Light On Dark Water

Of course conversion stories are always interesting; it’s always interesting to see the different ways and means by which God calls people. Some he commands directly, with a presence that can’t be denied or refused; others follow a trail of faint and ambiguous intuitions. I find it especially intriguing to hear the story of someone who grew up without religion and found his way to it as an adult, against what would seem to be strong odds. Such is the case with Jennifer F.:

When I was 26, I had never once believed in God. Raised entirely without religion, I was a content atheist and thought it was simply obvious that God did not exist. I thought that religion and reason were incompatible, and was baffled by why anyone would believe in God (I actually suspected that few people really did). After a few years in the Bible Belt, I became vocally anti-Christian. Imagine my surprise to find myself today, just three years later, a practicing Catholic who loves her faith (my husband and I both entered the Church at Easter Vigil 2007). This is the chronicle of my journey.

It’s in two parts, Why I Believe in God and Why I’m Catholic.

This section in particular struck a chord with me:

The more I went through the motions of believing in God, the more the world started to make sense to me. The more I started to make sense to me….I saw the psychological harm that certain actions that seemed totally innocuous in my atheist worldview had caused me; I was finally able to put a name to the deep stirrings within my soul I’d experience when listening to a profound piece of music or hearing about an act of evil….

Sometimes I think it all comes down to those deep stirrings: you have to decide whether they’re just a more sophisticated version of the pleasure and pain reflexes that all animals have, or are trying to tell you something about the real, and I mean real, world.

I might leave the word “me” off that sentence about the psychological harm caused by certain actions; I’m more worried about the harm I’ve caused other people.

(Hat tip to Mark Shea.)

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