Something of my own testimony

This is copied from recent correspondence I had with members of a ministry in southern Wisconsin:

There are three advantages, all closely related, to NOT having been raised as a Christian and only coming to Jesus after some time in "the world." One advantage is that you know it's YOUR conversion, not an echo of your parents. Another is that you appreciate salvation: "He who is forgiven much, loves much." And thirdly, the memory of how it was to be in darkness allows you to understand better the people to whom you witness for Jesus. My parents, alive to this day, are agnostics. Having no Christian upbringing, I was left on my own for years to GUESS whether God was real or not. Christians tend to assume that Romans 1 means that _every_ individual, just by looking at rocks and trees, clearly _knows_ that God exists. But my own experience argues that there has to be more to it. I would say that Romans 1 shows that mankind AS AN OVERALL GROUP has an awareness of God and is resisting this knowledge; but it has to be possible for individuals to have grown up under so much deception that they DON'T recognize God in the rocks and the trees. I know this has to be so, because I myself ABSOLUTELY DID _NOT_ automatically know God existed when I was a boy. This was ABSOLUTELY NOT a matter of my just refusing to admit that I knew He was real; I _wanted_ God and Heaven to exist, because I was afraid of dying, but I knew that my wishing by itself could not _make_ God exist.

Only in college, as a history major, did I start to find evidence that could penetrate the ignorance which the world had imposed on me. Once converted (in 1971), I could then reach out to other young people who were also in that darkness and confusion. To this day, as I have opportunities, I enjoy answering for young people the questions I used to ask myself in bed at night.