Faith to Believe

4/14/14                     Arnold       about 28

It’s not too often I get to talk with a nuclear physicist, but that’s who the guy working on his computer at the coffee shop turned out to be.  I had asked him – Edgar -  if he had time to talk about his beliefs, and he did, saying he found questions about religion to be more interesting than his work on physics, even though he calls himself an atheist. He actually works at designing small-scale nuclear reactors, and told me about his work before we got back to my original question. At one time, in college, he was an “evangelical atheist” – the kind that view religion as poison - and actively worked against it “for the good of mankind”.  But now, four years out of grad school, he has toned down his beliefs, beginning to see much value in religion, but admitting he still doesn’t believe.  “Belief isn’t something a person can just decide to do” he said.  He had to be true to himself, but was very interested to know that I had felt the same way about my faith – at one point in my life I had come to a point where I just had to be honest with myself and confess that I did believe.   I asked “Do you think it’s possible that one day your eyes will be open and you will suddenly believe in God? He did, so I spent some time preparing him for that possibility.  “Do you really know what Christianity is all about?”  Edgar had grown up the son of atheistic Jewish immigrants from Russia.  He didn’t understand the basics of the Gospel, and was interested to learn.  We talked quite a while and he had plenty of questions.  He still doesn’t believe, but let’s pray that one day he will find that he does have faith not only to believe in God, but that it will be faith that brings him to a right relationship with God through Jesus.