Intellectual Atheism Challenged – Jordan Monge’s story

Former atheist Mike Arnold suffered an unspeakable childhood tragedy which suddenly catapulted him into atheism. After twenty years, he was given cause to reconsider not only God’s existence, but God’s goodness as well.

Episode Transcript

Hello, and thanks for being with me today. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side.

What happens to your view of God when bad, especially traumatic things happen in your life? You may have had expectations of a good, loving, and powerful God who’s supposed to protect you at every turn. The bad things aren’t supposed to happen. But they do. You begin to wonder, “Where was God? Who is this God that I thought existed? Maybe He doesn’t exist after all. How could He, in light of such horrible circumstances?” Belief in a good God often crumbles under the weight of pain. If that’s true of an adult, it’s especially true of a child. When a child suffers sudden, unspeakable loss, it’s not surprising when they also suddenly lose whatever faith they must have had in a God who seemed to go missing. Pushing God away is the only viable option left on the table.

The only problem is life without God doesn’t seem to have any existentially satisfying answers, either. That’s the tension faced by the former atheist in our story today. Someone who hated God for nearly 20 years, a God, in his view, who didn’t exist, but comes to experience God in an unexpected way. Mike Arnold was a former atheist but is now a Christian and serves his community as a Christian pastor.

Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Mike. It’s so great to have you!

It’s great to be on as well and to join you on this cast.

Thank you, thank you. As we’re getting started, why don’t we start by you telling me a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, and perhaps where you live now, what you do now?

Yeah, well, my name is Michael Arnold. Everybody calls me Mike, and I prefer it that way. I’m a bit laid back, but if you’re thinking, “This man sounds really strange,” it’s because I’m from Wales. I’m a Welshman, but I’m actually living in a small town in the East Midlands of England called Long Eaton, where I’m a Baptist minister.

And you’ve been in England for how long?

I moved here 12 years ago, into a different pastorate. I recently left there and moved here, but yeah, 12 years ago, I moved from Wales into England, where I can honestly say that I’m a missionary.

Yes, yes. That’s great. All right. So at least we know where you are now. And let’s now kind of start back at the beginning of your story. I presume, if you’re from Wales, you had a childhood in Wales? And your ideas of God and faith and religion developed there. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about that your childhood, your understanding of if there was a God, those kinds of things.

Well, I grew up... My parents, like so many parents, didn’t actually attend church and had no faith at all. They wanted, I think, a quiet afternoon on a Sunday, and so they used to send me and my brothers and sister to Sunday school at the local Pentecostal church, and that’s where I went for about 18 months, up until the age of seven. The one morning I stopped going because the one morning I was woke up by my brother, Tony. He was 11 years old. I was 7 at the time. But he woke me up to say that the house was on fire, and yeah, sure enough, it was. We went to get Mom because she was sleeping in her bedroom. We went to wake her up, and then she raised the alarm by smashing out the bedroom windows, and I jumped out of the bedroom window, and my brother Tony, at the time, realized that my youngest brother, David, who was 3 years old, was still somewhere upstairs in bed, so he went looking for him. I jumped out of the bedroom window, and I have 47 stitches across my backside because I fell onto a piece of glass on the pavement, and I was taken into my neighbor’s house. When they were ready for me to go to the ambulance, as I was going to the ambulance, my brother Tony walked out of the front door of the house, and he was a ball of fire. He suffered third-degree burns over 90% of his body.

Oh, my.

Oh. Well, it is what it is, isn’t it? You know. He survived for five days in absolute agony. I was put in the ambulance at his feet, and for the next ten minutes, while they raced us off to the hospital, that’s all I could hear was him screaming in agony. And that was the last I saw of him. They found my younger brother, David, who was 3 years old, as I said. They found him curled up dead in my mother’s bedroom, near my mother’s bed. He never got out of the house alive. The following Sunday, Mom sent me to church, where the minister said, “Come and give praise to God,” and I ...