The Courage to Follow the Evidence

I was eleven years old when I first became afraid of hell.

A friend invited me to church, and I remember hearing the youth pastor explain that anyone who didn’t have Jesus in their heart risked eternal punishment. For an eleven-year-old, the decision seemed obvious.

So I prayed the prayer.

At first, it was fear that brought me to Christianity.

Later, it was curiosity that kept me there.

My best friend and I immersed ourselves in Scripture. We debated theology and philosophy, challenged one another’s arguments, and tried to become people who could defend what we believed. I admired his grandfather, whose command of the Bible and quiet confidence represented the kind of wisdom I hoped to develop myself.

Looking back, I realize what I loved most wasn’t certainty.

It was the search for truth.

That desire has remained the most consistent thread throughout my life.

As I became more serious about understanding my faith, I also became more willing to ask difficult questions. Within the tradition I grew up in, I had been taught that the Bible was infallible, inerrant, and perfect. I accepted those claims without much hesitation because they came from people I trusted.

At the same time, I took seriously Jesus' invitation to “Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” If truth had nothing to fear from honest inquiry, then asking difficult questions wasn't an act of rebellion.

It was an act of faith.

Years later, while studying philosophy and reading the work of biblical scholars, I encountered a very different picture. Questions about the transmission of biblical manuscripts, textual variants, and authorship challenged assumptions I had never seriously examined.

Whether those scholars were ultimately correct wasn't what mattered most. What mattered was realizing that beliefs I had accepted without question deserved to be examined.

Once I accepted that responsibility, there was no returning to the comfort of untested certainty.

I remember sitting alone wondering whether I had just lost my faith or whether I had simply become more honest with myself. At the time, those two possibilities felt almost indistinguishable.

I wasn't trying to lose my faith.

I was trying to be honest about what I believed.

I don't see that period of my life as a rejection of truth. I see it as a commitment to follow the evidence, even when it led somewhere I hadn't expected.

Losing my faith was raw and painful.

I'm reminded of reading The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel while deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In its introduction, Strobel interviews Charles Templeton, once a close friend and contemporary of Billy Graham. Templeton had lost his Christian faith years earlier because he could not reconcile belief in a loving God with the reality of suffering.

One moment has stayed with me ever since.

Templeton described seeing a photograph in Life magazine of a woman in Northern Africa holding her dead child after a devastating drought. He recalled asking:

“I don't control the rain. You don't control the rain. But He does…”

I never saw the photograph myself, but I didn't need to. Templeton's description alone was enough to make the scene unforgettable.

Later in the interview, despite his doubts, Templeton became emotional and quietly admitted:

“I miss Jesus.”

I understood exactly what he meant.

I no longer see that chapter of my life as a story about losing faith.

I see it as a story about accepting responsibility for my own beliefs—and following the evidence wherever it leads.

Following the evidence didn't guarantee that I would always reach the right conclusions, but it taught me that truth is worth pursuing, even when the journey is costly.

If my beliefs are ever wrong again, I hope I have the courage to change them.