Intellectual journeys

Found via Instapundit, a personal journey to faith through the thicket of unbelief.

Starting point: “I didn’t need faith to ground my identity or my values…and my perception of Christianity fitted well with the views of my fellow students: Christians were anti-intellectual and self-righteous.”

A few points along the way:

• “Briggs [Professor of Nanomaterials at Oxford and a Christian] asked me whether I believed in God. I fumbled. Perhaps I was an agnostic?  He responded, ‘Do you really want to sit on the fence forever?’”
• “I walked into a church for the first time as someone earnestly seeking God. Before long I found myself overwhelmed.  At last I was fully known and seen and, I realised, unconditionally loved.”
• “God wants anything but the unthinking faith I had once assumed characterized Christianity. God wants us to wrestle with Him; to struggle through doubt and faith, sorrow and hope. Moreover, God wants broken people, not self-righteous ones.”
• “…salvation is not about us earning our way to some place in the clouds through good works. On the contrary; there is nothing we can do to reconcile ourselves to God.”
• “Christianity was also, to my surprise, radical – far more radical than the leftist ideologies with which I had previously been enamored.”
• “To live as a Christian is a call to be part of this new, radical, creation. I am not passively awaiting a place in the clouds.”

These are the people who have the kind of impact described by Melba Maggay in Transforming Society (hardcover, paperback).