My Path to God

I've been away for awhile because I've been addicted to facebook. If you’re not on it you should check it out. It’s pretty awesome. Anyway, while talking to a friend of mine from when I was seven or so I wrote the following. Thought I would post it here because it is related to my typical blog topic. I gave short service to a few things toward the end - namely Kay’s contribution to my conversion, but the email was getting pretty long. bp!

As is often the case when dealing with God my path was long and winding. I started with the modern paradigm of secular humanism tinged with agnosticism and atheism. From there I turned east to Taoism and Zen Buddhism. And finally found God in charismatic Christianity.

When I was eighteen and heading off to college at A&M I was a devout atheist. I’m sure this had more to do with not being filled with the gospel in my youth than any conscious thought on my part. The secularist spirit of the day filled the spiritual vacuum formed during my upbringing. I’d say my belief at this point was that God was invented by man to explain things we could not understand thousands of years ago.

Even though I was an atheist I was still intrigued by the question posed by religion. So while in college I went to an atheist/Christian debate. Attended lectures on Islam - I knew more about Islam when 9/11 happened than your average citizen. Hung out with a Seventh Day Adventist and talked about the afterlife with a friend that was a Mormon.

My beliefs started to change when I was in Europe for a semester. There is a deep sense of the Spiritual you can feel in some parts of that land, and there was something magical about the gothic churches we toured. I had an epiphany while I was walking around Castiglion Fiorentino - the city we lived in. I was thinking about playing basketball with Marc Jenkins. I would post up on him. Then without looking toward the basket I would turn and fade. I could hit that shot most times back then and for me there was something divine in that moment. I felt I was tapping into something beyond myself.

Even though I now believed in the divine I didn’t go straight to Christianity. I ran the opposite direction actually. Mostly eastern thought I picked up from my brother Steve - Taoism and Zen Buddhism. I read Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind and was struck by how much wisdom Shunryu Suzuki had. So I was always looking for a place to practice Zen. It is one of the reason’s I moved to Austin. There is a very well established Zen group here that has a teacher directly in Suzuki’s line. So I practiced Zen off and on for a few years, and was still doing it while dating and marrying my wife.

In that same period of time I read the Bible from cover to cover with the Victory Reading Plan. I felt that I couldn’t say something was wrong that I had never read. So I was far from my atheist beginnings by this point, but not really ready to become a follower of Jesus. Then like most people I found Jesus at the end of my rope. I had a nervous breakdown six months after marrying my wife and starting a new job. I didn’t accept Jesus right then and there, but when I was in my darkest hour I called out to Him. Then over the next three to four month I slowly came to believe in Him and started to build my life on the rock.