Coming something of a shock for anyone who automatically associates Wikipedia with left-wing bias, co-founder Larry Sanger recently shared he was Christian in a thoughtful interview. In it, he explores the journey most, if not all, Christians face at some point. There is an introduction to Christ, a combination of emotional pain and hubris in youth, and ultimately a return to the Word. Sanger announces at the start of the interview that he recently “let the cat out of the bag” that he was Christian before divulging further.
“I was a pretty inquisitive sort of kid. I remember asking a question of my parents as we were driving to church one day,” he recounted of his formative years. “I asked, what’s the difference between the mind, the spirit and the soul and I had other, you know, curiosities. I guess you might say that I asked more questions than the adults in my life really had patience for when I was about 12 or 13. My parents were getting a divorce, so we shortly thereafter stopped going to church…seemed to remember my interest in God and my faith perhaps slipping away.”
“My belief in God went by the wayside at that time,” Sanger continued, remembering his time as a young adult. “I remember calling a pastor. I remember asking him, you know, some of these sorts of skeptical questions, and he sort of gave me the brush off. In fact, he struck me as being threatened, and that made an impression on me.”
Sanger then noticed that his experience mirrored that of so many other Christians since the time of Christ. Indeed, it was not only okay but expected of disciples to ask questions. “I started rethinking some of the classic arguments for the existence of God as I was reading the Bible and like thinking of these new perspectives on the older arguments, and I was finding them to be actually a lot more interesting.”
It was here in the story that Sanger had an ah-ha moment, an epiphany, his Road to Damascus moment. “It actually makes a lot more sense than I understood,” he said. “All of the questions that I had asked before had been asked by other people and answered in various ways. There’s whole traditions of asking my questions and many more that I hadn’t asked.”
“But the thing that I hadn’t understood is that the reason why there is a 2000-year-old tradition of theology is that the Bible withstands questioning. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to go on talking about it in such detail and the doctrines behind it,” Sanger declared, echoing the sentiment of so many others who have arrived at God through not just religious beliefs but intellectual defenses. The fact that the Bible and belief in God has survived two millennia is itself proof of something beyond just mere words.
“But it wasn’t just an intellectual persuasion. At the same time, I started talking to God, or imagining I was having conversations with God, but these turned into prayers. And I said, Well, I guess I should actually pray to God and give my life to him. And I did that,” he concluded with emphatic punctuation. Take a look at the moving honesty from Sanger in his new interview:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/wikipedia-co-founder-larry-sanger-announces-conversion-from-skeptic-christianity?intcmp=fb_fnc&fbclid=IwY2xjawI7v25leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHW8kq2ehNk74ORcj4s1aKkhvqMGnxZSIk2jXXBX1Nikf7cQsNIFzvUuaVw_aem_G1m94_orwYrczyT8csOD3A
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video