I could identify with Wilson’s remark. “Why did I, along with so many others, become so dismissive of Christianity?”
Said, Wilson, “Like most educated people in Britain and Northern Europe (I was born in 1950), I have grown up in a culture that is overwhelmingly secular and anti-religious. The universities, broadcasters and media generally are not merely non-religious, they are positively anti.”
“My belief has come about in large measure because of the lives and examples of people I have known - not the famous, not saints, but friends and relations who have lived, and faced death, in the light of the Resurrection story, or in the quiet acceptance that they have a future after they die.”
“The Easter story answers their questions about the spiritual aspects of humanity. It changes people’s lives because it helps us understand that we, like Jesus, are born as spiritual beings.”
“But an even stronger argument is the way that Christian faith transforms individual lives - the lives of the men and women with whom you mingle on a daily basis, the man, woman or child next to you in church tomorrow morning.”
Of all the arguments in The God Delusion by Richard the one that is strongest in favour of Christianity is the undeniable experience with God that has changed the lives of so many for the better that is otherwise inexplicable. It is something that we find the atheist Matthew Parris wrestling with. As in a few of the posts that follow the article in the Daily Mail, there will always be those who, “convince a man against his will and he will be of the same opinion still.” But this story by A. N. Wilson is another I am impressed to add to the few others on this blog that can be found in the Category, “Stories About ‘Change of Heart’”.
A shorter version of Wilson’s story can be read here and the fuller version in the Daily Mail.
