“There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.”
Blaise Pascal
The meeting in the Physics Library was not the end of the story. It was the beginning. Jake invited me to church the following Sunday evening, and I accepted. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure why. Christianity wasn’t the direction I thought my search was heading. I was convinced that truth would ultimately be found by looking beyond the boundaries of any one religion.
Yet I went. The church service itself was pleasant, but it wasn’t what kept me coming back. It was what happened afterward. Every Sunday evening, after dinner, we would return to his dorm room to sit and talk. Before long, it became our routine. Jake would usually begin by asking if I was still reading the Bible.
“I am,” I would answer.
Then the questions would begin. Our conversations wandered across almost every subject imaginable: God and evolution, science and faith, sin and forgiveness, the reliability of the Bible, why Jesus had to die, and whether Christianity could really claim to be the only true faith. One topic came up again and again.
Why is Jesus God?
Oddly enough, I rarely argued with Jake on that point. “I believe Jesus is God,” I would tell him. The words sounded the same, but they meant something entirely different. I believed Jesus was divine because I believed everyone possessed the divine within them. Jesus had simply realized it more fully than anyone else. Divine Mother taught something similar. Jesus was extraordinary, but He was not unique.
Jake believed something altogether different. Jesus wasn’t merely a man who had discovered God. He was God who had become man. At first the distinction seemed almost insignificant. The longer we talked, the more I realized it changed everything.
I enjoyed our discussions more than I expected. Jake never seemed interested in winning an argument. If I raised a question he couldn’t answer, he didn’t bluff or change the subject. “I don’t know,” he would say. “Let me look into it.” The next Sunday he almost always returned with an answer. I respected that. As a science major, I had learned that admitting what you don’t know isn’t weakness. It’s honesty. I questioned almost everything.
If God is loving, why does evil exist?
Why would a loving God judge anyone?
How could Jesus be the only way to God?
Why should the Bible be trusted above every other religious book?
Week after week we circled back to the same questions. Sometimes it felt as though neither of us had moved an inch. Looking back, that wasn’t true. I thought I was putting Christianity under the microscope. In reality, my own beliefs were being examined. For over a year, I had accepted the teachings of Divine Mother because they seemed to make sense. Now, for the first time, someone was asking me why I believed them. As a scientist, I believed every hypothesis should be tested. I was finally allowing my own worldview to be tested as well.
One Sunday evening, after several hours of talking, Jake became unusually quiet. He looked directly at me. “Are you really looking for God?”
“Yes.”
“Are you really searching for the truth?”
“Of course I am,” I replied. “I wouldn’t be spending all these hours talking with you if I wasn’t.”
He nodded. “I just wanted to make sure. Sometimes I wonder whether you’re trying to understand or whether you simply enjoy arguing. We keep coming back to the same points.”
I smiled. “I probably do enjoy debating,” I admitted. “But that’s not why I’m here. I honestly want to know God. I want to know what’s true.”
He waited a moment before speaking again. “Then ask Him.” I looked at him without saying a word. “Ask God to reveal Himself to you. If you sincerely ask Him, He will answer.”
I stared at him. “You’re promising me that?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I guarantee it.”
His confidence caught me off guard. In one sense it reminded me of Divine Mother. She also spoke with certainty. But there was a profound difference. Divine Mother pointed people toward herself. Jake pointed me toward Christ. He wasn’t trying to build a following. He wasn’t asking me to trust him. He was asking me to ask God.
That conversation stayed with me the rest of the evening. I kept turning his words over in my mind. What if nothing happened? But another question refused to leave me.
What if he was right?
If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.
Proverbs 2:4–5 (ESV)
#faith #trustinggod #christianity #jesuschrist #bible #seekinggodswill #truth #sanctification #godisincontrol #godhearsourprayers #salvation #providenceofGod #Sundayevenings #Proverbs2:4-5
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