About the Contributor: Joe

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Although I grew up a religious kid, it wasn’t until I attended a yearly Christian weekend retreat in junior high that I was told there was a conflict of interest between my faith and science. Concerned, I asked my dad, a strong Christian example in my life and in the lives of many, what he thought.

“It’s not very important whether Adam and Eve were real people or whether Genesis is a literal history,” he said. I was confused.

Anyway, it didn’t matter much because around that time at one of those retreats my eyes were opened to the more basic details of life: The world is tragically broken beyond man’s repair and I am just as much a part of the hurt as anyone else. But God wouldn’t stand for it and arrived on earth to simultaneously introduce himself to us and bridge the gap between people and him, proving to be a very different God than anyone would imagine. I was told that if I believed in Jesus as the real deal, I could enter a new, eternal world in harmony with God.

Over the next couple years I grew in knowledge and maturity in Christ. Part of that was struggling with belief and the dependability of scripture. I used the internet to research all the arguments, but found them unsatisfying in a genuine search for truth.

Meanwhile, I flailed spiritually, at best, during my first semester of college. But my sisters managed to drag me to a Christian conference where I learned that Christ is truly at the center of everything and is a trustworthy caretaker of my whole life.

Since then, so far that’s been true, and I have learned more and more how to serve Jesus with everything in me. This has included a leadership position in our spiritual movement on campus and a very fulfilling year-long internship with a college missions organization.

But part of that growth in spiritual maturity that has surprised me. As I took really good classes—classes on the Bible and ethics, classes in scientific disciplines, and classes on church history and ancient Near East culture—and talked through all these topics with my friends, I came to believe in the important role learning and our brains should play in our faith.

Many I knew were at the same time rejecting this, trying to rely solely on authority and tradition or trying not to “quench the Spirit” with too much intellectual fluff. For me it was the opposite. The more I opened my mind and made my faith vulnerable to new information, the more excited and sure I got about being a Christian. Academic classes and intellectual freedom were becoming an important driving force in my spirituality.

These days, I live in Columbus, Ohio with my beautiful, intelligent, Christ-like wife. I am involved with Xenos Christian Fellowship and am a freelance writer looking for full-time work. I’m starting to think I should eventually go to seminary to learn more about the Bible.

I pray that this blog causes thoughts to hatch in your brain as well as mine.