I was 6 or 7 years of age.
In my little school in Britain, discussion turned that day around religion. I recall that during the discussion, a colleague guaranteed that everyone had faith in God. While all the class was gesturing, I got up out of nowhere with the ferm will to break out this agreement. No, have I announced seriously, I don't trust in God. This demonstration of insubordination filled me with an enormous pride. Like the youngster who will say purposely that the presence of Santa Claus is a story, I was eager to feel that I was further developed than my schoolmates ; for example you are still in your conviction, however I have overpowered it!
I experienced childhood in a nonbeliever family
As I was not immersed and haven't got a strict educating, my reality was truly closed to Christianism. Indeed, even the Christian occasions had no strict criticalness to me. Christmas in my brain spoke to just presents ; Easter was only an occasion given to chocolate; and Sunday was for me less a unique Day for the Lord than a chance to rest late. At our supper table, "God" was rarely articulated. The uncommon minutes this subject was drawn closer was under a basic perspective and it was simply to scrutinize the passeism of the Christian Church. At school, the set of experiences exercises zeroed in on this traditionalist variant : was it not Christianism that dispatched the Inquisition, impulsed the Crusades and consumed alive Galilée, in another way lectured savagery and censured the advancement of science? Regarding the Christians I met to a great extent, they couldn't disclose to me their conviction and they just gave me an unclear declaration about it which didn't fulfill me by any means. Obscurantism, credulity and bigotry were subsequently, to my sentiment, the catchphrases of this religion which I took for a relic from an earlier time, bound to vanish for a logical and positivist age.
I find Philosophy
Interested by reasoning in my 6th structure, I chose to contemplate this subject at the Strasbourg University where my family has moved. Around then, I was known as an agnostic : since it doesn't exist any Creative God, and in this way no expectation behind the Universe, nothing could bode well. The mankind, showed up coincidentally, would simply vanish similarly. In actuality, I felt near this character of Dostoïevski which expressed in "Les frères Karamazov" : "If God doesn't exist, so everything is allowed". While I was walking around this world this incredulous and disappointed view, placing everything into question including ethical quality, a specific Mike halted me toward the finish of a Philosophical course. While we were developing in compassion, I found that he was a Protestant. How might you be a Christian I asked him, on the off chance that it isn't by disdain of live, dissatisfaction or searching for a world loaded with fantasms?
Clarifications which hit hard
A long way from being destabilized, Mike offered an explanation to me which clarifications which were correct and balanced. Unexpectedly, I've met a Christian who ruminated over his conviction and offering option to reason. During one year, we experienced a decent partnership, attempting by enthusiastic discussions to change over one another, me to my vision of a world without God and Mike to Christianism. By obliging Mike, I moved continuously from a straightforward agnosticism to an assailant skepticism : as he was suspecting I thought, perhaps I can figure out how to spare him ; from that point forward, I chose to follow him all over the place, in the gatherings of supplications and social event of devotees where he went to consistently. I felt the commitment to take back to reason every one of these Christians I met.
I open the Bible to dismantle it
Willing above all else to win, I chose to assault the root of their conviction, as such, open their Bible, perused it cautiously and drawing an inventory of their logical inconsistencies. When I've accomplished this work, Mike and his companions will be obliged to open their eyes and to perceive their mistake. One night during Summer 2005, while I was perusing the Bible with the point of devastating it, I felt out of nowhere a presence coming to me, warm and cold simultaneously, as a heart with let me know : "Alexis, you are a delinquent, yet I pardon you, for I am embracing you from today as my child". That day of July 2005, when I encountered the adoring and forgiving presence of Jesus, was the start of my change.
A mind blowing change
From this disclosure and until I got immersed, I've changed my relationship toward the others, my method of seeing the world and of reasoning it. As per my companion Mike, even my look, so far dull and tortured, got more splendid. Nonetheless, this transformation has more begun the start of my journey than its achievement. Ready to give a balanced establishment to the experience I lived, I decided to dedicate my philosophical examination to the connection among reason and Christianism. When my Master Degree on the proof of God's being in my pocket, I asked in my petition this other option : it is possible that I proceed on the scholarly way or I will educate the general population about the fortunes regarding Christian idea. It was this second way that the Lord drove me. Since there, in all the medias, I attempt to review that if God gives Himself by the methods for experience, He can likewise leave Himself alone found by the method of reason. How might we love an individual undoubtedly without attempting to know who the person in question is? Jesus is well alive, companions!