try to cause trouble, didn’t leave my heritage, didn’t start a new one. After high school, I served as a youth ministry intern, preached for a small church, and took a few mission trips.
The questions were maturing and increasing.
Then I spent a few months in England studying philosophy of religion and the development of doctrine (teaching) in the early church. It was, academically, the most difficult time of my life. It also was the hardest spiritually. I finally reached a point at which I knew I had no faith.
The death of my faith was not because of my education. It was not the fault of any professor or assignment. In fact, my philosophy of religion professor was a minister who, upon hearing my confession of faithlessness, smoothly shifted from academic guidance to pastoral care.
Maybe in another post I’ll tell you about my return to faith, but here I want to highlight the precise moment in which I knew my faith had vanished. I had researched and rejected the major philosophical arguments for God’s existence. One night, however, sitting on my bed in a small basement room, I prayed, “God, I don’t even know if you’re there… much less if you’re listening… but for some reason I’m praying anyway.”
Why did I pray? Why do you pray? Why have people prayed for thousands of years?
Perhaps it’s when our prayers seem pointless that they have the greatest impact. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “the most important time to pray is when your prayers seem meaningless.”
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Closing quotation from Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way (Boston: Cowley, 1999).
Wow! Powerful story, thanks for sharing. Looking forward to hearing the rest of your story.
I think deep down in our souls we all want something bigger than us to be true, we want something to be able to rescue us, we want a savior in any form or religion we see fit. Perhaps this is why we resort to prayer and why others also resort to supertition and vain religious practices: because deep down we know we can’t do much on our own and we want something to come out of thin air and save or help us.
Thank God that Christ is a true and active person and He does come to those who pursue Him.
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