One Sunday, shortly before my 28th birthday, I walked into a church for the first time as someone earnestly seeking God. Before long I found myself overwhelmed. At last I was fully known and seen and, I realised, unconditionally loved \u2013 perhaps I had a sense of relief from no longer running from God. A friend gave me C.S. Lewis\u2019s Mere Christianity, and one night, after a couple months of attending church, I knelt in my closet in my apartment and asked Jesus to save me, and to become the Lord of my life.<\/p>\n
From there, I started a rigorous diet of theology, reading the Bible and exploring theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Ramsey, and F.D. Maurice. Christianity, it turned out, looked nothing like the caricature I once held. I found the story of Jacob wrestling with God especially compelling: God wants anything but the unthinking faith I had once assumed characterized Christianity. God wants us to wrestle with Him; to struggle through doubt and faith, sorrow and hope. Moreover, God wants broken people, not self-righteous ones. And salvation is not about us earning our way to some place in the clouds through good works. On the contrary; there is nothing we can do to reconcile ourselves to God. As a historian, this made profound sense to me. I was too aware of the cycles of poverty, violence and injustice in human history to think that some utopian design of our own, scientific or otherwise, might save us.<\/p>\n
Christianity was also, to my surprise, radical \u2013 far more radical than the leftist ideologies with which I had previously been enamored. The love of God was unlike anything which I expected, or of which I could make sense.<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n How Oxford and Peter Singer drove me from #atheism<\/a> to #Jesus<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/oba563jUXs<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/QMWp8Uxe0a<\/a><\/p>\n — The Poached Egg (@ThePoachedEgg) April 28, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n