[00:00:02] Speaker A: And I'm pretty sure that a lot of atheists have come up with their conclusion in a similar way. Not much evidence religion is boring.
Those two added together equals God does not exist.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Hello and thanks for joining in. I'm Jana Harmon and this is ex skeptic, where we hear unlikely stories of belief. Each episode we explore the journey of someone who has once been an atheist or skeptic, but who found their way to Christianity against all odds. Over the past month. Since we've rebranded, we've been thrilled to see a remarkable growth in our audience, with more people listening and watching these transformative stories than ever before. If you're a skeptic joining us for the first time, welcome. We hope these stories provide insight as you contemplate questions about God's existence and whether he matters in your life. And if you're a Christian discovering these stories, we hope they offer a deeper understanding of those who once held very different views from your own and what led them to openness and change. Either way, these stories encourage us all to seek greater understanding, to pursue what is genuinely true and meaningful, and to discover what can be deeply life giving. If you're interested in hearing more, you'll find over 100 fascinating stories on our
[email protected], that's exquisite, and on our YouTube channel we always welcome your feedback and questions, so please feel free to email
[email protected] dot there's a big difference between simply believing in statements about God and religion, and truly believing in God as a personal being, someone real, true, and deeply involved in your life. A real belief in God isn't just intellectual, spiritual, experiential, or purely emotional. Rather, all of these work together in a meaningful relationship.
Christianity offers both beliefs about God and a relationship with God. This is a God who not only created the universe, but also knows each of us intimately, values us, and loves us. In her book longing to know, Esther Meeks explains that coming to know God is much like how we come to know anything deeply, through trust, experience, humility, and a willingness to be surprised. It's a process that unfolds over time, blending moments of clarity with periods of doubt and struggle, requiring both our minds and our hearts to work together and pointing us towards the truth. This relationship with God isn't just wishful thinking, as some might believe. It's based on good reason, grounding in a cumulative case of evidence that leads us towards the reality of God.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: Today we'll hear the story of Doctor.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: John Studebaker, a former atheist who once dismissed the idea of God entirely. He wasn't searching for God until he encountered a series of intellectual and personal surprises that led him on a path towards belief, not just about God, but in God. This journey opened the door to a relationship with God that continues to grow. I'm excited for you to hear John's story.
Welcome to ex skeptic John.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: It's such a pleasure to have you with me today.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Hi, Jana. It's great to be with you.
[00:03:19] Speaker C: I would love for the listeners to know a little bit about you. As we're getting started. Can you introduce us to yourself? Maybe your education, where you live, the kind of work that you do, maybe the things you're passionate about?
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Sure. I'm in the Kalamazoo, Michigan area, and I actually grew up here.
I moved away for about 20 years when I was involved in various ministries and working on a couple different degrees.
I graduated from Michigan State University in engineering and then went on and pursued a seminary degree. This is all after my conversion from atheism.
Never thought I would pursue seminary. I didn't even know what that was, and I was such a glutton for punishment that I ended up working on a PhD in theology.
[00:04:18] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Actually, I enjoyed it completely. It was a chance to do something unique and distinctive along the way. I've worked with three or four ministries. Now I'm the director of the BMI Oasis, which stands for bridge ministries Incorporated. No, it's not body mass index, though we do assess people's spiritual health.
And so the oasis is a place for pastors and missionaries to come that are typically burned out or just looking for a sabbatical.
And I'm also a professor with the Lima Lema seminary, and we focus on teaching and discipling african pastors and teachers.
[00:05:07] Speaker C: And you worked for Hillsdale College for a number of years, didn't you, too?
[00:05:11] Speaker A: I was with Hillsdale for 14 and a half years and retired from there a year and a half ago.
That was a wonderful experience.
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Well, let's get back to your early life and introduce us to your family. When you were younger, you mentioned earlier that you were an atheist at one time, so I wanted to know how that came to be, what shaped that view. So take us back to your childhood and talk to us about what your life looked like. And was religion a part of any of that?
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Well, we had a great family in one sense, but in another sense, I was a bit lost because we did attend church occasionally, but I had no sense of hope or joy in the family. I was the youngest in my family and I experienced some trauma in the early years that what resulted was just a sense of despair and hopelessness. And also we attended a church that I viewed as a pretty much as just a social club. It's a beautiful church, but as I learned later, it was quite liberal.
And also I had this sense that, well, the church was, I thought, rather boring, not just a social club, but it was rather uninteresting, especially to a twelve year old. So I started to tell myself, how could God be so boring?
And I concluded that God must not exist. I didn't have any evidence for God's existence either. None was provided at the church or in any conversations. So by age twelve I was a self declared atheist and actually met a couple of other friends that 6th grade that claimed the same.
So I was pretty comfortable with that for the next five or six years.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: So in declaring that, that's a pretty strong perspective for a twelve year old, yeah, it sounds like church was boring. There was nothing there for you, and you hadn't heard any arguments for God's existence. Were you looking for that data? Were you asking questions? Can you tell me, you know, like from the church leadership, even from your family, were you asking questions? How do you know that God exists? How do you know the Bible is true?
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Or whatever?
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Were you asking those or were you.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Just presuming I wasn't really asking those questions, I just came to that conclusion that seemed logical by the age of twelve.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: And growing up in a rather secular household, it seemed to be a natural conclusion. Now the rest of the family, I believe, did believe in God and they went to church.
None of us were actually christians in the traditional sense, but religious in a very cursory sense.
So yeah, I didn't really think too much about it, except for those couple of points I made that led to my conclusion, and I'm pretty sure a lot of atheists have come up with their conclusion in a similar way. Not much evidence religion is boring.
Those two added together equals God does not exist.
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Plus you mentioned you had had something despairing happen in your life, and I would imagine that would have perhaps added a third reason.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: That is a pushing point. Yeah, the despair of family and traumatic issues made it more challenging to believe in a sort of higher power, and I think that's also typically another ingredient for many atheists, not always.
[00:09:17] Speaker C: So it was easy for you to uncheck the God box and just dismiss it out of hand, really as something not real, true or viable for you again, at twelve years old, which is what I understand a lot of pre adolescents and early adolescence, twelve to 15 is at the age at which they start to dismiss God. So true. So you moved on from twelve years old. It sounded like you had some friends who believed similarly to you.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: I did. And at the age of 17, I had friends that a couple of friends had become christians and they started to pursue me. A couple of my best friends and also a girl that I thought was cute and I was attracted to. And they are all becoming christians. So they all came after me and they wanted me to attend a weekend retreat with the FCA, with the fellowship of christian athletes.
And I took a bit of convincing, but I said to myself, well, I like fellowship, I like athletics, I was involved in sports. This was around junior year of high school.
And the christian part I'm not so into, but okay, two out of three, I'll go.
And the cute girl was going.
And my couple of my best friends, I went. And during the retreat, well, first they had a movie that they showed. It was called thief in the night. This was popular back in the late seventies, I think, and it was about the rapture.
And of course I didn't believe any of that. But one thing I noted was, at least we have someone here from the book of Revelation making a strong, bold prediction about the future. I thought that was respectable because, you know, a lot of claims about future events, but this one claimed that events had been fulfilled in the past and therefore these predictions would be fulfilled in the future and also gave the people hope for a future life.
Other thing was, I noticed was of the 30 or 50 students that attended the retreat, that they all had a certain joy about them. They sing a lot of different christian songs that were contemporary, and I just made a note of the joy and the love they had for each other. And the last thing was one of the camp counselors pulled me aside after the movie and explained that Christ fulfilled over 300 prophecies and that no one had fulfilled even six of these prophecies regarding the future Messiah. But Christ fulfilled over 300.
He said, that's the chances of anyone fulfilling that many. And these were detailed prophecies fulfilled in the New Testament from the Old.
That really got me thinking.
Of course I said to him, well, that's an easy one to counter, because obviously, obviously the predictions were made after the fulfillments.
He said, no, that's not possible, because all the archaeologists know that the Old Testament was completed at least 400 years before the writing of the new. And when he said that, something really grabbed a hold of my thinking and all of a sudden I realized there's someone with some evidence here, someone's doing some thinking regarding religion.
I'd never heard of such a thing.
It wasn't fully convincing at all. But I went to bed that night in this dormitory, at the retreat, at the camp, and looked up at the rafters and I thought, wow, I don't know what I believe.
I was shocked and I was kind of in a daze.
So that was the first piece of evidence that got me thinking. But I tried to put it aside and go on with my atheistic worldview as best I could.
[00:13:30] Speaker C: Yeah, it makes me wonder. Of course, at twelve you dismiss God and you probably didn't think through it very well, let's just say. And you lived your life until you came up to this retreat, but you had some presumptions going into that retreat. And one is that religion is not grounded in evidence, you know?
[00:13:51] Speaker A: True.
[00:13:52] Speaker C: And I wondered what other presumptions you might have had about what religion was or what Christianity was. Our belief in God. If it wasn't true, how did you perceive all of that when you had just dismissed it out of a hand?
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Yeah. As impersonal that God was. If God existed, there was no personal sense. And it's certainly not a God that loved me. And my friends took me, my two friends, including the one that I thought, I gal I thought was cute, took me for a walk.
This was probably 11:00 p.m. after the movie and the talk with the counselor, and they took me for a walk. I mean, it's really amazing as I look back, how these events were orchestrated and we went out in the dark. It was a beautiful night. I remember every minute of it now. And they explained to me that Christianity was a personal relationship with God through Christ. And they had both come into that kind of relationship. And I was stunned by that, that they believed that this wasn't. They said it wasn't a religion, there was a relationship. And that was shocking because I always thought of religion in relation to that church that seemed so boring. And now they're talking about a vibrant relationship with God that is personal.
And that was another piece of evidence that really got me to ponder further.
[00:15:16] Speaker C: So you had this intellectual awakening, I guess, of sorts, that all of these 300 prophecies that were written at least 400 years prior to Christ somehow were fulfilled in this person of Christ against all possible odds. And then you have a more experiential, I guess you call it evidence. It's really a shift in your understanding of who God is and what the expected relationship with God is, rather than a religious act towards God as actually a person with whom you connect in some way.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And both were important for me because I needed the intellectual engagement, but also need to understand the personal encounter, the personal aspect, because of that despair and that sense of hopelessness and loneliness that I felt as a teenager. So I, and I'm sure every atheist is going to, if they're going to begin to make any sort of shift, is going to need both aspects, both the intellectual and the personal engagement. And they both came early on in that retreat. But there was a couple of other evidences I found out I needed. That came a little later.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: Yeah. So it got your wheels turning. I guess. That retreat was something. Would you say that was a catalyst or a disruptor towards creating an openness in you or a seeking or a searching? Was it something that you wanted to actively pursue after that retreat, or is it something you just kind of put away?
[00:17:00] Speaker A: No, I did not want to pursue it. It was just an initial catalyst, but it was going to take a lot more prodding. So my friends continued to ask me to come to prayer meetings. I was on the wrestling team and the tennis team, so before each match they would invite me to come to a prayer meeting before the match. Seems like every time I went to that meeting before a wrestling match, I would win the match.
Another piece I have to point out was that during that retreat, they asked everyone for a prayer request, went around in a circle, and I said, you can just skip me because I don't believe in prayer. They said, oh, come on, just mention one thing. I said, okay. So I gave them a challenging one. I was in AP chemistry, which was, you know, advanced placement, which if you got a b in the class, then it would essentially be viewed as an a. So it's very difficult. And I said, okay, you can pray and I'll get an a in AP chemistry, which would be like, even the smart, smartest kids didn't get an a. Well, at the end of the semester, guess who got an a in the class with one point to spare on the final exam. It sounds like, it sounds like could be coincidental, but I believe there's some divine intervention there just because of that prayer to prove to me that there is a something, something happening here.
But this was all early on. This was a first semester of my senior year of high school.
And then in my second semester, when a few more things happened that were significant, they continued to ask me to come to these prayer meetings before matches.
One time I had a match, it was my last wrestling match, that I was going against an arch rival who I had lost to three or four times. And I was just about to beat him for the conference, for the third place in conference. And in the last three or 4 seconds, I lost to him again. I felt that this deep despair, I was winning the match up until the last three or 4 seconds, and I felt that deep despair, like, what is life all about? I can't. I mean, I felt such a deep sense of loss.
If this is all my life is about, is winning a wrestling match. I have nothing else, then what is life about?
That's it. And then, so that got me really pondering the meaning of life. Then in my last tennis match later on that year, I was.
This was significant.
And this is what we would call the moral argument for existence of God, I found out later. So it came to he won the first set. You know, he played two out of three sets. He won the first one, and the second set we went to four points each in the tiebreaker. Well, back then it was the next point wins the. Wins the set. So we went back and forth. He hit a slam that I thought it missed the line and was out. So I called it out. Well, if you know tennis, then the ball leaves a ball mark. So it caught. I saw the ball mark, and it caught that line just barely.
Well, by this point, the guy starts swearing at me and yell at me that the ball was in. And even though I saw that ball mark in, I did something I'd never done before. I said, well, if you're gonna swear, I said in my mind, if you're gonna swear at me, I'm just gonna yell right back. And I said, hey, I said, the ball's out. It's out.
So that made it my set. And we had one more set to decide the match once. One set each so far. And we have a ten minute break before we play the final set. And I'm sitting on the side of the court, I'm thinking to myself, okay, the ball actually did hit the line, but I called it out. What am I going to do with this? And now I'm thinking, you know, I've never cheated before, but that would be cheating and can I live with that? And I thought to myself, well, you know, who says that there's any rules that we have to obey by obey to?
And is society setting up these kind of rules of honesty?
Is it myself? And I thought, no, those would not. I need some sort of standard here.
I'm amazed. I thought through this whole thing in ten minutes.
I said, you know, society is not. It's always changing its morals and does not provide solid evidence for, you know, having morals. And I could not. I wouldn't be a good source for that either, because I would always change the morals to fit my own desires.
So what is the basis for morality? All of a sudden it hit me. Maybe this is the God concept, if anything else. Maybe God is the standard of morality that. That wants to get at us and make us want to be honest.
I said, I'm not sure, but that sounds like the best explanation. I went over to the other player, even though he's a jerk, and I said, okay, I saw the ball in barely, it was your set, your match, and pretty much floored the guy. I went to my tennis coach afterwards and I told him what I did.
He was a Christian. He said, well, praise the Lord. I couldn't quite respond the same way, but it really got me thinking about God and the idea of morality. So it was forced upon me.
The next piece of evidence was after graduation. Well, there's a couple more ones I could mention briefly.
One was at graduation or the day before, we had an event called baccalaureate, and back then there would be a religious service the day before graduation.
And I didn't know it was a religious service. I had never been in a choir before, so they asked for people to sign up for the choir. Well, the day of practice, I was sick, so I just showed up at the baccalaureate to sing the songs on the song sheet.
And turns out these are all religious songs. I had no idea I was going to be singing these, but I did anyway. One of them was a song by Andre Crouch called my tribute.
And if you don't know the song, the chorus is to God be the glory for the things he has done.
By his blood he has saved me. And by his power he has raised me. And also when I sang that line, by his blood he has saved me, it hit me in some strange way with a sort of curiosity, what in the world is that about?
By his blood he has saved me. That is the strangest thing I've ever heard. I'd never heard of anything regarding blood or sacrifice, and I didn't know what it meant. I just knew. It grabbed me with a. With a kind of a curiosity, and it shook me up. Well, I just went on, sang the other songs and. But I was really shaken. A week later, though, we had this graduation party in the 40 acres out back of our home.
And I invited my best friends to come over and have a sleepover under the stars, just kind of celebrate graduation.
Well, on my left side I had an atheist friend, and on my right side I had a christian friend, and they I'm looking up at the stars and I'm thinking about the stars and, you know, the expansion of the universe. And they started debating the existence of God on the left and right. I'm kind of caught in the middle, and it's amazing. I'm always caught in the middle of these things.
[00:25:23] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:25:24] Speaker A: And I'm listening to their debate, and all sudden I'm want, my mind is wandering out toward the stars and thinking, the farthest star. I wonder how far away it is, and I wonder what's beyond it.
And I thought, whatever's beyond it, I don't know. But I don't. I know that the stars don't go on forever because of the big bang theories. True. Then the stars are limited. So what's beyond them? I thought, well, I'll just take a spaceship someday and I'll get to the farthest star and I'll find out theoretically, and maybe there's a wall beyond it. Well, I just take my dynamite and blast through it and I'll find out what's beyond it. I mean, something's got to be infinite in any one direction.
And I thought, the concept of infinity can't be physical, it must be spiritual.
I thought that must be the concept of God, the infinite.
And that led me to all these different pieces of evidence. Start adding up.
So those are the major pieces. And it was only a matter of time before I made a decision on all the evidence.
[00:26:38] Speaker B: I'd like to take a break from our story and ask you a question. Do you have questions or doubts about God or Christianity? We'd love to help. If you are a curious skeptic who is intrigued by our stories, who has questions or doubts, we invite you to reach out whether you want to engage in a respectful, intelligent conversation with one of our former guests or dive deeper into questions surrounding faith, science or philosophy. We're here to help. If you've been intrigued by a particular journey and would like to talk with one of our guests from our podcast, please feel free to email
[email protected] and we'll get you connected.
If you'd like to have a one on one conversation with an expert who can help you navigate your specific doubts, I have another excellent resource to
[email protected]. you'll find experts in the areas of history, science, philosophy, theology, and apologetics. Ready and waiting to discuss your questions, you'll be able to meet with someone one on one, who can address your specific doubts. Go to www.talkaboutdoubts.com and get your conversation started. Now back to our story.
[00:27:48] Speaker C: So I guess the atheist didn't convince you towards more belief in naturalism, rather, or the Christian at that point. But all of these things are touch points. It's a gradual process, an accumulation of, again, touch points that are pointers towards the transcendent or the need for the transcendent in order to make sense of things. Even the a on your AP calculus test, an unusual thing that was prayed for.
But yet there were all these pieces and parts of a personal God who seems to answer prayer, that there's, you know, the grandiose, the grandiosity of the universe and. And, yeah, and even the song at the baccalaureate, different types of evidence that were all scary.
Yeah. So it was kind of accumulative. It seemed like your curiosity kept being piqued or your views challenged, you know, whether even on the tennis court, you know, you felt like you. I guess, as Greg Koeckel would say, you bump into reality in these different touch points in your life that beg for an explanation.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:12] Speaker C: So what did you do then after you kept encountering these touch points at different places in your life?
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Well, it was about a month and a half later, I believe it was August 1 of 1978 that I was home alone for the day, and I was about to go off to college in two or three weeks for the first time. And I was a little scared about going to college and starting my adult life.
And that question of identity came up, who am I going to be in my future?
And so I said, you know, I need to make a decision about my future and who I am, especially whether I believe in God or not, because I had these different pieces of evidence, but I still was not sure.
So what I did, trying to be logical, and I always claimed, you know, I did real well in logic class and mathematics. So I just said, well, I'm going to pull a piece of paper. And on the left side of the paper, I wrote down all the reasons why I thought God might exist.
And on the right side, I wrote down the reasons God doesn't exist. Or maybe I. Maybe I wrote the other way around, I don't know, on the left and right.
And then I wrote down all these reasons, and then I gave each one a point value regarding their strength, like one to five. How strong was that piece of evidence.
And I added all, I add up all the points and they came out, I think they came out to about 42 points each.
So now I have another dilemma.
They tied, what am I going to do? And at this point, my friend, that I went for the walk with him after, you know, at the end of that retreat, he said, if you ever want to check out the validity of God and Christianity, then pray this prayer. I got on my knees and I prayed my first prayer. It was basically, okay, God, if you're there, do whatever you do when someone is saved. Amen.
Yeah. Probably the most prayer ever.
[00:31:30] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: And I stood up and I said, well, I think I just wasted five or ten minutes, but, oh, well, we'll see what happens.
Well, nothing happened. I felt kind of stupid. I went about my life for the next couple of days, and about three days after the prayer, I'm driving around in my car and this boy who had all that despair and hopelessness, all of a sudden I feel this have this emotional experience going on inside of me. It was a feeling of joy and optimism and I couldn't explain where it came from.
And it kind of grabbed hold of me and I said, wow, I feel better than I've ever felt. I feel so good. And then all of a sudden I had this thought in my head.
It lasted on a feedback loop for the next two or three days. It was, you're going to have a great life.
It just kept going through my head over and over. You're going to have a great life. I said, this is really weird. I wonder if I become a Christian.
So I went off to college two weeks later and I'm first week on my new dorm floor. There is a guy on the floor talking to another guy.
They're sitting on the floor and talking and it sounds like they're talking about God. Well, I just sat down next to them and just listened and they're talking about God and talking about campus crusade.
And I didn't pick up much of it, but he just invited the other guy to go to campus crusade that next week.
And I said, I'll go.
I said, I prayed my first prayer last a couple weeks ago and I don't know what's going on, so I'd like to go and check it out. So I went to campus crusade for my first time that next week. And all these 300 christians were there at Miami University of Ohio, and they were all singing these christian songs like I sang a year ago.
And they're all so joyful and I stood, they had a time for, you know, a few people to stand up and give a testimony or something, and I'm kind of bold, so I stood up, and I share with the whole crowd that I prayed my first prayer two or three weeks ago. I don't know what's going on, but if anybody wants to explain this to me, feel free.
The guy from the dorm floor that invited me took me aside a couple days later and explained the whole gospel, which didn't make a lot of sense. It took me three or four months to get a grasp on this thing. And around Thanksgiving, I prayed a better prayer and kind of confirmed to myself, I think I'm a Christian now.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: Oh, wow. So for those of who might be listening, John, who are wondering what the gospel thing is, can you explain what your, your cohort explained to you?
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Well, I had to realize that, okay, first of all, God exists. God exists and he loves us.
And that was the first challenge, obviously. But once I got past that, I had to realize that because my despair showed me that I was out of line with God's plan, that I was a sinner. And that's a religious term, but it really just means missing the mark. I had missed the mark of God's plan in my youth.
And so salvation essentially, is a chance to return to God. And Christ offered that opportunity to return through his sacrifice, which I had found so stunning when I sang that song about his blood.
But I realized that blood was the sacrifice that allowed me to return, that paid the penalty for my sins. My missing the mark allowed me to return to God and find salvation, find eternal life.
And that's what it took me about a year to really grab a full sense of.
[00:35:33] Speaker C: So once you received forgiveness and then you were given a new life in Christ. And so that's where some of that, I guess, new joy came from, or that sense of joy that you observed in others.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: The joy I saw and the joy I experienced that first time came far before I really understood much of anything.
And that just shows to me the graciousness of God, that he allowed me to experience that. Before I understood any theology, really, I prayed that feeble prayer and that I got an initial response from God that kind of allowed me to continue to pursue this.
And that's been my journey all along. It's just a journey of pursuit of understanding, knowing God better intellectually and spiritually and even emotionally.
[00:36:30] Speaker C: Yeah, that's pretty wonderful.
You had someone there who explained the gospel more fully to you, you understood it, and then once you understood the gospel. And you had had all these really so many different pieces that were leading you in this direction that you were trying to make sense of, whether it's, you know, morality or your identity or the despair that you had had in your childhood.
How did all of those things come to make sense within your belief in God and Christianity and the christian worldview? How did those things come into alignment?
[00:37:17] Speaker A: You know, it's a good question. And it was really about a journey of the first ten years. The despair I had felt before my conversion. In some ways, after the initial conversion and the first two or three years of the excitement of this new life, it started to wane in some ways. And through those first ten years, I felt some more despair, even some depression. And I realized that I was confused about my worldview. So I ended up going to a study center in England that a friend, I was in seminary at this point, and a friend told me about this study center called La Brie, which means shelter. And it was started by doctor Francis Schaeffer. And I'd never read any of his books, but I went, I flew all the way over to England to go to this study center for a month.
And there I was able to engage my worldview and realize that I didn't have a strong basis for it, that I didn't have a. I was questioning whether the Bible really was true or whether God really loved me.
And I was able to kind of work those through and realize that God loved me for my own sake, not just because I've been involved in some ministries where I was trying to earn God's favorite by service.
And I came to realize at Libri that God loved me for me, not because of my service or my ministry.
And I realized that the Bible is true because not just its fulfilled prophecy, but because it was true to reality. As you had mentioned earlier, it made sense of reality.
It was epistemologically, had a, had a epistemological foundation that was valid.
And so that helped me to revise my worldview and come out of that despair as well. So I was able to also read along the lines some former atheists. And actually, I read them early in my journey as well. Josh McDowell. And I would recommend these to any atheist who is wanting to read some good material by those who have converted from atheism, like Josh McDowell's evidence that demands a verdict, or Cs Lewis, mere Christianity.
Another gentleman is Anthony Flew, who is the world's most famous atheist, who wrote, what was the book called?
I believe in God, or there is a God. There is a God. He wrote it in his eighties after his conversion from atheism to deism.
And so a lot, and of course through your podcast, a lot of converts from atheism and flu said he converted to believing in God because he followed the evidence, he followed the argument, he has always committed to that. But he finally followed it to the point where he believed in the existence of God. And that was sort of my story as well.
[00:40:39] Speaker C: So yes, it said that you had said at the very beginning that you had actually worked somehow in the field of apologetics or teaching it or whatnot. And so I presume that over time that youre love for just making intellectual sense of the world and relationship to God increased over time, or that you pursued that avenue as well in order to perhaps ground your worldview more or help others understand how the world makes sense with God.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: I was involved with probe ministries on staff for three years in my thirties and helped me work through apologetics and even teach it for those three years. But what I discovered was that was not, even though I loved it was not my primary love. So I went on and got my PhD in theology because it was, in a sense, I guess, more holistic in the understanding of God's character. And my dissertation had to do with the study of the lordship of the Holy Spirit because I really wanted to do something that helped me to grow spiritually and help others to grow spiritually.
[00:41:56] Speaker B: I'd like to pause for a moment to tell you about something you might find really quite helpful. Have you ever wanted to read the Bible but felt unsure of where to start or what it's really all about? At its core, the Bible is a story of God's deep love for us. God created us to live in a close relationship with him, but when humanity chose to turn away from his ways, that relationship was broken. Instead of leaving us in that separation, God, out of love, sent his son Jesus to heal the divide. Jesus life, death and resurrection opened the way for anyone who trusts in him to experience a renewed, meaningful connection with God. In the end, gods love will restore every bringing us into a perfect, everlasting relationship with him. To truly understand this story and how all of the parts of the Bible fit together, its important to study the whole thing. Each part contributes to the larger story of Gods plan to bring people back to him many people find it challenging to read the Bible because certain sections can feel long or difficult to understand.
The CS Lewis Institute has a helpful bible reading plan that makes it easier to navigate reading the Bible to learn more visit the CS Lewis Institute website at cS lewisinstitute.org Bible reading Plan. You can start today. Now back to our story.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: Yeah, so it sounds like again, over time your conversion happened late high school, early college, and that you've just been on a journeying ever since. It sounds like you've not only increased in your knowledge and understanding and relationship of who God is, but you're also helping others to now understand what you have learned to understand, not only with regard to reality and the relationship with God, but also this personal walk with God that seems so important to you. Life is a pursuit of growth, isn't it? It's always challenging, always growing in so many different ways.
I would imagine that if there are skeptics listening that they would be somewhat intrigued by your journeying, that you had, again, so many different kinds of what you call evidences that pulled you in towards belief in God from a place of non belief.
If someone was listening and they were open to taking a step towards God, how would you commend somebody to do that? Would it be a prayer? Would it be an intellectual search? Would it be talking with other christians? It sounds like you just had so many different things in your life that led you.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: Yep. I believe that these evidences were tailored to me and what I was needing at each point along the journey. So if someone is an atheist or an agnostic, if they are open to the, to follow the evidence, then I believe the evidence is, I'd say, overwhelming.
Regarding the like Josh McDowell says in his book, evidence that demands a verdict, that the resurrection is the most.
I can't remember the quote exactly, but is the most attested and validated historical event of history.
I believe CS Lewis says something similar in his book Mere Christianity, where he, he tackles various different kinds of evidence as well. He was a former agnostic or atheist as well. So here I, here are people, I believe that followed the evidence, followed the argument, and they were open minded. A lot of times in our secular world we've become closed minded. We think that secularism, you know, living in the present, living for the moment, living in the now, that must be the appropriate worldview because that's what we experience.
But who's to say that that worldview is correct? I would challenge atheists to really, and I respect atheists more than your nominal believer in God who doesn't really take it too seriously. I respect the atheists that have come to their conclusion based upon intellectual pursuit.
I would ask them to continue that pursuit, but don't rule out those who have made the trek from atheism to belief, because there's a lot of scholars out there that have journeyed through this many times painstakingly, like myself.
[00:47:19] Speaker C: And that's really, really good advice, I think, especially towards being open to look. I think that's. That's huge. You know, you became open, and you were willing to see the evidences from all different directions.
[00:47:39] Speaker A: I was reluctant, as I mentioned in my story, which in some ways, I think, have kind of hurt my faith along the way, being always such a skeptic and always having to begin with the evidence, rather, sometimes I envy those friends who just like my wife, who grew up essentially believing and believed based upon the love of God and experience spiritual experiences.
And then, you know, we've helped each other. I've helped her develop a more solid basis of evidence for her faith. She's helped me in trusting God, learning to trust God for his character, rather than just always having to rely on the intellect. And the past year or two, especially, I've been on the journey of growing emotionally more in tune with God's heart.
So. And that's really what the agnostic or the atheist, I think, is ultimately longing for, is to have a. To fill in that harp, that heart shaped vacuum that Augustine spoke about, fill in the despair, fill in the loneliness, because the atheist has no hope for the future except for, you know, of course, dying and being food for worms. That's not really a sense of meaning and purpose for the future, but we all long for that. Lewis made that great point that every person longs for, for fulfillment, human fulfillment and human hope in the future.
[00:49:22] Speaker C: Yeah. That's certainly something that the God story does provide, doesn't it? And even you mentioned earlier, who are you in terms of identity? Our basic identity is so solid and so loved, so known, so valued as a child of goddess.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:43] Speaker C: That society cannot change or.
[00:49:47] Speaker A: Yeah, there's just the notion that I am created in the image of God is really what I grapple, grappled with and learned at La Bre.
That's what provided a sense of value. You know, the. The secular worldview, the materialist worldview, that we are a product of evolutionary chance doesn't provide any sense of value for who I am or a sense of dignity.
And that's what I love about Cs, about Francis Schaeffer's writings, was the way he helped us grapple with our dignity as opposed to the materialist, secularist, and now the postmodern worldview. Even the postmodern worldview is, in a sense, maybe a little better because we can gain identity and some form of dignity from the community, it still ultimately is a despair because that community is not going to last forever.
[00:50:41] Speaker C: Yeah. And they're always changing, aren't they, in their expectations?
That's a really great word. And for those of us as christians who want to see those who are skeptics in our lives come to know the love of God that you have now found the intellectual grounding, how can you best advise us to engage with.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: As sharing one's testimony, as I've done today, in a briefer sense, is important, because who can deny one's experience?
And when my friends took me aside at that retreat and shared with me that they had encountered this personal relationship, and it wasn't ultimately a religion that, that struck a chord with me.
And so I would advise anyone who is looking to share their faith with others to make it personal in some sense. The intellectual aspect is important if there are questions. But don't forget to share one's own personal experience, especially today's more postmodern culture is looking for authenticity.
[00:52:00] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's a very, very human way to relate these deep and real truths of God, that it's not only grand and transcendent, it's terribly intimate and personal in terms of the way that God makes sense of not only all of reality outside of ourselves, but who we are in our own humanness and to the depth of who we are. Really.
[00:52:28] Speaker A: I got to be real, though. The only thing that bothers me about God is he always leaves that craving within you to seek and find more. It's like you'll get satisfied for a short time, and then there's always this craving to want to seek and the need to find more.
Sometimes that bugs me.
[00:52:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:53] Speaker A: And I think a lot of christians have that same experience because we're never able to rest on our mores, our previous experiences.
[00:53:03] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Jesus said, you know, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. First they will be filled, but I guess not ultimately in this life. Right. Because we have such a dependence. And he knows the more that we hunger after him, the more that our lives will actually flourish.
So thank you. Wow, John, what a story. I love that. It's so, you know, it picks up on so many different elements. It's not just intellectual, it's not just personal, it's not just experiential, it's not just moral argument or looking at the stars. It just. I would say that your story is really kind of a cumulative case study for the existence of God. Not only that God exists, but God matters.
And I appreciate so much you coming on and telling your story and all.
[00:54:01] Speaker A: The bits and pieces, and God thinks that we matter. That's probably the ultimate conclusion I would provide is I know several friends right now that are dealing with tough issues and, and that's what I would lead them to remember, is that God really cares about what you're going through, even though it may not feel like it.
[00:54:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. And he's so personal, isn't he? I mean, just the way that he answered that prayer for you back in high school. I mean, he's very personal and very specifically personal.
And he does care. Even. Even though sometimes it seems like he is there and he is not silent as you would say, you know, quoting Francis Schaeffer.
Yeah, he's there. He's there. And sometimes we don't feel him and he feels hidden, but he cares personally and intimately about everyone. Thank you for that final note.
[00:54:58] Speaker B: I really appreciate you coming on today, John.
[00:55:01] Speaker A: I enjoy being with you. Thank you.
[00:55:04] Speaker C: You're welcome.
[00:55:05] Speaker B: Thanks for tuning into x skeptic to hear Doctor John Studebaker's story, you can find out more about his ministry and recommended resources in the episode. Notes for questions and feedback about this episode, you can contact me through our
[email protected] dot. Again, if you are an atheist or a skeptic who would like to connect with a former guest with questions, please contact us via our email email and we will get you connected. This podcast is produced through the CS Lewis Institute and the help of our wonderful producer Ashley Decker, audio engineer Mark Rosara, and ministry assistant Lori Burleson. You can also see these podcasts in video form on our YouTube channel through the excellent work of our video editor, Kyle Polk. Jordan Harmon is our amazing graphic designer. If you enjoyed it, I hope you will follow right review and share this podcast with your friends and social network. In the meantime, I'll be looking forward to seeing you next time where we will hear another unlikely story of belief.
