From: hovingh@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (William Hovingh)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Atheism -> Christianity
Date: 14 Dec 92 05:11:55 GMT
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder

I'll share a brief outline of what process led me from atheism to Christianity.
There were basically three circumstances that conspired to slow me down enough
that the Hound of God could catch up with me.

1) I had spent a wonderful summer vacation in a beautiful place, and had been
deeply impressed both by the grandeur of the scenery and by my own capacity to
appreciate that beauty.  Something happened on that trip that left me more open
to the idea of an intentionally created universe.

2) I was miserable.  A year earlier, I had transferred to a new school; I had
thought that my misery was geographic.  Just before my vacation, I had switched
research advisors, thinking that my misery was my advisor's fault.  I'd just
had a bad visit with my parents, and I had assumed that I would be less
miserable when they went home; I was wrong.  I just couldn't shake the sense
that something was missing, and I was ready for a change; I was more open than
I had ever been to the possibility of looking in new places for change.

3) For the first time in my life, Christianity had been presented to me as an
intellectually respectable system of thought.  A colleague in graduate school
had been talking to me at a party and got me interested in the Calvinist-vs.-
Arminian controversy.  Initially, I saw it as just an intellectual problem that
had some historical significance.  But as I did some background research (OK,
so I was bored with physical chemistry!) I began to think that I wouldn't, as I
had previously assumed, have to give up being a rational person were I to 
consider becoming a Christian.


Aside from my one Calvinist friend, most of the people I associated with were
openly hostile to religion in general and Christianity in particular.  But I
found that my *real* friends were willing to accept my choice, once they had
confirmed for themselves that I hadn't gone off the deep end, had made a
careful and rational choice, and hadn't fallen into the clutches of some cult
that was going to try to take over my life in a destructive way.

It took me a while to figure that out about my friends, though, and until then
I was pretty wary about talking to them about what was going on with me.  I 
probably appeared a little hostile and withdrawn to them.  With some of my
circle, I was right to be wary; with the rest, it just took a little time for
them to get used to my changes and for me to be reassured that they accepted
me still.

Chances are, your friend has made a Good Choice (or, if he's a good Calvinist
like me, that Someone made a Good Choice for him!).  If you can accept that,
your friendship is likely to stay intact, although the dynamics may change some
over time.

-- 
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Straight, but     |         Bill Hovingh         |Stay out of my bedroom unless
not narrow-minded |wjhovi01@ulkyvx.louisville.edu|you plan to sleep with me.
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