Journey Home - 2012-07-23 - Former Atheist - Marcus Grodi with Jennifer Fulwiler

good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program over the 15 or so years we've had a great variety of men and women who've joined us on this program to share how the holy spirit has opened their heart to a deeper relationship with our Lord Jesus and His Church and they've come from a great variety of backgrounds especially if you've been watching the program over the years some of them come from backgrounds in which Catholic the Catholic Church was a part of their upbringing some discovered this later in life others of us come from a background where the last place we ever wanted to be was the Catholic Church or ever considered that that's where we might end up our guest tonight Jennifer full Weiler comes from a background that is be seemingly more and more prevalent today in our world if you watch the the news you hear more and more atheists are not only becoming vocal but are getting organized and to what extent is that something for us to be concerned about more and more we're hearing about communities whose tradition were in the judeo-christian heritage but are being forced to deny that heritage because of the pressure of modern activists atheists and so our guest tonight is Jennifer full Weiler who is a former atheist Jennifer it's great to have you thanks so great to be here on the program it is probably again like with so many of the guests as the last place you ever thought you'd be 10 years ago oh yeah well even five years ago when I used to watch the program I can still remember sitting in my living room watching you so it's very surreal to be here it's great to have you here and I do want to mention to the audience that you were a contributing author in the book the church and new media by Brandon vote and they may recognize your name because you have a very popular blog on National Catholic Register is that right that's right yeah it's it's a lot of fun to be able to write for them it's such a great publication and owned by EWTN just really really good stuff going on there yeah well it's good you're doing that I will tell the audience the beauty of of the blogosphere it's got the negatives and the positives the negatives is we're living in an age where a hundred years ago if anybody wanted to say something it was tough you had to get into a publisher's good side whether it's a newsprint or in a book world about the only way that the average American could get a voice in the public eye was in the opinion page the news there was it if that if that we still had to get accepted right today we're at the other extreme is that anybody can say anything to the world and in a sense the devil laughs because on the one hand the good media opportunity that the Lord has provided in this day and age has been used by the other side too it has well and the other thing that comes with it that's very different than the op-ed page or even you know letters to the editor in a newspaper is with this new publishing forum not only can can anyone have a boy voice but they can often do so anonymously and you say a lot of different things and a lot of different tone than you would if you had to put your personal name behind it yeah so the reason I'm bringing it up before we do the interview is that Jennifer's blog is on a very trustworthy site and her her blog along with her other blogging compatriots on National Catholic Register are very trustworthy and I would highly recommend all the blocks including including yours Jennifer so you've watched the program before so you know what I do get out of the way as soon as I can and invite you to help the audience know where you came from plenty of spiritual doing well you know I I was always an atheist I mean I don't remember believing in God even as a child you know when I you know when I was five years old and really wanted something for Christmas or something it would have never occurred to me to appeal to some kind of higher power I'm one of those people I come from a long line of Engineers and I'm a natural materialist I guess you could say you know I believe in this desk because I can see it I can observe it and why would I believe in anything that I can't see and I can't observe it that's is fascinating to me because I dabble a little bit with it in college scientific materialism but even we think about people of faith I'll ask the the guests on the show at what point in your life did you have a cognitive reality of God a realization of God accepting God as opposed to just going along as a Christian and not thinking about it were you a cognitive atheist did you realize you didn't believe in God or it was just the soup that you were brought up in that just never came to your mind that's a great question very much so I was a I was a cognitive atheist especially after maybe say age age 10 or 12 because now my dad was he was really the one who we really bonded on on those kind of beliefs he's great guy and still to this day always encourages me to seek truth question assumption you know find what's true whether it's convenient for you or not and in his own journey that led him to atheism and with me too when I was younger I said you know he didn't force that belief system on me but he did encourage me to not just go with the flow not just believe something because he believed it but to come to my own conclusions so I came to the conclusion that atheism was true and this coincided with the fact that we lived in some areas where there was a certain type of Christianity that you know for example I would be called a Satan worshiper because my family didn't go to church I would be I got honestly you know some pretty hostile treatment by people who very vocally labeled themselves as Christians just because you were not active exactly therefore that meant you were proactive in the other direction and that's what they thought you know looking back what I think it was it was just a typical you know social thing where people you know they just formed cliques I mean it wasn't about Jesus it was kind of about cliques and who goes to this church but I didn't see that at the time so I developed a very visceral negative reaction to people of faith because they would claim to be Christians and then you know I would see them not really living out their own beliefs but then judging me so I I became one of those atheists who thinks well religions dangerous it's dangerous because I have seen it used as a tool for people to wield control over others or you know advance their own agendas and then say well God gives me the stamp of approval for what I'm doing and so by the time I got to college I was really a very vocal atheist and you know unfortunately I really worked to talk Christians out of their beliefs because because I thought it was dangerous frankly so you were moved towards vocal active atheism partially as a reaction to the hypocrisy you saw in Christians that right now I will say part of it it just in speaking for me personally I do think part of it was pride you know one thing that one thing the new atheists have done and there was a little bit of this even when I was in college they have done a very good job of branding atheism as it's for the Intelligencia you must be very well educated and intelligent if you're an atheist and oh boy does that appeal to an 18 year old you know I'm a rebel and I'm smart you know and I get to have this big cause so yes the hypocrisy of Christians was definitely a key piece but there were some other things going on as well but there's also the other piece was that you were getting from your father and then I don't want to label your father in any way here but there was the underlying emphasis that the determination of what is true is within you well actually I don't know I I think that he was and again still is would say you have to he would definitely not say you know you find what's true within yourself he would say you know you research you learn about the world that you have the ability to determine right what is true right would he have said that there is a truth that's I think so I think so and I think because well I certainly believed that there is a truth and that it that it is that neither God nor a spiritual realm exists I mean that's definitely what I believed all right but for morality ethics well that's where it gets tricky yeah okay so maybe what would you say that that during those first parts of your life as you're moving towards active atheism partially as a result of what you saw amongst Christians that you had not thought through all the implications yet morale morally ethically what about in the areas of just origins and purposes of life and and this earth and all the order and all those issues that the creationists what will throw up against the the Darwinian Zoar whatever was that a part of your cognitive thinking at that state your life it was that also later but it well it was and and that was something that sort of began to trouble me when I thought you know so wow we're really just a randomly evolved series of chemical reactions that you know as an atheist I had to accept I am NOT inherently different than this plant you know we're both bang the table while ago you might have been banging your sister exactly and I thought you know the the only way we we determine value of human beings is as atheists we would say well human beings are more cognitively complex and and you know and we're smarter and that's why we're more valuable than say an at and then and a fellow atheist actually caught me on this a professor famously stated when I was in college he said that it would be more ethical to kill a newborn human baby than to kill a pig because pigs are smarter than babies and that's how we determine value is by intelligence and so I was horrified of course but then I thought I cannot refute that statement from my own atheist materialist worldview and that goes back to the moral code that you brought up that you know a big thing that that I really believed in and that I was raised to believe in is that you know I was an atheist so that I could be a better person you know I don't need a book I don't need a man in the sky to tell me what to do I'm I am free to just be a good person out of the goodness of my heart and the way we justified that as a theist is to say well humans have evolved to you know it benefits our communities for for people to be peaceful and happy and that's why it's better to be you know a good and moral person but then I realized you know if you look at evolution you could also concoct you know just in a purely materialist worldview a moral code in which survival of the fittest is the highest school like a lot of the ancient empires where it's like you kill the weak and you steal their stuff and that's that's the right thing to do because you know it's best for the fit to survive and I realized I have to accept this if I'm going to be an atheist if we've involved to such a point that we are so much superior than our predecessors then it's now our responsibility for evolution and so it's our responsibility for our those who come after us to make sure we do everything we can to make sure the gene pool is purged of all bad effects so people that have bad genes need to be purged from the gene pool and that's what the doctors did in Germany yep 70 years ago yeah I mean that was the the natural trajectory of that thinking it's it's an inevitable result and and you see it happening in our atheistic society and you know I know a lot of atheists and they would all say no I think that's terrible of course I would never advocate for you know the extermination of the weak that's that's deplorable but I think what they'll find is as our society begins to question more and more assumptions and assume that this atheist materialist worldview is what we must base our values on I think that they're going to find that their own worldview is able to justify some really chilling things especially if we get to a point where we have a government controlled health plan that has to decide between people whether this person or this person will receive the care who decides thank the elderly or a 30 year old right and they will decide or an infant and so who will whose morality ethics will decide and if it's this evolutionary that believes well that little baby or that senile old person is neither them as smart as that pig right I'll supposed to stop it would you save again before we move on to your next step in the journey looking back though at that time would you say that this group of rising atheists within our culture is something we need to be deeply concerned about that is such a good question I mean on the one hand their arguments are so weak that it's kind of hard not to laugh I mean it's you know it's it's it's hard to be deeply concerned when you when you read what they're saying they consider themselves so intellectual but like when you read their books I mean III read that book The God Delusion and I was just laughing it's silly I mean these arguments are it's you know it's like a fifteen-year-old wrote it I mean it's just not not something that you know someone who is steeped in in history and in philosophy it's just not something they would have written so I so I'm not concerned about their arguments I am concerned a little bit about you know what they're trying to do in society that they're trying to institute a purely atheist materialist moral code on Society because as we were just discussing I think that has terrifying implications yeah you think some of them opted for it because just simply what you hear I don't want some God telling me how to live my private life is that just the simple that's not what I see actually a lot what I see I think there's a little bit of that it's but certainly nobody says it consciously what I see more is people saying I want to be free to be a good person without you know I think they may have seen some of the things that I saw of you know hypocrisy and you know there are a lot of different views these days on what Christianity is so I think what happens is people might run into a so-called Christian who really does have some hateful beliefs that you know we would also think are hateful and that and they say well if this is what religion is then religion is dangerous and I want to be able to you know do what's right in my heart or whatever without this you know crazy belief system holding me back and so I would say for most of the people I speak to who embrace atheism that's a pretty that's a pretty significant motivator and and I think there's also that issue of you get the payoff of its branded as you know for the smart people were you surrounding yourself with fellow thinkers at that time in your life atheists yeah I mean you know I think unfortunately I went to a school where there is a a vibrant Catholic Center and and you know I had no idea what great intellectual tradition there was there that I would have loved I mean as an atheist you truth-seeking atheist I mean the truth was right there but but I did i I surrounded myself with atheists and and by the time I graduated from college I don't know if I knew anyone who was a practicing believer I knew a few theists but I don't think I knew any practicing so all your readings your internet searches everything were familiar feeding of where you were right exactly they confirmed where I already was and if you did by chance come across a Catholic or even a Christian or Jewish site your immediate response was always tainted with the presumption that these people are lost exactly although as I say in that book what happened as I sort of softened towards belief the blog world really did help me because I would I would some people would share their stories and they happen to be Catholic or you know some other Christian denomination and I would say these people seem so happy and I noticed that there was a sense of peace when I would accidentally wander into the Christian blog world as opposed to when I was in the there's so much angst and stress and just discomfort in their own skin you know among the secular bloggers and then I'd go to the Christians and and especially the Catholics and just see there's just such a peace there and so that that did that did pique my was that the spark that started no the spark was when I wouldn't met my husband okay all right so he has so you were involved with active atheist dating you were evangelizing as an atheist tryand yeah well yeah no well my husband is actually a believer and I didn't realize that until after I met him but he has this interesting story he he grew up poor and his mom told him that he needed to go to some good schools so he went ahead and went to Yale Columbia and Stanford you know just coming up with rooms for the party and and so I knew that he was smart you know I couldn't say that this guy wasn't smart and yet he believed in God and he'd been raised Baptist and was not practicing any faith but he would never deny Jesus either and I was shocked like you have this guy with this amazing education and here he is saying he's some kind of Christian like what is going on here and I didn't necessarily think he was right but that was the first step in my conversion because it shattered that belief that you know only smart people or atheist so yeah I'm wondering if you were so active in atheism it's almost interesting that he of course you said he wasn't practicing that much well he wasn't practicing and that's actually a funny story of it religion hadn't come I was not at that point I was more focused on career I had I had I'd found a God in a way and that was money in career and so I wasn't so active in atheism at that point this is right after college because I just wanted to you know make money and do career stuff and so it actually didn't come up when we were first dating and then I had this moment where you know I sat him down and I said I know you you've mentioned you're a Christian which is weird we'll talk about that later but I need you to know I am an atheist and I waited you know was he gonna cry what was he gonna do he laughed he laughed at me and he said no you're too smart to be an atheist you'll you know you'll get over it and I mean he just he was so entrenched in this idea that atheism is just silly that he thought you know he said oh this is just a phase you know yeah you'll get you'll grow out of it before we move on again nothing crossing mind since you mentioned that you had found your God which was wealth career success I would like you to talk into that a little bit because as a Christian even though I wandered I don't ever remember a day when I didn't think that one day I'll stand face to face with my Creator responsible for my life yeah and not necessary with a dread or as if it just gonna be a mean-looking you know but that even if it's just sitting on a cloud next to Jesus and he'll say okay what you do with your life I've never had a moment without that thought you must have had a time where that never the idea of career and wealth was only for this life then right right well and it also begged the question that I tried not to think about what happens when this life is over you know it was this very fatalistic almost way of living that all we have is this life and you know your life is is just multiplied by zero at the end of it just there's nothing and so I guess all you can do is just you know try to have the most fun and and the big thing the big I guess you could say zeitgeist and the among the you know secular world that I hung out with was autonomy you need complete control over your own life because then you'll be able to do whatever you want to be happy and so that was really my goal I think more than anything was autonomy I needed money so that I could be more free and and there was almost this desperation this like treading water to to try to amass enough of whatever it was I needed cars money the place I lived whatever to you know to finally find that lasting happiness and there was always one more thing it was the carrot stick you know there was always one more thing I needed to be happy and then I'd get that thing and there was one more thing I mean it just never ended it would almost seem that another at least a SUP a sleeve from an atheist perspective is that I'm going to aim for wealth and I'm gonna do what I've got to do to get there and if I get myself so deep into a mess there's suicide because it's just like turning off the TV right that's all that it really is from an atheist perspective there's nothing afterwards there's no judgement there's not another life there's an atheist wouldn't even believe in reincarnation it's just I just I'll do everything I can if it works out great if it doesn't I can anytime I want to that's right know if that was ever part of your thinking it's you know I think for a lot of people it can't help but cross your mind and it's not it's not even a you know I think the dramatic thing it would be for a believer because like you said it's just sort of my life is going to be multiplied by zero at some point the result is the same regardless of when it happens and you can't help if you're an intellectually honest atheist you can't help but think about that and it's scary because it's so false but you know and I think the devil really you know he sees someone's thinking that direction and he's like yes yes you know get keep keep on that train of thought I mean even to again if you see the spiritual warfare which they would deny you would deny that there's any other voices in your head other than your own set you up for the scary destination of are you indeed thinking on your own or are there so many other influences in your life both them out and with with the end that make you think you've an intellectually arrived but in fact you are dead wrong right yeah I think one of the things I worry about most with people who have either fallen away altogether with belief or maybe a lukewarm is that they don't understand the reality of spiritual warfare and I think on the date on a day to day basis you know to be honest I think one of the one of the ways that my faith most comes into play just on kind of an hour-to-hour basis is that knowledge of that there are spiritual realities out there and spiritual attack is real we don't like to talk about it it's not popular but it's real and looking back in my life I see so many very very dark periods I went through that there was definitely a spiritual warfare component involved but it's like I had a target on my back because I had no idea I had no idea yeah Bolivia stood yeah oblivious to it so during those old years all those years you didn't have somebody pull you aside and say have you ever accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior that just didn't happen to you during those years oh I did a lot well because I in college I had a roommate who was a devout Baptist and it kind of an ding story we are often commented that we had so much in common and we thought so much alike she was a devout Baptist I was a devout atheist and she is now Catholic too so now we go to Mass together oh just so fun oh it's great but but no she did she really she really tried to share her faith with me a lot of people did and it would I'm not being flippant here when I say it would be like if someone said you know Marcus have you made your wish list for Santa Claus is are you gonna do that before Christmas I seriously that is literally how I heard that question it was so absurd to me that I just couldn't I'd it's like we were speaking two different languages so you kind of patronized I did them I did other words you feel sorry for them they're caught in this thing but they're good people and you assume that once they intellectually matured they would grow out of this goofy and it's the same way somebody might decide that the Easter Bunny really doesn't bring those eggs and scatter them around the yard right okay literally that's how I thought all right okay well this is a good place to pause can we come back we're gonna find out how your relationship with your future husband really was the door that opened your heart to the church okay Jake for this is pause welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is Jennifer full Weiler and as I mentioned earlier she is a blogger at National Catholic Register her blog site is WWE conversion diary calm that's my personal blog your personal life but you can also find her writings at National Catholic Register and for those who just turned in she was a flaming atheist but you said actually that one of the sparks that the Lord used to get you thinking about or at least challenging that that position was your husband that's right and right yeah husband-to-be and his story was very similar to yours that you know he went through phases where he was not practicing but he always had that knowledge I will stand before my Creator and it was you know more or less you know close in his mind he was also very concerned with career and stuff but you know he was baptized in a full dunk Baptist ceremony when he was I think about 13 and he just had this you know experience of a true encounter with Jesus Christ and you know as I was this is skipping ahead a little bit but I'll say later as I was researching Christianity I pointed out a lot of problems that I was seeing and it seemed to me that this just wasn't gonna check out and I asked him I said how how do you still have this faith and he said I just know you know he did I might be putting words in his mouth here but it was like he described it as being more real than reality you know what what he encountered that day at his baptism and and he was unshakable in it and and there I think the next biggest moment then it was when our child was born and you know that stuff we talked about about what are human beings in the Atheist materialist world view it's one thing to apply it to yourself but then I had to look at this baby and say oh what a cute randomly collection randomly evolved collection of chemical reactions and I thought yes you you did move on your relationship without challenging your religious view and right well cause in a way we effectively even though my my husband did you know he he did claim to be a Christian in some sense the reality was we had made an idol out of out of work and out of careering and we drove a Jaguar lived in a 21st floor loft downtown and so we were very bonded on that and so religion wasn't an issue and we actually got married in a totally secular ceremony I wore a purple dress we wrote our own vows and we you know we had a 12-hour reception and so we actually got married and it still wasn't still wasn't an issue at that point so it was his child yes that's when it changed because I thought you know I experienced the the love that I felt for this child and you know I I guess you could say it was like my evolved you know mother's instinct to protect my young but I thought I don't think it's that I said I I think that there is an eternal source of this love and I didn't know if it was one God multiple continent a spiritual realm I didn't know but you know one of those first moments of holding my newborn baby I just said I'm not an atheist because this this is not true yeah why wasn't it uh whatever creature yeah I know I mean in other words it was a human so just that connectivity starts challenging all these other presumptions that atheists have so did your husband have an involvement with that realization too at that point it was this really just something going on inside of you I to him about it and you know his reaction was sort of like yeah of course you know of course a isn't true he he didn't know really where to tell me to go since at the time we were starting a business and we were still very focused on this very worldly path and so he was glad but he was so busy you know with our shared goal of just you know trying to accumulate you know worldly stuff that he just didn't actually take a very big interest in it it was like yeah uh you know because because what I told it the big realization I had was you know we spoke earlier about how I had determined value you know why is a human being more valuable than a gnat well because we're more cognitively complex and more developed but by that same thinking that meant that this one day old baby was less valuable than you know a 30 year old professor or something and I thought I don't know what is true but I know that that's not true and my husband was kind of like yeah finally you're getting a clue okay so how'd you progress him okay so well I actually said a prayer and in some of those moments after my son was born and it was very lame you know like is this thing on I mean I didn't know how to pray and and I and I thought how do you initiate contact with God as opposed to just talking to yourself I mean I'm very analytical and I managed to mess up even prayer but but I did I said this sort of bubbling prayer like if anyone is out there let me know and then nothing happened for four months and I thought well I guess you know and that's something I always you know counseled agnostics who are reaching out just because of you don't like see a course of angels immediately doesn't mean that your prayer wasn't answered I mean God you know God has his own time timetables so for like seven months nothing happened I didn't really think anymore of it and then one day I was in a bookstore and I found a protestant book making written by a former atheist making the case that Jesus really was who he said he was and I picked it up only to debunk this claim that the author was a former atheist but I ended up believing him just the way he wrote he spoke my language you know so many other books written by people who had who had always believed I guess I hadn't read any books at that point but just if I'd stumbled across things online we didn't speak the same language they'd say something like aren't you weighed down by sin well I didn't believe in sin you know I I would always rationalize my own behavior tell myself I was a good person so those kind of arguments just straight over my head but this guy kind of spoke my language and so for the first time after reading that book I had this light bulb going off moment where it was really a huge earth-shattering moment for me where I said what if this is true what if God exists and he became a man and Jesus is who he said he was and and I started looking at you know if you look at history and this is something that that book pointed out that you know you see the the Jews believe that these institutions like animal sacrifice and keeping the Sabbath and all that that their souls would be you know damned to hell if they didn't follow these extremely important customs and then you have this you know poor guy come along from a you know not very popular region he gains a group of middle-class followers and then but suddenly you see all of these Jews thousands of them abandoning these ancient ancient social and religious structures and I thought I don't know what did happen exactly but even from an atheistic point of view you have to admit that something huge happened in in first century Palestine so that lead you to more research it did and internet what Internet yet and well I started a blog you start a Nigel I did because I didn't know any Christians and I thought well maybe I can find some Christians on the internet so I started a blog as a place to ask questions and kind of an interesting side note is there was there was a website this huge atheist blogger where he very much hated Christianity he had a blog called the raving atheist student he hated Christians but there were some Christians who would reach out and and minister to him and they would use logic and reason and and so I recruited the ones who I thought were they were just so intellectual so interesting I would find out later every single one of them was Catholic who I had identified as really being able to hit hard on atheist arguments and another interesting thing is that guy is now a Christian so the blog owner so kind of a news story there but but so the next thing I did you were putting your own questions into a blog yes just is the sense of just reaching out there my help right and and and we would have these discussions and so that really that shattered a lot of the stereotypes I had about you know Christians don't have good arguments I thought they have great arguments actually when you actually sit down and listen to them and again I I didn't see at the time I was hearing Catholic arguments which you know I mean the Protestants have a lot of great stuff going on but as an atheist the there was a certain solidness to the you know the Catholic worldview that really I thought this is more reasonable than atheism I mean this is they've got it and so the next thing I did it was was by a Bible but again at the time I didn't I didn't understand you know any I didn't understand any difference between denominations and so I thought you buy a Bible it's a book you know I never went to Sunday school or anything and so I guess you start on page one and so I just started reading on page one you know Genesis was pretty interesting but then I got into some of that Old Testament stuff you know keep in mind I thought Jesus was gonna come in on like page four I mean I I had no idea so I'm knee-deep in the Old Testament watch and and so Joe told me to skip to the New Testament and and I did but I I just didn't see the traditional Christian moral code like is abortion right or wrong I did not see it spelled out in the Bible so I would go to these websites you know just from from a variety of different denominations and I would see everybody had a different answer everybody had scripture verses to back up their answer and what troubled me about that was I'd been reading CS Lewis and he has this idea that you know God is the source of all that is good you know God God is good and so when we define a moral code when we define the boundaries of what is bad and what is good in a way we're defining that that we're defining the boundaries of God you know and so to say like well you know we don't agree on abortion or euthanasia and that's fine I thought no it's not fine because you're saying what God is here and so so that was very troubling to me I've heard Christians get angry at the more liberal atheists because they are making a big deal out of hypocrisy of Christians they're making a big deal out of people that claim to be Christian but then have affairs in and the Christian arguments well why you making such a big deal but you you don't care about having affairs at all so why are you making a big deal they're making a big deal out of it because of the hypocrisy the confusion and what you're saying is okay just when you're open to Christianity you're going to the websites and they can't agree on anything so from an atheist standpoint you could be angry because wait a second you're saying there's a truth but you can't agree on what it is that was exactly the problem and because as an atheist I wasn't sure you know Christians had said you know you need to have faith in Jesus Christ and I said okay I get it I understand that if I'm going to convert to this religion that's what I need to do so my burning question was who is Jesus Christ now some of these websites were saying Jesus Christ is pro-choice you know Pro euthanasia he's okay with you know all sorts of you know and all sorts of stuff that other other groups would say no that's actually really immoral and that's dangerous so you'd have people who would read scripture and present this picture of Jesus as like I'm okay you're okay and then other people you know more of a an angry you know wrathful Jesus and as a person who was not a Christian I could not get my question answered who is Jesus Christ because nobody agreed on how to interpret the Bible and the other thing is sometimes when people would disagree with one another they would say well you interpret that one scripture verse that way but you know you're not looking at how it works with this Old Testament verse and something from you know one of Paul's epistles but then I thought so this requires a lot of free time to gain an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible and at this point I had I had one small child and another on the way and I thought this is not a system that works because I can't believe that I would in order to know Jesus Christ that I would have to have the free time to gain this encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible I don't have time to become a scripture scholar and so I was very troubled by all of this well I'm gonna keep pushing you on that I want to make sure we we get to all the details in your because you're explaining a sense in which on the one hand the Internet can be helpful right but on the other hand can make it more difficult right yep and so that so the blog ended up actually being a key thing for me because I actually wrote this post that I thought would be a farewell post where I was saying this just this isn't working I don't see any agreement among Christians and and I also pointed out to them this system that you're telling me or my readers weren't telling me but I had to sort of absorb from cultural osmosis this system requires the printing press I said what it what did people do before the printing press one the average family that not only did they not have time to become script personal scripture scholars but they could have afforded a Bible and a concordance and a biblical encyclopedia and so I wrote a post saying I thought I had experienced something with you know when I first asked that what-if question I thought I sensed that there was something real about this Jesus person but this is not checking out I don't see a divinely inspired religion here and that's when my readers had kind of been holding back because they didn't want to push me and that's when someone was like okay we got to lay it out what you're looking for is the Catholic Church and so they told me this idea that you know what if just how God used imperfect people he inspired them to write perfect doctrine in the scriptures what if he didn't stop doing that what if he kept doing that and gave us a living church that can speak to all people in all places in all times and I thought oh are they talking about the Catholic Church and I was I was torn because I thought well we can't become Catholic and Joe was just he grew up you know fairly anti-catholic and he said oh we we can't become Catholic and I I said I know we can't obviously but this is really the only system that works and so so that that was a we just we didn't know what we were gonna do at that point well did you quickly deal with doctrine it that Catholic doctrine well yeah on the encouragement of my of my readers we started just researching everything we could and you're probably familiar with this moment like when you crack open the the treasure chest of the intellectual tradition of Catholicism just the richness of wisdom it was this overwhelming feeling of like if I live to be 500 years old I I wouldn't even scratch the surface on this and so you know we've always both of us have always loved reading and learning and when we discovered the Catholic intellectual tradition we said wow there's really something going on here and then when when I looked at the Catholic moral code I still had questions about things like abortion and contraception I didn't understand it all but one thing I did see was that the moral code was seamless and it didn't change and it didn't change even when there was tremendous social pressure for it to change and interestingly this is when a lot of this this was shortly after a lot of the scandals had broken and in a way that pushed me further towards the church because first of all I realized I did some research and realize this is just biased I mean this is no more of a problem in the Catholic Church than anywhere else and as a mother that was deeply concerning to me that they're you know giving people a false sense of security of like oh this only happens in the Catholic Church so it made me wonder like why does the world hate the Catholic Church so much but the main thing is the more the media highlighted the the faults of some of the people in the hierarchy the more I started thinking yeah but you know people who are imperfect they're always the first to sell out they're always the first to tell people in power whatever they want to hear just to you know get more power for themselves and I thought if what you media saying is even ten percent true of imperfect people being all throughout this this church's hierarchy then you cannot explain the fact that it has this seamless moral code that it's had for 2,000 years never reversed itself won't go away all these empires have fallen away and yet it still stands and and Joe and I both kind of looked at each other and came to the same conclusion like I think this church is divinely inspired so that that was a you know we never we never thought we would get to that moment it is neat to hear that your husband and you were both on the journey that's right yep and interestingly he came at it from a totally different perspective that he once he realized that there might be something real here he was all about you know deepening his relationship with the Lord he was very intrigued by the Eucharist and for example he was concerned about the doctrine of Mary and I had a totally different perspective that I said Joe you know this is God's mom I mean of course they would venerate her and he would say but she's God's mom and so we would be saying this she's God's mom and he'd say but she's God's mom and so anyway and you know of course he came to really appreciate the Blessed Mother later and I always you know from the first moment I heard about that doctrine I thought oh yeah that that makes complete sense but so it's interesting we had totally different backgrounds we're coming at it from totally different perspectives like for example when when my husband was reading the New Testament and realized that after Judas died they replaced him he thought this was this big light bulb moment where he said that's that's apostolic succession I thought what's happening solid succession yeah I'm I'm still trying to figure out what the moral code is and you know reading the Catechism so but yeah we ended up in the same place and we both entered the church Easter Vigil 2007 what would you say then of all the issues was the the big final straw that convinced you in the reality of the Catholic Church versus all the other churches without question 100% it was contraception because I had always been adamantly adamantly pro-choice I mean I I said I would lay down my life to protect a woman's right to choose and I meant it I meant every word of it and so when I was first reached researching Catholicism even when I was pretty far along in that journey I was really torn about that issue because I thought I think I'm always gonna be in favor of abortion I I don't think that's going to change and I was struggling with how I would reconcile that because in that secular worldview that is the whole key to how women have freedom over their bodies and then once I realized that it was contraception that had sold out women's freedom that you know that our society tells women to go ahead and engage in the act that creates babies even if they feel they absolutely cannot have a baby and then you know contraception isn't 100% and then society tells them well just you know go down to your local abortion facility and and that's how you can you know continue to have freedom over your body when I saw that that was all connected and it all hinged on the issue of contraception and the church is the only institution left telling women the truth on that issue that's when it I was 100% convinced at that moment all right no you had mentioned you know a brief time we had before the program that the discovery of your baptism was also a key part of this yes yeah so what happened was we were we were having my three-year-old son baptized and it was one of those moments of thinking how did I get here it's so impossible I was so far away and and as I was going through my house looking for something to wear I was praying over and over again you know explain this to me Lord how could this happen it just seemed like it could have been so easy for me to go you know to just fall away even further as I was saying this prayer I open up a drawer a candle slides to the front and it was my baptism candle and it was just it was a tradition my mother had come from an Irish Catholic family and even though I wasn't raised in the faith her parents had you know you just knew baptize babies it's just what you do and I realized you know the grace of my baptism was real and and I another interesting thing is that before our conversion well before actually when my husband and I were still very worldly I remember one evening it had to come out that one of our friends had actually been baptized Catholic we did and she was an atheist and then and then I said you know that other friend who was also also grew up Catholic and then Joe said yeah actually in that those other friends we realized that something like 80 to 90 percent of our friends were fallen away Catholics and this was well before our conversion but we thought what what's going on with that and looking back I think it was you know the grace of my baptism really drawing me to other people who had that same grace working in their life yeah I want you to expand on that the power and the grace of baptism because that's one of the things that so many people just take for granted right yeah that's you know I think in our society especially even for believing Catholics it's ten it's it's tempting to in practice just think of it as you know a symbol or we don't understand exactly what it does but you know it's an indelible mark an indelible mark when you think about that that's that's huge and especially for people who have loved ones who have fallen away I always remind them you have supernatural power on your side if your loved ones were we're baptized you have that supernatural grace and it's real and it's powerful and and if it can bring me home it can bring anybody home yeah well it touches an important issue which you need to blog about and that is that if this sacramental grace is indeed life-changing in baptism but often even Catholics will say well wait a second I see non-catholic Christians out there experiencing great blessings in a relationship with Christ so it must not make a difference with your Catholic or non Catholic what we don't see is that behind them is their baptism right right so the baptism can work in or out of the church they're all a part of the body through their baptism right that's like with my husband Joe I mean his he really felt like it was his baptism that kept him tied to Jesus even though you know as far away as he drifted that even it even at our most worldly at the height of all that he would never deny Jesus Christ and and he's always credited his baptism for that email from Marie from the Midwest I've heard many atheists say that there is no evidence that Jesus the historical person actually existed what will you say to someone like this I'd say they need to read up on history I mean here's the problem I found when you research this nobody can ever investigate this issue without bias you know everybody has an agenda because if you are not a believer you don't really want to find a whole lot of you know compelling evidence that miracles were happening and and so it really is a minefield I will agree with that to get solid answers about the the historical facts surrounding Jesus and that's something that when you know agnostics contact me and they say that they're you know they're they're researching you know whether or not they can believe in Jesus I say as silly as this is gonna sound you know do pray and I know you don't believe that God exists say a prayer anyway couldn't hurt right for guidance for enlightenment because you will encounter more bias in this area then you can find in any other subject but the evidence is out there if you look for it yeah I remember one when I was through that phase in college I think the end the statement that expresses to me the core the you know you pull away all the the skins and that the core is that phrase he is alive he is alive the message of Easter he is alive historically the impact of that on those people in Jerusalem he is alive that is to me the undeniable fact of history when you deal with the impact of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus and how that the people were willing to die rather than deny that that that to me was an amazing proof of history an email from Teresa from Ohio my brother is an atheist and follows the ideals of Ayn Rand the ideas of selfishness and self-centeredness how do you evangelize to someone who doesn't see the benefits of offering time and sacrifice to others Wow what that's a really tough question I mean I think you could start by kind of saying is that you know if you ever found yourself in need of in need of health and need of mercy is that sort of golden rule you know is that how you would like for people to treat you I think that that that is such an extreme viewpoint it doesn't tend to last I would say I mean I've known quite if it doesn't represent most atheists that you know it does I mean I know atheists who will kind of stay in that phase for a while but I think what they find I mean there's that phrase you know love wins and think when they really deeply love another human being they find that this just doesn't the state you know when when you fall in love with someone you have that urge of like I would lay down my life for them my life doesn't matter in comparison to them and you know that that's true you know that that's true more than anything in the world and so a lot of those philosophies just start to look really just sad and weak in comparison to that so you know I would pray and I would show him the love of Christ and let him see if he doesn't like that a little bit better which is interesting too and when this love changes their life that love isn't a piece of board right it's it's not a visible thing right it's something that's real though and they know that really quickly me - one more minute how would Jennifer suggest I reach a young man who says he doesn't think it matters if there is a God or not he's my godson so I feel responsible email from Ben for Minnesota great question this is a tip that I got from a blog reader from a long long time ago is they recommended and I found this so effective to really just try to gently form a relationship with them stay close to them and ask them questions because I know that when we evangelize there's a tendency to want to you know grab people by the throat and like listen to me first I'm going to tell you about some scriptures and then I'm gonna make the case for natural law that I'm gonna quote Aquinas and you know everybody loves to be listened to and I think especially for young people we're always telling them things and we never listen and so I think that he could maybe really open a door for having some good dialogue if he said ok god son you know tell me about this a little bit more kind of that Socratic method of like ok you believe this let's let's test these ideas but keep asking questions yeah I couldn't agree with that Marcus often even when we do get the dialogue the first thing I wanna do is come back with an eraser and maybe we just need to shut up for a while and let them talk yes get it out and trust that the Holy Spirit could even use what's going on and they're thinking as they try and put together their own arguments maybe they'll see that there's sometimes shallow argument we have to have that real trust in the Holy Spirit too often we act as if it is my job me personally I'm going to convert people conversions the Holy Spirit's work and we can never forget that Jennifer thank you very much okay thank you for your blogging and again I encourage you all to read her blogs on National Catholic Register bless god bless you thank you for joining us tonight in this program see you again next week

Channel: EWTN

Views: 72,935

Rating: 4.83391 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, Marcus Grodi, Jennifer Fulwiler, Former Atheist, Journey Home, Catholic

Id: sXmX8NrpaLE

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2012