My Clean Conscience Had a High Price, But Enormous Value
My Clean Conscience Had a High Price, But Enormous Value

My Clean Conscience Had a High Price, But Enormous Value

Everyone eventually comes to a pivotal point in their life. I grew up on a small farm in the Midwest.   My father had grown up Catholic but my mother was raised Evangelical Protestant and refused to convert to Catholicism or raise her children in the Catholic Church.  Surprisingly, when my father returned from WW2, after being gone 4 years, they married anyway.  Growing up, our mother took us to church faithfully every Sunday to a small Christian church, with my Father driving us there but rarely ever attending unless my brother and/or I were involved in some special program. I remember my Father telling me that, ”You boys will attend church with your mother while you are under this roof to keep her happy and when you leave home you can do whatever you want.” Consequently, my spiritual upbringing was a bit confusing – at best. As an adolescent, I remember my mother announcing to my brother and I that we were going to get baptized the next Sunday, which I did to keep peace in the family, but it had no impact on my life at that time.   

I eventually went away to college and as a biology major was entrenched in evolutionary doctrine which quickly led me to agnosticism if not outright atheism. However, as I got into graduate school and started taking upper level 800 courses, God started revealing Himself to me in the complexity of nature in molecular & cellular biology, embryology, etc.  There was so much complexity and design, it started to become obvious to me that everything could not have come into existence by time & chance.   

My wife & I were unbelievers when we got married after graduate school and we subsequently spent 3 years on active duty with the Navy on the West Coast before returning to the Midwest for more schooling.  It was here that my wife got “radically saved” at a large evangelical church in the area. The change in her life was dramatic, however I just thought, “whatever makes her happy will make my life easier.” 

Upon returning to the West Coast, our kids were preschoolers and I started to think about what values I was going to teach them when I really had not sorted that out myself. I was still in the Navy Reserves and encountered a fellow officer who knew I was driving 40 minutes each way to work during the week and he gave me a set of New Testament cassettes to listen to going back and forth each day.  Back in those days, radio reception was terrible on the drive over, so cassette tapes were a good option to keep you awake while commuting. I probably listened through the NT ten times that year and finally came to the conclusion that Jesus was who he claimed to be.  

 Also, during that time I discovered that I was in a business partnership where there were unethical, if not outright illegal, things going on. I came to the conclusion that I needed to remove myself from that situation. I did not want my name on the door when the authorities came.  Unfortunately, that decision would cost me more money than we paid for our first home.  

I remember sitting in a chair in the office in August 1985 (at age 35) pondering on a particular egregious situation that had recently occurred and realized I needed to make a decision on the path my life was going to take. I accepted Christ that day, still having questions regarding evolution and the Bible, but realized some things we won’t know till we get to heaven. I’d just have to trust God.   

Fortunately, God didn’t leave me in that situation.  About a year later, we were going to take a week to get away without the kids in Hawaii. One of Ruth’s friends from church, part of a group of women who had been praying for Ruth’s “unsaved husband” for several years, gave her a book which she put in my suitcase to read.  When we got there, I took it down to the beach to read. It was from ICR and entitled “What is Creation Science?” (Public School Edition) with arguments for special creation just from science.  I remember being on the beach and going through a dramatic paradigm shift.  I had the same set of data from my evolutionary background, but once I saw it from a Biblical perspective, it all fell into place and made sense. (Job 12:7-9) I remember thinking two things: 1) God’s Word is true and it can be trusted and 2) “Now that you know this, you need to tell people”.  At my age, I have now been a Christian longer than I was not, and I see the truth of God’s Word in the scriptures and in His creation apparent all around me more and more each year.

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