On the knowledge of God.

The God of my imagination

Growing up I never encountered God, neither of my parents were religious and nobody in my family was visibly religious either. I attended a Christian primary school, however this only manifested in going to a Protestant church on Christmas and singing songs. It was only after my conversion that I realized that I did have some Christian education as a child, which is either a testament to the lack of Christian formation at that school or my own ignorance at that time in my life.

As a proud, ignorant teen I believed that God, and any god, was simply a crutch used by people who needed emotional support and comfort. I found it quite sad that people needed an invisible man in the sky that loves them in order to feel content in life. Living in a secular society also comes with the fact that a lot of people who I was supposed to trust were teaching me that Christianity was a backward religion of hateful people with hateful politics. My teachers hammered on the indulgences scandal in the "dark ages", the crusades as evil attacks on the innocent in the name of Christianity. I was taught that Christians hated gay people, hated women and think they are inferior, hate Muslims etc. These teachings came from "trusted" adults like teachers, family members, parents and others. I do not believe these people necessarily acted in bad faith, they simply suffer from a profound misunderstanding of the Christian faith as I have thankfully come to find in recent years.

Prayer without faith

Even though I thought God was a weak, invisible sky man for sad people, I distinctly remember praying as a very young child whenever I was afraid of the dark. I would go to the skylight in my room and look up at the stars, clasp my hands together and ask God to keep me safe from the monsters of the night. I have no idea where this came from other than maybe having seen it in movies and such.

Even as a teen (14-17) I remember praying to God in my darkest moments, I struggled somewhat with suicidal thoughts and during this period of my life I did pray to God. However I had made God in my own image, thinking that I was smarter than all of the theologians I did not know. I thought God to be a pretty indifferent guy in the sky who knew that I was intelligent and good and was just going to assist me throughout my life to help me reach all the goals I had set for myself.

The pride of unbelief

My unbelief was strengthened by my presence in online circles such as Reddit, which was and still is a host for many atheists. I also as a teen was under the impression that I was genuinely smarter and better than most adults, which led to me not trusting actual intelligent people but rather trusting ultimately in myself to come to the correct conclusions about the universe. I remember laughing at memes on r/Atheism, looking back at these memes they were basically always made by people with a massively skewed idea of Christian theology. I suspect that much of my problems in this area could have been avoided had I actually been taught Christian theology at my "Christian" primary school.

Seeking something to ridicule

One day, when I was about 20 years old I was sitting on the edge of my bed, watching Instagram reels or TikToks or some other form of online content, when I came across a clip from Christian apologist Cliffe Knechtle, I remember watching the clip in order to find out what kind of ridiculous statements and leaps of faith he was going to make to justify his mistaken beliefs. I watched the clip and found that Cliffe was actually incredibly rational and reasonable in his approach, but they always say that a broken clock is right twice a day so I clicked onto the next video to ridicule him. To my surprise the second video I watched, this time a full length episode on the Give me an answer channel, also did not contain the ridiculous leaps of faith I was expecting.

The collapse of the caricature

Fast forward about two years and I had watched at least 200 hours of Cliffe Knechtle and his son Stuart Knechtle. One by one they dismantled every objection I had and every objection I had not even thought of also, I was becoming convinced of Jesus Christ by them through the Holy Spirit. Suddenly my own idea of God was reconstructed into the Christian idea of God. I was starting to learn about how Christians actually believed God to be and why. Obviously I also encountered plenty of other online apologists that all helped to form my theological understanding massively. I can confidently say that sometime during the twenty-first year of my life I was convinced of the existence of the Christian God, the Father Almighty.

Knowing that I did not know

In hindsight, my unbelief came from a combination of pride and ignorance. Pride in the sense that I thought I didn't need God because I was plenty smart myself, ignorance because I simply did not understand even the most basic details of Christianity, even having attended a Christian primary school. From the very first revelations I received from online apologists I started to be humbled and that has not stopped since. I now know how little I actually know, not just when it comes to theology.