BY STEVEN RAY BOWEN
Body
Part 1
Welcome to the “Front-Porch.”
I would never have expected to read what I read.
If you had asked me what I thought a particular atheist would have said in his response to one of the most probing questions he could ever have been asked, I could have given you a hundred answers and not the right one, not the one he gave.
I have revisited this account many times through the years.
I first wrote of it after revisiting it as the amazin’ blonde and I took off down the runway at the Atlanta airport for one of our many excursions down to our land of pine trees and red clay.
As soon as we boarded the plane, I reached for the book that tells this story, one I almost always carry with me on any trip: Lee Stroebel’s “The Case For Faith.”
In a way, it’s kind of my little Bible.
It goes where I go.
By the time the plane had jettisoned to the runway for take-off, I had come to the section of the book where Stroebel – the journalist who, himself, was once an infidel – interviews a current atheist whose path in life curiously mirrored Stroebel’s own. Stroebel and Charles Templeton were the same in many ways, only different.
Strobel began his journey as an atheist and converted to Christianity.
Charles Templeton began as a Christian and finished his journey as an espoused atheist.
In fact, Mr. Templeton was an evangelical preacher for many years.
So much alike, yet so different.
By the time Stroebel walked into the quaint little professor-like apartment, his journey to faith likely had been completed. But, still, he knew that Mr. Templeton’s story would tell him a great deal about his own journey, and yours and mine, too.
Stoebel finds Templeton in that modest high-rise apartment in downtown Toronto, and the two scholars spend several hours conversing in as congenial a way as if they were talking about grandkids or the Toronto Bluejays. It was soft, gentle, emotional, personal, convicting, and, in the end, very sad.
Even though their 180-degree journeys were mostly complete – and the aged Templeton’s forever – and though they found themselves on opposite sides of the fence now, you could feel, even in reading the account, the camaraderie between the two.
There would be one probing question after another from the journalist, and then there would be candid answers for why his Canadian friend had rejected his faith.
The answers were not argumentative. Nor does Mr. Templeton try to convert Stroebel to his way of thinking. Ah, no, he would not even if he could’ve. I think he would have led him slowly – for his steps were now very slow – back to the door where he had come in and bid him an abrupt goodbye before he would convert him away from Christ.
After a couple of hours of intriguing discussion, Stroebel has one question he knows he has to ask.
You’ve been there where you just cannot walk away from a conversation without asking that one question that is weighing on your mind. It’s one you are afraid to ask, perhaps because you might be afraid of the answer, or because you do not want to push someone that far into a corner where they have to retrieve a long-hidden thought they had tucked away safely.
But such questions usually need to be asked. This one had to be.
“What about Jesus?” Stroebel asks gently, after a long silence. "What do you think about Jesus now?"
The answer is surprising. It will be worth the wait.
Next week.
God bless! – Coach
Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently came out of retirement twice for teaching tours at Ferris and Waxahachie High Schools. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) have slowed down some of their travels and reconvened in their evangelistic work with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the working to publish “Crossing The Georgia Line” that ran in the Ellis County Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, and see frontporchgospel.com.
