by Doug Draper
“Research a simple question about God, spending one hundred hours on it, and then give me your answer when you’re ready. Be prepared to defend your conclusions. If you present a compelling argument, I’ll buy you dinner at your favorite restaurant in Cedar City.”
Ben chuckled about the pastor’s plea to spend one hundred hours competing for a prize worth less than ten dollars. He didn’t want to offend the pastor by telling him no, so he agreed to go along with the idea. Ben’s mind raced ahead to a quick solution—find a book in the university library that shows God is the product of outdated thinking, not modern scholarship.
After Ben accepted the challenge, Pastor Jonathan smiled and said, “I’ll be praying for you every day.” Then he handed the page to Ben who accepted it with a nervous grin and read the research question.
If God is real and I ignore him, am I making a huge mistake?
CHAPTER 47
“How did you like my dad’s Sunday school class?” Cindy asked when she joined him for the worship service. Ben had taken a pew near the front of the chapel at the pastor’s suggestion because he would have “more elbow room.” The spot suited Ben who continued to prefer sitting up front as he had done all through elementary school.
“Good, but I was the only student, so your dad spent the entire hour talking to me. And he gave me a homework assignment,” Ben said, handing the research question to Cindy.
She read it silently and then said, “That’s a great question. So, where are you in your walk with God? It sounds like you might not be a believer.”
“I’ve never known what to think about God, but I don’t see myself as an atheist or any other kind of nonbeliever. I’m only someone getting through life by working hard and being a good person.”
“That’s a fine plan, but you could have so much more out of life if you turned to God for help. He’s a loving Heavenly Father who wants you to do more than just survive. If you trust in him, he will fill you with hope, joy and peace.”
Ben laughed nervously. “I’m sorry about laughing, but you surprised me when you started talking like a preacher.”
“Guilty, but that’s my version of being a pastor’s kid. I take my faith in God earnestly and believe in a powerful, unseen counselor who can guide and protect us.”
“Why do you believe?” Ben asked. “Can you give me something that I can see and touch?”
Cindy handed Ben her Bible. “Read this with an open heart and see what it tells you.”
Music interrupted their conversation as the service began. Ben continued to hold the Bible and thought about Cindy’s faith. He admired her strong beliefs, but he wouldn’t merely go along with her stance to make himself date-worthy. He hated being a phony and anticipated that she would spot his deception.
Returning to his hectic schedule on Monday made it easy to procrastinate the start of the research he agreed to conduct for Pastor Jonathan. When Cindy asked him to attend church the next Sunday, Ben accepted the invitation because he looked forward to sitting next to her for an hour. At the same time, he knew it meant facing questions from the pastor about the research project. Not wanting to be embarrassed, he made a trip to the campus library and skimmed a dozen theology books. The complexity of the information overwhelmed him. No quick, easy answer was found.
Ben showed up for the Sunday school class early and had a one-on-one conversation with the pastor before four other students arrived. The pastor sighed after listening to Ben’s summary of his library visit. He expressed no surprise that Ben found differences of opinion among theologians on the existence of a higher power and what religion should offer people.
“With your approach, it sounds like you could spend more than one hundred hours studying my question and still not have a compelling answer,” the pastor said. “May I offer you a different approach?”
“Sure,” Ben said.
“Which sources do you consider the best when researching a subject? Primary or secondary?”
“Primary.”
“Of course. And I believe the Bible is a primary source when it comes to discussing God. Do you think that’s a fair conclusion?”
Ben agreed, and the pastor continued. “Why don’t you begin your research by reading the Bible?”
“That’s what Cindy suggested, but she also said that I should read it with an open heart.”
“She’s right. Did you do it?”
“No, I’ve read the Bible before and liked the stories and lessons about having good morals, but it didn’t convince me that God is real.”
“Consider applying Cindy’s idea of reading with an open heart or, to be more precise, an open mind. Could you look at the Bible in a fresh way? Instead of thinking of it as a collection of stories with good morals, view it to be a biography about Jesus Christ—someone who most historians believe existed. Have you ever read a biography?”
“Sure—many. That’s something my mother encouraged me to do.”
“Good. Who have you read about from ancient times?”
“Julius Caesar.”
“Great example. Was he a real person or fictional character?”
“Definitely real.”
“How do you know that?”
“Through books written about him and things he left behind—buildings, sculptures, and other artifacts found by archeologists.”
“And did he have an influence on world history?”
“Sure. He gets credit for the rise of the Roman Empire.”
“And what influence does he have on our lives today?”
“Well, I don’t know. I guess the month of July and perhaps Caesar salad,” Ben said, laughing.
“Good enough. Was Jesus a real person or fictional character?”
“I don’t know. To me, it seems like there’s a lack of evidence.”
“Are you sure that’s true? Aren’t there books written about him and sculptures, paintings or other artifacts that would suggest he was real?”
“That’s true, but most of those things, including the Bible, were created long after he supposedly lived. They might have been things people came up with when telling stories about a popular legend. And over time, some people took the stories as facts.”
“Would you be surprised to know that the oldest existing copy of the Bible is hundreds of years older than the oldest copy of a history of Julius Caesar even though Caesar lived before Jesus?”
“Yes, that would surprise me.”
“It’s true. If you’re interested, I’d be glad to show you facts that you could use in your research project. And while those facts are compelling, the best piece of evidence is the impact Jesus has had on the world compared to Julius Caesar. Think about how much world history is connected to Christianity—whether good or bad—and the art, music, literature and other cultural influences like Christmas and Easter celebrations that can be traced back to Jesus. Do you know of any other legend or actual person to leave that kind of mark on the world?”
“Not off the top of my head, but let me think about it.”
“If you can find one, be sure to include it in your research, but I recommend that you start somewhere else.”
Pastor Jonathan picked up his Bible and said, “Cindy is right. You should begin here. Read the Bible as if you’ve never read it before and keep an open heart and mind when you’re reading it. See if you can discover whether it’s fact or fiction.”
Ben exhaled slowly and said, “Wow. I don’t know if I have time with classes and everything else I’m doing.”
“Don’t forget that you already promised to dedicate one hundred hours to researching my question. Being a college student, I’m sure you could read the New Testament in twelve hours. That would be an excellent start to getting your answer and you’d still have time to attend our Sunday services.”
The other class members arrived, giving Ben a timely break in the discussion. He didn’t have to commit to reading the Bible or continuing to attend church. After the class, the pastor shook ha
nds with Ben, looked him in the eye, and promised, “I’ll be praying for you and asking God to help you find the time to read his word.”
The pastor gave Ben a new copy of the Bible, so he wouldn’t have to check one out of the library and then hurried to the chapel to deliver his sermon.
While Ben waited in the pew for Cindy to join him, he turned pages in his new Bible while thinking about the pastor’s pledge to pray for him. He recalled the last person who said it—his scoutmaster, Gene Augustine. He made the promise shortly before Ben left the campsite for his snowy hike up a mountain where his life nearly ended.
Ben worried about Pastor Jonathan’s plan to pray for him. It seemed superstitious to be concerned, but strange things happened when the scoutmaster prayed for him and Ben didn’t want anything to change. He liked the way things were going, especially when Cindy arrived in the chapel with a kind greeting and sat next to him.
CHAPTER 48
Thinking about his conversation with Pastor Jonathan kept Ben’s mind too active for sleep that night, so he decided to follow the approach that the pastor and Cindy had suggested. Because his roommate was sleeping, Ben grabbed his Bible and quietly left the room for the dorm’s shared area.
Ben found it empty and stretched out on a couch to read for an hour. He began in the New Testament with Matthew. With the first sixteen verses presenting the genealogy of Jesus, he thought this reading assignment would surely put him to sleep. But he stayed awake as Matthew transitioned to the familiar story of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, the wise men from the east, King Herod, and the round trip to Egypt. Ben continued through the story of John the Baptist and his preaching in the wilderness.
The next chapter passed quickly for Ben as he remembered it well—Jesus being tempted by the devil and Jesus recruiting his disciples to become “fishers of men.” When he reached the fifth chapter and started reading the Sermon on the Mount, his pace slowed significantly. Despite having heard these words often as a child, Ben paused to think about what they meant—as if reading them for the first time. And the message penetrated a well-protected area of his life—the anger he held toward his father and many former classmates.
The emphasis on forgiveness and an obligation to “love your enemies, bless them that curse you” reminded him of the approach to life his scoutmaster had recommended. While Ben had already rejected Derek Dean’s philosophy of attacking anyone who messes with you, he remained a long way from what Jesus taught.
Ben finished Matthew before he realized that an hour had passed. It surprised him that reading the Bible hadn’t turned out to be painfully dull. While thinking about what he had read, Ben closed his eyes to rest them and dozed off.
The sound of loud talking and footsteps jarred Ben from deep slumber and he sat up to see two fellow students staring at him as they walked by.
“Hey, what’s up?” one of them asked. “Did you pull an all-nighter?”
“No, I came out here to read for a few minutes and fell asleep.”
The two students stopped and one of them pointed at the book in his hands as he slowly sat up. “Is that a Bible you’re reading? No wonder you fell asleep.”
“Yep, it works every time when I have insomnia.”
Laughing, the students exited the dorm and Ben shuffled to his room.
Despite having a test to cram for, Ben read Mark that evening and Luke over the next two. After working a full shift at the hardware store on Saturday, he read John while eating dinner in the cafeteria. He placed a couple textbooks next to the Bible to disguise his reading material in case anyone he knew walked by.
With the four gospels completed, Ben had something to give Pastor Jonathan for his progress report on Sunday. Besides enjoying the pastor’s pat on the back, he liked the class and soaked up the information. The small size of the group and interactive format allowed him to express his skepticism about religion. He also received counsel on ways to discern the truth about God without relying on blind faith or the belief of others.
In between the weekly Sunday school classes, Ben continued to read the New Testament, but he took it at a much slower pace than the twelve-hour timetable that the pastor had presented. Ben found his skepticism shrinking and becoming less of a roadblock to seeing that the Bible’s promises might be feasible. He had previously tuned out all messages about hope, joy, and peace because he had little of that in his life.
Pastor Jonathan followed up on his progress every Sunday, so Ben created a chart to show him how many hours of research he had conducted. During one of the pastor’s classes, Ben disclosed his struggle with deeply held anger due to abuse by his father and bullies. The pastor listened carefully, expressed regret, and prayed for Ben. He also suggested that Ben use the university’s free counseling service for students. Thinking it could be an interesting discussion, Ben made an appointment to see a counselor.
The counselor began with a typical approach and asked Ben about his childhood. Ben told the counselor things that he had kept secret for years. The counselor found the abuse to be shocking and applauded Ben’s ability to carry on a relatively normal life. Still, he suggested more sessions, including group therapy, and Ben went along with the idea.
From his individual and group sessions, Ben recognized the need to completely embrace the reality that being abused wasn’t his fault. Like many survivors of abusive situations, Ben believed that he was “the problem.” He had picked up that perception from his father and let it influence his thoughts and behavior for years.
Counseling also helped Ben understand that he should quit wondering what he could have done to win his father’s affection and avoid his harsh disapproval. As with many abused children, he had adopted a faulty approach to life that made him dependent on someone else’s emotions for his sense of worth and happiness. He couldn’t control the abuser, so he tried to avoid him or any circumstances that would trigger his rage. When facing challenges in other relationships, Ben took the same path, running away from conflict, criticism, and rejection.
The Bible study and counseling provided comfort by helping Ben deal with his childhood pain. Both encouraged Ben to let go of the harmful things behind him and to reach for the better things to come. Even if he continued to view the existence of God with skepticism, he had found value in what the Bible taught, viewing it as a worthwhile guide for his life.
Within two months of starting the pastor’s experiment, Ben read Revelation, the last book in the Bible, while sitting in his dorm’s shared area—the same place where he read the first book in the New Testament. He remembered Revelation from a decade earlier when Derek Dean suggested reading it to learn more about “the beast.”
Despite finding the book difficult to understand, Ben could see a connection between what the writer recorded and what he had experienced in his life—a continual, ferocious battle between good and evil. When he read in Chapter 11 about two powerful witnesses for God, it struck him that this wasn’t creative fiction or a metaphor for a common struggle. In his heart, he believed that the book spoke honestly about things yet to happen.
While Ben read this chapter, he recalled what he had read earlier that “death is swallowed up in victory.” The many promises in the Bible about the gift of eternal life through a savior suddenly seemed real to Ben, not wishful thinking as he had often viewed them. Something moved inside of Ben to give him hope that the people on God’s team—those who believe in Jesus Christ—will have a life beyond their current mortal existence.
For the first time, Ben wanted to pray and to do it with sincerity, believing that God would hear him. He left the dorm for a walk, thinking about his new, intense desire to pray. Ben’s path led him to the university’s track where he had spent hours training and competing. Sunset had passed, so the track was empty and dark. He walked to the starting line for the distance runs and knelt there, clutching the Bible to his chest.
“God, I don’t know if I’m asking this in the right way, but I want you to pick me to be on your tea
m. I promise to give you my best effort to finish every race. I’m sorry that I have ignored you for so long and ask you to forgive me for everything I’ve done to let you down. Please let me know what you want me to do with my life, give me wisdom to understand spiritual things and help me always believe that you’re there and have adopted me as a son. I pray for this in the name of Jesus.”
As Ben said these words, something unseen touched him like it had at the edge of the cliff years earlier, creating a powerful sense of peace. It left Ben feeling overwhelmed with gratitude because God had heard him and accepted his request. Ben’s belief that he had connected with a loving Heavenly Father, the almighty creator of heaven and earth, left him in tears. He remained on the track and allowed the tears to flow. He knew this eternal father wouldn’t judge him for crying “like a girl.”
Ben looked forward to presenting his report to Pastor Jonathan because he knew that he could defend his conclusions. And instead of a free meal, he would receive a lasting inheritance as a reward.
CHAPTER 49
When Ben delivered his report the next Sunday, Pastor Jonathan said, “Praise the Lord. That’s an answer to prayer and there’s rejoicing in heaven.”
Over the next three weeks, the pastor held one-on-one sessions with Ben to discuss baptism and church membership. While Ben enjoyed attending the church, he hesitated about taking those steps because they meant turning his back on the LDS Church with its strong connections to his family’s heritage.
“Ben, I understand that this decision is difficult for you, but I think it will be easy for you to make when you consider the source of your new faith in God. Where did it come from?”
“Studying the Bible with an open heart and praying to God for salvation,” Ben said.
“Is your faith connected to the Book of Mormon, the LDS prophets, or your pioneer ancestors?”
“No, but I’ve always been taught that those things are important and to walk away from them feels like I’m losing my family and leaving a church that does so many good things.”
