An Ivy League Stoic’s Search for the Good & True – Leah Libresco’s Story

07/08/22 • 44 min

Former atheist Leah Libresco rejected religious belief until she encountered intelligent Christians at Yale University. Her search to find the grounding of objective morality led her to God.

Resources written by Leah:

Website: www.leahlibresco.com
Book: Arriving at Amen (the story of her conversion from atheist to Catholic)
Book: Building the Benedict Option (a guide to building thicker Christian community)

Resources/authors mentioned by Leah:

CS Lewis
GK Chesterton
Allister McIntyre, After Virtue

Episode Transcript

Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist who became a Christian against all odds. You can also hear today’s story, along with other short video testimonies from former atheists, on our Side B Stories website.

Oftentimes, we think that atheists have nothing in common with those who believe in God, but that’s not necessarily true. Both points of view can equally acknowledge the existence of certain parts of reality, but they have different explanations about what something is and how it came to be. One of those hot topics of debates between atheists and Christians is something we all have a very deep intuition about, that there are certain things or actions in our world that are really right or really wrong, not merely for ourselves but for everyone.

As C.S. Lewis says, if someone cuts in line, we automatically think that’s unfair according to some commonly understood rule or standard of fairness, and that’s certainly the case for much more serious points of injustice. It doesn’t take a lot of time to consider whether or not certain things are more like vices or virtues. In our own minds, we are constantly making judgments about whether or not something or another should or should not be the case, whether or not someone ought or ought not to do something. We simply can’t help ourselves in the way that we are constantly judging. The problem is not that we can’t or don’t know what’s right or wrong. The problem isn’t even that we aren’t capable of living good lives with or without God. The problem is, rather, where we ground those moral duties and obligations as true and real, not merely opinion or preference.

From an atheist household, Leah Libresco learned to critically analyze ideas from a very early age, fostered into her Ivy League education and beyond. Her intellect drove her to deeply consider the seeming difficulties that lie with the problem of objective morality. It led her to reconsider God. Let’s listen to her story:

Welcome to the Side B Stories Podcast, Leah. It’s so great to have you with me today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Leah, so the audience knows who you are, a little bit about you, your education, why don’t you give us an idea of where you live. Are you married? Do you have children? Any of that.

Yeah. I grew up in New York. I went to Yale University, where I studied political science, and now I live in northern Virginia with my husband and our two daughters.

Oh, wonderful! Wonderful. So let’s start back... You said that you were born or grew up in Long Island? Is that right?

That’s right.

All right! So you’re from the big city. So why don’t you walk us back to the early part of your life and growing up. Tell me about your family, about your culture. Was God any part of that picture at all?

I’m from about 40 minutes by train outside the big city. So growing up, that was definitely a big part of my life. I’d go to the Museum of Natural History for my birthday almost every year. But my family wasn’t religious, and I grew up in a community that was mostly nonreligious. I think there probably were some people of faith in the surrounding community, but not in a way I noticed. I didn’t know anyone who believed in God personally that I knew of.

So it just wasn’t part of your world at all.

It was part of my world, in that I knew there were people who were Christians in the world, but not knowing any personally, that meant Christianity was mostly relevant to my life when it made the news, and that was usually in a bad way.

Ah, ah. Yes. That seems to happen a lot, where Christianity gets a very uniquely distorted picture from the news and from the arts many times, and it sounds like you grew up in a very culturally enriched environment, but also heard, obviously, things from the news and that sort of...

Former atheist Leah Libresco rejected religious belief until she encountered intelligent Christians at Yale University. Her search to find the grounding of objective morality led her to God.

Resources written by Leah:

Website: www.leahlibresco.com
Book: Arriving at Amen (the story of her conversion from atheist to Catholic)
Book: Building the Benedict Option (a guide to building thicker Christian community)

Resources/authors mentioned by Leah:

CS Lewis
GK Chesterton
Allister McIntyre, After Virtue

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Side B Stories Podcast, Leah. It’s so great to have you with me today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Leah, so the audience knows who you are, a little bit about you, your education, why don’t you give us an idea of where you live. Are you married? Do you have children? Any of that.

Yeah. I grew up in New York. I went to Yale University, where I studied political science, and now I live in northern Virginia with my husband and our two daughters.

Oh, wonderful! Wonderful. So let’s start back... You said that you were born or grew up in Long Island? Is that right?

That’s right.

So it just wasn’t part of your world at all.

Previous Episode

Discovering the Meaning of Life – Stacy Gleiss’ Story

Former atheist Stacy Gleiss traveled across the world and explored worldviews and philosophies until she finally found what was true, good, and beautiful in Christianity.

Stacy’s Philosophy Group: Philosophy in the Forest: http://philosophyintheforest.com Authors and Books recommended by Stacy: Soren Kierkegaard Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity G.K. Chesterton, OrthodoxyEpisode Transcript

Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Stories podcast, where we see how someone flips the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to a former skeptic or atheist who unexpectedly became a Christian.

On the surface, in a world without God life seems so free. Someone can live without constraints of religion and morality without someone or someone telling you who you are or who you ought to be. You can dream and idealize. You can create and recreate yourself and your identity, your own meaning and your own purpose, pursuing it on your own terms. You can design yourself in your own life, free from criticism or control except for yourself. It’s called expressive individualism.

But oftentimes the underbelly of this pursuit begins to show. The idealism begins to crumble, and the dreams begin to fade. Satisfaction fades to that which is elusive and fleeting. Temporary pleasure erodes into long-term pain. Poor choices result in deep pain and regret. Perhaps we are not the best judge after all. Perhaps our identity and our ideal cannot be found in what we want or what we think is best for ourselves. After all, identity is fragile if it’s based upon our own passing whims and desires. Meaning becomes meaningless if it’s only determined by what we create or deem important. Temporary pursuits gratify for the moment, but lasting satisfaction seems an ever-elusive dream. As one of the wisest men who ever lived said, it’s like chasing after the wind, and we know that when we sow the wind, we often reap a whirlwind. We cannot run from ourselves and our own brokenness.

Our story today touches on these personal realities. Searching for identity and meaning and purpose on her own terms, yet finding herself in dark realities and desperate places. Is there something more than this, Someone who can provide a life that is true and good and beautiful? Let’s listen to Stacy tell her story of moving from darkness to light, from a kind of death to life that is truly life.

Welcome to Side B Stories, Stacy, it’s so great to have you with me today.

Well, thank you for the opportunity. I’m really happy to be talking to you today.

Wonderful. It’s great to have you. So our listeners know a little bit about you, Stacy, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, my husband and I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is the northernmost part, so it’s very cold, and we enjoy a lot of outdoor sports, fishing, hunting, hiking, and so on, and a lot of my time is spent with a tiny house mission center called Philosophy in the Forest.

Well, that sounds intriguing, and I would like to come back to that a little bit later and find out more about what Philosophy in the Forest is. So why don’t we get started with your story. Were you raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Has that upper Midwest region of the US been your home since you were a child? Where did you begin your life? And tell us a little bit about your family, whether or not there was any religious belief or anything associated with that?

Yes. So I grew up in Michigan, in lower Michigan, the lower peninsula, the mitten part, as they say, and I lived on my grandfather’s farm for a good bit of the time. We lived in a rural area. We were not religious. My parents did not talk about God. I don’t even think we owned a Bible. So I didn’t have a religious upbringing, but when I was about 12, my family joined the Mormon church, so we went from 0 to 100, you know? Because that’s a very active, involved faith.

There must have been a strong Mormon community around you, I’m guessing? Is that how your family got acclimated or involved with the Mormon church?

No, actually it was pretty rare when I was a child. There weren’t that many Mormons around, but my aunts, my father’s sisters, had joined the church at a certain point, and they kind of brought missionaries around us.

Oh, I see. So you had some influence of Mormonism in your life, and I’ll explore that in a moment, but did you have any historical or orthodox Christianity or any form of Christianity around you at all? You said you grew up without much reference to God in your family, but I wonder in your friendships, relat...

Next Episode

From Atheist Activist to Christian Advocate – Rich Suplita’s Story

Psychology professor Dr. Rich Suplita believed science provided the best explanation for truth, and he promoted atheism on the university campus. Over time, he began to question his own beliefs, and it led him to find truth in Christ and become an advocate for the Christian worldview.

askaformeratheist.com

ratiochristi.org/chapter/university-of-georgia/

To hear more stories about former atheists and skeptics converting to Christianity, visit www.sidebstories.com

Episode Transcript

Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. You can also hear today’s story and see other video testimonies on our Side B Stories website you can find at www.sidebstories.com.

Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist but who became a Christian against all odds. Each story is different. Each journey courses a different path. Everyone has their reasons for belief and for disbelief. There are the reasons that sound good and reasonable as supporting our beliefs, and then there are the real reasons underneath the surface, sometimes presumed and unexplored, sometimes not particularly rational.

One of the most interesting findings in my research with former atheists was the difference between the reasons they gave for atheism, which they said were mostly based upon reason, science, and evidence, and in hindsight, the real reasons they said why they rejected God and belief in Christianity. It turns out, on self reflection, that one-fourth of them actually rejected God solely for more personal, rather than intellectual or rational reasons. For the remaining three-quarters, it was a mixture of both the personal and the intellectual. As humans, we are holistic beings. We are all susceptible to rationalizing what we want to be true. Of course, our desires and objective truth may line up, but sometimes it’s good to be skeptical of our own beliefs, to look more deeply at why we believe what we believe.

In our story today, Rich was compelled to examine his own beliefs, first as a Christian, and he found his beliefs wanting. Then, as a militant atheist, he became skeptical of his own skepticism. As an academic and deeply introspective and contemplative thinker, he became willing to look at his intellectual reasons for atheism but also beneath the surface to the real reasons below. I hope you’ll come along to hear what he found along his journey from belief to disbelief and then back to a much stronger belief in God and Christianity than he once knew.

Welcome to Side B Stories, Rich. It’s so great to have you with me today.

Yeah. Good morning. Thank you.

So the listeners know a little bit about you. Can you tell us a bit about who you are, where you live, your education perhaps?

Sure, yeah. My name is Dr. Rich Suplita. My wife, Mary Kathryn, and I, we live in Athens, Georgia, and we do a lot of ministry at the University of Georgia, with Georgia students. My educational background: I did my underground at West Virginia University, which is my home state, and then came to the University of Georgia in 2000. From 2000 to 2005, I was a PhD student, earned my masters and then my PhD in psychology, with an emphasis on neuroscience and psychopharmacology, and I went on to teach as a lecturer at the University of Georgia for about 10 years after that.

Wow. Okay. So you’re an academic by training and history, but it sounds like you’ve moved in a completely different direction from that, and I can’t wait to hear all about it. Now, let’s get into your story from childhood. I know that part of your story is that you were a militant atheist, but you didn’t start that way. Why don’t you bring us into your world as a child? Talk to us about your family, your community, friends, culture. Was God in any of that at all?

Yeah, sure, absolutely. He was. Very much so. I was raised in a middle class, blue collar family in north central West Virginia, a little town there called Fairmont, West Virginia, and my family and I, we were members of a Church of Christ. And so it was a three-times-a-week thing. We were very much in the habit of going to church. I learned a lot of Bible growing up, Bible verses, Sunday school, all of that, so God was very much in the picture, although it never really resonated with me on a deeply personal level.

So you went through the routine, and I guess the ritual of going to church three times a week, but it never took pe...