EWTN Live - 2014-11-26 - Jennifer Fulwiler - ConversionDiary.com

she was an atheist who had everything the world could offer materially until one day she began to wonder why did it matter what was the point of it all while here about what led her to the Catholic Church tonight so please - you with us thank you thank you to this Wednesday before Thanksgiving I know all your families be gathering around and already some of the sweet smells of dressing and other things being cooked are going on might be some pies being baked hopefully nobody will be putting their fingers into that before its time but as you do get together for your Thanksgiving Day with your families and your friends we certainly want to extend a great Thanksgiving to God for everything that you are but I want to just go on now and also talk about our guest our guest tonight here at EWTN live is a mother of five who has a popular blog conversion diary calm and it's as much about the faith as it is surviving each day in a homeschooling family of five children in addition to that she's an author whose book something other than God tells the story of her journey of conversion from atheism to Catholicism so please welcome Jennifer full Weiler now how old are your children well what's the range that you have well we actually have six you got to be got to be quick to keep up with the full Wyler's last few minutes we're busy we have six and my oldest is actually nine so really busy house and my husband and I are both only children so is that so it's all it's all brand-new to us all bad I'll bet I've known a number of only children who don't understand the squabbles among I know I know that my house was silent I mean you could hear a pin drop and now it's like someone's always yelling always it's amazing to me so yeah it is a brand-new experience one of my favorites is when baby but when brothers go to their sisters yet know is that all boys all girls are mixed oldest and youngest are boys and then all girls in the middle alright and the boys probably do you know go like this and who knew they would argue over just looking at each other it'll be like mommy he's looking at me like he's looking at you who cares yeah I I just didn't go through that is how do I know all these things oh so you know I know my mother said I know you didn't do it be instigated everybody else no here you are with six children and you and your husband a reason and I presume raising them in the faith of course and you know that oh you yourself though did not come from a place where you were raised a Catholic yeah tell us a little bit about your background here so I was raised in a home well first of all I personally was an atheist as far back as I can remember I really seem to be one of those people who is naturally wired for it my dad is an atheist sorted I'm actually not sure what his current beliefs are but he was when I was a child and very very strictly an atheist but he didn't raise me to be an atheist per se he raised me to seek truth in question assumptions and and he always taught me if you have an idea if you have something that you believe to be true make sure you follow your beliefs to all of their logical conclusions really think them through in so in other words he's somebody who really is a thoughtful person who cares not about indoctrinating and shoving it down your throat but who wanted you to learn how to think exact that is exactly it and interestingly he is very supportive of our faith and of my husband and I being Catholic now because he said true to his word he said I always said I told you to seek truth and I respect the fact that that you have done that so but when I was a child its it it it just seemed atheism seemed very natural to me you know this idea that you know I believe that this table is right here because I can touch it and I can see it and measure it observe it and so that that strict atheist materialist view that there there could be absolutely nothing if we cannot see observe or measure it was came very naturally to me okay and that's very interesting but you know a friend of mine who's a physicist uh Anthony Rizzo I don't know if he knows has another name yeah he's working on some physics for little children okay so whether that's something that you might want to check into but he says one of the first steps in being able to find the existence of God is to believe that this is real right you know that's that's so even though you said I can't see God and if I can't measure it at least you believed in the real things around you that's right and that's very important right right that's that's an important first step and you know I think that as I got older one of the things that really solidify solidified me in in my atheism was that you would see people who would believe in the supernatural but would kind of start to concoct some some crazy things you know say well God told me to to do this and that and and to me that seemed dangerous because I thought the reason we stick to believing what we can see and observe is because there there's a certain safety in that because I thought even if you were to believe in the supernatural how would you know that it's God telling you to do something and not just something you want to do and so spirituality actually seemed kind of dangerous to me yeah well see if especially if you come across certain forms of spirituality that are judged by me myself and I right yes yes that's very problematic and it's very common today you see that a lot in all sorts of brands of spirituality that it it is a very self-centered spirituality where essentially you come up with with what you really want to do and then you give it the the divine stamp of approval and to an atheist that was very troubling to me sure well you know to a believer that's also true that's true and it's um you know something that you know in the case of certain groups we certainly in the past there were more of them I think than today but it was a big fad to join various cults that were very destructive sometimes suicidal or murderous as in the case of Jim Jones right so you know you're right these are there's great danger but that danger kept you away from faith you know that you stood you wait what were the next steps well so the the first step in my conversion is and it was a many step process you know which is why it takes a whole book to explain it but the first step was when I met my husband he has a really interesting background and that he was raised very poor raised by a single mother they they just pretty much had nothing when he was growing up and she told him that the way to get out of poverty would be to to go to good schools and so he went to Yale undergrad Columbia Law Stanford Business School and he studied in the master's program studying artificial intelligence in the computer science program at Stanford he's also a CPA now so he's extremely intelligent exactly you know in your mother-in-law she still alive oh yes he's wonderful and she was percent right yes exactly and and so she really encouraged education and so I meet this man who is highly educated just you know not and not just book smart just really understands the world and after we'd been dating for a while it came out that he believed in God and not only believed in God but considered himself a lukewarm Christian he didn't go to church he didn't pray or anything like that his his God was the god of success and career but but he did believe and he said you know I I believe that Jesus is real and I won't deny that and I thought what this guy's educated he's smart like he does the Jesus thing what are you talking about and you know and I'd meet his friends who were as smart as he is and they had like him you know they had more letters after their name than in their name and they believed too and I didn't think they were right I you know I still was baffled by how they couldn't believe it but it was a big first step for me in the sense that it showed me that it is possible to be a reasonable thoughtful person and believe in God I didn't see how it was possible yet but I saw that it was possible and you know that's important I've come across some places and some situations where in fact uh when I was in graduate school one of the other students told me about a preacher who was boasting about how dumb he was and you know I don't condemn somebody for not being well educated but he was bragging they've never gone to finish eighth grade and and never went to high school or college it and um finally one of the sisters uh had to speak up said thank God that you're dumber than and something that's pretty dumb and so uh that's not really our goal right so then what happened so so we got married and and as I talked about in the book the religion was actually not a source of conflict for us because even though I was an atheist and he was not only a theist but believed in Jesus in a certain sense both of us had made an idol of worldly things so we lived downtown we drove a Jaguar xj8 you know that's we had the life that we wanted and so religion was just it was irrelevant to both of us so we got married in a completely secular ceremony I wore a dark purple dress and we had a we had a friend just walk us through our vows which we didn't rehearse so the ceremony was only seven minutes because we didn't and so but apparently the marriage has been longer than the ceremony is it yes yes that's what matters that's right that's exactly right so and and we wanted to make some statement we weren't even married by the state at the ceremony it was kind of a mess so so we got married and we we continued on in our ways but then when my first child was born that was a big moment for me because you know my dad always told me think through what you believe follow your beliefs to all of their conclusions and you know father to be honest I had not really been doing that in my life I just I had I was too busy planning parties and you know driving the Jaguar around and I didn't in my own beliefs had become irrelevant in my life and so that's one of the things that I noticed is fairly common a lot of people will claim to be atheist or more commonly agnostics but they don't keep thinking in insane follow you thoughts right like this they're cool toys out there right and I around the toys yep when you're comfortable you have no incentive to question it very much you know because I because I didn't I think I didn't want to question it because I didn't want to find out that maybe there was more to life than this I wanted to believe that you know going to New York and go into a fabulous cocktail party was you know that I didn't need to think beyond that that I could just accept that this is this is this is what life's about even being aware that cocktail parties or something that you call fabulous the source and summit of my life was it was that kind of thing it really was and so yeah so I had no incentive to question anything until my son was born my first child and then you know just out of love for him I thought if I'm going to be passing a belief system on to him I need to make sure that I have really thought this through and that I know what I believe and so the having a baby kicked thing get back into play yes and not just coasting on toys right exactly because is somewhere in the back of my mind I knew all those years that I wasn't really thinking through what I believed and but I didn't care because it was just it's it's my life I mean I think you're always more reckless with your own life but when it came to my son I thought I want to do it right for him I want to make sure that if I'm teaching him something I have thoroughly evaluated it and made sure that it is true yeah and so when I was holding him you know I was a strict atheist materialist and when I was holding him I looked at this two week old baby and I thought what is he in in my worldview and I thought what a precious little randomly evolved set of chemical reactions that came from nothing and will return to nothing and like nonsense it was it was at that moment that was like I don't believe this I in and of course being the overly analytical person that I am and you'll see all sorts of analysis in the book I immediately thought is it that I don't think atheism is true that he is nothing more than just you know chemical reactions or is it that I don't want it to be true I wanted to be very careful about staying on the track of seeking truth and not just believing what I wanted to believe and and I spent a long time really thinking about that and and the more I looked at that baby and the love I felt for him I thought you know I can't prove it in a laboratory but maybe there are some truths in life that can't be proved scientifically and I came to think that the love that I felt for my child might be one of those truths that it that it comes from something outside of the chemical reactions in our brain that maybe the chemical reactions are the conduit but the source is something external and I thought yeah I can't prove it scientifically but I believe that it is true you know if you focus only on the chemical reactions going on in a baby you're gonna be grossed out ha ha ha and you can look and see you know those two despite those chemical reactions in the smells coming out all enemies I this child is someone I love right in the chemical reactions and my willingness to overcome the grossest of them and ignore that for the sake that is key it is and it I was reminded of what when I was in college I I hung out with a group of atheists where we once had a discussion about how do we determine value of a human being because someone who a Christian or a theist said why would you say that a human being is more valuable than say this NAT of flying around or something and what we came up with was we said you know human beings are more cognitively complex we have awareness we have intelligence and so that's how you derive value but then when I remember that and looked at my baby I realized that to determine value for any organism I had essentially set a scale where over here is like not cog not cognitively complex therefore not valuable and over here is like intelligent adult human very you know very very valuable but I realized my baby wasn't all the way over here on the scale because he actually wasn't that cognitively complex I mean honestly an adult pigs are actually I think more intelligent than newborn babies and I thought oh by my own worldview an adult Pig is more valuable than this baby and it was that kind of thinking that made me think I don't think this worldview makes as much sense as I think it as I thought it did in and you see for instance there are some atheists who still said no the theories are that the more commit to the theory and they're willing to say that you can abort a child up through age six years which is not abortion you asked for what everybody else calls right but you know that's a position actually held by an atheistic ethicist right so you see know that you take that conclusions that makes sense right it sounds shocking but it is actually perfectly logical with it is internally consistent with that worldview yes but you sense something beyond that worldview right in your job I sensed that there was some sort of animating force you know be behind humanity that that an origin for the love that I experienced with this child and in our new family and I didn't know what it was but I I thought that it existed and so I tried saying a prayer the first prayer I'd ever said in my life and I had no idea how to do it I thought you know like tapping a microphone is this thing on like how do you know when you're talking to God I mean I don't know so I just said a quick prayer and I guess just through cultural osmosis I I had heard of these moments when like you know the the non-believer reaches out to God and something happens right like there's a chorus of angels or a sign or something and I was very disappointed when nothing happened you know I just I said a prayer basically saying well if anyone is out there I'm willing to hear from you and when nothing happened I thought well I guess God doesn't exist a personal God either must not exist or must not care if I know him because he didn't respond because I didn't understand how prayer works I thought it was like an instantaneous you snap your finger and things start happening yeah after having a baby which is not instantaneous exactly nobody great yeah so so you know I had I had kind of given up on you know any sort of search for a personal God I was you know reading up on Buddhism which I think honestly in Austin is like required by law you know that you at least say that you dabble in Buddhism so I was just reading up on on that thing and then one day I went into a bookstore and completely randomly I literally did stumbled into this book called the case for Christ it's by a Protestant author at least Strobel and and and I I found it very intriguing you know it was not the case that I read it and I was like he's right Jesus is real but but I he was a former atheist and I think that matters because atheist kind of we had our own language in our own way of viewing the world and analyzing things and in my years you know I grew up in the Bible Belt I had lots of contact with believers and I found that lifelong believers what we were always missing each other I mean when they tried to explain their faith to me I I did I just had no idea what they were talking about but here was someone who had actually been an atheist and so he could sort of speak my language and and one of the things that I think is worth noting because sometimes when I give talks about this people will say what's the name of the book oh I'm gonna give that to every atheist I know and because because if it you know if it changed your mind that'll change their minds but it is I do like the book but one thing to note about that is that I had said the prayer first so I was in a state of openness you know I could have come across that book a year before and I would have just laughed at it and ridiculed it but I was in that state of openness and in that state you know having this former atheist explain his faith in a way that I could understand it it actually had an impact on me and he's done although because even for Strobel his growth first of all I had to deal with his study of physics that's right he had to go through a whole process where he began to realize physics doesn't have this closed system world it can't explain itself and that he would do a lot of research right oh that's very interesting research in its own right and then move toward Christian faith but first it come to believe in God right by seeing that that makes sense within physics exactly and and I think in very similar conversion to my own that I think with with atheists before they can move on to the next step they first need to see well first I mean they they have to just sort of be in a place of openness but but even aside from that they first need to see that it's not unreasonable to have faith you have to have that security that I don't have to check my brain at the door because I think when we we a theist when we're on the outside looking in the impression is that in order to be a believer certainly in order to be part of a religion the way it works is the the hierarchy of the religion tells you to believe something and you just check your brain at the door and you say okay well I believe that then and that that you know that seems crazy and scary and of course is not the way it works and so I think for him and for me certainly that was a very important step to so at least establish okay a reasonable case can be made for exactly in you know I had one of my students who was an atheist and took my course she was from a Jewish background but she took my Old Testament course because she had to take biology and she very well I know about this but you know what she feared was becoming what she called a head not her that in other words you go to a synagogue church or mosque and just agree with everything they say and don't think and she realized no this opened up thinking yes to believe in God and really surprised her but also please because she's much so very very intelligent woman medical doctor in fact oh wow that was exactly in my experience - of seeing the world just opened up you know I was always curious I always wanted to learn about the world and the human experience and science and everything and you know I found that since I've been a believer it's I feel like I'm at that all-you-can-eat buffet I mean there's I feel like there's so much more to learn than I ever knew it was possible like when I I can still be interested and learn about all the things that I was interested in when I was an atheist but now it's just like the boxes is so much bigger it's a bear expansive experience exactly and this is you know and I don't know how your studies have gone since but you know to discover it like say Thomas woods book and other books al Kresta has a new book on you know the crises facing the Catholic Church um these books point out how many scientists were believers who came to science not in secret against the truth but Copernicus dedicated his book to the Pope right to Pope Paul the third and this was part of the the the faith opened them to science right and they loved science more because they were priests and lay people like Louie pasture that's right exactly it's you know it's amazing how having a solid grounding in faith I think really sparks your curiosity makes it makes you want to learn more it you know makes you desire to learn about creation and so to me now and now that I'm a believer it makes so much sense that you know many many of the the great founding fathers of science were not just believers but devout believers I think that curiosity about the sciences in particular is very much just a natural extension of of being a believer well for instance the founder of genetics which is such a huge science now right was founded by an Augustinian priest you know this is this is a some of the marvelous realities that the church you know encourages the Pope's have had an astronomical observatory before you know many other people did right because they loved it yeah and so so this been moved you toward openness toward belief and eventually toward not just believing but making an act of faith well right because I'd be game I became intrigued by the figure of Jesus I began to think that there was compelling evidence that at least that there was something special about him because what the thing that stood out to me about Strobel's book is that one of his experts pointed out you know you you see Jewish culture in first century Palestine that they had all of these really important social and religious traditions like keeping the Sabbath and animal sacrifice and they had they had held to these traditions through unbelievable persecution and then use and again I'm quoting from the book here but you see you know a lower-class guy come from a lower middle class region and get crucified along with a whole bunch of other people you know it really kind of unremarkable circumstances and yet suddenly you see tens of thousands of Jews abandoning these traditions that they had held to through all sorts of persecution through the ages and then Christianity spreads like wildfire despite the fact that being a Christian often meant persecution or death in those times and I took a step back and I thought okay something happened there around this this figure of Jesus Christ and and so I told Joe I said you know I think I'm gonna go Joe's my husband I'm sorry I I told Joe I said you know I think I'm gonna change my search to focus more on Christianity and I thought he would be surprised and excited and and he just said very dryly he said well yeah I guess you would start your religious search with the only major lasting world religion whose founder claimed to be God I mean it just seemed obvious to him and when he said it I thought well yeah that is kind of obvious that you know a cult leaders throughout the ages have tried to get their religions going by saying that their God and then they die and stay dead and everyone's like well I I guess he wasn't God so you know that didn't work yeah some like Muhammad would would absolutely reject any claim right that he was God at all right in his tombs in Medina right and no that was totally part of their faith right and yet here's this Jesus guy he said he was God and his religion is still around and still exploding still change the world today and I thought okay there's something's going on here and so I changed my search to focus to focus on Christianity all right well I've got to change a little bit here because you got to take a break again one remind you of Jennifer's blog which is called conversion diary dot-com and also her book something other than God is available at he dipped in religious catalogue which is ewtn religious catalogue come back in just a couple minutes odd to hear more from her about this very very interesting story conversion please stay with us you back you know what this song this Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I know a lot of your making your own pilgrimage over to Grandma's house or they're making a pilgrimage to your house because the food's good but if you do get a chance to come and join us we'd love to have you I'll make a pilgrimage here to either begin I'll contact our pilgrimage department at two zero five two seven one two nine six six or you can go to our web site ewtn.com thank you all the information you need about scheduling of masters programs tours of the studios information about places to stay place to eat we have some really good place to eat down here some fine barbecue that's not Texas Bob well that's right no mo don't know if it would meet Michael well you just have to learn to be more open-minded and another conversation folks you don't know Texas barbecues much more beef here it's much more pork so but you just love the boat that's and that's why it's golden all right you know we're gonna take a question from our studio audience first and almost story young man where are you from I'm from Ann Arbor Michigan good to have you here welcome up there I am I'm at University of Michigan's dental school oh good for you so would you question my question was if throughout your search for truth and throughout the study of Christianity if anything you came across in terms of people who claim to be Christian or people who claim to be followers and other human atrocities that had happened in the name of a religion and how that affected your outlook on that world you very question yeah great question um it absolutely did and I think even before the atrocities done in the name of God bothered me I just had a personal I I had the personal experience of we moved around a lot when I was a child and being the Atheist family we we were always in the Bible Belt for some reason and I had quite a few experiences of getting a very unwelcoming reaction and in fact sometimes a downright hostile reaction you you know when I was a child when it would come out that our family didn't go to church you know people would say now where where do you guys worship and I'd say like oh we're uh I I I'd learned the terminology I'd said we're we're still looking for a church home and you know when that was when three years later we were still looking for a church home everyone kind of figured it out and folks don't realize but in the south it's not unusual for the real estate oh yeah ask you that is exactly right and so I there weren't a lot of young atheists in my elementary schools and I was on the receiving end of a lot of just hate or outright hate and hostility from Christians and I didn't see them living I didn't see them transformed by their by their faith at all you know and in fact the atheists I knew were more generous you know more giving cared more about other people than some of the Christians I saw and that was one more data point of saying like see I knew this was bunk I knew it because I don't see lives transformed here they're there they're living just like we are in many ways and so it's the same thing like with you but the wars and the atrocities it's it's it's it's a big data point for atheists to say you know youyou would think that you would see you know people acting a little different if God exists but what I began to see in in my conversion is that first of all God gives us free will and so you know in the theory of Christianity is not that you become a saint robot where you know everything you do is always perfect so III so first first of all I saw that within the Christian worldview it was it internally consistent it didn't violate what they claimed about their faith that there would be people who mess it up and mess it up in big ways Jesus our Lord has parables about deep weeds and the wheat grow up together right and but then you know I began reading about the lives of the saints and just butt in or just saintly people and and I saw that you see this group of the people who are holy within Christianity the people who do Christianity like you're supposed to do Christianity there is nobody like them in the world like that that proof I was looking for a well if this Jesus guy is who he says he is wouldn't wouldn't people act differently wouldn't they do amazing loving things I saw there is it's a small group unfortunately you know it's not as big as it should be but there is this group of people you know the Saints and who've lived throughout history and the saintly people who live today and you do see them doing just heroic superhuman acts of love and you don't really see that level of love in in groups anyway you know and anywhere else and I found that very remarkable when one of the things I like to point out two elements on one hand the religious wars talked about this many times on my program but I found this at the University of Hawaii which is not a Catholic or Christian University it's a State University but at the University of Hawaii just Hawaii dot edu slash power kills in there they do a chart of the people who died in the wars of Christianity which really were from the mid 11th until the mid 17th century that's when you see the Christian wars for the most part and in that period 2.5 million people died now this is not to be commended by any means but take a look then at the secular wars in the Napoleonic Wars the French Revolution they equaled that in a short time in the secular Wars an atheistic genocides of the 20th century between 1914 when the war is about nationalism a secular idea of the importance of the state over the church and then you have National Socialism oh that Socialist Workers Party the Nazis you've got the Communists and Soviet Union China and Cambodia and the other common spot countries they added that all up so between 1914 and 1991 it's 305 million people died in wars or mass executions working people to death mass state-directed starvation's for instance in Ukraine and Ln China and elsewhere 305 million in that short period when a theist do get their way right well it this is absolutely astounding the other side is that it's the Catholic Church that invents the university the hospital the orphanage the mental institution in many other areas of study in that those are specifically Catholic inventions right the the pagans never had them right and you know that we're still one of the largest operators of hospitals and schools in the country well what you see with those you know you talked about the huge death rate and some of those you know atheistic regimes in a way it's not surprising because when you have a purely atheistic state it doesn't take very long before you get to the belief by the people in power that human lives are worth if you don't start with this idea that you know if you're the one in power that some someone more powerful than me created these people and they are valuable and I answer to the person more powerful than me if you don't believe that if you think that you are the arbiter the arbiter of all truth and all power in value right exactly exactly if you think you are the art arbiter of human value it is very tempting and very easy to just say all of those people over there are worth nothing their lives are worth nothing and so it's not surprising that you see those huge huge numbers getting racked up in terms of death you just compare the two hundred and forty years of Crusades that's one of the people obvious is horrible a million people died in the Crusades you know all together in the first month of World War one the same number of people died and the Eastern Front in the russian-german battle in August of 1914 a million soldiers died in one battle in one month compared to 240 years a million people dying and again I don't commend that know it what happened in the Crusades but we also need perspective right on how nationalism treated the people as cannon fodder right and that wasn't that wasn't good for the poor people that died yes it's yeah it like you said it's so important to have perspective on these things because especially in our culture there's just sort of it's just taken as truth that nobody questions that Oh religions have killed so many people so many people and we really need to make sure that we're looking at the facts so we know exactly what we're talking about in you know in terms of your own development um we did we got to how you came to believe in God and that openness to God and especially how the openness to the person of Jesus Christ doesn't make sense to you unless what he says is true right of all the people crucified under the Romans in Palestine of that day and there are lots of them and 6bc hundreds and hundreds if not thousands were killed by the Romans and Jewish people of and Galilee and so this one gets to transform the world where did you go next in terms of what brought you to faith okay so I was very I found myself very intrigued by Jesus because of what you just said so I started so I bought a Bible I know I knew that the Bible was was the Christian book because I wanted to know more about him I wanted to know who he is and so that was my goal at this point just get clarity on so who is this Jesus guy he clearly did something amazing I want to know who he is so I bought a Bible and I was about as ignorant of the Bible as you could be growing up in in modern America I I didn't completely understand the distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament and so I started the Bible on page one thinking that I thought you read it like a book you reading her to cover I thought Jesus would come in on page thirty fifty I don't know so I'm in the Old Testament like expecting the story is about fishermen and you know water and widen up like what is numbers Leviticus like what is this so I was completely baffled by the Bible and a couple things I ended up reading not all of the whole Old Testament but most of it and then all of the New Testament and a couple things stood out to me one is that I didn't see a clear case for the Christian moral code as I knew it I knew something about what what Christians believed but I didn't I mean I could sort of see how you could get parts of it but but I didn't see it clearly laid out and I also didn't understand you know this question of who Jesus is you could kind of have different interpretations of some of the stories and I wasn't clear on how I was supposed to interpret that and I would go online and and look at you know different Christian interpretations of various parts of the Bible and everybody had a different interpretation and everybody said that their interpretation was right and and and so what I saw is that these people were not worshipping the same Jesus they each sort of took away the Jesus that you know felt right to them made most sense to them and said that's who Jesus is and as someone who didn't know who Jesus is I said you know I I need an objective answer not just your your personal take on how you personally interpret the Bible so very very quickly I saw the need for authority as someone who came to Christianity completely fresh and just picked up a Bible and was trying to find Jesus I it was immediately clear to me that this system this you know me and the Bible all alone system simply doesn't hold water it just doesn't work yep so Wow well I I had started a blog and which was came very naturally to me I had had various websites and I had actually recruited people who did a great job of defending Christian beliefs in various atheist forums and and stuff like that and later I would find out that all of the people that I recruited I would email them and say you did a great job of defending your beliefs that I'd like for you to talk to me these were people who used reason and knew about the sciences and were very just educated reasonable and intelligent all of them that I had self-identified as as being able to just demolish atheist arguments we're all Catholic it turns out and that in that was not intentional so I had these Catholic readers who unbeknownst to me at the time were Catholic and so I went on my blog and I said what's guy I cannot make heads or tails of the Bible and and I also said you know this system of you know reading the Bible just by yourself to find Jesus it requires literacy it requires the printing press these are things that have not always been widely available if nothing else it requires free time to be able to you know just read the Old Testament and know how the Scriptures work with one another and I said you know guys this is a mess I think if this system just doesn't work and they said that you know maybe there's a need for an authority they gave the analogy of you know imagine if the founding fathers of America had just distributed the Constitution to individuals and said make of this what you will you know we need a Supreme Court to to guide the interpretation of the Constitution and so using that analogy which appealed to me you know as a lawyer's wife they said you know what if there's a need for Authority what what if when got you know how God inspired the writers of the Bible how he took imperfect people and conveyed perfect truth through them what if he kept doing that in founding a church what if he is still doing that to this day in a church that still exists and I said that makes a lot of sense and then they said that's the Catholic Church and I said oh no no no not the Catholics no and and Joe in the Bible book you probably did not hear that as one of the optional pushed on I did not I had no idea I had never heard that theory I did not know it was an option I only knew the Sola scriptura version of Christianity and so Joe my husband he had been raised Baptist and was fairly anti-catholic even though he was a lukewarm Christian I often say that when we got married the only thing we had in common religion wise was that we were both anti-catholic he really recoiled at that and said you know Catholicism it's they have all these pagan influences and they worship Mary and I mean you know you've heard it all and so he said you know we we cannot we can't go any further with this religious stuff you're doing because these people are Catholic and that's bad and and I said but what choice do we have I I said this there's something to this Jesus Christ guy like I I really think there is but there is no Christian theory there is no system of Christianity that makes sense outside of this Catholic Church that claim that it is a divinely guided living church that speaks truth through imperfect people to all places in all time I said I don't want to become Catholic either but I don't think we have choice because this is the only theory that is even plausible within Christianity and he obviously followed that right yes and well my husband and I both ended up converting because we we decided to seek truth together because by this time he had become interested and at first he didn't really he wasn't particularly interested in my search for truth and my religious quest but by this time he was on board and we agreed we said well let's just let's just figure out what's true and let's see where it leads us and so you know spoiler alert here in the book but we did both end up becoming Catholic which is interesting since I when we got married I was an atheist and he was an anti-catholic Baptist who didn't practice right and and the biggest thing I think that and and this is one of the reasons I had to work so hard on this book is because I think God slowly revealed to me what the story was really about that even more than me letting go of atheism and my husband letting go of his lukewarm Baptist background what we really had to let go of was our real religion which was the world.we because what we really worshiped was our idols you know just the the lifestyle that we lived and and that wasn't actually clear to me and to like the the third rewrite I did on my book that it was only then that I realized this this wasn't as much it's sort of about me leaving atheism but it was more about am I willing do I believe in God enough to really put him first to put him above all these things that I like so much you know the travel and the cocktail parties and stuff like that though you know one of the things I like about your story is that your oldest son was the instigator even before he could talk and as an oldest boy who was an investigator tell your son I admire his good work I will when you assume that as you homeschool you also are communicating the faith to your children that's right do you find do they find that oppressive no not at all to them it's it's such a natural part of life I think that you know they know that that I wasn't raised Catholic and I think it's the to meat to them I think it seems like there must have been something missing because it's so natural to stop and to say a prayer and to ask for a Saints intercession or you know to just communicate with with God and and the divine I mean that it I think it just feels like a very natural part of life to them that's good and hopefully they'll want one of the things I certainly remember well was a boy going to Catholic school is that we would read bog feasts of saints and they were so interesting that's right they're funny we're interesting than the sinners that's right you know the sinners do some things that are catalyzing but interesting right the same sins that's right yes in the CS Lewis has that great quote which I can't remember exactly what he said but he basically said the tyrants of the world are all alike but you never see such rich beautiful diversity as with the Saints right right right and this is one of the great things about having faith you know it's very much an important thing that you do with your blogging because a lot of people meet on the Internet atheists don't have churches that's right and so they use the Internet as the meeting place to recruit other atheists there are a lot of young people on the Internet right and for you to be blogging I I don't do that myself you don't have a blog father it's you know but the folks like you are out there to realize for a lot of other people that this is a great way to be missionaries you know you can stay at home even if you're homebound that's right this is a great way well and with a lot of kids and all this and to use this as a great tool so I want to mention that your blog is conversion diary dot-com and folks are welcome do you have rules about being polite and stuff you know I don't have rules actually and I haven't found that I've really needed to oh good good well hopefully it'd be very nice they are everyone is you know even the atheist who and I have quite a few atheist readers and I love them and they tend to be quite polite actually that's wonderful that's that's the kind of dialogue we want to see that's right well you know it's time for us to end thank you so much for being with us and may the Lord bless you and your whole your families wherever they may be especially on this Thanksgiving weekend may God bless you keep you the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen and you spend more time with each other less time shopping on good Black Friday and enjoy each other's company and were thankful for you watching and for supporting us so please do keep us in between your gas bill your electric bill in the cable bill because we have a lot of bills to pay too god bless you and thank you you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 18,258

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television, ConversionDiary.com, Eternal Word Television Network (TV Network), Religion (TV Genre), Jennifer Fulwiler, Blogger (Website), Author (Profession)

Id: qZDy0YunOHM

Length: 56min 35sec (3395 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 27 2014