Steve

strefanash@clear.net.nz

My name is Steve Meikle. I am 43 and a professional classical double bass player albeit in an orchestra that can only fund itself on a part time basis.

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand.

I was an intellectually gifted child, equally involved in the sciences and the arts at primary school. Intellectually, from the time I could start thinking for myself, I was an atheist convinced that science had rendered God irrelevant and all religion untrue. Even though I had two brushes with Sunday school, one at age eight the other at age 12, my thinking was rationalist (for an intelligent pre-teen and teenager, that is) and I took it for granted that rationality implied atheism.

However, emotionally speaking, my flirting with church even in my childhood (there was no compulsion from my parents to believe anything either way pertaining to any religious matter at all, for which I thank god) may be revealing of something else altogether . . .

But, at age 19 (1978), with adulthood looming my atheism was more desperate. I was frantically searching for meaning as I became a nihilist within weeks of my starting university that year. I was a music student but one would not have guessed as I did side papers in philosophy and Russian literature, and philosophy was my preoccupation.

Gradually my atheism assumed all the torment of a character in a Dostoyevsky novel. And the depression that hit when I was 16 and concluded that life was indeed meaningless was consolidating itself as my life style and conviction.

I raved about philosophy to any who would listen, one so afflicted by me suggested I come to her church where the pastor had a degree in philosophy. This was fateful as this church, in my own home neighbourhood was one I had had dealings before (age 12) and it was the one I later joined.

I spoke to the pastor but he was unimpressive. I went to the church over three weeks but was only impressed by the wrong things (as I now see in retrospect).

On the third week I went to a young adults supper after the service but had already decided that they had nothing to offer and that I would not be returning. I embarrassed myself by my raving philosophy at the party. They gave me a lift home. I got into my room at about 11:45 p.m. Sunday 30 July 1978. I looked in the mirror and a powerful inner voice spoke to me saying "YOU FRAUD". But though powerful it was not condemnatory. There was no fear or violence. But interestingly enough no intellect was involved at all. That was to come later yet the anti-intellectual implications I drew in part from this and from what the church told me were totally wrong as well

I fell to my knees as if knocked down and asked Jesus to be my Lord or Saviour or something to that effect (I do not remember the exact words).

And then I was flooded by the most wonderful peace and joy I had ever known.

Hence my conversion was a la Damascus Road but without the visions St Paul encountered.

However, the next morning the doubt hit me. I had always defined religious experience as wish fulfillment fantasy (and seriously think now, 24 years later that most indeed are just that). Of course my response to these was wrong.

Had I accepted both what the Lord told me then and the implications of it I would have been spared years of suffering. But my experience persuaded me, quite wrongly, that other Christians had the same or even deeper, and that they were to be trusted. I am forced to concede that this is indeed a mistake, and have written concerning it elsewhere. Thus my testimony is of the love and grace of God direct to me and not through any church

The Lord revealed his love to me over the next three weeks or so but I now know I did not believe it, and the resultant darkness was not what many call a desert experience sent in order to encourage me to move on (they do not exist, IMO) but proof that I had already backslidden from god in my heart even though I was soon to become a devoted son of my church and a religious zealot.

They were all direct unmediated revelations with no connection to any mediator or church - this I, of course, ignored at the time.

My doubts have been brought into abeyance by first rational argument and then repentance, both lead by the Holy Spirit through one on one dialogue, for it is written in the Bible "Come let us reason together."

Intellectually, I am becoming more and more convinced that Christ is the only way and that His Gospel is in fact logically necessary. But such convictions are more the realm of apologetic argument than testimony except that I grow increasingly to believe that the Lord has reasoned with me in debate with His Spirit to lead me to see the logical necessity of His Gospel.

Despite the hard years since my conversion, such sufferings brought about by my unbelief, I can only thank God for reaching down to me that dark night. My despair was such then that I may well be dead now if He had not, or if I had refused Him when He did.

You are welcome to ask questions or comment.

Steve

strefanash@clear.net.nz

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