What is God Like? I have given a couple of short answers to this elsewhere. I was raised an atheist by my atheist parents. We had a very, non religious family and would set around the dinner table discussing reasons we didn’t believe in God. I was very vocal about it. All the old Atheist arguments were part of my upbringing.
When I graduated from high school I went into the military. Good thing I did because it gave me a chance to grow up. I was a wild man, going out into the world to party. I was stationed in Rhode Island. In the evening I got a job at a local bar where I got to meet other anti-religious people. After awhile I got tired of all the cheating and lying I saw it all around me. Being sober, while working in a bar can be depressive. No wonder everyone was drunk and on drugs. I drank fully at that well for a couple of years There was little morality and I saw no reason for it.
Every chance I got I put religious people down. Growing up in an atheist family I knew most of the arguments’s against God. Every chance I got, I put down the religious. I was as rude and crude as I knew how to be around anyone religious. One day I broke the faith of a Christian ministers son. I felt kind of bad, kind of like taking a security blanket away from a Child. As a result I decided to read the Bible, so I would know first hand what I was talking about.
At the same time the most religious guy in my Battalion was moved right next to me. He started asking me to go to church with him. Every Sunday morning he would wake me up asking me if I would go to church. The answer was always, “NO.” I always had a hangover or was still up.
Finally I got tired of it and told him if he woke me up one more time, I would smash him in the mouth. He left and I felt bad for being such an ass. So I decided I would go to Church with him and tell him I didn’t like it. That way he would feel better and so would I..So I went to Church.
I didn’t become a believer then but I did discover there were happy people in that Church.
I struggled with the hopeless, immorality, I saw everywhere, the meaning of life and my own atheism. One weekend I decided to go into Providence R.I. to a girls club dance. I caught a bus and it was raining, as I sat in the back seat by myself. The water was hitting the window and made patterns of different colors from the passing lights. I decided to say an atheists prayer. “God, if there is a God, I put what little faith I have in you. I don’t even know how to believe. I have so many doubts.”
The next day, when I woke up, everything changed. I noticed the colors were noticeably more saturated. The world looked different. Something was different deep in my heart. I knew, I had meet God. My life has been one process of learning as it affected every area. CS Lewis wrote a book, “Surprised by Joy.” which starts to describe what life with God is like.
I have continued to be intellectually interested in everything. I went to College and
Graduate School, after I got out of the military. That grain of faith has continued to grow.
I love the intellectual challenge but God is as close as your heart. You can’t explain a color to a blind man who won’t bother to step out and open their eyes. So it is with God and the heart.
Edited by shadowhawk, 08 February 2012 - 11:27 PM.