My Journey of Faith: Growing in Christ, Renewal of Mind, & Defending Faith

      

            I became a born-again Christian when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior in 9th grade. I was an ardent Roman Catholic before that and when my history teacher, Selvanathan, presented the Gospel to me, I couldn’t help but feel the need for my sins to be washed and that I need a savior. I prayed and welcomed Jesus into my heart on that day in the year 1999. Since that day I have experienced a total transformation that occurred within me. I began sharing the gospel with fellow students and started sharing the gospel with strangers I meet on the road through means of tracts, pamphlets, and personal conversations. God helped me to find two born-again believers, Raja and Edward, in my class to have fellowship. Together we started reaching out to the nearby villages and towns near my hometown in India and sharing the good news of salvation in Christ Jesus. The passion and desire to share the Truth with the world that was put in my heart did not quench since that day I was saved.

            When I went to college for my undergraduate studies, God enabled me to reach many fellow students in college. It was during that time I realized that God started preparing me to help believers and non-believers find answers to their genuine questions. Not until I went for my graduate studies in the year of 2009, was I challenged by my fellow students in the Physics department about the existence of God, my Christian faith, and other paradoxical arguments. When I came to the United States for my graduate studies in 2009, I was faced with challenging questions from the graduate students in the physics department who were atheists. It was a test of my faith because I was not prepared to answer their questions. I had no clue about apologetics at that time. My faith was shaken because I was not prepared. I was disappointed to an extent that I started questioning God on this subject. To say the truth, I started doubting if my faith is true because I didn't know how to approach the questions intellectually or logically to come to a reasonable answer. My quest for logical reasoning and apologetics began at that time. Perhaps God, in His sovereignty, planned to bring about His purpose by putting me in that situation. I wish I had the clarity and knowledge that I have now to help those students think rationally to find reasonable answers. But the one thing that kept my faith going was the transformation that happened in me when I accepted Christ, which was so real and clear to me. I realized that if what God did in my life is real, then there should be reasonable answers to these intriguing questions. One night in 2011, I prayed to God to help me find answers and asked God to reveal Himself to me or speak to me that night. God did not appear to me that night, but He opened the halls of apologetics to me that semester. He exposed me to online videos, articles, and resources of well-known apologists and evangelists who have done so much work in this area. I realized that the questions that I was facing were not uncommon and were not hard to comprehend but they have reasonable and meaningful answers. I started listening to the online videos of Dr. Ravi Zacharias and Dr. William Lane Craig. My faith, which was once questioned and shaken now has become stronger and more reasonable. My perspective and approach to gospel outreach changed. I was able to have meaningful conversations with international students who came from a non-theistic and pantheistic background and from countries apathetic to theism. I felt the significance of apologetics in evangelism and in reaching out to the world for Christ.

            While God exposed me to the field of Apologetics, He also had plans to develop my theological knowledge. During that time, I was attending a local church where the use of instrumental music was considered ungodly or a violation of God's command. Although I did not bother much on the denominational subject, God urged me to engage with the preacher at the congregation on the truth of 'Righteousness through Faith and not by works. At the end of the detailed study and back-and-forth email conversations, I realized I have put together a detailed summary on the subject of 'Righteousness through Faith'. I created a website and started putting all the contents I learned during the study. I put up a Q&A format page on the website for people to easily navigate to the questions and find the answers they are looking for. With these happening and God's working in my life, the desire to pursue a degree in theology and apologetics was set firm in my heart.

            After completing my Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Idaho, I started working for a private company in the United States. But the passion for sharing the Gospel and the urge to study theology and apologetics that God put in my heart did not change. Towards the end of 2019, I felt the nudge from God in my heart for pursuing a degree in theology and apologetics. With that motivation, I started looking for online degree programs and started applying to universities and seminaries. At the beginning of 2020, I started writing personal statements and applying to universities to pursue my graduate studies. I desire to finish my master’s to set a good foundation and God willing, pursue a Ph.D. in Theology and Apologetics. I believe this pursuit is only the early steps of the mission that God has planned and purposed for me to fulfill in this world.

            Today’s church has lost its position in influencing believers to think and preparing them for a skeptical world. The failure to understand the importance of intellectual thinking in Christianity to withstand the heavy blows of scientism and withdrawal from the public arena instead of responding intellectually like the early fathers in the first few centuries has resulted in Christians being tagged as anti-intellects. This was a costly mistake that changed the culture of Christianity after the 19th century to an extent that subscription to intellectualism is considered apostasy or anti-faith. The irony is that the truth about the importance of logical thinking was slain in the streets by the very agency, Church, whose sole purpose was to protect it. The Church was not able to keep up the intellectual pace it once held because of which the secular world left out the Christians as anti-intellects. When I was growing up, I was even told not to think too much unless I also fall away as an apostate. This change in ideology was a huge misunderstanding that faith and reason or two extremes and therefore cannot be reconciled. Today’s Christianity is paying the price because the Christians were not prepared to withstand skepticism. It was not the cunningness of scientific naturalism and post-modernism, but the larger blame rests on the shoulders of the Church which failed to adhere to its duty of loving the Lord our God with the mind. Critical thinking with the mind is crucial for Christians and it is not only a Christian responsibility but an obligation to love the Lord our God with the mind. It is vital for Christians to think properly, think soundly, think intellectually, and think logically. Jesus Christ Himself prepared for thirty years to be intellectually sound before he started His ministry in the public arena. Whether it was Moses or Daniel or Apostle Paul, God trained them through a season of preparation to be intellectually sound so they could not only respond to critics but also could pen down the truth that God revealed to them eloquently. Therefore, effective utilization of the mind to think properly and be intellectually sound is a crucial part of discipleship. As the Apostle Peter said (I Peter 3:15), the intellectual preparedness of sound reasoning is critical for discipleship, defending the Christian faith, and doing the task of apologetics. Lack of preparedness could result in shipwrecking faith.

- Jenn Anand, In Defense of the Truth.