The Early Years
I was raised in a Christian home, attended
Christian schools through ninth grade, and was confirmed in the Lutheran
Church. My parents were
wonderful examples of living by Christian values, but we never had
family devotions and rarely discussed issues of faith.
I knew bits and pieces of what was in the Bible, but had never
read a single book of the Bible all the way through.
I had a somewhat confused view of the Trinity.
I knew more or less what I believed, but not why I believed it.
Brigham Young University
In 1972, I graduated from high school and chose to
attend Brigham Young University in Utah.
I knew BYU was a Mormon school, and I knew Mormons held some
beliefs that were different than those I’d been taught, but a young
lady I was infatuated with was going there, and I thought it sounded
like a good idea at the time.
Once at BYU, I quickly learned just how different
the LDS doctrines were than those I’d been raised with, but I was
woefully unprepared in late night dorm room discussions to adequately
explain or defend my faith. I
was impressed with the students I met.
They were, for the most part, sincere in their faith and were
trying to live their lives according to their beliefs as fervently as
– or even more than – those in my church back home.
One day, two guys I thought were students came to
my door. They introduced
themselves as Mormon missionaries and offered to discuss their beliefs
with me over the course of several weeks.
I agreed to take their lessons, but cautioned them that they
would have to present the Biblical basis for their doctrines.
As the missionaries went through their lessons, I
was struck again by the extreme differences between their faith and
orthodox Christianity. I
was impressed with their sincerity, and with the coherence of their
theological system, but every time they tried to demonstrate the
Biblical basis of their beliefs, I could see that their interpretation
of the Bible was flawed.
Towards the end of the lessons, the missionaries
asked me to read the Book of Mormon and begin praying that God would
reveal to me that it, like the Bible, was His word.
I agreed, largely because I was required to take a Book of Mormon
class and was reading it anyway, and because I was genuinely curious
what God might have to say about this odd book that claimed to be
“another revelation of Jesus Christ.”
After several weeks of reading and praying, the
missionaries concluded their lessons and asked me to fast and pray for a
testimony that the Book of Mormon was God’s Word, that Joseph Smith
was a prophet of God, and that the LDS Church was God’s one and only
True Church. Again, I agreed.
The next Saturday, I fasted and prayed. I attended LDS services on Sunday morning, praying that God
would touch my heart if I were really sitting in His Church.
I then drove up to the LDS Temple in Provo.
I sat in my car, the Book of Mormon in one hand and the Bible in
the other. I prayed for
several hours, reflecting on all the Missionaries had said, all I had
read in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and asked God if it were
possible that what all these sincere, kind people believed was true.
I kept looking at the Bible in one hand and the Book of Mormon in
the other. I opened the
Bible and reviewed the passages the missionaries had used to justify
their doctrines to me – the two sticks in Ezekiel, the bodies
terrestrial and celestial in First Corinthians, the sealed book in
Revelation. In each case, I
simply couldn’t get past the fact that the LDS interpretation of these
verses was wrong.
I didn’t know the Bible that well. I didn’t know in detail why I believed what I believed, but
I knew that if God really inspired both books, they would not contradict
each other, and the verses the missionaries cited would support their
beliefs completely.
Ultimately, I determined that by not giving me a
testimony, God was telling me, “No, this is not my Word, Joseph Smith
was not my prophet, and the LDS Church is not my True Church.”
His did this through my assurance that the Bible was His Word,
and everything must be measured against that standard of truth.
College and Graduate School
After rejecting the LDS Church and falling out of
infatuation with my lady friend, I found little reason to return to BYU
the next fall. I enrolled
in a local state university and then went on to graduate school at the
University of Southern California.
I was an English Literature major, and most of my professors were
liberal politically, socially, and theologically.
They openly ridiculed Christianity.
Though I was convinced that the LDS theology was
not true, I was still unprepared to say why I thought mine was.
I still didn’t know why I believe what I believed.
Doctrines that contradicted the Bible, while asserting that they
were based in the Bible, these I could prayerfully reject.
But an all-out assault against the Bible and belief in God
devastated me. Though I
never fully rejected the Bible and my faith in God, I wandered far from
the faith of my youth. I
grew skeptical and cynical. I
wasn’t happy. For a time,
I characterized myself as a “Christian Existentialist” – I thought
there was probably a God, but that we could never really know Him.
Later I termed myself a “hopeful agnostic.” I couldn’t prove God existed, but I hoped He did.
I became an ardent evolutionist. I was fascinated with human origins, and read all I could
find about the latest discoveries in paleo-anthropology: Skull 1470, Lucy, the Laetoli footprints.
I thought God might be behind all this, but I knew according to
the real tenets of evolution, He didn’t have to be.
My Bible gathered dust on my shelf.
I only prayed when heading for the hospital with my heart
palpitating in my chest, an irregular heartbeat becoming a physical
metaphor of my irregular faith.
Spiritual Quests
In my late 20s and early 30s, I found myself,
occasionally, wondering about God.
Though I would tell people I was an agnostic, I still wondered if
God wasn’t out there, somewhere, and if He was, I wanted to find Him.
It occurred to me that perhaps other faiths might
hold the answer. I explored
eastern religions for a time. I
tried Buddhism, but found it cold comfort.
I looked into some new age religions.
Not the Shirley MacLaine variety, but by way of Joseph Campbell.
The emphasis on myth, ancient literature, and the syncretistic
elements of Campbell’s writing appealed to me.
It allowed me to utilized elements of my Christian upbringing
without having to deal with the more difficult areas, like obedience and
submission. It allowed me
to utilize elements of Buddhism I liked, without pondering why I found
them so unsatisfying. On
the one hand, I felt intellectually alive during this time; but
spiritually, I was still dead, and I knew it.
A Grief Considered
In 1989, I met Shirley, the woman who would become
my wife several years later. Prior
to our marriage, we lived together.
Early one Easter Sunday morning, the phone rang.
It was my future father-in-law.
Shirley’s mother had collapsed and was being rushed to the
hospital. As Shirley and I
drove to the hospital, Shirley talked about staying with her dad for a
few days, while her mother recuperated.
A cold chill gripped me. I
didn’t think we’d ever see her mom alive again.
Unfortunately, my thoughts proved correct.
When we got to the hospital, they took us to a little room, and
the doctor came to tell us Shirley’s mom had died.
The doctor asked if we had any spiritual counselor.
My father-in-law answered, “What we have is right here.”
I’d noticed a man sitting in the corner of the room when we’d
walked in, his face buried in his hands.
Now he was standing beside us.
“I’m Ken Keene,” he said.
“I’m the pastor of Ojai Christian Church.”
Ken was truly a God-send.
He knew Shirley’s parents, as they had been attending his
church for several months. He
was kind and sympathetic. He
conducted a beautiful funeral and was there for us when we needed him. He never pushed his faith on us, but it was clear where he
was coming from. I was
confronted for the first time with true grief – my own to some extent,
but the awful fullness of my wife’s and my father-in-law’s.
Though Ken had spoken words of comfort, of a future reunion with
Shirley’s mother, it was obvious to me that lacking faith myself, I
had no such assurance.
A Child Shall Lead Them
When Shirley and I got married, we asked Pastor Ken
to marry us. A year and a
half later, Shirley and I had our first child, our daughter Caelin. When Caelin was about a year old, Shirley mentioned over
dinner one night that we should consider going to church. She said it would be good for Caelin to learn about God.
Shirley was not a believer at the time, nor was I.
Yet, it sounded like a good idea to me.
I’d learned good values when I was going to church as a child.
I wanted the same for Caelin.
We found that Ken was pastoring a church near our
home. We attended one
Sunday, and found that his church mirrored his personality – warm,
friendly, non-threatening. As
we sat there one Sunday morning, Pastor Ken passed out a little form and
asked us to fill it out. The
first question was: “If
you could be assured of success, what would you like to accomplish by
attending this church.” I
pondered the question, running through my mind a number of issues that
I’d been reflecting on recently. I
wrote: “I want to be a
better husband and father, and I think I need help to do this.”
The following Sunday, Pastor Ken announced, “Any
of you men who’d like to step up and be better husbands and fathers,
plan to join us at the upcoming Promise Keepers event in May.”
I’d just heard about Promise Keepers from a friend at work, and
I was a bit stunned to have my request seemingly being answered in this
way. I leaned over to
Shirley and told her I thought I should attend the event.
Promise Keepers
The Promise Keepers event was a very emotional
experience. It was
exhilarating, being with all those men, realizing that each, in his own
way, was trying to do the right thing in their families, churches, and
jobs. The speakers were inspiring.
I still wasn’t ready to go forward at the “altar call.” I
was a bit suspicious of the emotionalism of the event.
I was intellectually unsure about the fundamental claims of
Christianity, but I took the little NIV New Testament I’d gotten in my
package and determined to read it.
Reasons to Believe
The following Sunday morning, sitting in church, I
was struggling. I saw so
many good things in Christianity. I’d
found some concrete ways I could become a better husband and father.
Yet, the doubts of all my years as a skeptic and “hopeful
agnostic” were still there – indeed, seemed to have become more
ferocious in their intensity. “How
can I believe this stuff?”
As I sat there, it came me that I needed to put
Christianity to the test, once and for all.
I fully expected to find the “emperor had no clothes,” so to
speak. But, if it was
all a myth, it was better to know it now than continue the charade any
longer. I knew that Christianity stood or fell on the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ and the historicity of the New Testament record.
That was where I determined to put my efforts.
I was something of a history buff, so I felt
equipped to undertake a reasonable assessment of the Resurrection
claims. I also had taken
Textual Criticism while at U.S.C., so I also felt I could handle an
examination of the manuscript evidence for the New Testament record.
So began a wonderful season of research.
I guess I’m just an old graduate student at heart, because I
genuinely enjoy digging through library catalogs and Internet search
engines, looking for evidence to support or overturn some claim or
other. Probably not a big
shock that I now enjoy apologetics so much!
I read a variety of scholars and apologists.
I investigated the secular explanations of the Resurrection.
I read what the Jesus Seminar had to say.
I read the polemics against the New Testament record.
On the Christian side, I read folks like William Lane Craig, Gary
Habermas, Craig Blomberg, N.T. Wright, J.P. Moreland, and Gregory Boyd.
On the textual evidence, I read Phillip Comfort, Bruce Metzger,
and F.F. Bruce.
As I was reading this material, I became more and
more persuaded that the Resurrection was more likely to have occurred as
reported in the Gospels than any other explanation that had been
offered. I discovered the
wealth of manuscript evidence behind the New Testament, some of the
fragmentary evidence dating to early in the 2nd Century and
perhaps even earlier. There
simply wasn’t time for legends to have developed in that timeframe,
let alone a full-blown mythology. I
began to think that the New Testament might actually contain a valid
historical record of what Jesus taught, of the Resurrection, and what
the earliest believers believed.
At the same time, I was reading through the little
NIV New Testament I’d gotten at Promise Keepers.
As I was reading the Gospel of Mark, I was struck by the
immediacy and bluntness of the prose.
It read like history, not at all like the mythologies I’d read
so many times in my Joseph Campbell days.
I was struck by passages that did not present Jesus in comforting
ways (the cursing of the fig tree and the hiding of the Gospel message
in parables). I marveled at
the straightforward presentation of the empty tomb account.
As my heart opened to the possibility that what I
was reading just might be true, the truth of the Word leapt from every
page. I raced through the
other Gospels, then Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation.
Somewhere, I crossed over the boundary between unbelief and
belief. I see now that
reading the Scriptures with a mind open to the possibility that they
might be true allowed the Holy Spirit to convict me of the Truth.
I was filled with an immense joy. I told everyone I knew, and many I didn’t.
Pastor Ken baptized me in June, 1996, and I thought my joy was
complete. Of course, in
many ways, it was. But as
I’ve matured in my faith, there have certainly been many struggles.
Accepting the truth of the Gospel
means also accepting the truth about one's sin. Being a disciple
of Christ calls us to carry our crosses, and that doesn't mean the gold
kind we wear around our necks. As a father, I can see how
growing up is sometimes a painful process for my children, and it is no
less difficult for all of us as children of God.
Even my path back to God led through the dark valley of the death
of my future mother-in-law, an amazing example of the principle
proclaimed in Romans 8:28:
And we know that God causes
all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who
are called according to His purpose.
But, as I’ve grown in sometimes agonizingly slow
steps, I know that God is completing the work he began in me (Phil 1:6).
He is conforming me to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29), slowly
but surely. I am a better
husband, father, and man today than I was yesterday.
But more than that, I am a child of God, and I am learning that
my sole purpose is to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.
And this knowledge, indeed, makes my joy complete.
To His glory,
Robert Hommel
Woodland Hills, 2001
robert.hommel@forananswer.org
www.forananswer.org
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