Stepping into the Light

This story continues from my last blog post (11/16/08). This is the third in a four post series on how I became an atheist. Of course, this only scratches the surface.

You see, my spirit had been fed the milk but not the meat of God’s Word and, on all sides, the world contradicted that Word: through high school science classes in which The Big Bang and—even more vigorously—evolution were taught as fact rather than theory; in magazines I read voraciously, such as Ms. and Essence, which propagated the notion that abortion was a woman’s right and not murder; that a man’s chief worth lay in accommodating a woman sexually and otherwise, unless she preferred to partake of another female; by the advertising and entertainment industries pushing the idea that with the availability of birth control, all and sundry should take pleasure in fornicating with any willing candidate they found attractive. I didn’t see anybody "cool" who supported anything from the Bible except perhaps the Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," taken from Luke 6:31.

I denied the existence of God for seven years. He sent people to tell me about Him—like Jackie, a great friend who bribed me with home cooked Jamaican meals to get me to church. She spoke to me about her relationship with Jesus Christ every time we got together, and whenever I came to her apartment, Jackie tuned in Oral Roberts on television. Of course, after I heard Oral Roberts declare that Jews were destined for hell if they didn’t accept Christ, I became so alarmed that for years afterward I warned as many people as I could that he and probably most other evangelists were insufferable bigots. Each time Jackie brought up Christ, I called her crazy and told her not to waste her time, but she didn’t stop loving me.

When we started seeing each other, my late husband, Jae Mason, declared that I had to be blind not to believe in God. He tried to convince me with examples of God’s work, even though he was not a Christian then. But until God allowed me to get myself into a fix that I could not repair on my own, I continued to enjoy my "charmed" life without Him.

To be continued...

(excerpted from my book, Stepping into the Light: You're a Christian, what now? )