Raised By An Atheist: My Discovery of Truth

I was raised by an atheist which is not the typical thing you hear from a Christ follower. However, that is where my story begins. I was raised in a secular home with my Dad being the hardcore atheist. My mom has always been more of a universalist. She is a free spirit with an anything goes kind of worldview. (My intention here is not to bash my parents but to give an inside view of my experience.)

Today I’m a strong biblical Christian because of my past and my journey to Jesus was very dramatic. I know Jesus is the truth because of the evidence I found and this is what I want to share.

My childhood was less than stellar and that is putting it mildly. The short version of my childhood is that it was full of strife, abuse, and feeling abandoned by the ones closest to me. My mom took my brother and I to church a few times much to my father’s dismay. Her family were Methodist so she took us a handful of times. It wasn’t too memorable besides the fact that I remember her singing hymns very loudly. Nothing about God or faith was ever talked about at home. My parents were married until I was 10 years old.

After my parents divorce my brother and I lived with my Dad. My dad would call all believers hypocrites and I could see his point using my mother as an example. I thought every believer was like her and so I believed the lie that all Christians were two-faced. I wanted nothing to do with those fake Christians and I cringed when I was around believers. I thought they were all pretending to be something that they weren’t, happy perfect people.

In high school I started to think about life’s greatest questions like was there purpose in life and did I have a purpose. I would lie in bed at night and think about the cosmos and how vast and beautiful it was. I would regularly attempt to imagine just how far it expanded and if it even had an ending to it. In school I was learning about the Big Bang theory and while it was interesting it didn’t seem reasonable to think things just popped into existence without something or someone directing it to. In Biology, I was learning about things like cells and how the human body operated, but that still made me have more questions than answers about how life began and what happened after we die.

I did attempt to talk to my dad about my questions but he always shot my questions down. He said that there was no purpose to life and that I can find all the answers to my questions in science. If I’m being honest that was really depressing and I just couldn’t shake the idea that I had these feelings that there was a purpose to life, even if I couldn’t explain why I felt that way. During this time I was also interested in beliefs of the afterlife, so I spent hours at the library reading books I didn’t want my dad finding out about. They were books on reincarnation, philosophy, and what people believed was the truth about reality.

After I graduated high school and spent a couple years at the local college studying pre-law I decided I wanted to get out of Michigan to discover and experience new things. I took a job as a traveling sales agent, so I was in a new city every two weeks or so. I was around other people my age and soon found myself partying hard every night. I was good at my job and I made enough money to buy anything I wanted. Before too long I was chasing after every high I could get my hands on drugs, alcohol, sex, sky diving, etc. While I didn’t realize it at the time I was just trying to numb my hurt and all the emotional turmoil I experienced in my youth. The world’s message was to do the things that make you happy. I really wasn’t sure what that was in my early 20’s, so I tried many things that I thought would fill that need in my life in order to feel satisfied. Unfortunately, nothing worked and it left me feeling angry and wanting to find something that would make me feel whole and happy.

I returned to Michigan after my 22nd birthday and while I landed an excellent job at the state’s largest law firm I still felt like that U2 song, ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for‘. So, I decided I would start a serious quest to find the truth about life. I so badly wanted to know what truth was and why I was even alive. When I wasn’t at work I was reading books I had checked out at the library. I had already read a lot about philosophy prior to this, so I decided to start with researching the major world religions. I mean they all claimed to know the truth, so I figured that’s the best way to get my questions answered. I avoided Christianity like the plague though because I figured I had been to church, so I know enough about it to put it last on my list.

I started looking at the major world religions outside of Christianity. I remember look at Islam first because growing up in Michigan I started learning about it from the time I was in middle school. It was a big part of my social studies curriculum probably because at this time many Muslims were flooding to our state. I first thought it was full of discipline and beauty especially as I looked at the written language of Arabic. However, that soon faded as I started to read the Hadith which is Muhammad’s thoughts and ideas on the faith. I quickly learned that he took a child bride as his wife when she was only 7 years old. Many Muslims defend him but it was hard to get past the fact that he slept with his child bride when she was 9 years old. While Muslims scholars will give you every excuse in the book it’s hard to get over the fact that he essentially raped a little girl because he felt like it was the right thing to do.

There were other things about the Quran that bothered me but it was the way Muhammad was inspired to write what he did and that he slept with a little girl that made me question this worldview. I also found out that he was convinced that he had interacted with a demon when he was given knowledge but it was another wife of his who convinced him that it was an angel that had visited him instead of a demon.

I went through other world religions with similar outcomes. Hinduism, Mormonism, New Age, Atheism (which I was already familiar with), and many others who failed to convince me that they knew the truth. They knew a fraction of the truth but they didn’t know the full story. I even studied Gnostic beliefs which proved to be false. I read a lot of work by Princeton University professor, Elaine Pagels, and she seemed to accept these lost gospels as fact when there was no evidence to back it up. She also seemed to accept these writings even though they were written a long time after the bible and when the original authors and supposed eye witnesses were alive. Having worked in law that was a big problem for me.

That led me to research the background of the bible and more specifically, Jesus Christ. Many of the religions I researched at least mentioned Jesus, so I wanted to see if he was an actual historical figure. I had my doubts, so I felt more comfortable reading non-Christian books to start. I eventually switched to books about evidence for the bible just to get an overall picture of what people and history said. Most non-religious scholars admitted he was a real historical figure, so I started looking at archaeology. I was shocked to learn that biblical events from the bible lined up with what archaeologists were finding. That shocked me so much that I had to sit back and let my mind wrap around that. Everything I was taught in school and at home was that there was no evidence for the bible and certainly not Jesus. Yet here I was discovering there are truckloads of evidence.

During this time I was also emotionally struggling with my place in the world and if I was important to people. A co-worker at the law firm I worked at invited me to a new movie that was just released. She knew I was researching world religions and was on a truth quest as we frequently went out to lunch together. She also happened to be a Pastor’s wife. Their church had rented out a local theatre and she told me it’s a free movie and that it may help with my research. So, I decided to go. The film was Mel Gibson’s, ‘The Passion of the Christ‘.

I didn’t have much hope for the film before getting there but I was willing to watch it. I really can’t put it into words that would justify the emotions I went through watching that film. Everything I had researched came to life when I watched it as if I was living through it myself. I have never cried at a movie until this film. Evidence came alive that day and when I walked out of that movie theatre it was late afternoon and the sun was starting to set. All of a sudden I could physically see clearer and it was like I could hear and see life all around me as if before I was walking with a cloud over me all the time. I drove back home to my apartment and was silent for hours just thinking through everything I just saw. It was a lot to digest.

It took me a couple of weeks before I could really admit out loud that Jesus Christ is real and what he did here on earth and on the cross is real. It wasn’t just a made up story like I had been told. I met my co-worker one night at a coffee shop to talk through my thoughts because I was an emotional wreck. I knew I had to admit it to her because it was true. It’s not that I wanted it to be true but I couldn’t deny the evidence that it was true. I was scared to admit this because I knew what my family and friends would say. That night at the coffee shop my co-worker prayed with me and I asked Jesus into my life. Not that I needed to ask really he was already there but that night out loud I admitted the most difficult words a prideful Italian raised to believe in atheism could say, ‘Yes, Jesus I believe you. You died for my sins and I thank you for doing so. Please forgive me.’

That night is when I do believe I became a Christ follower. I laid aside my pride and admitted God is real and Jesus is my savior. However, it didn’t really end there. It’s like God was saying, ‘Sarah, you intellectually believed but your heart is not quite there.’

About a week later after I attended church with my co-worker I was at home for a few hours when I felt this cloud of the worst depression hit. I called a friend to come over but she was busy, so I sat there alone with my thoughts. After some time I became convinced that I was a worthless human being and that no one could love me. I felt that must be how God feels about me too. I mean if humans can’t love me why would our Creator love me. I am nothing, no one of importance or worth. I decided to end my life that afternoon. It’s hard to explain to most people the emotional turmoil I had endured for many years and that ending my life sounded like a relief. I wasn’t afraid of the physical pain I would endure. I walked to the kitchen and got out a long knife that I had planned to use. I set it on the counter and walked back to my bedroom to pray one last time.

I started to pray, ‘God I know you are real but I can’t see how I have a purpose in this life. I can’t continue living like this with these emotions of feeling like I don’t matter. So, if I matter to you I need to hear from you or I’m just going to walk to the kitchen and end my suffering. I’m going to flip open my bible now and I really need you to speak to me to know that I, at least, matter to you, if no one else.’

That’s what I did, I flipped open my bible and it landed on Psalm 139 and I read from there until Psalm 145. I read in Psalm 139 how God formed me in my mother’s womb and that all days were written before one day came to be. In Psalm 140 I read words that I needed to see, “Preserve me from violent men, who plan evil things in their heart…” All of these words transformed my heart in an instant. Although I didn’t hear God’s audible voice, I felt him whisper to me that I mattered to him and that my purpose is to glorify him with my life. I know in that moment the Holy Spirit was with me, literally saving my life. I was so thankful for that extreme transformation of my heart that God did for me. Without it I wouldn’t be here today. From that moment on I knew I had a purpose and I’ve never struggled with wondering if I matter to God or what my purpose in life is.

Please note I’m not advocating challenging God like I did. I do think I experienced my first fight in spiritual warfare that day. The enemy doesn’t want people to give their lives to God and will do anything to get people to reject God. I pray my story is an encouragement to what God can do and how he can transform a person in an instant. It doesn’t matter what you have experienced, what kind of family you were born into, or what you have done. God desires you to call out to Him!