How Asking THESE Hard Questions Led Me Back to Faith

Those of you who have followed me since my previous blog, Truth at Home, will be familiar with the tender topic I’m about to discuss in this post. Those of you who are newer may not be as familiar with it. In any case, I want to tell you my personal story of how I left the faith — and how I came back. As sad as it is at certain points, I hope this will ultimately be encouraging to you all.

I already covered this in a three-part series titled, My Faith Journey. Looking back on those articles from almost seven years ago, I can see how they are very similar to this one. I did make one change (in addition to a slightly improved writing style, I hope), based on some helpful insights I’ve gained recently from Michael Pearl’s book about raising teens, Jumping Ship. It seems that the more experience I have raising children, the more I’m able to understand my own past.

At my worst

I made some bad choices when I was younger — some really, really bad choices. I was a homeschooled, Christian girl who sincerely loved God with (what I thought was) all my heart, and who had hopeful dreams of living for the Lord. My parents were Christians. My brother and sister were Christians. We had a loving home. I had attended church with my family every Sunday for years up until then. I remember when I was around eight years old asking God to forgive my sins and let me be in heaven with Him one day after I died. I had a horror of hell. I also developed a love for my Creator, so it wasn’t just fear, but love that caused me to believe in Jesus and want to live for Him.

Then something broke in my life.

I didn’t know that something was about to break. I didn’t even know that something was wrong. Afterwards, when I had returned to God, I looked back on the mess I had made, and that was when I was able to sort of make sense of why things happened that way (though I still don’t understand everything).

In about a year and a half, from the time I turned 18 to the time I was a little past 19, life went from fairly stable to crumbling and in ruins.

I suspect that Satan had me targeted, that he (or some devil of his) said, “I bet that in a year and a half I can take this girl down. Just watch me ruin her potential for God.” And then he proceeded to do just that. I was brought lower and lower and lower, until finally, I was almost to the lowest I could possibly go, while still maintaining my freedom of choice.

I had basically turned my back on God.

Why did this happen?

It all started . . .

It all started I don’t know exactly when. Looking back, I can see how things happened so gradually that they were almost imperceptible to me.

But here are some puzzle pieces I’ve been able to fit together:

1. I wasn’t meeting faithfully with other believers, as the Bible says to do (Heb. 10:25). Naturally, I’m an introvert, and spending time alone energizes me. However, there is a crucial need for godly fellowship in the life of every Christian, and I wasn’t taking that seriously.
2. I didn’t listen to my parents. I was rebellious. I thought I knew better then they did, in my pride. God says that rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft (1 Sam. 15:23), and I think I know why: He also says to resist the devil and he will flee from you, but to submit to God (James 4:6-8). What happens when instead of resisting the devil and submitting to God, we resist God and submit to the devil?
3. I allowed myself to make decisions based on my feelings, instead of on truth. I wasn’t as strong in my faith as I had thought I was. I had some mental preparation in apologetics, but no spiritual “muscles.” I had a lack of trust in God’s good plan for my life, and a lack of patience. When I later came back to God, finding answers to my intellectual questions was a very important part of that (or at least, solidifying my belief in answers I already knew were there), but the heart and some unhealthy personal patterns needed to be dealt with, too.
4. I was vain. I wanted attention, to be told I was pretty, to be appreciated and needed. That isn’t entirely a bad thing; I think that God made us with a desire to please, as women, and it drives us to want to be good helpmeets to our husbands. It’s bad, though, when you’re making that your idol and you’re looking in the wrong places for it. The ironic thing is that when I made all these bad decisions in my life, I was actually neither appreciated nor needed: I was just an accessory to make someone else feel appreciated. It was all so selfish, so shallow.
5. I didn’t have a good relationship with my parents. Don’t get me wrong; they were, and still are, good parents. But, I never felt that my mom was trying very hard to be a good listener and “understand-er,” and my dad didn’t seem comfortable talking about more personal matters. I was rebellious, true, and that’s on me; but, I wonder how things might have been different if I could have felt the freedom to talk with my parents about things, any sort of things, with the confidence of knowing I would be listened to, even if they didn’t agree with me?

At one point, early on in my personal path of ruin, they broke up a relationship I had with a guy who was younger than I. As painful as it was, I actually agreed with them. I understood their choice and thought it was the best. That didn’t take away the hurt of no longer having that friendship I had come to depend on in order to feel good about myself, though. I think the root issue wasn’t that guy; it was about my concept of self, and of God.

I was trying to find my identity in being “adored” by someone. I had lost my faith that there was a wonderful guy out there for me that was actually a man, a godly man, who could treat me as a woman, not a prize so that he could say to his friends, “Guess what? I have a girlfriend!”

My concept of self was that I wasn’t pretty enough or good enough to attract the kind of man I longed for.

My concept of God was that He wasn’t able or willing to bring that kind of man to me. That if it hadn’t happened by now (I was 18!) then it was never going to happen, and I just needed to catch whatever came my way. It’s not that I expected to get married so soon; I just wanted to know that someone really nice was interested in getting to know me better. I felt I needed that hope to keep me going. But, my hope should have been in God; what I really needed was to exercise faith in the unseen:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

How I came back

So, here you have this girl who had such a good start, looking at her life and wondering how it had gotten so bad. I felt trapped in a prison made by my own choices. Not at first; I didn’t feel that way at first. No, in the beginning of all this wildness, I just rushed into the next thing without allowing myself to think about it. I just did, I didn’t think. I just felt, I didn’t reason. I tried to enjoy the ride, though in all honesty, it wasn’t as great as I had hoped it would be.

Then came the day that I just broke down. I broke down crying about my broken life. I hated my life. I loved my son, but I hated how I had come to conceive him. I hated the life I had brought him into, a life that in his innocence, he didn’t deserve. He deserved more. He deserved better.

But I didn’t hate God.

God stood above me as holy, and all I could do was look up at Him from beneath all His perfection, and say, “I have sinned against You. Please rescue me.”

I think that to even get to that point, He had to have been already guiding me gently with His Spirit.

I looked at my child, and I knew I didn’t deserve such beauty, such a miracle. I looked at the fact that my parents and family hadn’t completely rejected me even though I knew they could have, and I realized that they were showing me the grace of God. The fact that I was well taken care of, that I wasn’t living as a single mother or out on the street, wasn’t beaten and abused by some bad man, were all evidence that God hadn’t abandoned me. And, even if things had been worse, there would still have been good that would have pointed to God.

Coming back involved a change of heart toward my sin. It involved repentance.

I had to submit myself to God, instead of run away from Him. I had to agree with Him about my sin, that it was what it was. I had to admit that I needed cleansing, and I had to let Him cleanse me.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom . . .” Proverbs 9:10

I don’t know if I was asking the questions before I repented, at the same time I repented, or afterwards. So, I’m not saying that chronologically in time, I repented first, and then asked questions next. It may have actually been more of a simultaneous thing. Maybe repenting helped me be able to ask the questions. Or, maybe asking the questions helped me get to a place where I knew I needed to repent.

Whatever the case, asking hard questions was a part of my coming back to faith.

What were some of the questions I asked?

I had encounterd some tangly ideas while in college. I wish I could say I had been brought up to be stronger than that, and the truth is that I had, in an intellectual sense, but it was me that was the problem: I hadn’t been brought up to know how to manage my own weaknesses, my own frailties. I could have asked for help, sought out a college social club like Crusade for Christ, gone to the college Bible study group at our church, etc. I did none of that. I don’t think I realized how important it would be.

So, those tangly ideas twisted my brain up in a knot. I started to doubt. I stopped wanting to remain faithful to God. I stopped caring. I played with some ideas. This wasn’t the first time I had heard these things; but it was the first time I had given myself the opening to seriously consider them. Totally different.

A huge part of my return to the faith was dismantling all the objections to Christianity that had captured my attention. I had to clear all this junk out of the way. Here are some of the ideas I had to untangle so I could move forward in my faith:

About the nature of reality

I clearly remember thinking to myself one day: Am I just making up reality according to what I want to be true? Is that even possible? Maybe I made up a belief in Jesus because I wanted that to be true, but I can make up a different belief in something else and that can be considered “true,” too; what if there is no solid truth, but only a mirage created by our own minds? What if reality is what we make it?

Then I thought, But if nothing is real and everything is a construct of my own imagination, why would I ever imagine something like suffering? Why would I ever imagine anything different than my own ideal of what’s good and right? Why do things surprise and shock me? Why do they bring me pain? If nothing is real except what I imagine is real, then why can’t I exit this reality I’ve supposedly made for myself and enter into something better?

I concluded that I could never make up my own reality. That was just absurd. If we make up our own reality, then reason is absurd, so why even bother to figure things out? There are no answers to find except the answers we make up ourselves. There is no right, no wrong. There is no up or down. There is no death or life. Everything is an absurdity. Everything is nothing. You couldn’t survive if you really thought that way; none of us could. And it doesn’t line up with actual experience. Reality has to be real. This world is the way I’m actually seeing it, the way I’m actually experiencing it. No; reality is not in my mind. It’s not in my head, it’s out of it; it’s separate from me, though I’m a part of it. Reality is something none of us can invent; it just is, and Someone had to make it that way.

About the nature of God

I think this one must have been the easiest. I had never really stopped believing that God existed. Sure, there had been moments where I had wondered if it could be possible that everything had come into existence by chance. I had wondered, What if God didn’t make us, and we evolved? What then? In that case, we are what Nature’s made us. There is no “right” way of being; no one can say that homosexuality is wrong, or that any other behavior is “aberrant”; we’re just acting according to our animalistic legacy and allowing ourselves to somehow change into something hopefully better.

Except, I knew that couldn’t be. Nothing is getting better. If evolution were true, it’s not working. The “progress” we’re experiencing in the world is more technological than moral. Morally, we’re swimming in a septic tank. You can’t tell me that abortion — ripping a sentient (feeling) human being’s limbs apart and dumping the remains in the trash as if that person were nothing — is an improvement. I know better. You can’t tell me that homosexuality — forcing body parts together that are obviously not meant to fit — is upward evolution. Any kindergartener could tell you the truth about that.

There were certain things I just knew: The sun shines. The earth is neither too cold nor too hot for our survival. We have food to eat. It rains. We have water to drink. The trees have branches, and leaves, and roots. We breathe air. Flowers are pretty. Clouds makes shapes. Sunsets are gorgeous. Gravity pulls down. We have DNA. Time exists. The universe had a beginning. I had a beginning. Babies are beautiful. Tears mean something.

I thought of all the things that pointed to there being Someone there — God — and that pointed to Him creating not accidents, not chaos, but order and beauty and meaning.

Meaning. What was the meaning of life? Without God, there is no meaning. Everything can’t be orderly by itself, everything can’t be beautiful by itself — it had to be made that way. In my experience, and in everybody else’s experience, I’ll bet, something doesn’t come from nothing. No broken glass ever turned itself into a mirror; no powdery white chalk ever constructed itself into words on a chalkboard. We all know this to be true; it’s the nature of reality. Why deny God, then?

About evil and suffering

Accepting that God exists, the next question is logically, Why is there so much bad in the world? I could answer that from personal experience: There’s bad in the world because of people. I made bad choices, and those choices affected people who didn’t deserve it, innocent people. I — Me, Myself, I — was the origin of evil and suffering in that particular situation for those particular people. It wasn’t God. It wasn’t the devil. It was me.

Now, if you take that individual choice to do something evil, and you multiply it by how many people there are in the world, you have that many potential decisions for evil that affect people who don’t deserve it. And yet — wait a minute — if we’re all making bad choices that affect other people, then none of us are really innocent; only as babes are we truly free of blame. And then if you add Satan into the mix, and attribute some of that to his wicked devices, then it’s really a wonder that there’s any good in the world! How is it possible to have so much good in such an evil place? That’s a question with more sense to it.

I really didn’t have to wrestle long with this question because I could easily understand how little it takes to ruin somebody else’s life with one “small” choice.

About Christ and salvation

Once we’ve come to that place, that place of devastation, what then? God exists; but does He care? This is the crux of the issue; this is where it all comes together. What about Jesus? Was He really God in human flesh, sent to die for our sins, to take our guilt upon Himself so that our sin debt could be paid and we could be forgiven by God for all our evil doings?

Think about it: If God does exist, and if He is powerful and loving and good, then doesn’t it make sense that He would do something just like that — like come down in our own human form, live among us, personally experience our hurts, be tempted as we are (but without sin), touch our wounds with healing, teach us His ways, tell us the truth, die for our wrongs, and rise again from the dead? Doesn’t that sound like just the thing God would do? Isn’t it the most beautiful, moving, epic love story you’ve ever heard or imagined? And why not? Why wouldn’t God do that for us, if He really does love us?

Is the Bible’s teaching about Jesus merely a fairy tale to help us cope with thoughts of death? Is it a way to make ourselves feel better about our failures, hoping they can be forgiven? I had guilt; I had a lot of it. Would placing all my hope in a nice dead guy from 2,000 years ago be able to take care of that guilt in a satisfactory way? Real guilt needs a real solution. No, a nice dead guy couldn’t take care of my guilt; but, a holy, living God could. The real Jesus could.

“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12

Jesus, Who had many prophecies written about Him in the Old Testament which were fulfilled at His first coming. The odds of that are about a trillion to one; but it happened in a way that can be legally/historically verified.

Jesus, Who was an actual Person in history, as attested to by historical sources apart from the Bible, in addition to the Bible itself.

Jesus, Who rose from the dead, leaving a trail of evidence impossible to refute and transforming 11 fearful disciples into mini atom bombs of fearless, Christian witness. They were all martyred. Some people might give their lives for a lie they believed was the truth — zero people would give their lives for something they knew was a lie.

“For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” 2 Peter 1:16

Jesus, Who has changed many people’s lives throughout history (and continues to do so today) and has been the motivation for hospitals and schools being built, inhumane tribal practices being stopped, people finally forgiving those they had once hated, and an avalanche of other humanitarian efforts and personal metamorphoses.

Yes, this historical, verifiable, living Jesus was God come down to meet us. This is the love story God wrote into our very own human history. I knew that if I didn’t come to Jesus, if I decided against Him at this point, I would be choosing a shallow, empty, false sort of life. I could live for myself — and continue to do myself harm. Or, I could turn my life over to Jesus — and find true meaning and purpose.

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9

About the exclusivity of Christianity

Why does Jesus have to be the Answer? Why can’t there be answers in some other religion? If there are billions of people in the world, and there are so many religions, why should Christians think theirs is the only right one? Why not think of it as one of many? I considered this. But then, my mind came back to Jesus: It’s His uniqueness, the way He fulfilled prophecies and verifiably rose from the dead, that sets Him apart from every other religious leader. And, in every other religion, you have to try and climb up to God; but in Christianity, God has come down to us through the Person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth — He has reached His hand down to pull us up to Him!

“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

Okay, but why is the world in such a mess, then? Why don’t more people know about Jesus, and why don’t more people accept Him?

Well, people have the witness of nature, first of all. Nature tells us about God. If they were to look around them and see God as He is, and were then to ask this God Who is there to give them more light, I’m sure He would. I think that for many people, the problem is that they stop short of that: they see God in creation, but they don’t bow down before Him. Instead, they bow down before idols, whether they are of non-living physical material, abstract philosophical ideas, or mere human leaders of flesh and blood.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.” Psalm 19:1-3

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” Romans 1:21

Second of all, God has spent the last 2,000 years sending missionaries all over the world to tell everyone the good news about Jesus. True, He could just announce it over a heavenly loud speaker, once every generation; but for some reason, He is letting us be a crucial part of this. He wants us to be the ones to get the message out, and that takes time, and there have been many setbacks along the way. But, the fact that there are still missionaries today risking their lives and well-being to bring the gospel to all nations of the world is an amazing testament to the durability of that message!

Third, everyone has free choice. My story shows that. God can offer us the Fruit of Life, but we have the freedom to choose the Fruit of Knowing Both Good & Evil, instead. Even if everyone knew about Jesus — would they still choose Him?

For further study, I recommend:

• The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy: Three Essential Books in One Volume (The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, He Is There and He Is Not Silent)

• The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, by Lee Strobel

• Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud, by Philip Yancey

• The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, by Timothy Keller

• Answers in Genesis (website)

Note: Links for the books go to Christianbook.com, but they can also be found on Amazon.

What came next

Now, some folks might allege that I was just coming back to Christ like an addict comes back to his drink, that I had lived with this fairy tale so long that when I attempted to live without it I found that I couldn’t, so I returned to it for the false sense of comfort it would give me at this scary time in my life. It was my crutch.

But, I don’t think that’s true.

I was free to go one way or the other; I could have chosen the other. What was holding me back? I’d already disappointed my family; I wasn’t going to church; I’d embarrassed myself with my previous friends; and my new acquaintances weren’t Christians. I could have tried to carve out for myself a completely new identity, one without church, without Christ, without the Bible. I could have done it, and I contemplated doing that very thing, but there was that something holding me back, and that something was the Truth. I just couldn’t keep on denying the truth.

Yes, I could have tried to keep on living in blindness if I had wanted to, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t think I could rest easy with myself, knowing that I was living a lie. And, I feared God’s holy judgement. One day, I would answer to Him. What would I say? What would He?

What came next was that I decided for sure I needed and wanted Jesus. I was tired of running away from Him — weary, in fact. I hadn’t even been running for that long, but it had been enough to leave a bloody trail of spiritual crime behind me. This isn’t what I wanted for myself; I wanted out. By that time, I couldn’t actually get out, but I could learn to live with my mistakes, asking God to take them and make something good out of them.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

I wept bitter tears of sorrow. I pleaded God for forgiveness. But, as dark and painful as that time was for me, I believe that it served a purpose. Did I need to sin in order to fulfill God’s purpose for my life, in order for me to learn certain important lessons? I don’t think so. The Bible says that God tempts no one to sin:

“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” James 1:13-15

It was my own lust which drew me away and tempted me. I gave in to it, and sinned, and that sin brought forth death. None of that was God’s fault, and none of it was what He had wanted for me. However, I think there was a reason He allowed it. How could I have seen my weaknesses if they had never been tested? The fault is not in the testing but in the one being tested, when a flaw is discovered. The things that I went through — by choice — uncovered my flaws. They made apparent the fact that my relationship with God was not as solid as I had once thought. My character was weak. I was full of silly, shallow, little-girl immaturity. I was also full of wicked, cruel, big-girl capabilities.

And now . . .

And now I’m here: Eight children (so far), a husband (this same imperfect but great-hearted man is the father of all my children), and a blog. I want to take my Christian walk seriously. This is not some game I’m playing, like, “Oh, isn’t that cute, she wears skirts and dresses only, and headcovers, and has a lot of homeschooled children.” I’m not trying to impress anybody with how “good” or “holy” or “old-fashioned” or “set-apart” I am. I just want to live for God. I wasted so much potential and too much time living for myself. I wrecked more than I could put back together and have to live with that knowledge every day, for the rest of my life. But doing the sort of things I talk about on this blog is not a form of penance; it’s life. I do these things because I’ve thought about them, I’ve studied them, I’ve made intelligent and careful choices about them.

This blog is here to be a comfort and an ecouragement to those who don’t receive support from their church in living this sort of uncommon life; it’s here to fill a gap.

I forgot to add one thing to the list where I said, “And now I’m here: Eight children, a husband, and a blog.” I should have added: And a future. Nobody’s story ends at failure (unless you’re dead and in hell); the story continues with the freedom to make new choices every day. Some choices seem small and insignificant, and our uncommonness in those areas draws attention, and people may think we’re just being silly and emphasizing little nothings. But I see it a different way:

Asking hard questions (and finding answers to them) and experiencing true heart-repentance helped bring me back to faith. I’m glad my parents gave me an introduction to apologetics, since many of those same answers came back to my mind during my time of struggling. And yet, I’m sure that if it hadn’t been for the prompting and convicting work of the Holy Spirit, I never would have gotten that far. I would still be way back there where I used to be, still lost in the misery of my idiotic veerings.

The true Bible story below sums up the things I experienced as a younger woman. I’m including the whole thing so you can see the story unfolding. It’s beautiful.

And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.

And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee.

And he saith, Master, say on.

There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?

Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most.

And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.

And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

Luke 7:37-50

***

• Is there anything from my story you feel you can relate to? How has God rescued you, or changed you, in a significant way?
• In this post, I look back and try to understand what it was that contributed to my downfall. Looking back on your own life, is there any advice you would tell your younger self to help her avoid certain mistakes? How about your own children: Is there anything you think you can do to help prepare them to live a successful life?
• What has helped you the most in dealing with any regrets you have from past mistakes? What do you think is a wise way of dealing with regret as opposed to an unwise way?

~Jessica