How I was set free from myself... and you can be too (a piece of my testimony)

It was my junior year of college. I had spent most of my 20’s having an absolute blast at LSU. I had become your typical southern sorority girl living for football and all the social life surrounding it. I grew up catholic but slowing stopped attending mass because the rules no longer made sense and the story no longer seemed relevant. The incarnation had no impact on my life nor did the consequences of the big bad sins about which I had once been told. I could, at the very least, ignore it for a while.

This became a problem at the end of my junior year. As the glitz and glamour of modern culture wore off, I found myself tired. I will never forget one Saturday night as I looked in the mirror. I was wearing a teal dress, hair in a ponytail and about ready to walk over to Tiger Land. I realized that I was doing the exact same thing every weekend and expecting different results. Going out with my friends and drinking far too much at bars, I hoped that I would come home fulfilled with excitement and having met a nice, smart, respectful man who didn’t want to take advantage of me. This was an illusion and it was at that moment in the mirror that the illusion wore off. I went out that night and soberly made a resolution that change was needed. If I continued the cycle, no matter how normal it seemed to the rest of the world, I would get nowhere.

I could go back to my old life in which I was known as the religious girl but I no longer believed in Christianity and I knew I had to reconcile that. I was stepping into atheism, unchartered territory.

The next week, I decided that if I was going to be an atheist, I was going to be a good one and needed to know what that looked likes so I went to Barnes and Noble and bought “ The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins.

I read the book in three days. His arguments were convincing and as I was reading I asked myself how I would tell my parents that I know longer believed in God? How would I celebrate Christmas? How would I respectfully stay home when they went to mass? Yet, as I closed the book I sat there with this major choice. To believe or not to believe? The decision would shape everything and so I had to make the right one.  Yes, Mr. Dawkins made compelling arguments against the existence of God and I so wanted to be done with the idea of God once and for all but there was one small thing, one off handed comment made by Dawkins that help me back.

In the prologue, Dawkins explained that everything that has ever become obsolete has eventually been phased out of humanity. If someone walked into a room and claimed that the earth is flat, we would laugh at him because we have proof that it is round yet at one time this was the common belief. Religion, Dawkins claimed, is being made obsolete and yet people simply won’t phase it out of society due to fear or stupidity. This bothered me because the first part of his argument almost always holds true. No one uses car phones because they are obsolete, so if religion just won’t go away, is it possible that maybe it isn’t?

In a moment of miraculous humility it was the following thought that crossed my mind followed by the prayer that did me in for good. “ Since the beginning of time, all of humanity as called out, given praise to a creator who exists beyond creation. Why the hell with I, Mallory Bueche, a 21-year-old LSU student in 2008 with a pathetic 3.2 gpa somehow have figured it out? If every people group in the history of the world believes in something beyond the physical, can I deny it? God, I am not sure if you are there but prove yourself to me and I will jump on your team.”

It was this moment of grace, a slight willingness to be wrong about every sophisticated, progressive idea I had formed in college that changed everything. God indeed did prove himself to me and over the next 2 years I spent much of my time relearning my faith. I learned to pray, I learned to read the scriptures, and very slowly (I mean slowly) began to change my behavior. My willingness to be wrong opened my eyes to a God who is everywhere and a humanity that NEEDS the incarnation. Every single view I held about humanity was challenged and I eventually entered ministry.

My friends, I tell you this story because our world view and how we live it out matters. The “you do you”, “believe whatever you want to believe” attitude of the culture is a lie and the consequences of it can be seen in the circus in which we now live. It is possible for us to live a right life or a wrong life that doesn’t change if we simply ignore it for the sake of comfort or emotional codling. We should want to figure out the Truth and live by that Truth no matter the cost.

Today, less people believe in God than ever before and even less people live as though they believe in Him. This does not make us sophisticated. It makes us foolish. God Himself called this out almost 4000 years ago when He spoke this to the Israelites.

“Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery …You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed”

He knows the heart of man and has known it all along. He made it. We are fooling ourselves if we think we are doing anything new. We are becoming slaves to our own pride, victims of our false worldview and what was predicted in DEUTORONOMY (I mean we haven’t even gotten to King David) is powerfully evident today.

We must recognize that a life lived for God is not the same or as “right” to a life lived apart from Him as long as we are “good people”. We as a society can find humility and admit that it is possible to be wrong. We can allow the living God who created this world and all that is in it to reveal to us the order in which He made it work. We can live according to that order, even if it hurts at first. This would change everything and we would no longer live in a circus of insanity. If God is real, it is His knowledge and His worldview by which we must live or else we will get everything else wrong and the stakes are simply too high. Let us reconsider.