This is part 3 of my testimonial about my faith. You can find chapter 1 here and chapter 2 here. I’d like to say this is the last chapter but alas, I don’t think it is. When we last departed I had moved to the bible belt, realized it was full of people going to church and then I met my husband who was not going to church.

I Make Some Big Promises
As David and I closed in on the realization that we were probably going to spend our lives together we started having some serious conversations. One such conversation was around religion. Although David also was struggling with his faith he knew he wanted to raise any of his future children in church. I knew that I didn’t want to leave my children with no clear direction on this issue and so I agreed to raise our kids in the church. Of course I had no idea what this meant and I didn’t know how I would do that, but I loved him and love makes you do some crazy things. I promised David to raise our kids going to church and he promised that we could still celebrate Hanukkah and Passover. It was a good bargain. We decided to seal the deal on October 14th 2000. Rings were involved as well as an oath to love each other until we died.

I Read Two Important Books
At this point I still didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ. However, I liked going to church and I liked the idea of belonging to a church and so I began dragging David to churches. Around this same time I was given two books. The first book was from my father and it was titled “The Jefferson Bible”. Thomas Jefferson felt that the bible was filled with too many parables and peripheral information. He felt that the real point of the bible is Christ and that we should focus on what Christ says and nobody else. So Jefferson, being Jefferson, took everything out and only left Christ’s speeches. It is a very powerful read and it is from this book that I realized a couple things about Christ. He was an amazing leader. He understood how to motivate people and how to lead people. The first rule of leadership is to lead by example and be willing to take responsibility for the mistakes of your team. My father is what some might call a “management guru” and being raised around somebody who stresses the importance of good leadership and management skills it was easy to spot these two things in Christ’s words. He lead the Jews by example — showing them what being a good Jew really meant. And then, when trouble started brewing he didn’t point fingers. He stood up and said this is my responsibility or more specifically “forgive them father for they know not what they do”. I can respect that.

The same time I received “The Jefferson Bible” from my Dad, I received “Mere Christianity” from my mother-in-law. I love C.S. Lewis. I read the Narnia series several times and as a scholar you really can’t escape his critical essays and linguistic knowledge. It pervades the field. The thing I love about this book though is that it is logical and for an analytical thinker like myself that is paramount for me. There were several passages that really stood out to me, but I want to quote the one that made the biggest impact on me and my beliefs:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 

And there it is. I had spent my whole life saying; “I don’t believe in organized religion. Jesus seems like a great guy, but I don’t believe he’s God. I mean, he seems like he had good things to say, but not divine”. And there was C.S. Lewis, a respected scholar, telling me that I was making the most absurd lapse in logic. He was right. I mean, if he’s not divine than why would you believe some crack pot who is going around saying “hey, I know what God REALLY wants. He told me.” No, you’d be like “that guy is a crack-pot”. So either he’s a total psycho or he really does understand the word of God.

This is the point where my education takes over. You cannot study the Medieval period without also studying the history of Christianity and what you cannot ignore is the far reaching and long lasting influence Christ has had on humanity. Like him, hate him, but ignore him you cannot. Which meant that at a minimum my life long assumptions and attitudes about Christ were wrong.