“Is there anything worth dying for?” – Andrew Sawyer’s Story

Professor Craig Keener became a convinced atheist at an early age. When philosophy left him without solid answers, his intellectual curiosity led him to consider the possibility of God.

Resources by Craig: https://craigkeener.com

Resources mentioned by Craig:

Stephen Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis

F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents, Are They Reliable?

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 but who became a Christian against all odds.

We all believe what we believe because we believe it to be true. We believe that our beliefs are true because they match up with reality, the way things really are in the world, and we are usually pretty convinced that we’re right, or else we wouldn’t believe it, right?

Sometimes we run into people who seem to have exceptionally strong, unwavering confidence for their beliefs. In fact, they have given their lives towards deep understanding, living out and sharing their beliefs with others, but what seems even more extraordinary is that they completely shifted their way of seeing the world and perceiving reality to a nearly polar opposite view from where they once were. There was something that was profoundly convincing enough for them to change. This begs the question: What was the information, events, reflections, or experiences that opened the door for them to another whole different set of beliefs? How do we change the basic way we think about the world around us, the way we think about ourselves? Those are huge questions.

Usually, there has to be something we come to learn or experience that seems to conflict with what we know, that challenges our beliefs. We begin to question ourselves and our knowledge and perhaps come open to another possibility of what is true and real, but that also takes a bit of humility, of admitting that we might be wrong, and more often than not, that’s not an easy thing to do. There are those thinkers who are seriously curious seekers who want to find answers, even if they don’t seem to line up with their own beliefs at the time. They want to find the truth no matter where it is to be found and what it is, as long as it is true.

Former atheist Dr. Craig Keener is one of those with a brilliant mind who desired to discover what was true about reality. Although he once held a belief in strict naturalism that only the natural world exists, he came to believe that reality consists of so much more, and he’s now a professor, prolific writer, and scholar in biblical studies. How did that shift happen? I hope you’ll come to listen to his story today. You might also want to stay to the end to hear his advice to curious skeptics on searching for God and truth, as well as advice to Christians on how best to engage with those who don’t believe.

Welcome to Side B Stories, Craig. It’s so great to have you!

It’s a privilege to be with you, Jana.

Wonderful. As we’re getting started, can you tell the listeners a little bit about who you are?

I’m a professor of biblical studies. I did my PhD in New Testament and Christian Origins at Duke University. I’ve authored somewhere over 30 books now. One of them is 4,500 pages. It cites over 45,000 references from ancient sources outside the Bible. So that’s my main focus of research, putting the Bible in its historical context in antiquity. My wife is Dr. Médine Moussounga Keener. She is from Congo in central Africa, and she did her PhD in France.

let’s go back to the very beginning, and why don’t you tell me a little bit about your upbringing. Tell me, Craig, about your home. Was there any religious belief in your home? Where did you grow up? Did you grow up in the United States or what area of the country? Did the culture affect any of your beliefs. Talk with me about your early childhood.

Sure. I grew up in suburban northern Ohio, and my parents were very respectable socially and morally and so on, but there was no religious belief talked about in our home. We didn’t attend church or any other religious institution. So when I would study religion, I was studying it from the encyclopedia or things like that, studying religions, studying philosophies, and so on. Just as a matter of interest. Especially, I liked ancient Greek philosophy and so forth. But I think at least by the age of nine...

I didn’t believe in life after death, because I remember having a conversation with a family member, and they said, “No, we don’t believe in that, either.” And I’m pretty s...