A Cosmic Accident?
I grew up in a suburban Connecticut town, and my family went to Mass every Sunday. Every week after the 9:30am Mass, we had catechism class. This was so long ago, our teachers were nuns in full black-and-white habits.
The nuns taught us that an invisible, all-powerful, eternal God created the world. Back then, I didn’t doubt the nuns, but I couldn’t really comprehend what they were teaching us either. I more readily understood things I could touch, see, and hear—focusing my attention on more concrete items, such as Saturday morning cartoons, strawberry frosted Pop-tarts, and playing baseball with my brother in the backyard. I didn’t disbelieve the nuns, but I just could not wrap my brain around what they were teaching us.
When I went to high school in the early 1970s, my freshman biology teacher declared that all life on earth came into existence by purely random, unplanned, natural processes. He taught us that the entire universe is made up of only matter and energy, shaped by blind, random chance.
I clearly remember him telling us that if it were somehow possible to wind back the clock of time to the very beginning — to the moment of the Big Bang 15 billion years ago — and let it all play out again, we would never get human beings a second time. Our existence was such a fluke, it would never happen again even if we somehow could start over.
Now, the teacher did not say, “Therefore, everything the nuns tell you in catechism class is a bunch of superstitious nonsense.” He didn’t have to. I put two and two together. I understood that if what he was saying was true, that life on earth was an unplanned, random accident, it meant the lessons taught by the nuns were not. These two views about the origin of life were thoroughly incompatible.
Our teacher told us all the smart people – the scientists and doctors and professors – believed what he was teaching. As an insecure 14-year-old, I definitely wanted to be at the cool kids’ table, so I decided I would side with the smart crowd rather than the old-fashioned church people.
While I didn’t use the word “atheist,” that is what I had become. I decided that everything they were teaching me in church was a bunch of superstitious fairy tales. Since I lived in my parents’ house, I still had to go to Mass each week. But I went with a smug attitude. I said to myself, “I know better than these fools. I know the stuff they’re saying here is pure mythology.”
I’m not sure if my newfound atheism contributed to the substance abuse problem that quickly developed, but it sure didn’t help. With atheism, the core belief was that our existence was an accident. During our short time here on earth, we struggle to survive. Then soon enough we die, and it’s over; we cease to exist — no soul, no spirit, no life after death. With that as the understanding of reality, it was hard to make the case that life had any ultimate meaning.
One thing I especially liked about my new atheistic worldview was the premise that if there is no God, then there is no supreme law-giver. There is no supernatural Being who has the authority to tell us the moral code we should live by.
If human beings are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, then we get to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. And who’s to say one person’s opinion is better than anyone else’s? So, with atheism, we all get to make our own personal moral code, which I thought was great back then. The personal moral code I embraced was one of the popular anthems of the 1960s and ‘70s: “If it feels good, do it!”
Substance Abuse
As a 15- year-old high school kid, I quickly discovered that drinking beer and smoking pot made me feel good. Really good. So I did it. I really embraced getting drunk and high on a regular basis.
Since I lived in my parents’ house, I couldn’t exactly start chugging beers on the living room couch and rolling joints at the kitchen table. I had to live a kind of double-life, a two-faced existence. To my parents and teachers and coaches, I presented myself as a somewhat responsible student-athlete. But when I was with my friends on Friday and Saturday nights—look out! It was time for heavy binge drinking and dope smoking.
When I graduated high school and went off to college, the guardrails were removed. Now I was able to party whenever I wanted, however I wanted. I spent four years being infrequently sober. I did go to class just enough to maintain a solid C-minus average, to make sure I didn’t flunk out. But my main focus that whole time was partying.
When I somehow graduated college, a very interesting thing happened. Some of my closest friends, my fellow heavy drinkers, got serious. They understood it was time to be responsible adults and they made that change. My roommate passed the CPA exam and went to work for a big accounting firm. Another close friend went to law school and became a successful lawyer. Yet another friend became a professional engineer and had a great career.
But I did not want to get serious. I wanted to continue living like a 19-year-old frat boy, and my employment record the next few years was not impressive. I bounced around from job to job, made very little money, and only cared about the next happy hour.
During this time, now in my mid-20s, I continued to live with a double-life, two-faced approach. To my parents and other folks in town, I came across as a fairly respectable young man. But when I was with my drinking buddies, my rallying cry was, “Let’s get wasted!”
In the midst of this, I did manage to do a few respectable things, though: I married my high school sweetheart, Joyce; we bought a small house; and we had a baby. But deep down, I was still a mess, and to be honest, I cared about drinking more than I cared about them.
When Joyce was pregnant with our first daughter, we attended weekly Lamaze classes. In the 1980s, it had become popular for the father to be present during the delivery. Those classes taught us a lot about the biology of pregnancy and birth, and each of us was given an important assignment. Joyce’s job was to remember to breathe when she was in labor. My job was to remember to tell Joyce to breathe when she was in labor. Unfortunately, they forgot to assign someone the job of reminding me to breathe when Joyce was in labor, and I almost passed out.
The day finally came. Joyce went into labor, and we drove to Yale-New Haven Hospital. Everything turned out great. Joyce was so strong and courageous. The baby girl was healthy—no complications. An hour or two after the birth, things were calming down. Joyce was lying in bed, cradling our daughter in her arms. I was sitting in a chair next to the bed, and after many days and weeks of stress, I finally was starting to relax.
Design Points to the Designer
Just as I was feeling calm, I was hit with a stunning thought. Like getting whacked in the head with a two-by-four, this thought flooded my brain: “Wait a minute. What I just witnessed could not possibly be the result of a random cosmic accident. What I just witnessed was so intricate and so complex, there’s no way it could be the result of matter and energy being shaped by blind random chance. I just witnessed an amazing marvel of bio-engineering, and it was obviously designed. And if it was designed, then there must be a Designer. A Designer with a capital ‘D.’ Yikes.”
Many years later I read about the late Antony Flew, a noted British philosopher and Oxford professor. For much of his career he was an advocate of atheism. But in his 80s, he stunned his colleagues by declaring that the evidence indicated that there must be a God. He explained his thinking this way: “The material of DNA has shown, by the almost incredible complexity of the conditions that are necessary in order to produce life, that an Intelligence must have been involved….The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of this ‘directed and self-replicating’ life we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind.”
An infinitely intelligent Mind. While sitting in that hospital room, I did not think of it in those eloquent terms, but that was basically what was going through my head. I felt like I was on the verge of fainting — again. The foundation of atheism, which had been the basis of everything I thought and did for over 12 years, was crumbling. On that day, I stopped being an atheist. I didn’t know what to believe, so I guess I was an agnostic. But it was a real shock.
For the next few months, I didn’t change my behavior. But I did have nagging questions: What is the correct explanation for our existence? Is it possible those old-fashioned nuns were right?!
December rolled around, and it was a wonderful time since it was “Baby’s First Christmas.” Our daughter was the first grandchild on both sides of the family, so everybody was very excited. A few days after Christmas, one dark and cold night, the baby was sleeping, and Joyce was tired so she went to bed early. I was sitting in the living room by myself, drinking a beer, of course. There was nothing good on TV, so I started reading a little booklet that had arrived in the mail a few days earlier. It was published by an Evangelical church group, and it was a simple explanation of the Christian Gospel.
If that book had arrived before our daughter was born, I would’ve laughed and thrown it away as soon as I realized it was about religion. But that year, with all those questions swirling through my head, I was much more willing to take a look. It only took about 45 minutes to read, and it presented what they called The Four Spiritual Laws:
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God loves us and has a wonderful plan for our lives.
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Mankind sinned, which caused a huge gulf between God and humans.
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Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, came to reconcile sinful humanity back to God by dying on the cross and rising from the dead.
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If we put our faith in Jesus, we can have our sins forgiven, enter into a loving relationship with our Creator, and receive the gift of Eternal Life.
This is not just an Evangelical Protestant thing. In the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement, these same points are called The Four Spiritual Truths. And even though they’re presented at kind of a fifth grade level — which was about all I could comprehend back then — they’re not false. They contain the basics of the Gospel message. If you had only 30 seconds to summarize the Christian Gospel, those four points would be a great way to do it.
I was sitting in the living room, and after I finished reading the little book, I wondered, “Could this be the true explanation of life?” Then I looked over and saw our little plastic Nativity scene under the Christmas tree. In the middle of the creche, there was a tiny figurine of the baby Jesus. I stared at it for quite a while, then whispered, “So, you really are who people say you are. Hmm.”
That evening, when I first sat down on the couch, I had been an agnostic. An hour later, when I got up to go to bed, I was a believer. My faith was no larger than a mustard seed, and I didn’t really understand exactly what I believed, but I knew atheism was not true, and I sincerely desired to find out what was.
What happened to me was a drastic change in my view of reality. When I did not believe in God, I thought life was an accident that had no ultimate meaning. And if life had no meaning, then why NOT get drunk everyday? Ultimately, it just didn’t matter. But with my new understanding that there must be some kind of supernatural Creator God out there, I realized life could have meaning. After all, why would God create us in the first place if He didn’t have a plan or purpose for our lives?
If God created us for a purpose, I instinctively knew His purpose for my life was not for me to be a drunkard and an irresponsible husband and father. From that time on, my craving to be drunk faded away.
Sobriety
My New Year’s resolution was to give up drinking—easier said than done. I understood that being drunk was not what God wanted for me, but after a dozen years of drinking almost every day, it was hard to go cold turkey. At that point in my life, I felt comfortable when I was drunk. Being sober made me feel anxious and uneasy. After four or five days of not drinking, I was getting very uncomfortable.
A week or so after New Year’s Day, I was in my office at the end of the day. Everyone had left, and I was getting ready to lock up and go home. But I felt so uncomfortable, the urge was strong to go to happy hour at some bar.
Impulsively, I opened a desk drawer and pulled out a phone book to look up the number for an organization that helps alcoholics who want to be anonymous about it. I made the call, and a pleasant man answered. I then uttered possibly the greatest understatement in world history. I said, “I think I might have a little problem with alcohol.” That’s like saying, “I think the Federal Government might have a little national debt.”
The man told me a meeting would be taking place in about an hour at a nearby church basement, and he very nicely encouraged me to attend. Looking back, it had to be the Holy Spirit who prompted me to grab that phone book and make the call.
Going to that meeting was such a blessing. For the first time in my adult life, I learned – and embraced – the idea that it is okay not to drink. I know that sounds silly, but I was raised to believe that enjoying alcoholic beverages was required to be happy and enjoy a full life. When I stood up and said for the first time, “My name is Bill, and I’m an alcoholic,” it was like a big weight lifted off my shoulder. It was similar to the experience I had a few days earlier, when I looked at the little plastic Jesus in the creche and realized He really is who people say He is. Both moments were such a relief, admitting that I couldn’t make it on my own and needed help.
After attending those meetings regularly for a few months, there was a time when a middle-aged man stood up to say a few words. He said, “Some people say that Jesus can do miracles. They say He once changed water into wine. Well, I don’t know nothin’ about that — it wasn’t like I was there, y’know. But I do know that He changed wine into bread, and into furniture, and into rent money, and into love. He changed a bum into a man. He changed a loser into a daddy. And that’s a pretty fine miracle if you ask me.”
Immediately, I identified with his words. Even though I had been sober for only a short period of time, I could tell something miraculous was happening to me because of Jesus. Now, over four decades later, I still identify with that man’s words. And I still thank Jesus for changing me from a bum into a man. What a blessing!
At those meetings, I met a young man who also was working hard to stay sober. He and his wife recently joined a fundamentalist Baptist congregation. I spent a lot of time talking with them, and they helped me learn a lot about the Gospel message and Scripture. I will always have a fond place in my heart for all of our separated brethren in the Evangelical communities.
There was one time, though, that felt a little awkward. I was over at my friend’s house one Saturday morning after a meeting. The two of us and his wife were reading the Bible and talking about faith. Suddenly, my friend’s wife blurted out, “Oh Bill, isn’t it so wonderful that you’re going to Heaven!” Then, without even pausing to take a breath, she continued, “But, Bill, isn’t it so sad that your wife is going to Hell because she’s a Catholic?!”
At this point, I had no idea if what she said was true or not. It had been so long since I had thought about religious doctrines. I had never paid attention to the nuns in catechism class, so I was a blank slate. I didn’t know anything — other than God was real and the story about Jesus struck a chord in my heart — but I was eager to learn as much as I could about Christianity. Unfortunately, my ignorance caused me to wonder if that woman’s claim about Catholics going to Hell might be true.
At that time in my life, I was perfectly content to join my friend’s faith community and be part of that independent Baptist group. But my wife, who also was raised Catholic but never lost her faith completely, as I did, was not comfortable with that plan. (Maybe learning that folks were certain she was going to Hell just because she’s Catholic might have turned her off a bit.) Instead, we started going to Catholic Mass together, though I went as an unofficial, undercover Protestant. I focused on the Liturgy of the Word, because my Baptist friends taught me the Bible is divinely inspired (which is true), and they taught me the Bible is all we need to live holy, Christian lives (which is not).
When it was time for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, I kind of zoned out. I was convinced the second half of Mass was a stale ritual added on to true worship by some sneaky popes during the Middle Ages. I accepted what my Baptist friends taught me: all the traditions and rituals added by the Catholic Church over the years were like barnacles on a boat. The Protestant Reformation scraped off those useless and idolatrous barnacles so people could once again worship purely and properly.
I also did a lot of reading during this time, along with listening to Christian radio stations. Some of my favorites were Charles Colson, Steve Brown, Chuck Swindoll, Max Lucado, and of course, Billy Graham. My faith was growing. I was staying sober. Our family life had done a complete 180 and now was heading in the right direction. I had finally landed a good and steady job, and we had another daughter. There was no doubt that I had a genuine and powerful relationship with the Lord Jesus, which had completely changed the course of my life. Things were going well, and in the interest of family harmony, I continued to attend Mass rather than demand that our family join some Evangelical community.
Eucharist is the Key
Soon after, I discovered books written by Scott Hahn, Karl Keating, Tim Staples, and a few others — many of whom were former Protestant ministers who had become Catholic. They presented a much different picture of the Catholic Church than I was getting from my Baptist friends.
The key for me was learning the true story of the Eucharist. I had been told for years the claim that bread and wine turn into the real Body and Blood of Jesus was invented by some medieval pope as a devious scheme to wield more power over the laity. Are you familiar with Jack Chick comic book tracts? I had read them often. Now, I started reading some of the early Church Fathers and discovered they all believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist from the very beginning of Christianity.
Back then I owned a massive volume of some kind of Bible resource book. It went through the entire Bible, verse by verse, with detailed explanations of everything. I turned to John Chapter 6 to read this Protestant publication’s explanation of the chapter those Catholic authors claimed was the most Eucharistic teaching in Scripture. I was stunned to see the book completely glossed over it. After having at least a page and a half explaining John, Chapter 5, the book said something like this: “In John, Chapter 6, Jesus teaches that bread symbolizes his body.”
And that was it! It immediately went on to discuss John, Chapter 7. That was a real eye-opener. It told me that very intelligent Evangelical scholars were afraid to describe the obvious Eucharistic message in John 6, probably worried they would come across as “too Catholic.”
When I attended Mass, I stopped zoning out during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and started paying attention. I silently asked myself, Is this real? Can God really change mere bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus? The answer was obvious: of course God can! He designed and created life; He raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore, does God have the power to work a miracle on the altar during Mass? Certainly He does!
That was the turning point for me. I came to understand that Jesus founded a single Church, and His one Church has been preaching the Gospel throughout the world for over 2,000 years. I love my Evangelical friends, and I’m convinced that if a person has even a little bit of Jesus, he or she has a whole lot of Jesus, which is a wonderful thing. But the Catholic Church has been entrusted with the full deposit of faith. And most importantly, the Church has the real Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ right in its midst, and right inside of us when we consume the Eucharist at Mass.
When I came to believe in my heart of hearts that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, that was the last time I thought about joining an Evangelical community. I knew I was home. I knew I was worshipping in the exact place God wanted me to worship. As I came to understand the importance of the sacraments, I finally went to Confession (Reconciliation) for the first time in decades. It was amazing; I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.
Some years later, I published a book titled, The Gospel According to Morty. It’s a collection of short stories and essays. One of the sections is called, “Is the Real Presence Really Real?” I quoted 15 different Church Fathers, from the 2nd century through the 5th century, and they all taught—firmly and forcefully—that mere bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Jesus at every Mass.
In the many years since all this occurred, I’ve led Bible studies in a couple of different parishes, written three books about faith, and recorded for the local Catholic radio station a weekly spot titled, “The Merry Catholic.”
I recently saw a meme online that sums up my story: “I know Jesus is real because I’ve seen the difference between me with Him and me without Him.” Amen.
