In 1995, someone asked me what I would do if I suddenly realized that Christianity was a bunch of bunk. I remember laughing as I told him that wasn’t possible, that for me, it was like being told the sun won’t come up in the morning and it never really had in the past, that it was all a figment of my imagination.
He could try to prove that the grass is really purple and there are two ton elephants floating in the sky instead of white fluffy clouds. I would be as likely to believe his little story about an alternate reality as I would his notion that God isn't real and Jesus Christ was just a man. (Although, as C.S. Lewis said, he either was a liar or a lunatic, or he was who he said he was. There is no middle ground in which he can be considered a man like other men.)
A more realistic and prophetic question would have sounded something like this:
What would you do if you suddenly realized the fullness of faith wasn’t found in Protestant theology, but that it had been preserved complete and intact within the Roman Catholic Church?
That is a more realistic question. And it would have been prophetic because that is the exact question that shattered my neat little world just a few years later. Most people never find the answer to that question because they never seek answers beyond the pool of truth into which they were born. One must have a seeker's heart in order to find. One must have a question that needs to be answered in order to find answers.
But what do you do with Truth when it shows up looking completely different from anything you expected?
Do you follow Truth wherever it leads? Or do you walk really fast in the opposite direction?
First, try not to be afraid.
Second, pray. Lift your heart to your God and pray for truth - and peace.
Third, seek. With all that you are, seek. But be ready to find.
Seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you. . . (from Jeremiah 29)
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