This year, I’m focusing on stories of former atheists that converted to Catholicism. How each person comes to Christ is unique and special, but especially interesting are those that go from no belief in God, to becoming members of the Catholic Church. For January, I interviewed Barry whom I recently met on social media. Originally from the Seattle area, he now resides in Baton Rouge. His story is the stuff of movies; truly a remarkable journey. It’s not just that Barry came into the Faith and believes in Christ; he puts his faith into action. He is the Associate Director for the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis in the Diocese of Baton Rouge. He visits with imprisoned men in his area, where he brings hope and encouragement by sharing Christ’s message. From a near death experience, to studying Buddhism in the Himalayas, to overcoming alcohol/drug addiction; this is a compelling story of a search for Christ. If you are like me, you’ll find Barry’s story quite remarkable.
1. Were you always an atheist or did you leave the faith and become one?
I am from a typical Pacific Northwest (Seattle area) family who is in a sense “post-Christian.” What I mean by this is that I was raised in an environment that didn’t even bring up the question of God, or of the Christian faith. We had some neighbors invite us to a Disciples of Christ Protestant ecclesial community and my sisters were baptized there, but I never really thought about the meaning of it and didn’t understand it. I didn’t have a feeling about it one way or another, it just wasn’t even on my radar. I had never heard anyone in my family discuss God or speak as if there was such thing as God, and so I definitely never experienced any sort of witness to Jesus as the Christ.
So, I was, in a sense an accidental atheist from the start. I wasn’t the type of atheist who was once Christian and rebelled against the faith intentionally and deliberately, rather, I was one by accident, by circumstances. I didn’t even have a rudimentary language for talking about ultimate reality, my origin and end, first principles, virtue and sin, or good and evil. And I definitely didn’t have a vocabulary for talking about God or knowing what the orthodox Christian faith taught in respect to the existence and attributes of the Creator or that Jesus was the Son of God and that the Church communicates Him.
Like the young Augustine, I sought out my completion in the world, in transient and sensual things. I didn’t know of any other way. I do remember, nonetheless, a time of greater innocence when my conscience alone communicated a sense of right and wrong, but by 15 or 16 years old this was largely clouded out by worldly clamors.
2. What was it that started to open the door for you, as far as considering the faith?
When I was 22 years old, I was critically injured in a car accident and had to be resuscitated. I had a near death experience. This radically changed my understanding of the meaning of life. Upon awakening from the NDE and since then, I have been involved in two primary tasks: Awakening to the gift of life and purifying my own life of attachment to sin. That path was intuitive to me after the accident and NDE though I wasn’t Christian. So I began a very intense period of spiritual searching, studying religion and philosophy. I studied both in school as an undergrad and graduate student, as well as in my personal life.
Like many in my socio-cultural demographic at the time I was more immediately drawn to the study of Indian religions, in particular Buddhism. For about five years, from 22-27 I studied it intensely in retreat and academic settings in N. America and India. I went as far as taking the five vows of a lay practitioner: 1) Abstain from killing 2) Abstain from fornication 3) Abstain from lying 4) Abstain from stealing 5) Abstain from intoxication.
It was in this milieu where I first began to exist in relationship to a transcendent source of morality and live as if my life had ultimate purpose. It was also in these contexts where I originally learned how to fast, how to be still and silent, how to meditate for long periods of time, how to renounce transient things for the sake of a transcendent goal. I also learned in this context, from a western Buddhist nun, of the moral horror of abortion. Up until that point, I though abortion could be justified. I also learned that mastubation, fornication, porn, intoxication, same sex acts, etc., were morally evil and very harmful (yes, even though everyone was doing promoting them as good and healthy!).
For the first time in my life I met men, usually Tibetan Buddhist monks (some nuns too), who were virtuous. This was very different from the men I was used to. And so, I would say, they were my first real formators in how to be a man. They taught me that a man isn’t a slave to his passions but rather gains mastery over them. The asceticism of these men was impressive, but their gentleness and kindness was even more impressive. I have always thought that if our own Christian faithful sought Jesus even half as intensely as these men sought liberation from suffering according to the path of the Buddha we wouldn’t have a priest shortage and the emptying out of our parishes in the West (I will leave that for another time).
I was in India, studying at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Himachel Pradesh or the Himalayan Province, when I began to turn toward the Christian faith in earnest. I was studying Tibetan language and Buddhist Philosophy in a place called McLeod Ganj where the Tibetan government was and remains in exile. In a sense, …
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]]>This year, I’m focusing on stories of former atheists that converted to Catholicism. How each person comes to Christ is unique and special, but especially interesting are those that go from no belief in God, to becoming members of the Catholic Church. For January, I interviewed Barry whom I recently met on social media. Originally from the Seattle area, he now resides in Baton Rouge. His story is the stuff of movies; truly a remarkable journey. It’s not just that Barry came into the Faith and believes in Christ; he puts his faith into action. He is the Associate Director for the Office of Evangelization and Catechesis in the Diocese of Baton Rouge. He visits with imprisoned men in his area, where he brings hope and encouragement by sharing Christ’s message. From a near death experience, to studying Buddhism in the Himalayas, to overcoming alcohol/drug addiction; this is a compelling story of a search for Christ. If you are like me, you’ll find Barry’s story quite remarkable.
1. Were you always an atheist or did you leave the faith and become one?
I am from a typical Pacific Northwest (Seattle area) family who is in a sense “post-Christian.” What I mean by this is that I was raised in an environment that didn’t even bring up the question of God, or of the Christian faith. We had some neighbors invite us to a Disciples of Christ Protestant ecclesial community and my sisters were baptized there, but I never really thought about the meaning of it and didn’t understand it. I didn’t have a feeling about it one way or another, it just wasn’t even on my radar. I had never heard anyone in my family discuss God or speak as if there was such thing as God, and so I definitely never experienced any sort of witness to Jesus as the Christ.
So, I was, in a sense an accidental atheist from the start. I wasn’t the type of atheist who was once Christian and rebelled against the faith intentionally and deliberately, rather, I was one by accident, by circumstances. I didn’t even have a rudimentary language for talking about ultimate reality, my origin and end, first principles, virtue and sin, or good and evil. And I definitely didn’t have a vocabulary for talking about God or knowing what the orthodox Christian faith taught in respect to the existence and attributes of the Creator or that Jesus was the Son of God and that the Church communicates Him.
Like the young Augustine, I sought out my completion in the world, in transient and sensual things. I didn’t know of any other way. I do remember, nonetheless, a time of greater innocence when my conscience alone communicated a sense of right and wrong, but by 15 or 16 years old this was largely clouded out by worldly clamors.
2. What was it that started to open the door for you, as far as considering the faith?
When I was 22 years old, I was critically injured in a car accident and had to be resuscitated. I had a near death experience. This radically changed my understanding of the meaning of life. Upon awakening from the NDE and since then, I have been involved in two primary tasks: Awakening to the gift of life and purifying my own life of attachment to sin. That path was intuitive to me after the accident and NDE though I wasn’t Christian. So I began a very intense period of spiritual searching, studying religion and philosophy. I studied both in school as an undergrad and graduate student, as well as in my personal life.
Like many in my socio-cultural demographic at the time I was more immediately drawn to the study of Indian religions, in particular Buddhism. For about five years, from 22-27 I studied it intensely in retreat and academic settings in N. America and India. I went as far as taking the five vows of a lay practitioner: 1) Abstain from killing 2) Abstain from fornication 3) Abstain from lying 4) Abstain from stealing 5) Abstain from intoxication.
It was in this milieu where I first began to exist in relationship to a transcendent source of morality and live as if my life had ultimate purpose. It was also in these contexts where I originally learned how to fast, how to be still and silent, how to meditate for long periods of time, how to renounce transient things for the sake of a transcendent goal. I also learned in this context, from a western Buddhist nun, of the moral horror of abortion. Up until that point, I though abortion could be justified. I also learned that mastubation, fornication, porn, intoxication, same sex acts, etc., were morally evil and very harmful (yes, even though everyone was doing promoting them as good and healthy!).
For the first time in my life I met men, usually Tibetan Buddhist monks (some nuns too), who were virtuous. This was very different from the men I was used to. And so, I would say, they were my first real formators in how to be a man. They taught me that a man isn’t a slave to his passions but rather gains mastery over them. The asceticism of these men was impressive, but their gentleness and kindness was even more impressive. I have always thought that if our own Christian faithful sought Jesus even half as intensely as these men sought liberation from suffering according to the path of the Buddha we wouldn’t have a priest shortage and the emptying out of our parishes in the West (I will leave that for another time).
I was in India, studying at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Himachel Pradesh or the Himalayan Province, when I began to turn toward the Christian faith in earnest. I was studying Tibetan language and Buddhist Philosophy in a place called McLeod Ganj where the Tibetan government was and remains in exile. In a sense, …
The post January’s Atheist Conversion to Catholicism: Given a Second Chance at Life appeared first on .
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