CONVINCED
(The Christine Hutchinson Story)

By: Christine Hutchinson

I certainly didn’t expect to become a Christian when I drove up to Seattle with my Mom for my sophomore year of college.  I hadn’t cared much about God since I quit going to church at age 12.  During my first year of high school, I sporadically went to a Christian youth group, but I never thought about God outside of those 45 minutes on Wednesday evenings.  By the time I entered my sophomore year of high school, I had decided that Christianity was ridiculous.  “Jesus” was something I said when I stubbed my toe and when I was making fun of televangelists (then I pronounced it “Jay-zuz”).  But I avoided any serious conversations about him.  As soon as I learned the word “agnostic,” I decided it described me exactly.  Unfortunately, that term was just a cover.  I was too scared to think about God long enough to come to a firm belief or unbelief.

Then, during my Freshman year of college, I took an Astronomy class.  My teacher (a graduate student) had an enthusiasm for his subject that was infectious-- I spent the quarter spacing out in my other classes, picturing the formation our solar system and marveling that the elements that make up my body were formed in massive stars billions of years ago.  I would stare at the pictures in my textbook, but could never really wrap my mind around the concepts.  This fascination inevitably led me to wonder who created all this. 

Up to this point I hadn’t made any commitment as to whether I believed in a God or not (nor did I care much), but my astronomy class made me decide that we do have a creator.  I didn’t think of this as a huge step in my spiritual development (most people do believe in some kind of God, after all), but looking back I see that this was the first time in years that I felt comfortable thinking and talking to other people about God.

But winter quarter ended, and I returned to my normal, non-astronomical life.  I wondered about God a little more frequently, but always thought of him the same way I thought of our universe: he might make our jaws drop in awe, but he was also cold, distant and frightening.  Just as I wouldn’t want to leave Earth to explore the cosmos, I was still too scared to leave my comfortable mentality and explore God.  Instead, I decided that any God who created so much couldn’t be involved in our daily lives - not when the Earth is a speck of dust compared to the rest of creation.

Then this past December (in the middle of my sophomore year) I decided it was time for me to read the gospels.  I wasn’t feeling spiritually broken, and I wasn’t unsatisfied with my life in any way (I was actually doing well in my classes and feeling quite self-sufficient, thank you very much!).  No, I wanted to read about Jesus because... well, I was curious.  What’s all the fuss about?  It dawned on me that I had rejected Christianity without ever really looking into the details.  I also felt obliged to read the gospels because I’m a literature major, and Jesus comes up often in class discussions and assigned reading.  I was not about to be the only Comparative Literature graduate who had not read Jesus’ biographies!

But this literary pretense didn’t last long.  Halfway through Matthew I noticed that this Jesus was nothing like the glowing-head-Jesus painted on church murals, and he wasn’t the comforting teddy-bear-Jesus I thought I’d learned about in Sunday school.  I was never able to guess how he would answer a question or react to an accusation.  He had the sharpest wit and the greatest compassion I had ever seen.  I found this man more amazing than all the pictures in my astronomy textbook which had up to that point represented God.  By the time I hit Luke, Jesus was taking up most of my thoughts, conversations with friends, and a lot of my diary pages too.  At one point I realized where all of this was heading and it startled me.  I considered dropping it and going back to “normal” life.  But that proved to be impossible.  Not only had Jesus firmly lodged himself in my brain, discovering him was so exciting and worthwhile that I didn’t want to stop.

I started going to a non-Christian Bible study that one of my (Christian) friends held.  Even though I was totally captivated by Jesus, I doubted that the gospels were actually reliable documents, and thought the authors (who must have been as smitten with Jesus as I was) had turned a great teacher into the son of God.  I doubted whether the original words of the gospel writers had been reliably preserved, I doubted that the miracles Jesus performed were real, and I doubted the resurrection.  I talked to my friend who led the bible study about this often.  He had wondered the same things the year before, and was quick to share the answers he had found.  One day he passed on an excellent piece of advice: “Read the arguments against Jesus.  Then read the ones for him.  Then read the counter-arguments.  Keep reading until you’re convinced one way or the other.  The truth will show itself.”  I was amazed at his confidence.  Unlike many Christians from my childhood and teen years, he didn’t try to shelter me from the anti-Jesus world as though they had the stronger or more appealing arguments and he didn’t want me to get my hands on them.  So I started ignoring my homework and spent my evenings looking up both Christian and anti-Christian websites.  The discussions were so interesting that I wouldn’t go to bed until my eyes refused to focus any longer.

For spring break a couple weeks later, I flew to Virginia to spend a week with my sister.  I was glad to be away from school.  Now I could think about everything I’d read and discovered over the past few months and make a rational decision about it.  This was the plan anyway.  I ended up having fun with my sister and my 1-year-old niece the whole week and I didn’t get much Rational Thinking time until the plane ride home.

Now, I don’t mean to give the impression that I had read all or even a significant percent of the debates over Jesus and Christianity.  But on that plane ride home, I realized that I had read enough to see a pattern: the arguments for Jesus were consistently more convincing.  I assured myself that I was still allowed to change my mind if I ever found better arguments than the ones for Jesus and his divinity, and I vowed to keep hunting them out.  Then I wrote one line in my diary that still makes me smile: “I think I’m convinced.”  Tentatively, I had decided I was Christian. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to write much more than that because the plane started jumping and jolting and (being a nervous flier), I thought curling up in my seat and gripping the armrest was a better idea.  After twenty minutes of this I started feeling queasy, and I thought, “I wonder if God could help me out here.”  Feeling slightly ridiculous, I asked God if he could find it in his infinite power and love to stop the airplane turbulence so I wouldn’t have to dive for the barf bag.  Half a minute later the plane gave one final jolt then began to fly smoothly.  I looked around to see if anyone else thought this was totally amazing, but everyone had resumed reading and filling in crossword puzzles. 

A minute later the co-pilot came on the speakers and said, “Well folks, it looks like we’ve hit some smooth air, so I’m going to turn off the seat belt sign for now.  But I want to warn you that we’ve spoken to ground control and they say that all of the aircraft in our area are still complaining about rough turbulence, so be prepared for that seat belt sign to come on again.”  We flew smoothly all the way to Seattle. 

The significance of what the co-pilot said didn’t hit me until just before we landed.  None of the other planes around us found that patch of smooth air?  I smiled.  “Didja try praying for it?” I said, allowing myself to feel smug for a moment. 

When I got back to my apartment I pulled out my old astronomy textbook and opened to my favorite picture.  It’s actually a row of pictures.  The first shows planet Earth with swirling white clouds and bright blue oceans.  The second shows Earth orbiting our sun along with our eight neighbors.  The puny size of Earth compared to the outer planets (especially Jupiter and Saturn) is striking. Then the third picture is of our Milky Way galaxy, with a small arrow pointing to our sun, now one of thousands of tiny dots out on one of the spiral arms.  The next picture shows our galaxy amidst a group of our neighboring galaxies.  Finally, the last picture is one of our entire observable universe, and a tiny red arrow points to this cluster of six galaxies (which has now become a tiny smudge).  From afar, this picture looks like a huge spider web, but on a closer look you can see this web is made of millions of tiny dots: galaxies like (or sometimes very not like) our own.  Earth, our sun, even our entire galaxy has become too small to be visible in this picture. 

The picture frightens and amazes me.  No wonder I thought our creator was a cold and distant being for so long.  But the God I had encountered that day had acted more like the Man I had spent the last six months discovering.  I felt like Jesus’ disciples after Jesus had calmed the storm on the sea – “What kind of man is this?” they had asked, “Even the winds and the waves obey him!”  They knew Jesus’ great compassion, but that night they were shocked at the extent of his power.

I had the opposite problem.  Staring at that picture of our universe, I could not doubt the extent of God’s power, but I was shocked at his compassion.  “What kind of God is this,” I asked myself, “that he actually listens to prayers about airplane turbulence?” I thought about the conclusion I had come to earlier that day: that I was more convinced by the evidence for Jesus being the unique son of God than by the evidence against it.  I knew I was supposed to believe him when he spoke of his Father as one who listens to and answers prayers. 

But now it was no longer a matter of reading arguments online and in libraries -- now I had to decide whether my own experience was a reliable piece of evidence.  All logical arguments aside, should I believe that God is a loving and personal God, or should I decide that it was all a coincidence -- that my plane had by random chance stopped bouncing within a minute after my prayer?

I smiled, and for the second time that day I came to a decision: I was convinced.  

Christine Hutchison

Dear Reader - are you at peace with God?  If not, you can be.  Do you know what awaits you when you die?  You can have the assurance from the Holy Spirit that heaven will be your home, if you would like to be certain.  Either Jesus Christ died for yours sins, or He didn't (He did!).  Are you prepared to stand before God on the Judgment Day and tell Him that you didn't need the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the Cross to cover your sins?  We plead with you ... please don't make such a tragic mistake.

To be at peace with God; to make certain heaven will be your home for eternity; to make certain that you are in right-standing with God right now ... please click here to help understand the importance of being reconciled to God.  What you do about being reconciled to God will determine where you will spend eternity, precious one.  Your decision to be reconciled to God is the most important decision you'll ever make in this life.