Like Jacob in the book of Genesis, my spiritual journey has been one of wrestling with God. Not physical wrestling, like that engaged in by Jacob, but wrestling intellectually with the questions and implications that have arisen from my realisation that God exists and Jesus Christ actually, in reality, rose from the grave.
I was not raised a Christian; in my early years my family attended an Anglican Church. This was part of the residual Anglicanism which is part of New Zealand’s heritage as a British colony. We ceased attending in the early 80’s when I was around 6. I was raised in a very secular environment where what are commonly referred to as ‘liberal ideals and values’ were taken for granted.
Something kept drawing me to the reality of God. New Zealand has an amazingly beautiful country-side, which I spent a lot of my youth hiking and exploring in; I kept being aware of a spiritual presence, a glory, an amazingly awesome being reflected in the world around me and I felt it was providentially guiding me. I engaged in theological debates at intermediate and high school as I explored this sense.
Then at 16 I began to ask serious questions about morality and my life. My parents had divorced, my friends were promiscuous, doing drugs and breaking the law. I had attended a very conservative upper-class boarding school and I had also attended a very permissive public school by then. I began to ask questions about how I should live, were the beliefs I had correct, what sort of person did I want to be? Who was correct, the Christians from the past or the moderns of today? And how do we tell – how can I know?
These questions lead me to attend a Church in 1991, which was enthralled by the teachings of Bishop Spong. Spong was teaching that the bible was not authoritative, Christ did not rise from the dead, Christians needed to revise their views on sexuality, and so on. I was puzzled as to why a Church would teach things like this. The elders recommended I read some “modern critical scholarship”. This led me to encounter the debate over many of these issues for the first time. I discovered Josh McDowell, Alistair McGrath, Francis Schaeffer and serious evangelical scholarship for the first time.
At a youth camp ran by the Methodist church in 1991 I ran into a small group of evangelicals who began sharing with me the Christian faith. I came before God in prayer and committed by life to following him. This was the most dramatic life changing experience I have ever had.
I started University the next year. Waikato University was the most secular university in New Zealand, and my new beliefs came under concerted intellectual attack. For time-tabling reasons I was forced to do a philosophy degree and from day one everything I had committed to was assaulted intellectually in my classes. My wrestling with God continued. As my interlocutors raised questions I went to the library to find literature that was not on the reading lists, which helped me address these questions.
I discovered the writings of Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig and J P Moreland. I began to ask questions about how my faith related to politics or history or to the theoretical disciplines I was studying. There was no real place I knew of where evangelicals could get these questions answered so I went to the library and began to skim through the books on the shelf and read. I began using what I discovered to respond to my sceptical interlocutors. I soon found they were quite unprepared for the answers I gave. It seemed to me Christianity had lost the cultural battle by default with skeptics raising age-old questions that Christian writers had already addressed and taking the silent response as acquiescence.
I also began to discover the great classics from Christian history. After disagreeing sharply with the very skeptical lecturer of my religious studies class I began checking primary sources. This led me to begin reading Athanasius, Augustine’s City of God, Calvin’s Institutes, sections of Aquinas and so on. I began to discover there was a wealth of history that I had not been made aware of and which my culture had caricatured.
My wrestling with these questions transformed me radically. I went on to do a Masters degree in philosophy on the relationship between faith, reason and scholarship and a PhD thesis on ethics. I found myself estranged from the very anti-intellectual, pietistic evangelical traditions that dominate in New Zealand. I also felt estrangement from the mainstream academic community due to my commitment to a fairly conservative Christian faith.
Despite this, I have felt in doing this I have been faithful to the call I perceived on my life at a young age. It ignited in me a passion to assist other Christians to wrestle with these questions and to come up with credible answers with which to engage the secular culture credibly. It has led me to having a very Socratic pedagogy and a demand for a high level of logical rigour, cultural awareness, and faithful theological commitment to my endeavours. This is why I blog at MandM.
Tags: 8 Comments
Thanks for sharing!
Matt,
It’s great to hear your testimony. Thanks for sharing it.
Good on you, Matt. Philosophy is not everyone’s cup of tea, but we need Christians keeping on top of the game in this field. Thank you for your contribution to the division of labour.
How to shoot your credibility sky-high…
he’s picked something worth doing and is making a very good job of it given the circumstances. For those that are interested,Matt’s latest post is on why he got into his field. It’s a good read….
I agree that we have too often lost the cultural battle by default. Thank you, for seriously standing for the truth.
I began using what I discovered to respond to my sceptical interlocutors. I soon found they were quite unprepared for the answers I gave.
This is a very interesting point. Of course, online people behave abominably and debaters of all stripes have a self-inflated view of themselves, but Christians should take heart in the fact that far, far too many real-life atheists have simply never heard a really good account of the other side.
I wonder how much of an impact the internet has made on the college experience. Now that it’s easy to access opposing viewpoints, I wonder if undergraduate Christians are standing up for themselves any better?
@ Samson J
If you’re wondering just what sort of an impact that the internet is making in with regard to the ease of access to opposing viewpoints with regard to the theist vs atheist debate, this presentation by “Thunderfoot” covers it quite well
The Internet – Where Religions Come To Die
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rqw4krMOug
And as far as measuring exactly what impact that this is having, especially on the college/undergraduate age group, this recent survet makes for encouraging reading, if you’re an atheist that is!
Sharp Increase In “Nones”
http://openparachute.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/sharp-increase-in-nones/#comments
No doubt, this may be one of the reasons behind the recently launched “Keep Religion Out Of Schools” that the New Zealand association of Rationalists & Humanists instigated
http://www.reason.org.nz/index.php/school-campaign/secular-education-network
So Paul, does the commitment to “non discriminatory values” that mean NZARH are going to reconsider their stance on sex education which involves teaching the value of using contraception in schools. This teaches values which oppose the values of roman catholic parents and as the statement says values should be taught in a non discriminatory way to all?
I asked Bill Cooke that a few years ago and his response was that sex education was non compulsory and parents could opt out. Note the statement in the article you link to
“Many parents have been put in the situation of deciding whether or not to allow their children to attend religion classes.”
So apparently opting out is not a sufficent answer.
So are you opposing contraception education in schools, yes or no? Or is it only the views they disagree with that should be taught in this way?