I Just Wanted To Know The Truth...

I'm a Christian. There. I said it.  

I could just as well have been an atheist. In fact, I was for a time. I wasn't raised in a Christian home. At least, I wasn't raised in what I would call a Christian home. My parents never really took me to church when I was a child. Well, I take that back. We went a few times, but it was never really a part of our lives.

I can remember a few instances going to the Methodist church across the street from my house and a few visits to the Presbyterian church about 2-3 miles from home, but we never attended any church regularly. We never discussed God, or Jesus, or the Bible, or what the meaning of life is...we just lived an ordinary middle-class life.

My parents were hard working people that loved their children very much, had lots of friends, liked to tell jokes, go to parties, and do normal everyday middle-class things. My parents were not abusive, they weren't alcoholics (at least not the bad kind), there weren't any torrid extra-marital affairs that I'm aware of, and they didn't ever really discuss deep and important topics like politics and religion. Maybe they did with their friends, but they certainly didn't discuss those types of topics with their children. And I guess I can understand that, because who wants to discuss those types of things with a little child?

When I was in the fourth grade, my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I remember driving down Merrimac St. in Garland coming home from school one day when my mom broke the news to me. I was crushed. After she told me, I immediately sat up straight in the front seat of the old red suburban we had and shouted, "NO!!!" and started crying. She pulled over and started crying herself and we hugged each other for several minutes. It was a devastating feeling. Even at that young age, somehow I knew it was a death sentence for my father. It wasn't until later they told me what kind of cancer it was and that the doctors only gave him six months live. My world had been turned upside down and for the first moment in my life I just wanted to know the truth...no matter how bad it was.

Well, my dad was a fighter and actually lived for 2 1/2 years more until he couldn't fight anymore. At this time I was in the sixth grade. He had been away at the hospital for 2 weeks, and during that time my family was making arrangements because they knew he wasn't going to be around very much longer. It feels a little surreal now that I'm recalling the events. My mother moved me into the master bedroom, and I was kind of just going along with it realizing in the back of my mind that dad wasn't going to make it.  

It was Spring of 1994, and the science fair was in full swing. I don't remember my project, but my dad helped me put it together just like he always had. That day we found out the winners of the science fair. I came in third place and rode home on the bus that day with my ribbon. When the bus pulled up at the house, I noticed the windows were open to the front room and I somehow immediately knew that my dad was home. I rushed inside to see him in a hospital bed in the front room. I ran over to him with a smile and told him the good news about the third place ribbon. He looked at me a smiled back and said he was proud.

At that moment, the reality of the situation started to sink in and I began to notice to nurse that was there, the crazy tube thing that goes in your nose, all of the machines there keeping him alive. He looked sicker than he ever had before and could barely muster the strength to talk. He couldn't get out of that bed and it was a pretty weird feeling being there. The nurse left and my mom went down to the store for just a few minutes and I was left there alone with my father. He started to yell for me in a very struggled tone and asked me to get his medication. I went to the kitchen and didn't see any, so I frantically ran back to the front room and started to panic.

"I don't know where it is, dad!", I said.

"It's on the counter in the kitchen.", he replied in his struggling tone.

"I looked but there isn't anything there!"  At this point I started to cry thinking it might be my fault if my dad dies right now because I don't know where or which medication he needs.

My dad looked me in the eye and took a gulp and grasped for air and mustered up the strength to say, "I'm dying, Scott."

At that point I heard my mother drive up in the back and I ran out to her to help. She came in, found the medication and gave it him. That was the last time I ever saw my father alive.

I went outside to the back yard, sat in a chair, and for the first time ever I prayed to God. I asked Him to let my father die so that he wouldn't be in pain anymore. I cried some more and then my mom took me to basketball practice a few minutes later. That night I didn't come home. My sister stayed with a friend and I stayed over at my best friend's house. That night my mom called over to my friend's house and told me the news that my dad had passed away. I was calm then and just said, "Ok.", and hung up the phone and stayed the night with Robert.

Within a few years after my father's death, I was in high school and really struggling with the deep questions of life. I figured that all that God stuff was just a bunch of hocus-pocus, and got fed the line from my freshman history teacher that religion was invented to keep the peasants in line. I guess that made sense to me somehow. I never questioned it. It just seemed right. By my Junior year, I fully believed that the idea of God was ridiculous, and Christianity in particular was for weak-minded simpletons who were too afraid to face reality.

I felt a little superior to people because of losing my dad. Superior because I had been thrust into life prematurely to deal with serious issues that almost no one else my age had to deal with. That gave me a sense of adultness that my other friends in school just didn't have. My good friend, Boss, was also an atheist at the time.  Although he'll tell you that we probably weren't really atheists, but that we were just mad at God for some reason. And I guess that makes sense to me if I really think about it. Even though I asked God to take my father away from his pain, what I really wanted for Him to do was restore my father to full health and give me back my nice happy middle-class family life that I had before my dad got sick. But God doesn't give us what we want. He gives us what we need.

At the height of my atheism, Boss and I were openly making fun of our Christian friends. We'd tell them that God doesn't exist, and that they are idiots for thinking that He does. We'd ridicule anyone for praying, because if God didn't exist, then obviously prayer is futile. I specifically remember a time after school when our show choir was rehearsing for a big concert and things were getting tense because it was late and we were all tired. We couldn't get the song down, and the singers were having problems with the choreography, and one girl said over the microphone, "Guys. We just need to stop and pray real quick."  Boss and I looked at each other in disgust and immediately said to them, "No, we're not doing that. Prayer isn't going to do anything for anybody! You guys just need to get it together and learn your steps so we can get out of here." They ignored us and said a prayer anyway and then we finished up the rehearsal and went home. It is a vivid memory for me because they didn't argue, they didn't try and defend their faith, they just let us say what we wanted to say, and then prayed anyway.

It wasn't too long after that time that I had my own conversion moment. I was changed in an evening. I went from being sure that their was no God, to being convinced that God does exist. And it was all because of a man I trusted, and that man had good responses to my questions about the meaning of life, history, aliens, dinosaurs, and who knows what else. It doesn't really matter what was said, but that I came to believe that God existed. I just assumed that if God existed, then He was the God of the Bible. 

Now I'm fully aware that none of this means that God really does exists, or that if He does exist that the He is the same God that is revealed in the Christian Bible. But I intend to state my case in this blog that the God of the universe and of all existence IS the God that is revealed in the holy scriptures known as the Bible.

Ever since that day, I've never looked back. I've never not believed that God existed. I've never not believed that Christianity was true. But interestingly enough, it took about six months for me to understand who Jesus was and that He was crucified so that I would have eternal life. It took six months for me to realize that all I had to do was recognize that Jesus was the son of God, and that his sacrifice was enough to bring me into eternal fellowship with the creator of life itself. And then I was saved. 

It was on a plane ride back from Orlando, FL when I first read the Gospel of John. The parents of my friend, Robert (the one whose house I was at the night my father passed) ,gave me a teen study Bible for Christmas one year. I always thought it to be a lame gift at the time, but it turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I'd ever received. That night when I first read the story about how Jesus was here to save mankind from eternal separation from God, I was born again. I became a new person. I had a literal born-again experience. 

All of a sudden, I began to see that I was imperfect and needed forgiveness. I'd never felt like that before. I mean, I'd heard it before but I never understood until that night. And then I began to understand why Jesus had to come and die a miserable death. I began to see that only God himself could rescue us from ourselves. And that night, I knelt down at my bedside and I asked God to forgive me of my sins, and I placed my trust in Jesus to be my Savior. And I've been a changed man ever since. Not perfect. But changed forever.

The purpose of this blog is to help others come to faith in Jesus. And I intend to show people that there are good reasons to be a Christian. The story is great, but the evidence is even greater. God can draw a man in by His Spirit alone without a doubt, just like He has to millions throughout history, but in our increasingly skeptical age the good news of salvation is getting harder and harder to hear through the noise of life. My intention is to show that you don't have to leave your brain at the door in order to be a Christian.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:14, if Christ has not risen from the dead then our faith is in vain. The reason to be a Christian is not because it feels good, or because your parents were Christians, or because you live in the Bible Belt, or because it sounds nice. The reason to be a Christian is because it's true. And I just want to know the truth. So together we'll tackle the tough questions in life and see if Christianity can hold up to the critical scrutiny of the scientific age. And for those with an open heart, I think you'll come to the same conclusion that I have: that God exists, and this man named Jesus of Nazareth who started a religious revolution in the first century out of Jerusalem is the savior of mankind and came to bring all to eternal life.

- Scott Neal