- Joined
- Jul 13, 2015
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- 19,199
- Location
- Western Australia
- Gender
- Male
- Religious Affiliation
- Catholic
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- Moderate
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- Single
- Acceptance of the Trinity & Nicene Creed
- Yes
I am not really sure which forum a post like this ought to be in. It is about a journey to faith more than about the specific content of the Faith.
The journey is my own. It is, of necessity, a summarised story. It starts when I was young. A little kiddy.
My first personally remembered encounter with Christianity was when I was old enough to understand a TV show (about six years old) and I saw a Billy Graham televised "crusade". The show ended with an offer of a free new testament. I asked my mother to get one for me and she generously wrote to the address given and got one.
But it never went any further, I was brought up as an atheist and that is what I was. The free new testament was glanced at read in little parts but eventually lost.
many years later and in a different country in my teens I met a friend in school - he is still my friend today - who was being brought up as one of Jehovah's witnesses. His mother was a witness but his father was not. He went to the Kingdom Hall and his brother and his mother too. I used to debate a little with his mum (she died a few years ago, God rest her soul). I eventually visited the Kingdom Hall with them. Read a few of their publications and did a little bit of study with his mum. That also didn't go any further. I remained an atheist. I went to university and encountered a Baptist chap there. He was rude and difficult but his bible monomania caused me to look at a Gideon's new testament & psalms that I was given at high school around graduation time at a school assembly where every graduating senior was given one.
I remembered the teachings I saw in the Jehovah's witnesses' publications. I compared the bible with those teachings that I remembered. But I remained an atheist. A more bible knowledgeable atheist.
Then a met a Catholic family, they didn't go to church often, except the mother and the youngest son. I never went to church with them, but I knew that they went. And I read the Gideon new testament and some of the psalms. I eventually decided that I liked Jesus. I started attending the local Baptist church. It was easy walking distance from my parent's home and I still lived with my parents at that time. I was baptised in that church. (I was also baptised as a 2 or 3 year old in my father's Lutheran church but that was not accounted as baptism by baptists so I was baptised in the baptist church).
I made friends in the baptist church, one couple was from a Pentecostal background in England, a few others were new converts who were leaning towards charismatic things, and a chap about my age whose mother was a Pentecostal. They left the week before I was baptised. The week after I was baptised I went to the Assembly of God meeting that they had started attending. I joined the AoG. I went to the AoG for the next 1.5 years. Then the AoG pastor shifted his theology away from a fairly reformed-Calvinist kind of Pentecostalism to a Kenneth-Hagan style of beliefs and I spoke with him about it a few times and then left and joined Westminster Presbyterian Church. It was not charismatic or Pentecostal but I did not mind. I joined that congregation as a founding member. I stayed with them for more than a decade. Eventually I moved house and transferred attendance to a different congregation of Westminster Presbyterian Church. But it was about a 20 minute drive so I started looking around for a better located church to join.
I eventually moved again (to Canberra) and started attending Westminster Presbyterian Church in a suburb of Canberra. I stayed there for a few years. I returned to my home city. Only this time I was unsettled and attended only occasionally. Then I stopped attending church altogether and returned to atheism for a number of years during which I moved to the Bay Area in California and then returned to Australia and did various things in various places. Finally I started looking for a church home again. I realised that goodness mattered to me and that the only source of goodness that made any sense was God. I attended an Anglican church a few times, a Uniting Church a few times, a Assembly of God a few times and then just once I attended a Catholic Church on Good Friday. I took a break from looking for almost a year.
When the year got to moving on towards another Easter I sent an email to the local Catholic Church asking for information about Catholicism. A day or two later I received a response. Things moved on from there. About a year later I was received into the Catholic Church - not baptised because my previous baptism was valid and accepted as Christian baptism by the Church - I was confirmed and met the Archbishop and got to know him and his assistant bishop. Many years have passed since then.
There was one matter I did not mention. Way back in the days before I went to the Assembly of God with my Pentecostal friends I visited a Catholic Book Shop in the city centre. I bought a Catechism while there after browsing for about an hour. The Catechism was called The Teaching of Christ and it was subtitled A Catholic Catechism for Adults. Over the next several decades I read about one half of that book. It always impressed me as kindly written, warm, full of genuine faith, and brimming over with God's love for human beings.
The journey is my own. It is, of necessity, a summarised story. It starts when I was young. A little kiddy.
My first personally remembered encounter with Christianity was when I was old enough to understand a TV show (about six years old) and I saw a Billy Graham televised "crusade". The show ended with an offer of a free new testament. I asked my mother to get one for me and she generously wrote to the address given and got one.
But it never went any further, I was brought up as an atheist and that is what I was. The free new testament was glanced at read in little parts but eventually lost.
many years later and in a different country in my teens I met a friend in school - he is still my friend today - who was being brought up as one of Jehovah's witnesses. His mother was a witness but his father was not. He went to the Kingdom Hall and his brother and his mother too. I used to debate a little with his mum (she died a few years ago, God rest her soul). I eventually visited the Kingdom Hall with them. Read a few of their publications and did a little bit of study with his mum. That also didn't go any further. I remained an atheist. I went to university and encountered a Baptist chap there. He was rude and difficult but his bible monomania caused me to look at a Gideon's new testament & psalms that I was given at high school around graduation time at a school assembly where every graduating senior was given one.
I remembered the teachings I saw in the Jehovah's witnesses' publications. I compared the bible with those teachings that I remembered. But I remained an atheist. A more bible knowledgeable atheist.
Then a met a Catholic family, they didn't go to church often, except the mother and the youngest son. I never went to church with them, but I knew that they went. And I read the Gideon new testament and some of the psalms. I eventually decided that I liked Jesus. I started attending the local Baptist church. It was easy walking distance from my parent's home and I still lived with my parents at that time. I was baptised in that church. (I was also baptised as a 2 or 3 year old in my father's Lutheran church but that was not accounted as baptism by baptists so I was baptised in the baptist church).
I made friends in the baptist church, one couple was from a Pentecostal background in England, a few others were new converts who were leaning towards charismatic things, and a chap about my age whose mother was a Pentecostal. They left the week before I was baptised. The week after I was baptised I went to the Assembly of God meeting that they had started attending. I joined the AoG. I went to the AoG for the next 1.5 years. Then the AoG pastor shifted his theology away from a fairly reformed-Calvinist kind of Pentecostalism to a Kenneth-Hagan style of beliefs and I spoke with him about it a few times and then left and joined Westminster Presbyterian Church. It was not charismatic or Pentecostal but I did not mind. I joined that congregation as a founding member. I stayed with them for more than a decade. Eventually I moved house and transferred attendance to a different congregation of Westminster Presbyterian Church. But it was about a 20 minute drive so I started looking around for a better located church to join.
I eventually moved again (to Canberra) and started attending Westminster Presbyterian Church in a suburb of Canberra. I stayed there for a few years. I returned to my home city. Only this time I was unsettled and attended only occasionally. Then I stopped attending church altogether and returned to atheism for a number of years during which I moved to the Bay Area in California and then returned to Australia and did various things in various places. Finally I started looking for a church home again. I realised that goodness mattered to me and that the only source of goodness that made any sense was God. I attended an Anglican church a few times, a Uniting Church a few times, a Assembly of God a few times and then just once I attended a Catholic Church on Good Friday. I took a break from looking for almost a year.
When the year got to moving on towards another Easter I sent an email to the local Catholic Church asking for information about Catholicism. A day or two later I received a response. Things moved on from there. About a year later I was received into the Catholic Church - not baptised because my previous baptism was valid and accepted as Christian baptism by the Church - I was confirmed and met the Archbishop and got to know him and his assistant bishop. Many years have passed since then.
There was one matter I did not mention. Way back in the days before I went to the Assembly of God with my Pentecostal friends I visited a Catholic Book Shop in the city centre. I bought a Catechism while there after browsing for about an hour. The Catechism was called The Teaching of Christ and it was subtitled A Catholic Catechism for Adults. Over the next several decades I read about one half of that book. It always impressed me as kindly written, warm, full of genuine faith, and brimming over with God's love for human beings.
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