You still cannot see or feel god, but you can everything else in your life. And when you came to your decision about GOD what made you immediately leap to the christian faith? Methinks you just got brainwashed by your wife.

Here's where you lose me: Christians believe in a God, Atheists do not. Given. But belief has never struck me as something a person could choose. In the case of conversion, it doesn't seem to me that people convert from not believing to believing; rather they convert from one mode of belief to another. In my opinion this would seem make conversion from Atheism to any variety of theism uncommonly difficult. (Maybe I'm wrong about this?) I'm sure the distinction will strike some Christians here as strange or inappropriate, as they often seem to interpret Atheism as actively believing in the non-existence of a God (which it sometimes) rather than a lack of believe (which, I'm inclined to think it more often is) but I think it stands nonetheless.

Hopefully this is making sense, but I'll throw in a personal anecdote to try to clarify a little: I have actually tried to believe in God. Multiple times. I was raised in a very religious (Christian) home and as a result grew up continually assaulted with the ideas of Hell and eternal torment for non-believers. Unfortunately, like all children, my psychology predisposed me to believe much of what adults told me. However, I have never (to my knowledge) been able to effortlessly believe in a deity. (Effortlessness seeming to be necessary for it to be true belief, and not self-persuasion.) This put me in the apparently uncommon position of attempting to force myself to believe something I could not believe, out of fear of a contingent assertion. As a result, I am quite familiar with the nature of belief being such that it is uninfluenced by artificial manipulation.

Maybe you were experiencing a different "kind" of Atheism than I am familiar with, or perhaps my assumptions are wrong. Feel free to correct me. But in any case, I'd like to know your take on that. Were you simply non-religious out of apathy prior to your conversion, or did you really not believe in theistic religion? Do you believe in God now? Do you believe in Jesus? (Forgive me if you feel the answers to those questions should go without saying. For me they don't, as I have myself attempted to be religious, while knowing all the while I didn't really believe any of what I was doing.) What does "belief" in those contexts mean to you? If you really did not believe in such premises before your conversion how do you think you began believing in them?

Sorry this comment is so long, (and contains so many questions) but I hope you respond. Please believe me that my questions are genuine and honest, and not intended to make a point or elicit a reaction. I know these days the interweebz seem to be full-to-the-eyeballs of trolling Atheist assholes (and trolling Christian assholes) and I'm not trying to be one of those.

Edit: This is the second time I've tried to post a comment, so if this one goes through twice, my apologies; it didn't work the first time. :O)

My congratulations and gratitude again! It's also oddly consoling to see that you also experienced the "you weren't really an atheist" or "you've chosen to be ignorant" comments. I'll never figure out why some of my former, atheist, friends ('former' by their choice, not mine) decided that the conversion FROM Christianity to atheism is "maturing" and discovering the work of God in my life was "ignorant." It honestly smacks of ego in the highest degree.

Once upon a time that would have made me angry. Now it just makes me a little sad.

Thanks again for sharing your story and for allowing a fellow convert to share it!

Thank you for sharing your story with us. I've got a somewhat similar story (replace atheist with agnostic and 27 year old with 37 year old) but have never really walked through it or written it down. I'm going to try to do that now.

And thanks for creating a cool community on your blog.

Peace.

They did an amazing job with that video too!

Thank you for being willing to let us all see into it.

As a former non-Christ-Follower, I am realizing that I did the same thing most of my adult life. Everyone that I knew that was 'religious' was 'old, and scared of death.' On top of that, most of them were judgmental and rude.

That was the picture I had of religious people. Unfortunately there are still plenty of those type of Christians, but Dewde and a whole generation of 'new followers' are going to unleash social changes, and care for people like older generations could only hope to. I'm glad I found your blog!