Two Spiritual Mentors
The journey of how Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Catholic Bishop Robert Barron led to my conversion from atheism to Christianity.
This essay was originally published on December 8, 2020.
“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” -1 Corinthians 13:4-8
My spiritual journey has been one that is unique and full of surprises. If you’d told me three years ago that I would become religious, I would’ve responded by saying that it was possible but unlikely. However, if you’d told me then that I would be religious AND seeking to join the Catholic Church, I would’ve dismissed you outright. In order to understand my desire to become Catholic, it’s necessary to delve into the history of my relationship with the Lord, as well as to explain how the influence of a former U.S. President and a Catholic bishop changed my life for the better.
My father was raised by a heavily devout single mother who ensured that he had a proper Christian upbringing. In fact, my father was one of the most Biblically knowledgeable people I’ve ever known. However, experiences throughout his childhood and teenage years made him wary of organized religion, and by the time I was born, he was no longer regularly going to church. My mother was also raised in a fairly religious environment, regularly attending Baptist church services as a teenager and young adult, in addition to occasionally attending vacation bible school. My father’s strong opposition to organized religion presented a problem for my mother once I was born, because she sought for the three of us to attend church services together.
Needless to say, because I infrequently attended church when I was younger, I didn’t have the best Biblical or religious foundation. When Mom and I would infrequently attend traditional Baptist church services throughout my childhood, I would find myself lost, confused, and bored. I didn’t understand the significance of Jesus’ sacrifice, nor did I understand why Christians recommended that we attend church services on a regular basis. In retrospect, I realize that I was beginning to doubt and question my religious beliefs as early as age seven, and that these doubts would persist throughout my teenage years and into my early twenties.
When I was twelve years old, I made what was the largest attempt to deepen my religious faith at the time. At this point, I had endured two and a half excruciating years of middle school, in which I often found myself warring with teachers and classmates. I had also started to realize the level of dysfunction that I was enduring at home, with my parents’ marriage slowly deteriorating and my father becoming an emotionally distant figure. A few years earlier, my mother had begun attending a local non-denominational church which had a modern approach to worship: blue jeans, rock music, and a barista. My father would jokingly, (and somewhat mockingly) refer to this style of worship as “party church,” but at the time, this was the most appealing church experience I had found. I began attending services every week, even occasionally going on Wednesday nights in addition to Sunday’s.
While I was attending weekly church services, I was also frequently reading and researching about the Bible. However, I would discover several verses during my studies that caused me great dissonance, particularly those in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that condemned homosexuality. While I myself am not gay, I have always sympathized with the difficulties and adversities that members of the LGBTQ community encounter. Throughout middle and high school, I considered myself an outcast in comparison to my peers, who frequently didn’t understand my interests or personality. When interacting with some of my peers who later came out as gay or transgender, I related to their feelings of isolation, sadness, and shame that were brought on by others ridiculing or harassing them. Worse, I slowly began to notice how hateful some “Christians” could be towards gay individuals. I remember watching a televangelist and alleged follower of Jesus Christ refer to gay people as “no-good” and “disgusting.” I remember reflecting on Biblical figures like Noah or Moses, who had spoken directly with God, and thought, “I would sure like to hear God’s voice right now, because I have a lot of questions for him to answer!”
These Biblical questions made me begin to question religion itself. Was Christianity the true religion? Was there even a deity at all? Was religion just a tool used by opportunists to gain power and control over others? Ironically, I believed then that the Catholic Church was a prime example of a religious institution filled with opportunists who exploited their power. I remember thinking, “Catholics ‘worship’ the Pope, who is human, and abide by all of his decrees in Rome. After all, Catholics listened to the Pope’s words so closely that it led to the Crusades and Inquisition. What good can come from that?” Unfortunately, I realize now that I was so vastly wrong.
By the time I was thirteen, I considered myself an agnostic atheist who rejected and opposed religion, but also claimed to be unsure as to whether or not there was an afterlife. This period of my life would prove to be very tough, with a tumultuous home life coming to a head with the death of my father when I was seventeen, and a rough break-up at the age of eighteen. These events and their traumatic nature contributed to my existing negative feelings about religion. I once remarked to my mother that, if there indeed was a God, “I hated him.”
Fortunately, I would undergo a monumental transformation in my life, one that would make me healthier and happier. I would lose a significant amount of excess weight, begin finishing my college degree, and get a day job in order to pay for college tuition. While life wasn’t and hasn’t been perfect, this period of my life is definitely the most hopeful period thus far. As time went on, I would slowly become more open-minded to the idea of a superior being, but would remain a deist. While I considered the possibility that some supreme being, (or the universe itself) could be influencing Earthly events, I still denied the divinity of Jesus and the existence of the Abrahamic God.
Halfway through 2018, I began questioning what I had considered to be my life’s purpose. Initially, I was pursuing a business degree with the intent of joining the financial field. My main desire was to accumulate wealth beyond my wildest dreams. With millions of dollars, I could achieve financial freedom, show that I was “better” than others, and ultimately prove to myself that I was worthy of happiness and love. However, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that, if I pursued this self-absorbed lifestyle, I would be living an empty life. I now consider this nagging feeling to have been a sign from God that I needed to take a different path for my life. I now desire to become a servant leader.
This need to shift the trajectory of my life towards love and service rather than competition and greed led me to study the life of Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. As a fellow Georgian, I could relate to aspects of Carter’s upbringing in the deep south, and respected his gritty upbringing. Additionally, I admired his integrity and traditional lifestyle, especially his dedication to his Christian faith. From Fall 2018 to Summer 2019, Mom and I would attend three of President Carter’s Sunday School lessons in Plains, Georgia, and I would find myself mesmerized with his way of professing God’s word. Carter’s lessons largely focused on God’s love for us, as well as His capacity to forgive us for our sins. Carter would also emphasize the necessity of forgiving those who have transgressed against us, and to seek fulfillment in life by following our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
I would consider President Carter to be a model Christian, and he made me realize that there is no place for hatred or vengeance in the heart of a Christian. Being a Christian means to love thy neighbor, no matter who they are or what they do, and to always seek forgiveness from our Lord. Similarly, President Carter’s own humility and grace have been an enormous inspiration for me, especially since I frequently indulge in the sin of arrogance. There is no doubt that Jimmy Carter’s influence on me is considerable, and I credit President Carter with helping to lead me back to Christ.
During the beginning months of 2020, I began researching the various Christian denominations in order to find the one for me. As I studied the progressive theology taught by many Anglicans, (specifically their emphasis on love, human rights, and support of gay marriage) I began to consider myself an Episcopalian. However, the feelings of spiritual insecurity and doubt quickly crept back into my mind. The same questions that had always plagued me about religion and Christianity once again resurfaced. “How can I believe that any of the Bible is true? Where is the historical evidence?”
One of the few Christian denominations I hadn’t yet researched was, ironically, the first Christian denomination: Catholicism. I had considered the Catholic faith “off-limits” when deciding which Christian denomination to choose from, primarily because of Catholic stereotypes and controversies surrounding the Church. Plus, I knew that if I even considered converting to Catholicism, it had the potential to cause a rift in my family. However, I desperately wanted to genuinely believe in the validity of Christianity, and no Protestant denomination had ever convinced me that Christianity’s message was factually accurate. Therefore, I concluded that I had nothing to lose by learning about the Catholic faith.
I began my journey into the Catholic faith by watching Bishop Robert Barron’s miniseries, “CATHOLICISM.” One of the focal points of Bishop Barron’s work is to analytically study religion and fuse it with history and philosophy. Bishop Barron’s arguments in favor of the Catholic faith appealed to my analytic nature, and answered many of the burning questions I had about the Christian religion. Similarly, Bishop Barron’s tendency to place Catholicism into a larger philosophical picture helped illustrate its feasibility. For example, Bishop Barron states that God is not simply a being within the universe, but rather, is everything that makes up the universe. Therefore, God is not some abstract concept, because He is reality itself. With his analytical explanations of Biblical phenomena, it can be said that Bishop Barron instigated the largest spiritual awakening of my life.
As I continued learning about Christ’s Church, I realized that there are actually seventy-three books in the Bible, and that confession, purgatory, the real presence, the primacy of Peter, and the papacy are all Biblical. I also became familiar with the writings of the Early Church Fathers, including those by Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, and Clement of Rome. I was fascinated to learn that a few of the Early Church Fathers studied under several of the Apostles. To this day, I would argue that the writings of the Early Church Fathers are among the most compelling evidence that the divinity of Jesus Christ is true.
Unfortunately, many Protestant theologians don’t emphasize the significance of the Early Church Fathers. This is most likely because much of what these Church Fathers wrote correspond with Catholic teachings that are nearly two-thousand years old. In the past, Protestants had always told me to look “in the Bible” for answers to my spiritual questions, which I had always found inadequate. By contrast, Catholicism emphasizes the Bible, (and considers it to be above all) but also emphasizes Church history and tradition in order to act as an authority on pressing spiritual questions. I personally believe that Catholicism presents a much more complete historical account of Christianity than Protestantism, which ultimately bridges the long historical gap between Christ’s resurrection and the modern era.
Similar to President Carter, one of the most appealing aspects of Bishop Barron’s message is his emphasis on love and forgiveness. While Catholicism is a stricter denomination than some, Catholic teaching and liturgy heavily focus on Christ’s love for us, which directly influenced His sacrifice on Calvary. Bishop Barron takes great care to emphasize that love and mercy are the root of all Catholic and Christian teachings, and that being a Christian is to give yourself over to God and His will. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t warn others about sin, or that we should ignore our own sins, but that our intention should be to bring others to Christ in a loving way. Bishop Barron also emphasizes that science, philosophy, and religion can coexist, and that science and philosophy should be embraced and used to strengthen our religious faith. While I credit President Carter with leading me to Christ, I credit Bishop Robert Barron for bringing me to Christ’s Church. Thank God for them both and for their influence on my life.
For the first time in my twenty-two year life, I am spiritual and religious, and wish to integrate faith into every area of my life. Catholicism is a beautiful religion which I initially misunderstood, and its teachings now bring me a substantial amount of happiness that I never thought was possible from religion. I can only imagine how it will feel to finally join Christ’s Church and become baptized, confirmed, and able to receive Communion. Thank you President Carter and Bishop Barron, for the two of you are prime examples of men of God and strong evangelists!
God bless you, and peace be with you!