Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary

by Kenneth W. Daniels

I see Christianity as a square peg and reality a round hole. The square peg doesn't fit in the round hole, so we start whittling and sandpapering the corners, trying to make it fit. The tools we use for whittling and sandpapering are collectively known as "Bible commentary." We find, for example, that the earth is very ancient, not a few thousand years old, that there are biological bases for illnesses like schizophrenia, not merely demon possession, that the Bible had a lot of editing as it was put together and doesn't appear error free. We incorporate these and other items into our Christian worldview, slowly sandpapering the edges and modifying our Christianity. When we finally get our Christianity smoothed down so that it can fit into the round hole of reality, we are relieved—until we realize that what we are looking at is no longer a square peg but a round one, no different from the round peg of Naturalism that fits into reality. Can what we have left of the peg, now completely rounded, still be labeled Christianity? No, it is Naturalism (or at best, Deism). Hence the loss of faith.