[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's not easy. It's not easy to be in this world. It's such a fallen world that it's hard to follow Christ. You can have a difficult life, even a painful life, and still God brings purpose and love and goodness and truth and beauty.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Do you ever feel like your values are being challenged?
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Where do we find real love, the kind that fills our souls and helps heal our brokenness? Is it in better policies, the right party, the next program? Or is it in a person?
Hi, I'm Jana and this is Ex Skeptic. Here we share unlikely stories of belief of former skeptics who surprisingly found faith in Jesus, plus practical wisdom for anyone who's curious or questioning.
In our story today, British journalist Heather Tomlinson helps us explore how moving from secularism to Jesus doesn't just inform ideas, it reorders your life. How we see people, view suffering and find hope.
Heather once expected to find what she longed for, love and the healing of human suffering through politics, psychology and different spiritualities. But they came up empty until she met Jesus, the source of love itself.
I hope you'll come along to hear her journey from moving from secular liberal journalist to someone who lives to share the love of Jesus.
Welcome to X Skeptic. Heather, it's so great to have you with me today.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: It's great to be here.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Wonderful getting started. I would love the listeners to know a bit about you, your journalistic background, your education, and a little bit just what you're passionate about.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: For most of my adult life, I've been a journalist or writer of some kind.
I actually got into.
I was very lucky in my early career to get onto a national newspaper in the uk, which certainly developed my skeptical nature, because you have to be, as a newspaper journalist, you have to be very critical of what you're being told. But actually got into that because I studied molecular biology.
And the first where I got trained up really was on an Internet site in the very early days of the Internet and a lot of newspaper journalists had left to set that up and they wanted somebody who understood technology.
So as a result I got a. I sort of. That was my stepping stone onto national newspapers. Although I didn't use my molecular biology degree much in my adult life, or at least not in my career, it did get me my. My first job and I'm grateful for that.
So.
But then I left in my mid-20s. I left journalism intending to retrain as a clinical psychologist and try and do something that's a bit more caring or to.
It seemed a bit more helpful to people that maybe journalists seem to be at the time.
But in that process, in the process of the training, which takes quite a few years, I had a very dramatic change of heart and that led me eventually to leave the process of training to be a psychologist and instead go back to writing, but this time for Christian publications and also. But to spend part of my time also in pastoral care.
So I've worked as work for Christian charities, worked as a chaplain, and so I have a balance of my journalistic and pastoral skills to use.
So, yeah, very diff. Very varied in my background and I've sort of gone through a lot of different changes, but the real major change in my life was becoming a Christian.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Well, it does sound like you. You've had your hand in a lot of different things, moving from secularism to, you know, pastoral care.
And so there's. There, obviously there was a shift there. So let's start back in your home life. Was it secular as well? Tell me about your growing up years in England and what that looked like in terms of God or religion or any touch points.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: So, like most people of my generation in northern England, I had a very secular upbringing, even more so, I think, than a lot of people because most of my peers were christened as a, as children, but I wasn't. My parents wanted me to make my own mind up, but I'm grateful that one thing I did have was I went to a public school up to year six, that was a Church of England school.
And so I got taught some hymns that I still love when I hear them, the Lord's Prayer and a few Bible stories.
And they were really important seeds. And looking back, I'm really grateful for them because nowadays, unfortunately, in England, not many children get that it's been a steady decline in religious in Christian belief in the uk it has been since the mid Victorian period, the mid 19th century, and even in my lifetime that's been the case.
So my parents, again, like most people would, sort of Christian, but absolutely no practice of that, of Christianity at all in any real sense at certain times. I called myself agnostic when I was a bit older, but I did most of the time have a very vague belief in God. There is, there is such a thing as a God, but do I know anything about that God? Does it make any real difference to my life?
No, not, not really looking back, certainly compared to to now.
And I had lots of various liberal views and attitudes about the world that would get challenged when I started to explore Christianity and Christian belief.
So mainly about sort of relationships and how that is applied in people's lives and.
But yeah, I was.
And the other thing, and probably unusually in my generation at the time, is that I was very political. My parents had been very political. They'd grown up, they had very working class backgrounds, quite challenging backgrounds, and that meant that they were very supportive of left wing politics.
And at the time that was the. Mostly the Labour Party and I sort of had been brought up and absorbed a lot of that, a lot of those beliefs. So really, in lots of ways my religion or my ethical framework was political and certainly when I went to university that sort of grew.
It was well before.
It was before what we call woke happened.
So there was lots of.
It was quite intolerant. I was quite intolerant of people who were not left wing.
However, compared to what is, is currently happening in universities and so on, it was, it was much, much milder than that.
So, yeah, I was a very Bolshy, typical Northern England Northern people were known then. It's, it's changed a little bit. But we're known then for being sort of quite, you know, quite forward friendly, but maybe quite direct in what we say.
And I was certainly at that. So growing up in this very secular world where I didn't really understand that Christianity had any real importance in the world and I really saw the answer to the world's problems as being political.
And if only we could get the right politicians and the right amount of taxes taken to fund the right kind of social projects, then we could have a much Better world.
That's pretty much how I thought going into adulthood.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: So it sounds like you were again in a secular world, secular home, secularized education and views and all of that shaped.
It sounds like you didn't have any like antitheistic kind of views or you weren't anti Christian, you were agnostic.
But did you ever have any personal relationships or people that you knew were Christian that gave you a, an, an idea of perhaps what Christianity might be apart from kind of this Church of England facade of Christianity?
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Very few people I knew were Christian. They certainly didn't talk to me about it.
But, and I say this to encourage anybody who, who know who's praying, somebody and because I was very, very lucky to have family, friend, a couple who were very, very loving and caring to me as a child. They made a difference to my life. And I knew there were Christians. They didn't talk to me about faith, but I knew there were Christians because my mum had told me.
And later when I'd become a Christian I rang them and told them. They were absolutely delighted and only then did I find out that they have been praying faithfully for me and for my family and lots of people that we knew in comment for many years and had never seen any change whatsoever in our extremely hard hearts all that time.
And so they were absolutely delighted that I had become a Christian and I'm very grateful to them for that love and care that they've shown me both at the, what I could see and feel, but also what the behind the scenes, on their knees, praying.
There was a few friends who I think maybe their parents went to church, but again it wasn't talked about, it wasn't something that, it just didn't seem to make any difference to life. When I first started to go to churches and I'd hear about these stories of like healing, inner healing and things like that and be like, I was just completely amazed that this Christianity that I'd always seen in this certain way might have this kind of effect.
And I was at points I said agnostic. I had a vague belief in that there was a God, but it didn't really affect my day to day life in any way. I just didn't understand how that could be.
And I would say yeah, there was a sort of image of Christians as being, and I don't really know where I got it from either being very sort of hostile, angry, evangelical. Evangelical would have been seen as a bad word.
People who were, you know, didn't like gay people or being very uncool, kind of sort of wishy washy kind of people. Just these weird stereotypes that I'd somehow absorbed from the culture and media that in bear no resemblance to I found when I started going to church just complete, just total fabrications.
So yeah, but I was quite hostile to the church in some ways in the beginning and maybe we'll get into that.
But my political beliefs and liberal ideas had led me to have sort of quite critical views of Christianity mostly. Again not very based in much reason or fact but it did take quite a long time of thinking and arguing with people and praying before I started to really understand a Christian worldview.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: As you moved more into whether it's molecular biology or liberal politics, how did that did, did that push you further, further into a, any kind of an anti religious perspective?
And what do you think that you're speaking of how once you actually engaged in it was different than you thought. But yet there is this again this very strong sensibility particularly in politics and there's a strong division of thought. And I wondered as someone who used to be kind of on the inside of that or coming from that perspective, what do you think is informing that kind of very resistant or negative hue over religion and religious people that, that whole thing that is causing such a division.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: So firstly so the molecular biology for me I say because I remember distinctly at the end of my degree saying to myself I think I'm more sure that there's a God than I was at the start. So it actually had opposite of what people might think.
And I think that's because I mean I really loved science. I thought it was so interesting.
But I had because I understood it well. I also understood what it was not. So it didn't offer an ethical framework, it didn't offer certainties.
It offered a method, the scientific method that you could use to explore the material world.
But it was limited and I could see that really easily.
And so although while I found it really fascinating, I didn't see that it provided answers to the world's problems really. But no, in my degree. Oh and there was a Christian who would come. I was involved with the student newspaper and we were a pretty godless bunch at that time. You know like a lot of universities, you know, it was a very sort of alcohol fueled and pretty, you know, party, it was a party lifestyle.
And this a Christian guy did come in and try and persuade us of a better way. And I remember just being scathing. I remember having an argument with him about yeah, but doesn't the. It's not really a Virgin birth, because the word virgin means, it means young woman and all this stuff that you know, but nonsense really. But it's come through the culture somehow.
So the science wasn't a problem. If anything, it was helpful to my faith.
The liberal beliefs. That's an interesting question. Where exactly it's come from.
And now that I've read and thought about it more, I think it's had a long history.
I think the new atheists, Richard Dawkins, obviously a famous Brit, and Christopher Hitchens, another Brit, they're in some ways products of the, the culture that I grew up in, which was very secularized. But yeah, the sort of secular, these sort of liberal ideas that you don't really need religion. And actually religion can be quite harmful really. And it had come through our TV screens and the media.
It had come from having a very secularized church as being the example of Christianity.
There was various philosophers that I think were very influential, postmodern philosophers latterly, but the 19th century biblical scholars, he started to pull apart the Bible and be very skeptical of it. I think it all sort of filtered down to this for England being a particularly secular, secular place.
So yeah, it was, I. It mostly, I think it was the media and films that I picked up these sort of negative ideas.
It really wasn't thought through very much. And so when I started to explore it properly, then I actually found how fascinating it is and how really I think the good world would have been ignorant. I was ignorant of what Christianity really was, what it taught, and of a, of a worldview that was just different to mine, it being very secular and liberal.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: So your, your secular liberal view, you obviously contended for it in secular publications. It was your view of the.
How, if I may, how was your life?
Were you driven by the purpose of promoting this kind of secularized view, getting it out there? I think it. I've gathered from you that you were seeking to do good, to, to solve human ills, to try to use this more leftist or liberal perspective to somehow, um, again, improve humanity, improve the world somehow. How. How was your personal world living in this view? Did you feel that it was satisfying? Was it meaningful? Was it giving you all you thought it would?
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Good question.
What was my purpose? I think if you'd asked me, I might have said something like doing good in the world or wanting to make the world a better place. But I might have said that really, was that my purpose? I don't think it. It was. Looking back, I had good intentions maybe, but they weren't really played out in Practice Looking back now I would say it was quite a self focused life.
The main purpose that I'd grown up with was about getting educated so that you can get a good job, get a good job so that you get a reasonable income and get a house and not have to worry.
There was a lot of focus on entertainment, on leisure and really when you think about all of those things they're quite self serving and I, and I think really that's what was, was driving me this sort of idea of searching for a better life or.
And that I did have intention. So I changed career. I left journalism and wanted to retrain as a clinical psychologist because I wanted to, to help people but realistically it's also, it's a good career, it's a well paid job like journalism. Very interesting. I was always.
I like to be challenged mentally. So that was another. Yeah being having things that would be difficult be it sort of obstacle to overcome.
That was part of the purpose. So it was quite confused really in lots of ways and certainly looking back I don't think I was really clear what I believed or why or why I was doing anything really other than meeting these sort of, sort of.
I think the word, I think selfish is a fair word.
Meeting these sort of goals of career and you know, finding the right relationship so that I can be happy and ideally making other people happy along the way.
But they are looking back they were quite empty and there's so much more to the world than that.
But I just didn't have any idea of.
I just had such a narrow worldview of this very secular liberal worldview. I didn't, couldn't see beyond that or what other options might be.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Jana Harmon from the Exskeptic podcast.
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Did you have any still continued vague notions that God existed during this time so you were still able to hold on to that kind of Tentative background.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Faith a little bit. So unusually I have a few memories that stick in in my mind. Bearing in mind my lifestyle is really did not have God in it, shall we say?
There was lots of drinking and such like, but at certain points. So I remember when I was working on the Guardian, which is a very left wing newspaper and really not much Christian faith in it at all even then as well as even more so now I remember there was something happening, some bad event on the news and I just blitzed out, oh gosh, we got to pray for that.
And someone just looked at me with absolute contempt and why on earth would you do that?
It was quite surprised that I would say that because it's not, I wasn't praying, I wasn't spending time praying, I wasn't really thinking about spiritual things, it was just an instinct.
And other times in my life when I've had something quite frightening happen, then I've prayed.
And I do wonder, so late in my career as a newspaper journalist I was having, I was just feeling very unsettled and unhappy, wondering.
I wouldn't say that I was wondering what life was all about. I just knew that it wasn't right, I wasn't in the right place.
And I remember praying on my bed, God, what should I do?
And literally that's all it was. But I do wonder if that was the start of the, of the process of conversion.
So there was maybe more faith than a lot of people. There wasn't a hostility towards God, might have been a hostility towards certain aspects of the church or what I thought the church was, but I had this, still had this vague belief in God.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: So then you, you moved into psychology because you wanted to help people.
And I presume that this was a more secularized view of psychology and you inferred that perhaps it wasn't sufficient enough to help people in the way that you wanted. Why don't you walk us there and, and talk us, talk to us about what that was like and perhaps some of the insights you were getting there.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: So I'd left my reasonably, I suppose, privileged career in London to move back up to Yorkshire and work and go through all the hoops to get onto the clinical training course.
And as part of that I had to do another degree and so I did a psychology degree. So while I was studying for psychology, I was doing lots of unskilled work with people with mental health problems because that helps you get through the process.
But I went from this quite prestigious job where I was dealing with all these PRs who were wanting to take you out for nice lunches all the time and ringing you up and you know, trying to butter you up and that kind of lifestyle. Had an expense account and things like that and crashing down, living in. I mean I was, I was lucky I had a reasonable house but the work was as a nursing assistant and as a bank nursing assistant. So the absolute lowest of the low in this healthcare environment and working on acute mental health wards um, as what we would have used to call psychiatric wards. Um, so it was a very humbling experience from being really quite privileged in this environment to, to going to, to that. And I have a, another clear memory of my very first day of walking into the, the building and a woman glaring at me and shouting something quite rude. Which I went.
And. But I thought at the time, I remember thinking this is going to be really good for me. It's just going to get me right back down to earth.
And actually I loved working with those people. It was, I didn't, I didn't enjoy seeing the suffering because there's real suffering people with that kind of mental health illness.
But I really liked them and I wanted to help them. I believed there was various sort of psychological programs that had had some research done so that showed that you could help people. So I read about that and be really inspired. I think oh great, we could do this.
Looking back it was quite a naive belief but parallel to that and I didn't maybe connect the dots at the time but I think it was probably seeing the suffering that made me start thinking more about spirituality and also going from this. Some newspaper journalism is so fast paced, adrenaline fueled.
You don't really have time to stop and think just to sit on your job as a nursing assistant often is just sitting, observing patients who might be at risk of doing something that would hurt themselves or things like that. So, so you're really just sitting and spending time with people.
So this massive slowing down of life as well as seeing this very difficult lives of people. I think probably that was part of the reason why I was looking for something spiritual.
So I started to.
All the sort of spiritualities and religions that I would have deemed to be more socially acceptable. I started to look into them. So Buddhism, I read Buddhist books, I went on a Buddhist retreat, I read the Quran at one point I was quite interested in paganism and Wicca though thankfully didn't end up doing anything about that, which is another story.
God kind of brought clarity to that potential avenue.
But I did. The thing that really changed everything was reading the gospels and I'd read the Gospels as a university student and it not really made that much impression on me, to be, to be honest.
But at that time it really powerfully affected me.
I would read. I loved the Gospel of Matthew. I started to read that and it really charmed with my liberal beliefs of helping the poor.
But also I could just see that what he was teaching was true. And not only was it true, but if we practiced, could really change the world.
And that started me interested, getting me interested in Christianity, interested in Jesus, and started.
So I started to attend churches before we go there.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: There's. There's so much there. So just for clarity, when you were sitting bedside, there was a, the, the diversions, the distractions were gone. You had a lot of time to think what. And you started on a spiritual search. Was that just because you, you were, you had that time with yourself to go, okay, is. I mean, what questions were you asking of yourself that would even prompt a spiritual search? Is like, is this all there is?
Is, you know, how do we help these people? I'm just trying to get clarity in terms of what would turn you in a spiritual direction to begin with.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: At the time, it was quite unconscious. I didn't really realize I could have a vague idea that I wanted something spiritual in my life.
But looking back, what, what I was looking for was love.
And I was obviously working in an environment where there wasn't much love, but kind of deep down I wanted to love.
And maybe didn't realize at the time how bad I was at it.
But I liked being kind. I liked working in this caring environment, trying to help people.
So looking back, in hindsight, I, I really.
Every human being wants love. We might be very confused about what that love is, but deep down, everybody wants it in some way, shape or form.
And I think God was working in me.
And I guess there was a sort of a little bit of openness in my life. Obviously, very occasionally I would pray. I think I re. I also, I really wanted the world to be a better place.
And perhaps being faced with really severe suffering made that desire much more, a much stronger desire. But I do believe there was something supernatural going on. Looking back, you know, there's no real logical reason why these things happened as they did.
There was how I understood it in my head at the time probably wasn't exactly what was happening. Maybe the prayers of those people were doing their work.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: Yes, I do find it interesting when you started looking towards spirituality, you didn't start with the God that you were praying to or the at least the God, I guess, of the Christian God, I presume, that you're praying to.
But you started in Buddhism and you moved more towards an eastern direction.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: I'd read quite a lot of new age sort of books which had a very watered down version of a Christian God. And I would definitely have been of the oh God, all religions lead to God kind of mindset.
I didn't really understand anything about, about those religions.
So when I prayed, I think most people had deep down know that God is real.
And I think it was praying to that real God.
But my beliefs and understanding of that God was very confused. It was the Christian God in a sense, but a very distorted view of the Christian God.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: I think it was more of a large kind of nebulous view that I can just choose a particular, any kind of religion just to be spiritual, to have that sense of depth or whatever that seeking was. And you were looking for love. I mean, I think you're right in that all of us crave to be known and loved.
Did you find what you were looking for obviously in Buddhism or paganism, Wiccan.
You were looking in some very interesting directions which I think are a lot more compatible with leftism and secularism. And so I can see where that would be a good, easy first stop on your journeying. Were you finding.
If you were craving love and love for people and healing, what were you finding in those worldviews that you, you opened the door to them but then you said, no, I'm just passing through, I'm not going to stay.
It's not giving me what I'm looking for. Can you just explain that a little bit before we get back to the, the Gospels where you landed?
[00:36:24] Speaker A: I spent some time exploring them, but I just didn't find what I was looking for.
And again at the time I probably wouldn't have been able to articulate what I was looking for?
The, the brief interest in paganism came about. You're absolutely right. It was much more in keeping with my liberal beliefs.
I'd heard some, something about modern Wicca being about easy equality between men and women, which was very much part of my worldview at the time. And I also love nature and they also sell, sell it in that way.
I had no.
I certainly wouldn't have wanted to do anything to do with dark witchcraft or anything like that, but I wouldn't have seen Wicca and paganism as dark. I would have seen. It's been sold in a very positive way in England and that's how I would have Seen her and actually, when I was a child, I really liked dressing up and playing as witches a long time before Harry Potter, but it was.
I read the equivalent books for my generation and so I had a much more positive view of Wicca than I think is deserved now that I know more about it.
And actually it was. It was looking into the. It was quite by chance I was in a library, very rarely in a library, and I saw a book about the original pagan religions of the British Isles, which was one of my big questions about paganism. So if it's this, you know, really positive religion that used to exist before Christianity, what it was actually like. And this book basically said that there wasn't.
We didn't know much about it, but what we did know wasn't very nice.
There's a sum total of it. And it just completely ended my interest in that.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: You mentioned when you started reading the Gospels or the biographies of Jesus in, in the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I presume that you mentioned it as, as seeming true.
Now, there's a different ways. You're a journalist, you know, there's different ways that you can use the word true, right? That it can ring true.
Personally, it just seems true. It can be morally true. It can be objectively, historically true, um, kind of metaphysically true. What do you mean by. Okay, I started reading this and you were you. Your proclamation there was very strong. This could change the world. The words of Jesus, they are true. You know, they seem true. They're ringing true. What did you mean by that? Did you mean all of the above? Did you just mean like. No, this is.
Talk with us through that again.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: I think it was more of an instinctual thing than a, than a intellectual truth. It was a real, knowing, an ontological understanding of truth.
And there was authenticity in, I think, in what he. He is saying.
And so many times, especially as a journalist, you can.
Often when people are speaking to you, they're not really saying what they really think or they're trying to present things in a way that they're not being authentic.
And you can sense that.
What I sensed from Jesus was an absolute authenticity.
And now looking back, I think what I was sensing was holiness or purity. But it's not just that he was direct.
He spoke with authority and, and like C.S. lewis obviously famously said, he's either a liar, a lunatic, or he's Lord.
And so although I hadn't at that point read C.S. lewis near Christianity, I did, I think had the same sense that this guy, firstly, he's not A lunatic.
I don't think he's lying.
And what he's talking about is I think he's Lord.
I say that though. And I didn't accept.
I had been influenced by liberal Christianity and I didn't understand or accept the atonement and the cross. That took some time, some years, some praying.
At first it was just an attraction to Jesus and seeking, coming to the decision to get baptized, wanting to follow Jesus as my Lord. Maybe didn't understand him as my Savior for some time, but it's a real, A real sense that this is what I've been looking for as a.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: As a journalist again, I guess. I mean, obviously when you encounter Christ, it is more of an existential kind of knowing, you know, this is, this is true and he is real and he is the authority.
As a journalist, did you question the source, the textual reliability, the historical event, the claims of the resurrection? You know, these things that surround Jesus that validate his claims to be God?
Did any of that come into play at all for you? I mean, it's okay if it didn't. You know, we. We're all wired differently in terms of how and why we come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior and God of all.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: So, for example, I started to read the Gospel of Thomas and I was just like, this isn't like the Gospels. This is just completely different. This isn't.
It's not of interest to me.
Even though I'd read sort of liberal ideas that, that had been excluded by the church and all, this sort of, you know, it was. It had these important insights about Jesus.
But when I read it, I. That's not how I perceived it at all.
I perceived it as much less powerful and much less interesting.
And so I sort of. And I did. I read liberal Christian writers like Brian McLaren who really appealed to my liberal left politics. Politics and actually I would say at that particular point in time were quite helpful in the sense that.
Because I think it took a long time before I started to question those values and my politics.
So at that time, it was kind of like, oh, you can look at Jesus in this way. And there's some wonderful stories. I was really inspired by, you know, sort of social action projects and stories that have been done by Christians to try and love people in the world, try and love the unloved.
Obviously I was having. Working with at the time.
So, yeah, I was really drawn to that. It was. It was much closer to my worldview than, you know, reading a more conservative, more traditional Christian book.
So that side, my Worldview change was slow and gradual, but my interest in Jesus was immediate and genuine.
And when I went to churches, I don't think they knew what to do with me because I was being very difficult. I would literally go. I was so arrogant. I would literally go to the welcomer. I didn't know they were a welcomer. I just. There's a person there who looked like I could ask them a question. I said, so what does this church think about women in leadership? Or what does this church think about homosexuality? Or what does this church think about, you know, all this stuff? And I was really difficult.
And most Christians are just not equipped to deal with that kind of question. So I really.
I really feel bad for those people.
And now when people are like that with me, then I have a lot more tolerance of it because I remember what I was like.
And, you know, you just so sure you think you know everything and you can't see a different way. And it took me a while before I started to understand a different perspective, understand the more orthodox Christian perspective.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: I guess with that more orthodox Christian perspective, your views began to change politically, even theologically, it sounds like.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: So after I made. I'd made a decision to follow Jesus and I'd got christened, that was in 2009.
Not long after that, I was sitting on my bed reading the Bible.
I read the Bible and prayed a lot.
And completely out of the blue, not expecting anything. I had a very powerful experience of God and God's love. And I'd had sort of glimpses of it. I'd been in churches in worship and sort of felt God's presence to an extent, but very mild compared to this.
This just completely blew my socks off. And it's hard. It's a hard thing to explain to somebody, but had this weird sensation that if somebody was in front of me with a knife, wanting to kill me, that I would love them, absolutely love them, even though I knew they wanted to kill me.
And what I knew was that that was God's love for us.
And I could see that I had been holding my life up at God all this time, really.
I might not have understood it like that. I might not have seen it like that, but that is what I had been doing and that God still loved me anyway. And the feeling of love was incredible.
And that completely changed. So I stopped being so argumentative.
I stopped questioning and doubting. And is it really real? How can we know if it's real? How, um.
And, you know, is Jesus just a good guy? Is, you know, all this sort of toing and froing in my head because I knew, I absolutely knew that God was real and that God was love and that that really was the answer to everything.
And that was the point I started to want to share my faith, wanted to help other people to come to faith.
So that was a very important part of the story, the other important part story. So that together with.
I just wanted to help people, much more so than before and more than just in my job. And so I started helping a church homeless drop in.
And I think that's a big part of what changed my politics. Because when you have a liberal left worldview, you really genuinely believe that people are just victims of their circumstance. And if you give them the right tools and all they need is a little bit of help from the government and everything will be fine.
Anybody who's ever in that field knows that that's completely untrue. And actually it's really hard to help people, especially when they're caught in addiction.
And I would see such terrible, terrible things and hear such terrible, terrible stories, and I really wanted to help them. And it was things like the belief in good and evil.
I think I encountered evil in that environment. People, for example, a drug dealer trying to stop me getting someone into rehab.
Just sometimes in the way that people spoke and what they did.
And, you know, I just realized it's a lot more than just, you know, that offering a government program or free housing or whatever can solve this is something much, much deeper and much more powerful. It has a hold on them and you need someone who's much more powerful in order to, to free them. And just wonderful stories that I heard from people who become Christians.
And real. When people ask me about evidence, then I often cite them, say, well, you know, I know if you've ever known anyone who's a heroin addict and an alcoholic, then you'll know that it isn't a real miracle if they get clean, and not just on methadone or, you know, a bit better, but actually clean, living, loving, productive lives in love.
So that was a big part. It started to challenge my politics. Also.
I probably shouldn't say who. Some of the people involved in that were very right wing, which completely blew my mind in my head. Right wing conservative people were really unloving and they didn't like the politics.
I really, really believe that. And, and I often argued to that effect. However, some of the people who were helping these addicts were very right wing. They didn't even believe in welfare. And that which to me was completely weird belief. How can you possibly think that? That's such a cruel thing to think. But it was from their experience of addiction, how the state can basically prop people up and kill, keep them in. In a. In an unhealthy lifestyle.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: It brought you to a very different place, it sounds like, of understanding this transformation, not only of your heart and desire for love, but your understanding of what is true and real and good.
Um, how to understand that through the word of God, you know, because you became invested in reading about not only who Jesus is, but I'm sure the grand story.
But it sounds like your. Your life has changed pretty dramatically and that you have had this huge paradigm shift. Sometimes it just takes time to shift your entire worldview and the way that you look at life and reality.
What is. What do you suppose it makes you so in earnest to want others to know what you have found?
[00:51:21] Speaker A: My life is so much.
I say this like I.
My life still can be difficult.
I've had really severe chronic migraines, which started not long after I became a Christian, actually. And.
And I currently have cancer. I've been through that battle once before and currently in it again.
And there's lots of healing from the past that needs to be done. And it's been a slow process.
So it's not that life hasn't been difficult, but life is so much better.
And it sounds like those two things are contradictions.
But you can have a difficult life, even a painful life, and still God brings purpose and love and goodness and truth and beauty and those things.
I just been pursuing them ever since pursuing God. He's drawing me into a deeper relationship to. To love. I think often I still have understood living out a Christian life in quite a secular way in the sense that just doing social action or being nice or things like that. I can get distracted by that understanding of how to be a Christian.
But really to be a Christian is to live, abide in Christ and to live through that relationship.
And I am by no means a good example of that at all. But that is my goal and.
And it has absolutely changed my life. And I wish everybody could know that. What can I say to persuade anybody? God is.
God is so much more than what we think he is.
We have. Even in my current state where I feel like I have a good connection with God, I know that I don't understand or perceive him as he really is, and I certainly didn't before.
But it's just a little, tiny, little bit of God, of Christ in life makes it so much Richer.
And all I can do is urge anybody who is on the fence or maybe just one. There's one earth and these Christians are going on about to just keep pursuing. It did take. It took me between me starting to seek and being baptized, I was.
It was at least a couple of years. And then after that there was a lot of. There was quite a few years where my views and change were being challenged and formed.
So because yes, some people have an instant conversion, but for me, and for me, there were certain moments that were like that.
But overall it was seeking. I was seeking God and it took time.
[00:54:32] Speaker B: If somebody is saying, well, I. I want that kind of love, that kind of life, and they are willing to seek, what would you advise them to do? Would you advise them to open the gospels like you did? Is that a good place to start or to go to a church or talk with a Christian or what would you, what would you say?
[00:54:54] Speaker A: I would definitely start with the Bible and the Gospels and yes, go to a church. But try different churches, I would say, because they really vary.
To find a good church that really genuinely is seeking to follow God is a massive treasure.
And I don't think we can really, long term, I don't think you can follow Christ without having some kind of support from other believers.
So, yeah, if you have a bad experience first time, then maybe just keep trying.
But most importantly, I think in your heart, have a genuine search for God.
Not just, oh, maybe, maybe I want to, like, just in case it's true, you know, I don't want to end up, you know, having those kind of thoughts.
Challenge them and just in your heart, really seek. Is this true? Because if it's true, if what Jesus taught is true, it's the absolutely most important thing in the entire world. There's no halfway measures.
So challenge yourself. Are you really seeking or are you kind of hedging your bets a little bit and really seek after God.
Definitely would read the Gospel for me particularly, and probably from my worldview, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were most helpful. But I think to really reflect, am I really seeking God?
And in that seeking God, I can pray, I can talk to God, say God, God, are you there?
If you're there, I want to know you.
And if nothing happens, okay, that's, that's okay because I just, I want to know.
I didn't get that powerful experience of God's love for, for several years, and I'd already committed. I committed to follow Christ before I had that experience.
So I don't Think you get any guarantees of God's going to show up? Sometimes people say that, and I'm not sure it's true.
It's more about coming to a point where you're genuinely seeking God and who God really is. Not what I want God to be, not a God of my own creation. I want God to just, you know, rubber stamp everything I do. Yes, you're a good person. Yes, you're fine. You don't really have to change anything. That's the kind of God we want, but that isn't really who God is. God wants us to change.
He loves us as we are. He wants us to get rid of the selfishness in us. He wants us to get rid of our bad habits. He wants us to get rid of things that get in the way of love and goodness and holiness in the relationship with Him.
And that comes.
It's a struggle. It's not just an easy. You know, and I say that I think people.
I have known, Christians who seem to have an easy time, and maybe there's different ways of, of coming to God, and maybe they've just had a different battle in different ways. I don't know. I'm not judging their walk, but I guess what I'm encouraging people is to really question. Look at their heart and with your whole heart, search for God because He's. He's worthy of, of that. He's worthy of our love and our attention and, and of drawing our, our will towards His.
[00:58:25] Speaker B: Yes, it is. That's where you find love, isn't it? It's, it's very paradoxical to, to give up yourself, but that's when you find the love of God really, when you come to the end of yourself. But, you know, when I think of your story and, and the way that Christians may have played a role in that. I know obviously early on you had that family who was setting a good example for you. They may not have talked with you about Jesus, but they were certainly an embodied example of what a Christlike life looked like. They prayed for you earnestly. And I'm sure that that had something to do with your change as well.
In, in your story. Your, you know, you, you have such a.
A heart of mercy and love yourself. I mean, even before becoming a Christian, you want things to be people to be healed and, and things to be better for humanity.
How can we as Christians either embody Christ in a winsome way, show them what love is. Loving your enemies, you know, allowing the spirit of God, God to live through you.
What are some Ways in which we can help others or engage with those who, you know, you speak with. There are so many even walking the streets of England or everywhere, honestly, these days, there's so much brokenness.
How can we show others the love of Christ in a winsome way or thoughtful way that, that, you know, might make them attracted to the love of God?
[01:00:07] Speaker A: I do believe that probably the most effective evangelistic tool we could have is just our, the depth of our relationship with Christ.
I think that people and I, as I say, I'm not the best example of this. I go through and we go through phrases of where I'm close to God and I'm not. But I think people can, in my experience, and sometimes when you're talking about God, people can sense that there's something that people can sense.
[01:00:48] Speaker B: Go.
[01:00:50] Speaker A: So dealing with our imperfections, our impatience, our judgments in our private prayer time, you know, coming to God and saying, you know, I want to live in you, Christ. I don't want impatience and I don't want grumpiness and selfishness and all these things.
The more that we are filled with Christ, the more that people will be interested. So, yeah, I do think that's the most important thing and depends what Christian tradition you're part of. But some focus more on personal holiness than others.
And I do think there's a danger that if we stomp around in a grumpy way or pray things in a sort of angry way, for example, we can give the wrong impression of God because that's not who God wants us to be. We can see that clearly in Scripture. Nobody becomes a Christian because you sit there and browbeat them.
And those, those arguments can be fun.
And actually, I mean, this isn't necessarily a good thing, but I can, I can win them fairly easily because so many people who will argue with you about God, as in the care enough about atheism to argue with you about it, use science and have no idea what science really is. So actually that's really easy to kind of get rid of that objection.
I don't think it's that difficult to make a good rational case that God exists.
I don't think that's really what's.
It can be a stumbling block for people. I don't think that's really what this is all about.
It's about.
It's a supernatural, it's a miracle. Every conveyed heart is a miracle.
And so, yeah, praying, really reading the Word and, you know, asking God what.
What is my.
What are you wanting from me? What in the Word is challenging me today and what do you want me to do today?
And hopefully then we can become part of his plan rather than us making the plans. Because I'm not sure how effective our plans are.
It's more when we align ourselves with God's plans and what he wants this world.
[01:03:21] Speaker B: So it's obvious to me that you're living in and through the love of God. And there's no doubt in my mind that you are a beautiful, attractive, winsome witness for for him and that others are coming in this mysterious God driven way to the reality and the love of Christ because of your life.
Thank you so much for coming, for sharing your journey and being so honest about it. And even with the ongoing difficulties and struggles, it's just to declare that it's actually better and richer and just more meaningful. And it is the life that it is, truly life. Even with the difficulties of life, even living through cancer, even with migraines, even with just the the struggles of this world that you found that the God that you were that you were seeking after, who was seeking after you, and that you've experienced it even in an extraordinary way and that you want to share it.
So thank you so much Heather for coming on today.
Thanks for listening to Heather's story. If you're searching for real love, the kind that fills your soul, start simply open the Bible to the stories of Jesus found in Matthew, Mark or Luke.
Pray honestly, God, show me. If you're there, try a few churches until you find one that helps you follow Christ.
Do you want more first hand accounts of God's love at work? Explore our featured playlists Is God convincing spiritual experiences or is God good when life hurts? You can find those on our YouTube channel or at xsceptic.org do you have questions or want to connect with a former guest? Email
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