Ever sit in church on Easter & wonder if 2000 years of worship by zillions of people was just one huge cosmic joke? I did. I used to feel like a liar for coming to church anytime, but especially on Easter. What if Jesus was a myth or maybe he just passed out on the cross & revived in the tomb? We’d be believing a lie. The Apostle Paul was pretty blunt about it in 1 Corinthians 15:14: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless & so is your faith.”
Hi, my name is Matt Rhodes. I’m a skeptic that came back to church after about 30 years of being a twice a year Christmas & Easter christian. The purpose of this blog is just to share the answers that God brought into my life when I’d given up on finding any answers to my doubts.
I grew up baptist, but lost most of my faith in college while I was studying science. My courses all emphasized the need for logical thinking, so it was natural to apply it to what I thought about Jesus & God. Unfortunately that just led to lots of questions & no answers. I always figured asking a preacher about what I thought would just lead to a lecture on the need to have more faith. Mostly I avoided going to church & avoided discussing what I thought with anyone.
After 30 years, what changed? Telling my whole faith journey here would make this post too long. I wrote about it before for our church newsletter back in 2006. You can find a copy here. It was too long in the beginning, so I wrote on how I came to believe, but not the why. Later I wrote that down as Part II. I don’t want to repeat all that here.
The short answer is personal events (my marathon story) softened me up to the possibility that God existed. Still didn’t know what to do with Jesus, though. Out of the blue in 2004, my niece sent me a book called Case for Christ by Lee Strobel & wanted me to read it. All things christian were offensive to me back then, so I almost didn’t. I did let it collect dust as long as possible. When I did look it over, I discovered that it addressed some of the questions that had been running thru my head after all those years of doubt. It never occurred to me that people wrote books on this stuff. Didn’t turn me into a believer when I finished it, but it did make me doubt my doubts. With time & a search for more information my doubts grew weaker & my faith stronger. Perhaps, what I’ve found out will interest others who aren’t as inclined to spend a lot of time reading thru books.
I originally posted this a few years ago, but the information still applies. The only difference is now you don’t have to wait for me to write Post #1 or any other posts. If you just want to get right to the answer to the question of why I believe, read Post #10 first as it summarizes my thinking. It won’t answer all your questions, but it might make you interested in knowing more about how I can make such statements and not feel like I am lying. Feel free to leave me comments or questions. I can give you more details in a reply.
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