PERSONAL TESTIMONY
Frank J. Gallagher
Abiding In The Word
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I was born in 1950, and from 1956 through 1964, attended a Roman Catholic elementary school. I was taught my Catholic faith by nuns, who right or wrong, knew what they believed and taught it with conviction and consistency. When I left grade school in 1964, I was a Catholic who believed what I had been taught.
Then I went to a so-called Roman Catholic high school. I say “so-called” because the priests there, in contrast to the nuns in grade school, did not teach a basic, fundamental “Roman Catholic” faith. In fact, they ridiculed what the nuns had taught me, and then as a replacement, offered their own personal brands of religion. These teachings were more in agreement with secular humanism and situational ethics than they were with Roman Catholicism.
By the time I reached my senior year of high school, the priests had torn down everything I had been taught as a child, but replaced it with nothing but doubts and questions. Their attitude was one exhibited by many arrogant liberal theologians in general, as well as agnostics and atheists. This attitude is that it is intellectual and open-minded to question and doubt spiritual things, and in contrast, it is ignorant and close-minded to arrive at some type of conclusion and to believe it. Such men remind me of the expression I once heard, that “you shouldn’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out!”. So by my senior year of high school, the teachings of the “good fathers” had effectively led me into becoming an agnostic in regard to spiritual matters.
Then in my senior year, my religion teacher spent time examining the “proofs” of the existence of God. I suddenly realized one day, that if the priests and nuns couldn’t agree on just about anything, and if so much of the religion that I was taught as a child was a lie, how could I know that there was even a God? As the priest showed us each “proof” of God’s existence, I realized that these were only arguments, not proofs, and I then started to question the very existence of God. By the end of my time at a Roman Catholic high school, I was an avowed atheist.
I went to a Jesuit college, hoping that maybe the priests who taught me in high school were just a bunch of kooks that I had the bad luck to get as teachers. I thought that certainly the Jesuits at college would have the answers. Was I ever wrong! The theology teachers I had as an undergraduate student were far worse that those in high school.
One lay teacher was a man who had been arrested for burning draft cards and for income tax evasion, all as an illegal protest of the Vietnam war. This was the teacher for my "Ethics" course, a mean-spirited liberal who came down hard on the only conservative student in class who would dare to disagree with him. Another lay theology teacher taught us about the life of Jesus Christ, not from the New Testament as some teachers might be inclined to do, but from the rock musical “Jesus Christ Superstar”. We sat in class and listened to portions of the musical, then engaged in serious discussions based on the words and lyrics. All the while, the material in the rock musical was treated by the teacher and students as being historically accurate and meaningful. Some conclusions the teacher drew from the musical were that Jesus never actually claimed to be God, Judas was a victim predestined by God to betray Jesus and then to suffer unfairly for it, and that Mary Magdalene’s feelings for Jesus were, of course, sexual. Any serious student of the Bible knows that the Scriptures do not support these conclusions, notwithstanding the fact that students of Andrew Lloyd Weber are free to arrive at their own conclusions.
Not surprisingly, my undergraduate experience only cemented my unbelief, and I spent the next eight years after college as a confirmed atheist. One of the things I enjoyed most was confronting Christians, who were all too willing to fall into my “trap” of trying to prove the existence of God. I say “trap” because I realized even then that it is impossible to prove God’s existence. No matter what a Christian argued, I had a plausible rationale to counter it. I would even attempt to “prove” that God doesn’t exist by cursing Him aloud with vile obscenities, and then daring Him to strike me down dead on the spot. The Christians would turn pale at my arrogant and blasphemous display, and the unbelievers would move away so that they were not between me and a window! When nothing resulted from my “challenge”, I would cite this as proof that there was no God to “strike me down”.
The reason it is impossible to prove God’s existence is not because He does not exist. Rather, it is because it is not possible to prove the spiritual by using the material world, that is, by using the observable or the philosophical. By its very nature, the spiritual realm lies outside of the material realm, and so is not subject to the methods we use to learn about material things. There are three basic methods by which we learn all things:
1. Perceiving - This is learning by the use of our five senses to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. This is often referred to as empiricism.
2. Thinking - This is learning by the use of our mental processes such as understanding, remembering, concluding, and imagining. This is often referred to as philosophy.
3. Believing - This is learning by accepting as fact the experiences and thinking of others. This is often referred to as faith.
It is the last method by which we learn most of what we know. For instance, most of what we learn in school (history, geography, science) is by faith. We believe the teachers who instruct us and the textbooks we use, concerning information which we did not, nor usually could not, experience on our own. It is this last method of learning, faith, by which we must acquire our knowledge of spiritual things.
Nevertheless, I do not advocate a spiritual faith based purely on one’s emotions or experiences, because our feelings and perceptions are not always reliable. Our faith should always be an extension of what we know to be true. A trustworthy faith is based on reasonable evidence that conforms to our logic and common sense. It is the result of a serious search for the truth, and our willingness to base our faith on the evidence we discover as the result of that search. True faith is the result of an honest examination of the evidence that is available to us, and a willingness to adapt objectively to that evidence. True faith does not start with emotional or intellectual prejudices and then force the evidence to support such biases.
For example, everything that we experience in the material world has a beginning and an end, a cause and an effect. This suggests that the physical world must have a beginning, a “first cause”. The evidence of the “big bang” theory and the expanding universe support a beginning, a first cause. This first cause would logically have to be outside of the physical realm and not subject to its requirements to have brought it into existence. This is not proof of the spiritual realm, but is strong evidence supporting a first cause that would have the power and means to begin all material things. Whatever we believe concerning the origin of the world is by necessity a faith decision, because no human being was there, and there is no way to prove one conclusion or another. What differentiates one person’s conclusion from someone else’s is the degree to which a faith decision on this topic conforms to what we know, what we experience, our logic and common sense, as well as provable scientific evidence. Our faith should also be free from predetermined biases, such as blind religion or stubborn atheism.
I believe the first cause to be God, a God who created all things. From the order and design that I see in creation, I believe that God has knowledge and a plan. If God has the power to create all things and a plan in doing so, it makes sense to conclude that God would reveal that plan to human beings, because He made us capable of understanding His design and purpose. If He wants us to know Him and His plan for us, then He would give us the ability to come to that knowledge. He would enable us to know the difference between the real God and His divine plan, and any false substitutes that would be presented to us. A fair God would reveal His plan in a way that all people could learn and understand it. That method of learning about spiritual things is faith. Empiricism (perceiving) and philosophy (thinking) are not fair methods because they depend upon human talents and abilities such as IQ, as well as upon human opportunities.
Only faith is a method of learning that is fair to all people, because anyone can believe. Anyone and everyone can have faith. It is a free will decision of every human being concerning what he or she believes. Anyone can believe a spiritual truth, although everyone won’t. Some will desire the truth and will believe it when they find it, while most people will freely choose to believe in lies, or in nothing at all. God gave all people the ability to believe, and the free will to choose yes or no. The eternal spiritual issue for all people is one of choice, and in this manner, God shows His love equally to all. All are able to know and believe the truth, and are free to accept or reject it.
Having presented some background into my own experiences, and a rational basis for what I believe, I now want to share the simple message of what it means to be a Christian.
God loves the world so much that He came into the world as Jesus Christ to die for all sins of all people. If you make a free will faith decision to believe this, then at the moment you do, you become a Christian through the power of God. He makes you spiritually alive, able to understand spiritual things. You can learn about Him through His word, the Bible, and communicate with Him through prayer. You can know for certain that when you die, you are going to heaven to live with Him forever. While you live here on earth, you can know that God has a plan for your life, and gives you the divine power to know this plan and to accomplish it.
To say it another way, all you have to do to receive God’s free gift of salvation is to believe that He sent Jesus Christ to die for your sins, that this saves you, and that nothing you can do will accomplish your salvation. Believing in Jesus Christ is not doing something to merit your salvation. Jesus did the work, and believing in him is putting your faith in His work, not yours.
This is the decision I made in November of 1979. A christian woman named Barbara who worked with me, gave me a tape of a talk by Josh McDowell. For weeks, the tape sat in my house and I didn’t listen to it. Then one morning, my car wouldn’t start, so I stayed home from work to have it serviced. I had nothing to do, so I figured I’d listen to the tape and get Barbara "off of my back". I found Josh McDowell to be intelligent, witty, entertaining, but more than that, a man who knew what he believed, and knew it to be true. At the end of the tape, when Josh shared the gospel of salvation, I understood and believed it for the first time. There was a moment when I said to myself, "Wait a minute! Am I going to go for this?" Then I thought, "Yes, because I know it’s the truth!"
I knew instantly that I had been changed from within. One moment, I was an atheist, and the next, a Christian. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me inside. I understood spiritual things that I couldn’t before. I realized that my atheism had been an angry reaction against my religious upbringing, not an objective belief system based on evidence. I had the assurance of an afterlife in a place where I am promised “no more pain, no more sorrow”.
What kind of evidence do I have that Christianity is true, besides the inner changes that I experienced? I have the eyewitness testimony of the writers of the Bible, forty men over a 1500 year period of time who present a consistent and powerful message. I have the historical record of Jesus Christ, who performed miracles to prove that His teaching were those of God. He is the only person to rise from the dead to prove His claims and divinity. While His tomb is empty, religious leaders such as Mohammed, Confucius, and Buddha are still rotted in their graves. The record of His disciples and their miracles verify Jesus Christ as the unique Savior. Many secular historical writings support elements of the Bible. Archaeology has supported claims of the Scriptures and have never proven them to be wrong (e.g. the Bible told of the Hittite Empire long before skeptics were proven to be wrong by archeological finds).
There are many other things that show Jesus Christ and Christianity to be unique. Our calendar is based on the birth of Christ. The most celebrated event of the year, as well as the one with the most alternate secular celebrations, is Christmas. Only Jesus Christ’s name is blasphemed. Only Christian images are barred so strongly from public schools and buildings. The greatest nation in the world is the United States, founded on Christian principles and guaranteeing the greatest opportunities for freedom and prosperity to its citizens.
There is more evidence to support Christianity as unique and true, than there is any other religious belief system. Most importantly, Christianity is not a religion. Religion is a system of beliefs whereby man earns favor with God by man’s works. Christianity is a relationship with God, based on the belief that man can do nothing to merit God’s favor, so God did all of the work. Only in Biblical Christianity is salvation a free gift from God based on faith, apart from any work that man can do.
It is not valid to examine the life of Jesus Christ and come away saying that, while He might have been a great teacher, He was not God. Jesus Himself claimed to be God, that “I and the Father are one”, that “if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father”, and that “I am the only Way, the only Truth, and the only Life. No man comes to the Father except through me.”
With these claims, Jesus could only have been one of three things:
a) Crazy;
b) a liar;
c) God.
His life and teachings are not consistent with the first two conclusions, only with the third. He also could not be just a “great teacher”, because His claims of Deity contradict this. That’s why the only issue confronting every person is, “What do you think of Jesus Christ?” If you think He was God and died on the cross for your sins, then you are a Christian and guaranteed salvation by God’s word. If you think anything else, then God will judge every person on his or her own merits, and when viewed by a perfect God, all such people will come up short and will be lost eternally.
So I wrote this to show that I know what I believe, and I know it to be true. Christianity is not a crutch or a myth, nor is it a clever lie. It has too much consistency and support to be any of these. Only negative free will can keep a person from believing in Jesus Christ, and accepting the greatest free gift of one’s life.
Right now, God is giving you the understanding of spiritual truth. Tell God that you believe Jesus Christ died for your sins and accomplished your salvation. You will immediately receive the gift of eternal life, and so much more. I know because I’ve done it, and the Bible promises it. So did Jesus Christ. Please make the right choice and this free gift is yours this very moment. I pray that you will believe. That decision will not lead you to a life bound by religious ritual and obligations. That decision will lead you to a life of freedom and meaning.
Copyright (c) 2000, Frank J. Gallagher
Abiding In The Word
http://members.aol.com/abidingitw
All materials are written by me and are copyrighted. These materials may be freely copied and distributed for the purpose of study and teaching, so long as they are made available to others free of charge, and my copyright is included. These materials may not, in any manner, be sold nor used to solicit "donations" from others, nor may they be included in anything you intend to copyright, sell, or offer for a fee. God the Holy Spirit freely provides this knowledge in grace, and so do I. My copyright is exercised to keep these materials freely available to all.
