Conversin Being Born Again and Again Catholic Update

T he twenty-four hour period President John F. Kennedy was shot is one of my most vivid childhood memories. I was in sixth class playing on the playground when the rumors started. Only before the dismissal bong at the end of the twenty-four hours, the principal made the proclamation over the PA system: JFK had been assassinated.

School was dismissed in eerie silence. Tears welled upwards in my eyes as I walked the one-half mile domicile that afternoon. My sorrow was nearly overwhelming for a 6th-grader, non only considering our President was dead, just primarily because in my eye of hearts I believed that he was in hell.

He was a Cosmic, and I was a Christian Fundamentalist.

I was the second child in a family unit of iv children, the only male child. Since my father was a Fundamentalist preacher, I was what people oftentimes called a "PK" (preacher'south child). My parents had met at Houghton College after my mother transferred at that place from Nyack Bible Found in New York. They returned to Chicago and were married by A. W. Tozer, a well-known Fundamentalist writer who was also their pastor. I was born while my father was attending Dallas Theological Seminary. At various times, both of my parents taught at Moody Bible Institute.

I have fond memories of sitting in church every Dominicus listening to my father preach. Through him, I had an didactics in theology before I always attended seminary. Every Sunday, we attended church for Lord's day school, morning worship, evening worship, and youth group. Nosotros also faithfully attended Wednesday prayer meeting and Friday youth grouping each calendar week. Our entire lives revolved effectually our church.

The only annual religious celebrations our church observed were Christmas and Easter. Other than those two holidays, I had never even heard of a "church building agenda" that recognized the events of the Incarnation every year. We did celebrate certain secular holidays, however, such as Mother's Twenty-four hour period.

Nosotros were called "Fundamentalists" because we believed in the "fundamentals" of the Christian faith. Fundamentalism as a theological motion had been formulated in reaction to the ascension of modernism in Protestant theology effectually the offset of the twentieth century. We felt that it was important that we exist articulate on the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, every bit well as the truths of Christ's divinity, virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, and imminent second coming to set up upward His earthly kingdom. (The last of these beliefs is known as "premillennialism.")

Although we believed that Fundamentalist Christianity predated the Reformation, we even so accustomed the twin pillars of the Reformation: sola scriptura (Scripture alone) and sola fide (organized religion alone).

A person became a Christian, we insisted, by believing that Christ died to pay the penalisation of sin, admitting that all his own efforts at sky were useless, and accepting Christ equally his personal Savior. A unmarried prayer was the only prerequisite for a "personal relationship" with God.

On a practical level, being Fundamentalist meant keeping oneself split from the evils of the world. As such, I did not trip the light fantastic, attend movie theaters or the ballet, utilise tobacco, drink alcohol, swear, play cards, hazard, or date non-Fundamentalists. (Our Southern counterparts as well forbade males and females to swim together.) I was almost thirty when I first stepped into a tavern. When I took my own children to see old Walt Disney reruns, I was seeing the movies for the outset time.

The adults around me lived up to these standards, and their example made it easier to alive this mode. I never detected whatever of the hypocrisy in my parents that the major media tried to portray within Fundamentalism. My parents taught me that delivery to the truth was always worth any cede.

Views on the Catholic Organized religion

I was taught always to be polite and neighborly to Catholics and other people nosotros considered to be not-Christians. Yet always nosotros had the desire to see them some day go true believers like usa. I was trained in how to turn a friendly conversation into ane in which I could share the Gospel. When I was in a social state of affairs and failed to accomplish this goal, I felt a twinge of remorse, or even guilt.

Our worldview divided the world into very neat categories. Fundamentalists were the true Christians like those of the early Church. Liberals questioned the fundamentals of the faith. This group included most non-Fundamentalist Protestants. Liberals might make information technology to sky, but it was rather unlikely. It was bad to be a liberal, but it was much worse to be a Roman Cosmic.

 Catholics were non even Christians, we believed, because they did not empathize that conservancy was past faith lonely. We believed Catholics were going to hell because they tried to earn their conservancy by practiced works rather than trusting only in the finished work of Christ on the cross. No one was good enough to earn conservancy. We could prove that from the Bible.

Well-nigh converts to Fundamentalism were former Catholics. Although they were non saved, at least Catholics could be convinced from the Bible that they needed to be.

The last category was fabricated up of those people who were total unbelievers. In that location weren't that many of them around. I met my first atheist during my junior year in high school.

All through history, we believed, God had preserved a remnant of people who protected the truth only as we Fundamentalists did now. It was easy to see that the Roman Catholic Church did non contain these believers. All i had to do was look at their beliefs.

Didn't whatever Catholics ever read their Bible? We were convinced that so much of what they believed was in direct opposition to God'southward Word. (I had never actually read any Cosmic theology for myself, but nonetheless I was sure that I knew what Catholics believed.) We seldom pondered the many areas of understanding we had with Catholics, such equally the divinity of Christ, the virgin nativity, and the inspiration of Scripture.

It has been said that few people disagree with what the Church actually teaches, while there are multitudes who disagree with what they mistakenly think she teaches. I fit into the second category, finding offensive many teachings that I thought were Cosmic.

I thought information technology was obvious that Mary had not remained a virgin after Christ'due south nativity, since the Bible mentions the brothers of Jesus. I could come across no ground for a belief in the Assumption or the Immaculate Formulation. The view of Mary as Coredemptrix and Mediatrix seemed to lower the role of Christ as our sole redeemer and mediator.

Catholic prayers to saints and veneration of images and relics as well seemed to impinge on the authority of Christ. The belief that our own works were involved in our salvation seemed to fly in the face of Bible verses I had memorized as a child. How could water Baptism be essential to our regeneration? That seemed too physical, as well superstitious, too medieval to be true.

Purgatory flew in the confront of Christ's finished piece of work on the cross, every bit did the sacrifice of the Mass. Anybody knew that indulgences had proved to be so susceptible to manipulation. The idea that a mere man, the pope, could exist infallible — well, that idea was hardly worth addressing. Even the few Catholics that I did know did not seem to believe that idea.

The practice of doting a wafer of bread and chalice of vino seemed to be as strange to true Christianity every bit anything of which I could conceive. I would never have addressed whatsoever non-relative as "Father," specially a priest who had never married and had children of his ain. Why would anyone confess their sins to a mere mortal when they could go directly to God and be forgiven with so much less trouble?

Anybody whom I respected was convinced that the Catholics had inserted books into their Bible to eternalize these false behavior. With their traditions, the Catholic Church belittled scriptural authority.

Every bit is axiomatic, there was very little distinctive to the Catholic faith that I had not been trained to pass up. But what made things even worse were lukewarm Catholics. Information technology seemed that Catholics lacked any deep commitment to their beliefs. Was it because they did not undergo adult Baptism?

Baptism

In Fundamentalism, babies were never baptized. Baptism was non a sacrament that actually changed someone. Nor did information technology bequeath anything. Baptism was merely an ordinance that we did as adults for i reason: to testify our obedience to Christ'southward command. Since a baby could never practice that, information technology was reserved for teenagers and adults.

I call up being baptized at age fourteen by my father. I publicly announced my organized religion in Christ, and he baptized me in the proper noun of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. I was so completely immersed in what I recall was extremely cold water.

In the years leading up to my baptism, I had answered numerous "altar calls." An altar call was frequently given at the terminate of a service. While singing a hymn, people in the congregation were urged to walk down to the forepart of the aisle and meet with an elder of the church. The elderberry would then lead any who came down in prayer to receive Christ as personal Savior.

The catch-22 was this: How did yous know whether your faith was potent enough to relieve y'all? Every bit a kid, I repeatedly would hear the altar call and wonder, "What if I was not actually sincere last time?" The best solution was to get downwardly again and brand sure. Since organized religion was all it took to be saved, it was of import to be sure that the faith you lot mustered up was genuine!

It was sometime after becoming Catholic that I realized my baptism had been a turning point. Although information technology was too subtle to find at the time, in retrospect I realized that my relationship with God had turned a corner at my baptism. Before it, I had continually wondered if my faith was strong enough, and walked the aisle in an attempt to make sure. Afterwards my baptism, I had a deep balls that God was my loving Father. I no longer doubted that He wanted me to go to heaven even more than than I did myself.

Without knowing information technology at the fourth dimension, I had experienced my kickoff sacrament. God had imprinted my soul with His marking. I was His.

It would take me decades before I would capeesh this truth, merely God had given me the grace of faith through a sacrament. I did not totally understand the sacrament (who does?), but I did want to exist baptized in accord with Christ'southward command. In His grace, God had carried me the balance of the way.

Years later, I was amazed that the Church building steadfastly refused to rebaptize me subsequently investigating my initial baptism. As a Fundamentalist, I had seen many Catholics rebaptized when they left the Cosmic Church. In seminary, I was taught that rebaptizing Catholic converts was necessary.

Seminary

The seminary I attended was Evangelical Protestant. Mayhap I should define terms hither. Within a few generations after the emergence of the Fundamentalist motion, many Fundamentalists had adopted for themselves the name "Evangelicals" instead. This "Evangelicalism" became in certain ways theologically broader than Fundamentalism and more accepting of mod culture. Many Evangelicals laid aside the strict Fundamentalist rules against attention the theater, playing cards, and the like.

I met some wonderful professors and fellow students at the seminary. I learned a groovy deal, only some lessons stuck with me fifty-fifty later on I left.

First, my Church history class was taught by a devout Presbyterian. I came abroad from the course with the distinct impression that the Protestant Reformation was very complex. There were important political forces at play that overshadowed whatsoever theological disagreements.

This fracturing of Christianity had continued right down into our ain day. I had seen congregations split over "theological issues." But when all the facts came to light, a dissimilar story usually emerged. At that place were political disagreements in these congregations that were at least every bit important as the theological. There would be 2 strong-willed men, or ii groups of men, that simply chose to divide a congregation rather than submit to any say-so. Theology was many times the public justification, but certainly not the entire reason.

I also discovered that when Protestants study early on Church building history, they rarely read the primary sources at length. We read a great many comments nearly what the early on Church Fathers believed. But any bodily writings by the Fathers were read in snippets.

I later found what I idea might exist a big function of the reason why. When I read the Fathers on my ain, I came to accept the singled-out impression that they were thoroughly sacramental and thoroughly obedient to a hierarchy already existent within the Church. In other words, they were non Protestants, Evangelicals, or Fundamentalists. The early Fathers had been thoroughly Cosmic.

I establish the theological terrain within Evangelicalism to be in crisis. During college, I had majored in philosophy. I had come to the point where I no longer considered myself a Fundamentalist. The rigidity of its theology and the lack of charity were exhibited most clearly in its doctrine of "separation." Only overall, I had just come up to disagree with also much that Fundamentalists held important.

In seminary, however, I plant that Evangelicalism was "all over the map." There were disagreements about everything, even within the seminary itself. Some of the matters of disagreement were perhaps understandable: predestination, premillennialism, the ordinances of the church. Merely other bug seemed to be basic enough that there should accept been some semblance of consistency. In that location was not.

The almost agonizing disagreements centered on the many Bible passages that had no plausible "Protestant" explanation. I had tucked some of them in the dorsum of my listen before seminary. I was sure I would discover the answers to these passages. But rather than finding them answered, I found myself with a longer and longer list as I progressed through my training.

I was surrounded past the brightest and all-time that Evangelicalism had to offering. My professors came from many different Protestant traditions. But none of them had a satisfying estimation of these passages — even though these verses were in the one Book that they all agreed independent all they needed for salvation.

Suffering

Perhaps two examples might be helpful to illustrate this dilemma.

First, how an all-loving and anointed God can allow homo suffering has been a topic of discussion since long earlier the biblical Task suffered. Equally a college philosophy major, I read The Problem of Hurting by C. S. Lewis for the first time. Information technology fabricated tremendous sense to me.

Lewis' major point is that suffering is not random. Suffering helps a Christian grow fifty-fifty when no one else knows almost it. Suffering teaches unqualified obedience. This perspective made a tremendous corporeality of sense, but unfortunately it is incomplete when compared with Scripture.

I think once sitting in our living room with the president of Dallas Theological Seminary when I was a teenager. I had a question. How would he reconcile Colossians 1:24 with the thought of salvation by faith alone? St. Paul had written to the Colossians: "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up up in my flesh what is still defective in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his torso, which is the church" (New International Version).

Paul's perspective on suffering was much more than comprehensive than C. South. Lewis' ideas. Paul attributed salvific merit to his ain suffering, even for others. His perspective in this passage was not that people could be saved past "religion alone." Somehow Paul assumed that the Colossians knew that faith must be perfected through suffering — dare I say, through works. He did non justify his statement as though information technology were a novel thought. He just stated it and moved on, every bit though no knowledgeable Colossian Christian would accept had any doubt about his statement.

I was surprised that the learned, holy, Fundamentalist president of Dallas Theological Seminary had no good way to reconcile this verse in Colossians with his soteriology (theology of conservancy). But I could tell that he had apparently thought most information technology a bully deal. After in seminary, I encountered this phenomenon repeatedly. Verses existed that could not be reconciled with whatever Protestant tradition by any of the professors I encountered. But it seemed to me that if some of Scripture direct contradicted my theology, it was my responsibleness to rethink the theology, non the Bible.

Suffering and its office in salvation did not brand sense to me until, long after seminary, I discovered the writings of Pope John Paul II. Somehow I got on a mailing list for a Catholic publisher. I was scandalized that they had somehow obtained my name. Merely I love books, and so I stayed on the list.

One day I saw a book in that publisher's itemize that had organized topically the thinking of Pope John Paul II. The Pope had been so influential in the liberation of Europe that I thought I should read some of what he had to say. It was my showtime direct run into with a faithful Catholic author.

The Pope made clear that suffering is not enjoyable. But he insisted that it is essential to salvation. This thoroughly Cosmic concept not just makes sense of the verse in Colossians; it infuses suffering with dignity. This was the offset of my discovery that Catholic literature plumbed a depth of spirituality I had never even dreamed was available in print.

In some mysterious way, Pope John Paul taught, our suffering can fifty-fifty aid in the process of other people'south salvation. Perhaps I should permit him speak for himself:

In the Paschal Mystery Christ began the union with man in the community of the Church.… The Church is continually being built up spiritually every bit the Body of Christ. In this Body, Christ wishes to exist united with every individual, and in a special manner He is united with those who suffer.… The sufferings of Christ created the good of the earth's Redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No homo tin add together anything to it. But at the same time, in the mystery of the Church as His Body, Christ has in a sense opened His ain redemptive suffering to all man suffering. In then far every bit man becomes a sharer in Christ's sufferings … to that extent he in his own way completes the suffering through which Christ achieved the Redemption of the earth. Does this mean that the Redemption achieved by Christ is not complete? No … Christ achieved the Redemption completely and to the very limit, only at the same fourth dimension He did non bring it to a close.… It seems to be part of the very essence of Christ's redemptive suffering that this suffering requires to be unceasingly completed. (Salvifici Doloris, no. 24; emphasis in the original)

Suffering's office in our salvation is conspicuously taught in Scripture. I found no expert caption for this fact until I embraced the ancient faith of the Catholic Church.

The "End Times"

The biblical truth about suffering was only one of many truths I encountered that pressed me to explore Catholic teaching. I came to the firm conclusion that the best way to understand the Bible was to listen to the Catholic Church. Yet, a second example might be helpful.

I had always believed in a version of premillennialism that teaches Christ will render very presently to fix a thousand-yr reign in Jerusalem with the Jews. Virtually American premillennialists also believe this scenario entails a "rapture" that will take "true believers" out of the globe. This "rapture" will permit a seven-yr "Great Tribulation" that punishes unbelievers and prepares the earth for Christ'due south 2nd coming.

Yous may take heard of Christians who are striving to rebuild the Jerusalem temple, or seeking to breed the pure cherry-red heifer whose ashes, once sacrificed and burned, they believe are necessary to consecrate the temple site (see Numbers xix:1–10). These people are premillennialists.

While in seminary, I pondered how to reconcile Christ's finished work on the cross with whatsoever resumption of the One-time Covenant animal sacrifices. The Book of Hebrews, for example, teaches that the sometime cult is no longer necessary and must pass away.

For me, the hardest biblical passage related to this word was found in Zechariah. I remember standing in a hallway with a human whose specialty was general eschatology (study of the "end times"). A fellow approached us and asked this respected teacher about this verse. His question was this: "If Jesus' cede is final and complete, why will there be sacrifices needed in Jerusalem after the death and resurrection of Jesus?"

The scholar's face momentarily clouded with annoyance. I have never forgotten his adjacent argument. He admitted that he knew of no plausible Evangelical explanation for these ii verses.

Zechariah 14:twenty–21 states prophetically: "On that day … the cooking pots in the Lord'southward firm volition exist like the bowls before the altar. Every cooking pot in Jerusalem and in Judah will be holy to the Lord of hosts; and all who come to sacrifice [in Jerusalem] will take some of the pots and cook in them" (NIV). Nigh premillennialists concur that this passage is speaking of a time subsequently Christ's first coming. Why is information technology so problematic for them? Because they understand these events to occur during the thousand-year reign of Christ over an earthly kingdom with its capital at Jerusalem.

Here's the rub. After Christ has died and set up His kingdom, why would sacrifices be resumed? There is absolutely no good Protestant response to that question. Evangelicals are adamant virtually the fact that priesthood here on earth is no longer needed. Sacrifices after the passion of Christ are unnecessary. The crucifixion of Christ was the concluding sacrifice ever needed. So why rebuild Jerusalem's temple?

This verse had remained an enigma to me for sixteen years, ever since seminary. When I was investigating Catholic Church building teaching, I realized that Zechariah was really talking near a sacrifice offered in Jerusalem every day at present. He was referring to the Eucharist!

The Eucharist is the only cede that would have any value after the Messiah's passion because of its connection to the passion. The cede of the Mass is beingness offered every day in Catholic churches, not just in Jerusalem, only all over the world. In other words, the continuing sacrifices of the Church building were foretold in the Onetime Testament. When this reality dawned on me, I got and so excited I ran into our living room and gave a "high five" to my thirteen-yr-former son.

Crunch and Reconciliation

We all reach certain critical decision points in our Christian pilgrimage. God gives u.s. a option: to follow or non to follow. These crisis points are never easy. They always involve sacrifice and suffering. And they are e'er an occasion of grace.

At the rather tardily historic period of xl, I knew that I had approached i of these crunch points. I had been studying Scripture all my life. By this time, I had spent the previous months studying Catholic pedagogy in relation to Scripture. I had desperately attempted to detect a reason not to go Catholic.

I knew my family would lose friends. I knew my wife and children would take to start all once more in a new social circle. I knew that once I "went public" with these convictions, life could never once more be the same. I hesitated, wondering if this was the right thing to do.

One day I woke upward and knew something for certain. I turned to my wife and said, "Colleen, I know that I believe." We had been investigating and discussing so much that I did not even need to tell her what I believed. After months of study and discussion, she knew that I was referring to the Eucharist. I believed it actually was Christ'southward Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. This faith was a gift from God.

Information technology was not a bolt out of the blue. I had spent months trying to justify to myself what I had e'er believed: the Protestant interpretation of John 6. Jesus had said, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if whatever one eats of this breadstuff, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh" (v. 51, emphasis added).

Later on studying this text from a Catholic perspective, I knew in my head that the Church building was right. John half-dozen clearly taught that the Body of Christ was the sustenance that I needed for eternity. Zechariah had predicted information technology. Jesus had instituted information technology. And only one Church in town taught this truth as Jesus stated it: the Cosmic parish five blocks from my house.

But that morn was dissimilar. That morning I woke up with the firm conviction in the center of my soul that the Church was correct about the Eucharist. I was certain of this divine truth. This grace was non a gift that I deserved. I practise not know why I was singled out to receive it. Someone was obviously offering upward prayers and sufferings for my enlightenment.

At this point, God showed me that He had already given me another great gift: my beloved wife. At that crisis bespeak, she only said, "David, if that is what you believe, then you need to follow your behavior and join the Church building."

Several months later, through another grace of God, I was reconciled to the Cosmic Church: not solitary, simply together with my married woman and all six of our children. That was over twenty years ago. Since and so, God has blessed united states with two more children.

I tin honestly say that reconciling with the Church building is the best thing our family unit has ever done. This Church is a wonderful place to raise a family and to travel on our pilgrimage to sky. In fact, it is the but place God ever intended for the states.

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Source: https://chnetwork.org/story/born-fundamentalist-born-again-catholic-conversion-story-of-david-b-currie/

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