Leonard Charles, a modern day missionary to the Democratic Republic of Congo

Following God's Voice Across the World

Charles Leonard was born in 1960 in Haiti.
In 1982 he finished his high-school and, as he was considering what to study next, heard in his heart God tell him to study the Word of God. His parents were not Christian but vodooists, and refused to support him financially in this endeavor. Leonard still decided to take the entry test of the Nazarene Bible school in Haiti, and passed it successfully. Later, he came to speak to the president of this Bible school, Dr. Jeanine Van Beek, explaining to her that although he did pass the test, he was lacking the finances to pay for the semester costs. She then, with tears in the eyes, felt that one day the Lord would send him to Africa and that she could find a way to help him. Indeed, she helped him to become the assistant of one of the teachers, and Leonard entered and completed the Bible school in 1986.

After his studies, Leonard helped plant a church in Haiti, and this church is still doing well today. He was ordained in the Church of the Nazarene as an elder in 1989 by Dr. William Greathouse.
Leonard met his future wife, Micheline, also a Haitian but living in New York. They married and went to the United States where she had been studying and then worked for a few years. He received a green card, studied and started a new Nazarene church in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1991, Leonard felt that the Lord spoke to him during the night about him going to minister in Africa. In 1994, a Haitian friend contacted him and shared that as he was praying he felt God was telling him that Leonard should go serve God in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Leonard's wife then had a dream of him speaking with Charles Dumerzier, a missionary friend in Rwanda, and encouraged her husband to speak with him. When Leonard did so, Dumerzier invited him to teach for a few weeks in 1997. Leonard arrived in Rwanda in the beginning of 1997 and ministered in Kigali, Gisenyi, and could also cross the border to the town of Goma in DRC. The border had just opened while he was there (before, the civil war in DRC did not allow this).
This time of ministry was blessed. In Goma, invited by the Nazarene leader Jacques Balibanga, he could go to a hospital and pray with sick people; some persons were healed and people (even doctors) committed their lives to Jesus. He could also teach homiletics and be instrumental in the deliverance of a young woman that was possessed, an event that marked many.

During this trip to Rwanda and Eastern DRC, he sensed that the Lord would want him to go next to the West of DRC. He then planned a trip in Kinshasa (West of DRC) and went for a few weeks, while he was still pastor in Brooklyn, with his wife and five daughters still living in New York.
After these few trips, Leonard was thinking that he had done all what God wanted him to do concerning Africa, and could continue his rather comfortable life in New York.

Then, he felt strongly that the Lord wanted him not only to do a few trips but wanted him to move and live in Kinshasa. This was something that seemed crazy to Leonard as well as to his whole family, and he battled against this direction. This meant for them that they would forfeit the financial security and confortable life that he and his wife worked so hard to establish.
Yet, sensing the clear direction from the God he loved, confirmed in prayer by his wife Micheline, he took the steps to move to Kinshasa in 2008. The Lord opened the door for him to receive a 5 year residency permit without paying a single dollar, and allowed him to establish a good contact with the Nazarene district superintendent in Kinshasa, Rev. Hermenegilde Matungulu.
By faith,  their family arrived in 2008 in Kinshasa, seeing confirmations of God's direction through surprising conversions, healings and divine appointments. Since then, they started a children church in one of the humble quarters of Kinshasa, and up to today God has sustained them faithfully.

It was a joy for me, with my colleague Gavin Fothergill, to meet with Leonard and Micheline today, and hear from them their story of God's faithful guidance and provision, leading them to be missionaries in Kinshasa, DRC. I mentioned only a few of the many ways God's voice has guided this couple to this beautiful yet very challenging place.

Please pray with me for this gracious and faithful couple, as they minister to hundreds of children in Kinshasa, and continue to follow God's guidance to show His love and shine of His grace.

Your brother in the Living Messiah
Stephane

From Atheism to Faith in God: Part 7b - Imperfect experiments, perfect reality

From Atheism to openness to spirituality: The toppling of my 'science idol'

B. Quantum and chaos mechanics, from the imprecision of physics to a renewed focus on reality.

During my three years of intensive scientific studies in preparatory classes, not only did I learn about the inherent limits of mathematics, but also about the limits of physics.

The results and consequences of the scientific revolution, spearheaded by Copernicus and perfectly illustrated by Newton's law of gravitation, were immense. They presented the world as so orderly that you could not only predict the move of far away objects, like planets, but also predict and describe close or small movements, like the fall of an apple. 

These amazing results were supported by the partnership between mathematical models and physical experiments.
This was so impressive that it seemed possible to predict everything in this world.
Another consequence was that it seemed there was no possibility of any influence of God on the present. God's immanence was discarded as irrelevant. The only form of faith in God that could stand in front of this powerful model was a deist faith - the faith in a clockmaker that set up in place all the universe as a huge clock, this clock of the universe now functioning without the need or even possibility for the intervention of any 'spiritual being'.

I shared in the previous post about the discovery of a major limit about the mathematical model, a first result that directly challenged this belief in a clock-like world.
I would like to share now how I was deeply challenged in what I believed, through my learning of fundamental limits in the experimental method, and then in the matching of a mathematical model with the reality.

The beginning of the 20th century saw the development of a new branch of physics, called quantum mechanics. In this branch, fundamental assumptions of science would be challenged in major ways.

Observer and observed - then end of the faith in absolute obectivity in science

A key assumption of experimental science was that you can make precise measurements, in an objective way. That meant that scientists believed they could measure variables in an experiment without influencing this very experiment. Quantum mechanics results helped realize that if we go at a small enough level, the observer is influencing the observed experiment.

For instance, to see anything with our eyes we need light. We need first to send light on the object of our observation. This sent light produces a transformation of the object, like little balls of light (photons) hitting the object. If we then see light returning to us, what we see is the state of this object before the particles of light (photons) left the object. Thus, the light we sent has transformed the object ('hitting it'), and the returning light gives us a picture of the object in the past - just before the light left the object.

This means that the observer both transforms the object of the experiment, and does not have an absolutely precise observation of the object.

The Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg

Another result of quantum mechanics had troubling consequences for me: Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
This principle states that you cannot know both the position and the momentum (=speed x mass) of a specific particle.
The mathematical form of this principle is: σx.σp ≥ h/4π
A consequence of this principle is that, for a specific particle, you cannot know both the speed and position at the same time.

I like to describe this principle with the illustration of a wet soap. A particle is a little like a wet soap: if you try to be sure of its position and squeeze it hard, it will then slide speedily out of your hands. On the other side, if you don't want it to fly away you have to accept that you don't squeeze it too hard and are not sure of its precise position.
Particles are a little like this wet soap. The more precise their position, the more unknown their speed. The more precise their speed, the less precise their position.

This result leads, like the influence of the observer, to the impossibility of an absolutely precise experiment.
Some would be tempted to say that these two results, Heisenberg's principle and the influence of the observer, have not much impact in real life. Since they are valid for tiny moves of particles, it will not change the move or real-life sized objects. This would be right, if there was not what is called in physics unstable phenomenons, as illustrated in chaos theory.

Chaos theory: the butterfly effect

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect describes how a small change in the state of a particle or object can produce a large difference. This relates to what is sometimes called 'unstable phenomenons'.
A famous illustration, the origin of this name, is that the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil could set off a Tornado in Texas.

This means that a very slight difference in the initial conditions of an experiment can produce immense changes. 

The limit of the scientific model, and the end of my idolatry of science

The combination of the quantum mechanics limit in the precision of the initial position of a particle on one hand, and the butterfly effect on the other hand, imply that science is not able to predict a long time in advance what will happen in this world.
Research programs like long-term meteorology previsions have disappeared.

For all practical purpose, this lead to a death sentence of a mechanistic or deterministic view of the universe. Whatever the progress in science, the scientific models will not be able to determine what will happen, except in simple situations. In some ways, this led to the end of the string of scientific victories that seemed to prove that science could master reality.

In the same way that Kepler and then Newton proved that mathematics could give an efficient model of far away and near movements, now the quantum mechanics and butterfly effect were showing that we cannot access to precise measurements either for near movements or for their far away consequences

My faith in science had been rooted in the victories of the scientific revolution. Now, this very faith was uprooted by further scientific discoveries. After all, the mathematical model was not able to justify either the hope of perfection in itself (Godels' theorems) or its ability to reach the foundation of reality (quantum and chaos theories)

This was a huge disappointment for me. It led me to a defiance for science and its presentation. I felt betrayed by the so frequent cultural presentation of the power of science, as able to answer the fundamental questions of life and purpose in this world.

For years, this left a bitter taste in my mouth, when considering the role and cultural presentation of science. It is only years after my conversion to Christianity that I would find a more balanced respect and esteem for what science can accomplish, and what it cannot do.
I would then realize that science is a bad master, but still be very useful in our search for meaning in this world.
Science could not master reality, but could still be a humble and helpful servant of reality.

This disappointment in science grew in me as I was entering my Grande Ecole. Therefore, in the following years, I would be open to many things, in order to find meaning to this world and to my life.

In the next post, I will describe, during the years in my Grande Ecole, my first attempts to find peace and meaning in my life. I would search through sport, psychology, various philosophies and religions.  

From Atheism to Faith in God: Part 7a - Imperfect mathematics, perfect reality

From Atheism to openness to spirituality: The toppling of my 'science idol'

A. Gödel's theorems, the move from the perfection of mathematics to the perfection of reality.

During my three years of intensive scientific studies in preparatory classes, I learned key scientific results which would lead me to lose my almost religious confidence that science could solve all the major problems of this world. This would also open my heart and mind to the possibility of spirituality.

In the universe of science, you have a kind of implicit 'hierarchy'. The 'hard sciences,' like mathematics and physics, are considered as sound and reliable. Mathematics give the models that physics can use to describe reality, and the accurate predictions that physics give then support the value and importance of mathematics - an efficient tandem between mathematics and physics.
When you move toward less absolute sciences, like chemistry or biology for instance, there is less respect or trust in the scientific arena. This is perhaps because you cannot really predict precisely results.
If you move to domains like human sciences, like sociology, anthropology or psychology there can be a greater distance and even a defiance. Scientists from the 'hard sciences' will have less respect for what is not precisely predictable and considered such domains at best as fragile models for experimentations but not really as 'science'.
This means that the most solid foundations of science are to be found in mathematics and physics.

By discovering results that severely limited both the mathematical models and the the physics models of this world, I would be led to an almost religious crisis.

A crack in the wall of logic: Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems

The first result that shook my belief in science came from a domain that I thought perfect: Logic, in some ways the heart of mathematics.

In 1900, a German mathematician, David Hilbert, had highlighted 23 problems to be solved, in order to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics.
(An axiom is a statement accepted as true, that serves as a foundation for a branch of mathematics, like this axiom in Euclidean geometry: In a plane, given a line and a point not on it, at most one line parallel to the given line can be drawn through the point).

Hilbert's second problem was: to find a proof that the arithmetic is consistent (= free of any internal contradictions).
In 1931, a young Austrian mathematician, Kurt Gödel, would prove that Hilbert's second problem could never be solved. After the amazing successes of the scientific revolution, this result would bring a new awareness of the limitations of any scientific model.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems demonstrate the inherent limitations of every formal axiomatic system containing basic arithmetic. Hilbert's program would never be completed.

In mathematical language, Gödel proved that every non-trivial formal system is either incomplete or inconsistent:
1. For a given (non-trivial) formal system, there will be statements that are true in that system, but which cannot be proved to be true inside the system.
2. If a system can be proved to be complete using its own logic, then there will be a theorem in the system that is contradictory.

In order to attempt a 'simple' illustration of this result, let us consider heuristically the field of human laws. A law is like an axiom in mathematics. In law, you have cases and you want to find who is guilty and not guilty, as in mathematics you have statements that you want to prove as either true or false.
In law, the adaptation of Gödel's theorem would then imply that:
1. either you don't have enough laws and some cases cannot be solved (a person cannot be proved innocent or guilty) -> an incomplete system, or
2. you have too many laws, and you can prove that a person is both guilty and innocent -> a contradictory system
By continuing to add laws we continue to move toward a less incomplete system, but also toward contradictions inside this very legal system. Contradictions would thus allow persons with more time and more lawyers to find more ways to prove a case, even if with the same time and effort the opposite could also be proven.

In simple language, Gödel's demonstration highlighted that logic and therefore mathematics were not perfect, they had inherent limits. Either they could not describe perfectly a situation (incomplete), or they would provide conflicting statements (contradictory).

Gödel's results challenged directly the claim of science to provide a perfect model of reality, through the powerful alliance of mathematics and physics.
Therefore, instead of seeing reality as an external manifestation of a perfect mathematical model, I began to see mathematics as the abstract foundation of an imperfect physical model of reality.

I hope you can sense the radical change this provoked in me. I would no more focus on mathematics as the perfect foundation of reality. I would then begin to focus on reality as more complex and rich than any mathematical or scientific model.

My passion to understand and master science then began to be replaced by a budding passion to understand reality. This was my first step to become open to the existence of a spiritual being.

In the next post, I will describe the impact that the results of quantum mechanics had on my vision of the world, and how, in relationship with 'chaos physics', they provided an even broader opening to the possibility of a spiritual world.

From Atheism to Faith in God: Part 6 - Surprised by a touch of God's love

My testimony: From convinced Atheism to joyful fellowship with God
Part 6: Surprised by a touch of God’s love

In one of the school vacations during my prepa, I was back home in my suburb of Paris. My uncle Gilles lent to me the VHS videotape of a film to watch. He told me that it was a very good movie, with beautiful landscapes and an interesting political intrigue. Gilles, as most of my family, was a fervent atheist, yet this movie was presenting Christians.
The name of the movie was: The Mission, a movie directed by Rolland Joffé, with the actors Robert de Niro, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson. I learned very recently that Roland Joffé is a frenchman from Jewish descent, which I can clearly relate to.
I watched the film alone at home. It is the story of Jesuit priests evangelizing indians in Paraguay in the 1750s, and their struggle with the Portuguese and Spanish colonizers who wanted to enslave the natives.
A key character in the film is Mendoza (de Niro), a mercenary and slaver. After returning from a kidnapping trip, he learns that his girlfriend is now in love with his brother. In anger, he kills his brother and then spends a period as a recluse not wanting to live anymore. Challenged by one of the priest (Irons) to face the consequence of his acts, he carries the weapons he used to harm others, and goes with the Jesuit priests to one indian village. When the indians recognize his as a slaver, they first want to kill him, and then - in a beautiful scene - decide to forgive him and through all his weapons in the water. Then, there is a very poetic scene were we see this converted mercenary learning to love the indians, laughing and serving peacefully. At that point in the movie, a beautiful text is read, when the chief priest asks Mendoza to read a book. This text, speaking about love, touched me deeply.
It impacted me so much that I played many times the VHS tape, to be able to write down the words. Then, I memorized these words, a beautiful poem.

Years later I realized that, through this film, I could experience a first crack in the strong wall of my bitter scientism. I began to realize that what I was really looking for was not worldly power but love. What I truly desired was to be loved, and to learn to love.
The text was speaking of the emptiness of seeking knowledge without love, to which I could clearly identify. I was arrogant and enjoyed humiliating others through jokes, in order to appear clever. The text was speaking of love as humble, I was very proud. It spoke of patience, I was demanding and impatient.

I wanted to know where this text came from. Since in the film it was shown as coming from an old book, I guessed it could be part of the Bible. I then went in Paris to a bookstore and, thanks to the index at the end of Bible, a ‘concordance’, I found out that it was the text of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 13. I then selected the Bible that had the text the closest to the one I memorized, which was a French TOB (ecumenical translation of the Bible). It was the first time in my whole life that I was having a Bible in my hands.

Please allow me to share with you this text that touched me so deeply:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 
So now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

This text was very appealing to me because it did not mention directly God, since I was an atheist.
After returning home, I tried to read other parts of the Bible, starting with Genesis. I enjoyed the stories of Genesis and Exodus, recognizing what I was then considering the founding myths of my Father’s origin, Judaism. Yet, when it came to the stories of Jesus in the gospels, I was pushed back by the frequent mention of miracles, since I did not believe that miracles were possible. I then left this Bible on a shelf in my bedroom for the next five years.

As I look back on my life, on my journey from atheism to the Christian faith, I realize how I then came very close to what would become the very foundation of my entire life: to learn to be loved and to love. To come to God’s school of love and learn from him and with him.
I was not looking for God, but I believe that God was looking for me.

In the next post, I will share about my discovery of key scientific results, leading to the crumbling of some of my scientific certainties, and how this opened me to a much wider world than before.

Since I will be traveling for most of the next 3 weeks in different parts of DRC, I will probably not be able to continue my testimony before beginning October. For those who would like, please pray for me, for my wife Sandra and for all our Nazarene brothers and sisters in Jesus from DRC, that we can together discern clearly God’s guidance and move forward together, in sometimes very challenging situations.

From Atheism to Faith in God: Part 5 - Learning the meaning of hard work - Preparatory classes

My testimony: From convinced Atheism to joyful fellowship with God

Part 5: Preparatory classes - Learning the meaning of hard work

As I finished high school, I desired to become a scientist. I wanted to work in the field of artificial intelligence, to build robots that would do a better job than humans. This seemed to me a good and logical direction, since I did not like people.
I was judging other humans in general, thinking that I could help build robots which would do better, forgetting that I myself was a human. The irony of this logical contradiction, with its inherent pride and foolishness, did not reach my mind for a long time. Pride can be so subtle, and hide under so many different mantles.

I was a good student and, in France, most good students don’t go to the University but rather to “classes préparatoires” (preparatory classes), to prepare for the very challenging national exams of the “Grandes Écoles.” You have such classes for science, business, or literature.
Preparatory classes are an old institution, dating back to the XVIIIth century. Their creation was justified by the apparition of national competitive exams (concours) for future army officers and civil engineers. With the French revolution and the creation of the Ecole Polytechnique, designed to prepare civil and military experts for the French state, the preparatory classes would flourish. The Grandes Écoles, with their preparatory class, would become a hallmark of the French meritocracy. Since the French revolution, personal merit would be a major indicator to how high you could raise in the republic, and no more the privileges of nobility or wealth. It implied that the Grandes Écoles were free of charge and that any French citizen could take the exams (I should precise: as far as you were a male. In this domain, the discrimination against women would not be dealt with for almost two more centuries).

It is noticeable that these Grandes Écoles were first for training military or civil servants, with a strong emphasis on science. They appeared in the XVIIIth century, the century of the Enlightenment, promoting this idea of equality in education. This emphasis on science is very noteworthy, specially in comparison with countries like the United States where the best students will often focus on Law or Business studies. In France, still today, the very best students will be encouraged to study science before anything else, to become what is called engineers. In France, the word ‘engineer’ mostly means a scientist with business and people skills, with sometimes not much practical knowledge on how to make an engine work or how to repair a specific mechanism. We even have, for the diplomas of the best Grandes Écoles, the term of ‘ingénieur généraliste’ (generalist engineer) which is a diploma for persons who can evolve in the leadership of large French companies.


My adoptive great-grandfather on my mother’s side, the ‘général Parvy’ (Maurice René Pierre Parvy), had gone to such a preparatory class, then entering the military Grand École  ‘Saint-Cyr,’ a school designed for training future military officers. He fought in the first world war, and at the start of the second world war, the general Parvy (63rd division d’infanterie), would be captured and stay in a German prison for the whole war, like more than a hundred other French generals. The famous general de Gaulle would avoid imprisonment and escape in Great-Britain, continuing the fight from abroad up to 1944, with the fundamental help of Great Britain and later the United States.

The general Parvy had an adoptive son, my maternal grand-father Roger Ascencio-Parvy. Roger’s natural father was Spanish (Ascencio), dying when his son was one year old. My grand-father Roger had gone to such ‘classe préparatoire’ and entered one of the ‘Grandes Écoles’ called ‘Sup-aéro’, the first and still today the most renowned French aeronautical school. My grand-father would then start a plane factory just before the Second World war, a factory that would be destroyed. He would then become a captain in the French ‘free’ army during the Second World War, fighting alongside American and British soldiers.

My mother also went to the ‘classes préparatoires,’ one of the first women in France to enter this old institution. She could not finish the exams and enter a Grande École, because she needed to take care of her destitute grand-mother. She rather entered a new school from the Bull computers company, that prepared the first French programmers in 1960, a school that paid its students - so that my mother could provide for her and her so dear grand-mother.


With such a family history, I also wanted to follow this direction and go to a ‘classe préparatoire’. When I was 12 years old, I already wanted to become an engineer from such a Grande École. I studied during all my high school years with the clear goal, one day to enter a Grande École.

About a year before finishing high school, with the help of my mother, I had already written to different possible preparatory class, with the details of my grades, to get what was called a ‘pre-inscription’ that would secure my place there. I was accepted to a good preparatory class in Lyon, in the Lycée La Martinière Montplaisir, section T’ for students of the E baccalaureate (science and technique).
I did not pursue the then more renowned baccalaureate C, because it allowed me to avoid the history subject, since I was only interested in science in these days. Many years later, when I became for five years a teaching assistant in Church history, this past choice would make me smile.
Since I already knew that I was accepted in a preparatory class, I did not need to perform well for the baccalaureate (the final exam at the end of the high school). I only needed a pass grade. For this exam, I did well in science (with a 19/20 in math), and struggled in philosophy (8/20) or in French (10/20). I also did well in English (16/20), thanks to the many weeks spend in the UK.


During my years in preparatory class in Lyon, I was to learn what intellectual hard work means.
We would study 40 hours a week in the classroom, and about 50 hours beyond the classroom in a normal week. We were more than thirty students in our class, with two girls.
We had many bursary students, coming from humble origin. In my case, my parents were not wealthy but still in the upper-middle class, so that I did not need financial help. Once, a bursary form was distributed for application in the classroom, and my neighbor was surprised that I did not take it and said to me: you should apply, we all got it! With a physician father and engineer mother, it was not necessary for me to even try. My parents provided for the expenses (for housing and food, the studies being free).

We were living in rooms of four, of a size of about 15 feet by 15 feet, each having a small closet for clothes, a table, a bed and a lamp. Some slept later than others, so most of us learned to sleep when there is still light or when others still speak near you. This means that, during these years, I learned to sleep or take small naps in many setting, for instance, sitting in a car or on a bench . This would prove handy to me, with the ability to take micro-sleeps even while standing in line.

Most of us had been either the first or the second student of our class in high school. It meant that some previously first students would end up last.
In the first year, nationally nicknamed “Math Sup,” Math was the most important subject in my class. Our math teacher, Genoud, was a dedicated man who poured his life in the students of this preparatory class for many years. We all respected him, for the quality of his teaching and his commitment to make us study well and prepare well. In the first months, I did not get very high grades in math, being in the average, and because of lack of a clean writing (striked words on the page, for some mistakes while writing), Genoud put me on his ‘black list’. This meant that in the next math tests, if there was even a single word striked on the many pages of one of our regular four hour exams, the teacher would stop reading and give me the 0/20 grade. As you can imagine, I instantly improved the cleanness of my exam pages, doing every calculation on a draft paper before copying it on my clean exam paper.

After a few months, I was frustrated of only getting average grades, so I decided to work even harder for the coming exam on ‘vectorial spaces’ that I knew would be difficult. For about a month, I slept only about four hours a day, thus working about 130 hours for four weeks. I took some vitamin tablets to sustain me,; yet I looked pitiful. When the exam came, I finished second of the class, with a grade of 11/20. The first, Romain, was by far the best student of the class and he got 16/20. All the other students had grades between 1/20 and 9/20.
In the following months, I would return to a more regular 6-8 hours of sleep, studying ‘only’ 100 hours a week, but remained the second in math. This gave me a new respect in the eyes of our esteemed math teacher Genoud, which was precious to me. I would then remain the second in math for the whole year.

As you perhaps remember, I was not very good at human relationships. When I entered the preparatory class, another student from my high school class, Vincent, had joined with me this same ‘prepa’ (a nickname for ‘preparatory class’). When I would pass in front of a group of students, I would tend to avoid eye contact and say nothing. One day, I was going up the stairs and Vincent was going down with a few of his friends, and he saw that - as usual - I would avoid eye contact. He said to me:  ‘mais qu’est-ce que tu es con!’ (what a fool you are!). This made me angry inside, although I did not show it. I had no idea of how rejecting my body language was. It is only years later, when I had learned to relate more healthily with people, that I became grateful for Vincent’s remark, realizing that he did not try to humiliate me, but to make me aware that I did not communicate well at all.
When I would simply see students playing with each other and pushing each other, it was like if inside of me anger would well up, in reaction to body contact. It would take me many years before reaching the aptitude to interact peacefully with others, and even hug people, not to speak of the aptitude to have a girlfriend.

As I became a better student, the best student of the class, Romain, befriended me. He was a good student in all the subjects and a good friend to most. I was a good student mostly in math, and had no real friend. He helped me to be integrated in the classroom and to have friends. Still today, I am grateful to Romain for the blessing it has been to be his friend during the prepa.

In the prepa, there was no alcohol and no smoking, and no girlfriend.
One student of our class was a the exception, nicknamed Chacha. He would drink, smoke and even sleep with a girl from another class in his bed. He was then fired from internship.

The week-ends were work as usual. We would sometimes have a break for going to swim or to watch a movie. On Sunday, in my prepa class, only one student went to Church, all the others studying diligently between breakfast and lunch.

The second year of prepa, named ‘Math spé’ (for: mathematics special), we had a significant improvement of our life condition: we would have a personal room, about 4 feet large by 10 feet long, with just enough space for a bed, a closet and a table.
At the end of the year, we had the national exam in Paris. I was accepted in a good school, the ENSIMAG (Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Ingénieurs en Mathématiques Appliquées de Grenoble). Yet, I chose to repeat the class, with the hope of entering one the even more renowned top Grandes Écoles.

During this third and last year of prepa, I had a good friend, Philippe, and since both of us were repeating we were a little less stressed than the others and could relax a bit.
At the end of this last year of prepa, after so many weeks of about 100 hours of intense studies, I was accepted at the École des Mines de Paris (now part of Paris Tech), one of the top Grandes Écoles preparing generalist engineers in France.


Before describing the years in my Grande École, I will describe in the next post a key event that happened to me during these three years of prepa. This event would have a deep impact on my life, preparing me to open the inner prison of my heart to the light of God's love, and leading me to my first direct contact with a Bible.

From Atheism to Faith in God: Part 4 - Atheism 101

My testimony: From convinced Atheism to joyful fellowship with God

Part 4: Atheism 101

I would like to share with you key elements that led me to build a strong atheist foundation during my high school years. Yet, this foundation of my life would later crumble, when I became a Christian.

In France, during my youth and in my personal cultural setting, religion or faith was mostly associated with the Catholic church. If today Islam is much more visible in France, it was not the case then. Christianity was in general identified with Catholicism. It is important to remember that the Protestant faith was forbidden in France for centuries, and still remains in France a small minority among those defining themselves as believers. When I was in primary school I would hear that most of the kids would go to ‘catéchisme’ (catechism, the teaching of the basics of the Catholic faith), not knowing what it was except that I was excluded from it.
At home, we did not have a Bible, and I would not even touch one before being 20 years old. In my teenager years, my parents bought me books on Greek mythology, as well as stories of the Old Testament and the New Testament. I loved Greek mythology. I enjoyed the stories of the Old Testament, probably because of my father’s Jewish origin. Yet, when it came to the New Testament, I found it boring, full of impossible stories of miracles.
The only family moments when faith would be mentioned was for jokes. One of my uncles delighted in the jokes about the priests, making puns with “père” (the title for priests) and other words. I knew that my grand-mother became a Catholic, but she did not speak much or mention it to us, and she was also struggling psychologically, so I naturally associated faith with psychological weakness or folly. My mother would tell me stories of the problems my father and her had with my grandmother, how they struggled, and that was for me a clear deterrent to any interest in faith.


Through my studies at school and through the influence of my family culture, I became, as many in France, a spiritual child of the Enlightenment. Please allow me to present to you what it meant for me, to fully receive the teachings of the Enlightenment, from its roots to its many implications for my worldview and beliefs.
First, it is important to learn about the relationship that existed between the king and the Catholic faith. Then, it is easier to understand the French revolution and its intellectual foundation, the Enlightenment.


In France, the Catholic religion has for centuries been strongly tied to political power, with many associated ambiguities and sad collusions. Starting around 500 AD with the baptism of Clovis, and going up to the French revolution in 1789 or even to Napoleon III, the French state and the Roman Catholic Church were intimately intertwined. In the XIXth century, it would be called ‘l’alliance du trône et de l’autel” (The covenant between the throne and the altar), a way to highlight the agreement between political rulers and catholic bishops or priests. Kings in France understood that to have a strong unity in the country, if they were seen as the spiritual rulers, it then implied that everyone needed to follow the same faith as the king. There was even a ceremony, just after the ‘sacre du roi’ (coronation of a king), to show clearly that the king was ‘roi de droit divine’ (king from divine right). All the persons with a specific disease named ‘écrouelles’ (scrofula) would be touched by the king and were supposed to be healed, highlighting his divine authority through his power to heal.

The Catholic religion was required of all the French subject, with very rare and fragile exceptions. For most of us today, it is hard to understand how important this was. To give you an example, in the Middle-Ages, if someone was excommunicated (rejected officially from the Roman Catholic communion of faith), this meant that the country’s laws did not apply anymore. This implied that anyone could rob them or kill them without the risk of being prosecuted. You can then imagine the fears that a threat of excommunication could trigger, it was in some ways a death sentence. For instance, Jews would need a specific protection from the king in order to avoid this danger, a protection that proved many times to be fickle.
When, in the 16th century, the first generations of protestants tried to convince the king Francis I to support the protestants, they failed (cf. the “Affair of the Placards” of 1534). In the following decades, after much hope of the protestants, the kings stuck to the Catholic faith and to the desire to have all their subjects following them in this religious matter. In 1598, the Edict of Nantes reinstated the civil rights of protestants, but denied them the right to build new temples or to convert anyone from Catholicism to Protestantism. In 1685 came the Revocation of this Edict of Nantes, cancelling the rights of protestants and making their faith illegal in France. Many Protestants from France fled, because of their faith, during this historic period. They were sometimes called the Huguenots.


In 1789, the French revolution changed many things in the domains of state and religion. Because of its so strong ties with the royal power, the Roman Catholic Church became a key target. At one point, the new republic tried to put statues of the goddess reason in the Catholic churches. The motive was to promote the principles of Enlightenment and anticlericalism. They even tried to remove any cultural sign of Christianity by even turning the weeks of seven days (a reminder of the seven days of creation) into periods of ten days, renaming all the months in the process. This did not last for long, and the darling of the French revolution, Napoleon, saw the value of uniting the people behind a single faith. He did not care much for the Catholic Church, but recognized the benefit he could reap, so he made an agreement with the pope - the concordat in 1801, and was later crowned as emperor.
One of the fruits of the French revolution was that Protestants and Jews received a legal status, thus benefitting for the first time of the official protection of French laws.
Some of the most formidable opponents to the king and the Catholics, during the 18th and 19th century, were the persons that came to define themselves as ‘Les lumières’. It was first people like Voltaire or Diderot who, through the propagation of the ideas of the Enlightenment, gave the intellectual foundation that the French revolution would claim.


The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. It stressed that reason was the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and promoted ideals such as liberty, tolerance, progress, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state. In France, the key doctrines of ‘Les lumières’ were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to the absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church.
In my opinion, the Enlightenment was a mix of very important scientific discoveries and shrewd methods of self-advertisement.
For their self-promotion, they called themselves ’Les lumières’ (the lights), implicitly stressing that those they were opposing were on the side of darkness or obscurantism. This promotional technique, that has nothing to do with objective or scientific thinking, has all to do with marketing methods. The period before them was then named ‘the dark ages’ in the English-speaking world, highlighting again the opposition light-darkness.
To be able to succeed with such marketing, the ‘Lumières’ were surfing on the wave of scientific discoveries that preceded them.
How did these discoveries develop? We can highlight the importance of the Renaissance and the modern scientific revolution, the foundation on which the Enlightenment would thrive.


The fall of Constantinople in 1453 is often considered as the end of the Middle-Ages and the beginning of Renaissance . You probably notice that I choose to avoid to use the term ‘dark-ages,’ for the sake of scientific objectivity :-). After the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, many Greek scholars fled to Italy and Western Europe, bringing with them Greek manuscripts, both Christian and pagan.
The Christian manuscripts (Greek New Testament, Greek texts of the Church Fathers) triggered a renewed knowledge for Christianity. This led, thanks to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, to the wide publication of the Bible in Latin, of the Greek New Testament by Erasmus, and the protestant reformation with Luther and others. The pagan manuscripts (Greek mythology, Greek philosophy) helped to awake a sense of perspective and to remember a respected and developed culture that was not Christian.
The Renaissance led, in painting, to the technique of three-dimensional perspective. It was also the time of a new awareness about historical perspective: for instance, scenes of the life of Jesus would no more be painted with the clothes of the the time of the painting, instead the painter would try to figure out what were the clothes worn at the time of Jesus.


The scientific revolution can be directly connected to the Renaissance. Thanks to the Greek manuscripts, and a renewed awareness of the science developed in Greece, many in Europe were encouraged to further develop scientific knowledge. This scientific revolution can be described briefly through the ideas of key proponents: Copernicus, Brahe, Galilei, Kepler and Newton.

Nicholaus Copernicus was a renaissance mathematician and astronomer. He wrote the book “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” in 1543, which presented the heliocentric theory, placing the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe. This theory and its implications would lead to a change of perspective, impacting many domains.

Decades later, Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), a Danish nobleman and astronomist, developed very accurate measures of the position of the different planets, thus exemplifying very well what would become the modern experimental method: precise observations that could lead to scientific discoveries. This inductive method, collecting precise data before developing a theory, was of key importance. If the Greeks did seek natural explanations to physical phenomenons, they did not make precise measurements. They mostly held the view that higher knowledge is passively received rather than actively acquired, something that can be related to Plato and his philosophy.

Following Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) would continue to develop precise measurements, in the process using the newly invented telescope (1608) and improving it. He would be remembered for advocating the copernican theory of heliocentrism, and for his struggle against the Catholic authorities that were still championing Aristotle’s view that the earth was at the center of the universe. In some ways, he would become a perfect example to justify the later enterprise of the Enlightenment: the rejection of the Catholic authority, and the advocacy of a science freed from religious dogmas.

Thanks to Tycho Brahe’s precise measurements, the one who had been his assistant, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), would be able to define and prove the laws on planetary motion (around 1620). With Kepler’s laws, we see a combination of different elements that are key to the modern scientific revolution: precise observation, then the elaboration of a mathematical model to match the collected data, then confirmation through prediction of what the future measurements should be. If Kepler’s laws were impressive, beyond the widespread belief in astrology (Kepler earned a living by reading horoscopes for the rich and powerful), they did not have much impact on the practical life of people.

Isaac Newton, with the publications of Philosopiae Naturals Principia Mathematica (or the shortened title “Principia”) in 1687, presented his hypothesis of what would be called the law of gravitation, with the amazing implications that it would have. He showed that Kepler’s laws could be deduced from his law of gravity. This theory did not relate only to planets but also to all the daily experiences that everyone could make. Scientific discoveries were no more limited to distant planets, it was impacting all the practical life.


I cannot highlight enough the deep implications of this scientific approach. By finding that mathematics described accurately the world around us, it seemed as if mathematics were at the foundation of reality. In turn, this meant that no supernatural explanation was anymore needed for anything happening. What was needed was to know the initial position of all the objects, and then you could conclude how things would evolve in the future.

Newton strongly argued for the existence of God as the masterful creator, and upheld that God still intervened in the world.
Leibniz would push Newton’s ideas one step further, stating that if God made a perfect world, it did not require anymore the intervention of God.
This position would give birth to what would be called deism. Deism is a theological/philosophical position that combines the rejection of revelation and authority as a source of religious knowledge with the conclusion that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to determine the existence of a single creator of the universe.
Deism implied that there was no more space for the supernatural in daily life. Therefore, prayer could no more expect an intervention of God, people who thought they could hear God were deluded, and the Bible could no more be a source of authority or revelation.

Toward the end of the 19th century, through the influence of rationalistic philosophers like Schopenhauer, Marx or Nietzsche, the remaining postulate of the existence of God as creator would be discarded, so that for many people deism logically morphed into atheism.
Atheism in its most radical form, is the position or belief that there are no God or gods at all in this world.
It is useful to remember that during the 19th century, and up until the 1930s, most astronomers believed that the universe had no beginning, therefore removing the need to study the origin and the influence of a creator. What was needed was to study the present world, God being clearly out of the picture in this endeavor.


This view of the Enlightenment, that God was not influencing the present world, would become a strong foundation of my worldview. I would also reject any belief in a creator, thus taking strongly the position of radical atheism.
It meant that I would find ridiculous to speak of miracles, and the authority of any Christian belief or of Scriptures was for me at best an illusion, at worst a deception. I would despise the Catholic Church as a structure of the past, doomed to disappear like the French monarchy had vanished away.
If a Christian would try to convince me, and would speak to me of the danger of hell, I would laugh at this preposterous notion. I was ready to die - this was the reality I accepted, despising those who tried to elude death with theories of afterlife. When I would come to speak to a Christian, I would do my best to convince him or her that faith in God was only a crutch for weak people, that science was all they needed in life. Happily, in these days, I was not very skilled at convincing people.


When I was 18 years old, at the end of my high school years, I learned that my sister, who then studied in Versailles in a ‘classe préparatoire’ was preparing to be baptized Catholic. I found it profoundly stupid, so I did my best to deter her from going further, to no avail. The Sunday when she left home to be baptized, all my family accompanied her, although they did not believe in God. All except me, and one of my uncles who stayed with me. We sat on a bench at home, mocking her and letting her go without us.
Years later, when I prepared for baptism, I asked my sister Cécile to become my “marraine” (godmother). She smiled and accepted. Then, she shared with me how hard it had been for her to face my fierce opposition and challenging arguments. Sometimes, she had needed to get away from me,  crying in the secret of her room, because of the pain I was inflicting her.

As you can imagine, it would be quite a journey for me to move from this militant and harsh atheism to faith in the living God of Jesus Christ.

From Atheism to Faith in God: Part 3 - High School Years

My testimony: From convinced Atheism to joyful fellowship with God

Part 3: My High School years

In France, primary and secondary education are a little different from the US. 

From 3 to 6 years old (3 years) we have the école maternelle (before primary school) where most children go. From 6 to 12 years old, we have the primary school. 

What corresponds to a US High School has often two parts in France: collège (12-16, 4 years) and lycée (16-18, 3 years), although in some cases collège and lycée are fused together in a same physical building. The name of each year are like a countdown up to the baccalauréat or ‘bac’ - an academic qualification when you finish high school. When you are about 12 years old, you enter the collège, first in the class called ‘sixième’ (sixth), the next year is the ‘cinquième’ (fifth), then the ‘quatrième’ (fourth) and ‘troisième’ (third). Then you enter a lycée for the last three classes: ‘seconde’ (second), ‘première’ (first) and finally the ‘terminale’ (terminal).

In my case, I went to a collège in Crosne and to a Lycée in Montgeron, both in the South-East of Paris. The trip between my house and the school would take about one hour each morning and one hour each evening, because we were located at the most distant stop on the path of the school bus. This meant that each day I spent about two hours sitting or standing in a bus, bored to death, since I did not have friends with whom to discuss. I just hoped that nobody would bother me. Most of the time, I would be day-dreaming all the way long. I would dream that I was a kind of super-hero, able to fight back if someone attacked me. I would dream that a pretty girl would become my girlfriend, something impossible in the real life because of my paralyzing fears and debilitating timidity.

As I was beginning collège (12-16 years old, not to be confused with a US college), I was welcomed in a group of 5-6 teenagers, which gave me a sense of protection and belonging. The key person of this group, as I perceive it, was Patrick. He was kind and friendly, with a joyful personality. I was not joyful and not friendly, but they welcomed me. I did not know much how to interact and did not have many subjects of interest in common with them. For instance, like most groups of kids, they would be interested in music, while I had no idea and was not very interested in listening to music. Just to pretend that I was like them, in the beginning of college, one time I wrote on my little green US army bag (which was then a trendy school bag at school) all the names of the music groups that others would write on their bags, although I did not listen to a single song of these groups. I rapidly felt how foolish it was, and rapidly replaced this school bag. 

At one point, Patrick read the book “The Lord of the Rings” of Tolkien and became passionate about it. I did not like to read, so I would read this book perhaps only 20 years later. Yet, out of this passion he proposed to the group to start playing the role-playing game (RPG) ’Dungeons and dragons’. I was happy to be part of this group, so I proposed them to come for these games in the basement of my house. 

I guess that it was a wise move of my mother, to be sure things were OK and that nothing wrong happened, to offer that we play during the night in the basement of our home. 

Most of the time, Patrick would be the ‘dungeon master’. During my collège years, we would then come a few times a year to spend part of the night playing as if we were heroes with magic powers, fighting monsters and delivering prisoners from wicked masters. Patrick and his friend Yann were giving a good direction to the group. None of us smoke or drank alcohol. (I believe that my parents would not have allowed that). There was no insult between us, and no aggressivity or fighting, as far as I remember. It was friendly times together. There were only boys, no girls in this group, so no seduction or love stories to complicate the relationships. I came to enjoy playing with others, and to have a certain level of friendship was a relief to me.

Yet, it would take me a long time before having friends with whom I could share what really mattered to me. For instance, personal computing was in its infancy during my collège years (1981-1985) and none of this group was interested in programming because they did not have computers at home. It took years before this became widespread. Because of the good pays of both of my parents, I was introduced in the world of computers years before most other teenagers around me. When I learned to solve the Rubik’s cube, my relational skills were pretty low so that I did not know how to explain to someone else how to do it. This meant that it remained only a personal interest, allowing me to perform but not to communicate in a friendly way.

One day in 1983, my mother invited my math teacher, Mr Marsac, to our house to show him a computer, something that he did not see before. I was supposed to show how to write a program for finding the prime numbers, which I had done a few times before. Under the pressure of performing for my respected teacher, I was fumbling but I believe that he could still get an idea of why computers would matter for education in the future, in particular when associated with mathematics.

As I studied in the Lycée (16-18 years old), I focused most of my energy on studies. I was a very good student in Mathematics and science, but not as good in other subjects. As I look back on this, I believe that one of the challenges was my difficulties to concentrate and not start to day-dream in class. In math, with a few elements I was able to catch up, but not in subjects like French, English or History.

Already around 13 years old, my mother could see that I was not very good in English. Since she rightly believed that it would be important for me to learn well, she decided to send me and my sister (later followed by our younger brother) about every year for a few weeks in England. We would travel by train and by boat. There was not yet a tunnel for trains between France and England, the future chunnel (channel tunnel). We were then hosted by a family near London and studied English each morning. If I wanted to eat or communicate basic needs, I had to be able to communicate with the members of the family in English. Therefore, I learned to speak English. 

In these days, there were groups called Punks (rather lower class, with torn clothes and crazy hair) and of Mods (rather lower-middle class, with jackets). As French people, we were sometimes called ‘Froggies’ (the little frogs), because in France one of the meal dishes is cooked frog legs. In the late evening we could be chased by these groups of young people, so I learned to speak - when needed - without my strong French accent. One time, a large group of punks was at a bus stop and asked us: ‘froggies’? And I responded in a perfect londonian accent: No. On our side we could call the English ‘bifteck’ (an abbreviation of ‘beef-steak’, widespread in England since 1711, used as a derogatory term in France already around 1836) or ’rosbif’ (roast beef, grilled meat cooked in England already in 1774). If our countries have been allied in the two world wars, before that we had been enemies making war for centuries, from around 1100 to 1900, and it left marks even in our respective vocabularies.

In France, we tend to be a revolutionary people, so once in a while there would be a strike related to school and we could participate. I did not care about any of the debates, but just enjoyed a day away from school, sometimes with a free ride to go to Paris and demonstrate. 

One demonstration I remember of, while I was in Lycée in 1986, was against the law of a minister, Devaquet. This law was supposed to allow the French universities to select their students. At the time and still today, any student applying has to be accepted by the university, with almost no fees to pay during these studies, something very different from universities in most other countries. The syndicates made sure that the trains were free, and by the hundreds and thousands we went to Paris and demonstrated in the streets shouting ‘Devaquet au piquet’ (Devaquet, to the picket = be punished as a bad student, put him in the corner). When I look back, I am very sorry of having been, like so many, sheep that the syndicates manipulated with ease and efficiency, crushing a law that could have been good. The law was rejected shortly after, and still today selection is not an option in French universities. Yet, it is useful to know that the best students in France don’t go to universities but rather to ‘Grandes Écoles’ (to not confuse with High school), high quality and selective schools for students after the baccalaureate (18 years old), with difficult exams that take years to prepare in ‘classes préparatoires’ (preparatory classes). This mix of absent selection and very selective exams for higher education is one of the hallmarks of the French paradoxes. 

In the next post, I will share about how I became solidly grounded in Atheism:
Atheism 101.

From Atheism to Faith in God. Part 2: Childhood

My testimony: From convinced Atheism to joyful fellowship with God
Part 2: My Childhood.

I was born in the early morning of Wednesday, February 19, 1969.

February 1969 was nine months after May 1968, which was a cultural revolution in France. In some ways, I could therefore be called a baby of May 1968. This month of May in France was a month of massive general strikes, with the occupation of universities and factories across France. It brought the entire economy of France to a standstill. Political leaders feared civil war and the national government momentarily ceased to function after President Charles de Gaulle left France for a few hours. The unrest was triggered by a series of student occupation protests against capitalism, consumerism and traditional institutions, values and order. It then spread to factories with the strike of 11 million workers, about 20% of the French population, for two weeks.
It was the largest general strike France ever saw, and the first nationwide wildcat general strike. It was confronted with strength and resolution by university administrators and police. Yet, the strong attempts to quench this national fire failed. The president, general De Gaulle, dissolved in June the National Assembly and called for a new parliamentary elections in June. This crisis manifested the fact that a majority of France perceived De Gaulle as too old, too conservative and too anti-American. A year later, the referendum of April 1969 would be the end of De Gaulle’s presidency and a turning tide in French culture. May 1968 could be pin-pointed as the rejection of firm authority and of decreasing moral landmarks. Two key slogans of this month were: “il est interdit d’interdire” (it is forbidden to forbid), and “jouissez sans entraves” (enjoy without hindrance).
For my parents, this month of strikes and unrest was not on their agenda, and they continued to work hard in order to provide for my father’s two parents, my sister and the new baby I was. I would grow up in a French culture where the consequences of this cultural revolution would spread broadly and deeply, changing morals and society in major ways.

February 19, 1969, was ten months after the birth of my sister, Cécile. (Cécile is a feminine name in France, not like in the English-speaking world). We were very close, and our relationship was similar to the relationship that can exist between twins. We developed in our first 15-20 years in opposite directions. She was very extrovert, I was very introvert. She was very good at learning languages and all things related to expression and communication. I was very inner-focused, becoming very good at mathematics, computing and science in general. It would only be after our 20s that we would each develop more balanced personalities. In the case of my sister, after studies in business she also did a degree in science. On my side, after a degree in science, I would pursue degrees in theology, learning languages and improving significantly my limited skills in communication.

February 19, 1969 was also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, forty days before Easter. In some ways, my life started a like the period of Lent, in a somber meditativeness, and it took me more than twenty years before experiencing the exhilarating resurrection of Easter and the joy to be alive.


When I was four years old, my parents moved in what became for thirty years our family house, in the town of Yerres, twenty kilometers South-East from Paris. It was a little after the birth of my younger brother, François. In France, most children go to school already at the age of 3. This meant for me that I changed school after the first year. In this new school, there were some kids coming from a rather tough neighborhood, who sadly experienced violence at home and would replicate it at school. The first day at this new school, one tough kid came hard on me, and I discovered the emotions of fear and panic. He would jump on me and call me by names, followed by others. This rough start triggered in me deep fears and paralysis in front of violence. I did not know how to react, how to fight back, and became the target of many humiliations in the coming years. As so many kids in the world, I learned the painful experience of being bullied.

My schoolteacher tried to keep me in the classroom at the breaks, but it would just make things worse after. I shared with my mother, with the limited communication skills I had, but she honestly did not know what to do, since she was working hard as an engineer in computing. My father, a general practitioner, was also working hard. He would leave home before we woke up, return home when we were in bed, and handle paperwork on the week-ends. This means that I did not see much my father for my first nine years, until the time when he chose to end his job as general practitioner that he loved. He then became a doctor for the social security, this job allowing him to spend more time with his family that he loved dearly.

Since neither my schoolteacher, nor my parents knew what to do, I stopped mentioning it. I continued to face this unpleasant situation at school for years, which provoked key changes in my behavior. I became extremely introvert, full of fears when meeting people. Fear would rule in me for years, leading me to be scared in many settings, with the accompanying strong stomach pains and inability to think straight under stress. One of the ripple effects of being bullied was that I hated school, not wanting to do homework in the evenings or week-ends. Decades later, I find this element pretty amazing, having spent more than thirty years of my life in school and having developed a thorough love for studying and teaching others. Another consequence was that I spent most of my time at school day-dreaming, struggling to concentrate. My body was at school but my heart was like a bird trying to fly away. I did not like my life, I did not enjoy life.

At school I wanted to be at home, and at home I wanted to have my extrovert sister leave me alone. This meant that sometimes, after my sister had insisted for a while to play with me, I would burst in an explosion of anger. Many years later, she shared with me that when she would see this kind of anger in my eyes, she would flee and lock herself in her room for protection, she knew I could be dangerous.
In my family, I was seen as a dreamer. This implied faith in things not seen, and that was not part of the family culture. For instance, at about 6 years old I was believing in the father Christmas. When someone in my family would say to me that father Christmas did not exist, I would answer confidently that I saw him on a cloud. One of my uncles, around the time of Christmas, trapped me by surprise in a large bag and pretended to be the ‘père fouettard’ (the whipping father - a kind of opposite of father Christmas), bringing me to the cellar to whip me. This provoked in me such terror and crying that my mother demanded for my uncle to stop this. Yet, I learned my lesson well: faith is dangerous and should be avoided. In these years, my life was not much fun, with not much peace.


Around my twelfth year, two events crystallized my approach to life.
It seemed that my attachment to life was fragile, and this manifested in different ways. I had quite a few bones broken, two times a leg broken when skying in the winter, later an arm broken and a wrist broken. Once, I was riding a bike with my younger brother and a cousin, and as I was trying to check if they were OK, I made a U-turn on the road and was hit by a car. I was told that I flew in the air, and fell on the ground, unconscious. The police came and drew my body on the floor with a white chalk. When my mother arrived, not far from my home, she thought that I was dead. Yet, after a moment I woke up with no brain damage or injuries. I spent the next two days in hospital, to check there was no problem, and did not have a single sequel after this accident. In the following days, I would see from the school bus the chalk drawing on the pavement, like what we can see in crime scenes on TV, realizing I could or should have died then, until the rain washed away the image of what could have happened.

In my twelfth year, the first crystallizing event was related to a stray cat who would come to our house sometimes, and we would give her some milk or food. When she came I would pet her, and share some of my inner world with her. In some ways, this pet was the only living link to the emotions swirling inside of me. Sometimes, I would sing in tears what I felt inside, sometimes I would talk. I did not like people, and wanted to be alone as often as possible. I did not enjoy life. Yet, with this little cat I could let the pains trapped inside of me come out, which would bring me some sense of peace.
One day, I found the cat dead in our front yard, perhaps poisoned by a neighbor who did not want stray cats to roam around. I then cried uncontrollably for two days, I did not know why. My parents did not understand neither. At school, even the principal got concerned by this kid crying the whole day long, and came to try to be kind. Inside of me, it was as if something snapped, as if a tenuous thread that connected me to life was cut. It is like if the song of life was trapped in me as in a prison, and that I had lost the key to open it. For the next twelve years, I would not shed a single tear and did my best to forget about the memories of humiliations.


The second event or set of events of my twelfth year happened in relationship with school and learning. When I entered high school, I still did not want to bring anything from school at home, which means that I did not do my homework. After the first months, the key teacher of my class decided, following the day when I received three fail marks (0 out of 20) for homework not done in her subject, to speak to my parents about having me stop high school and start instead an apprenticeship. My father brought me to an electrician repairing TVs in a small room of his small apartment, probing if I would like to be his apprentice, something that did not appeal to me at all!

I had a very good math teacher, Marsac, who encouraged me and I became the best student of the class. He was a very wise teacher, who would say that when a student did not get it, it was the teacher who should find another way of explaining the concept, instead of repeating in the same way a difficult concept. A very simple yet powerful notion. We had very tough teenagers in our high school, dealing with drugs and once attacking a teacher and wounding him severely with a bike chain just outside the school. Marsac, also a rugby player, was famous in our school for being respected even by the two toughest kids, playing chess with them during exams since they did not want to study. I believe that his example, his encouragements and validation played a key part in my life. It is perhaps why I still love today to encourage kids who struggle with math.

At home, my mother began to check almost every day if I had done my homework or not, sometimes spending hours to help me do it. This proved a tough battle that lasted for years. Yet, since she was very persistent, I began to do my homework. The hardest was when I needed to write something for the subject of French. She felt like she had to painfully pull every single word out of me. Today, I am so grateful for her love and persistence, which were key in allowing me to remain in school and succeed in this challenging environment, opening doors to many blessings in my life.

This year 1981 was the year when a new game, the Rubik’s cube, became widespread in France. Nobody knew how to solve this puzzle and many kids would bring it to school. I decided that I would find a solution, and spend many hours and days working on it. During the vacations of Easter 1981, I finally found a solution on my own. When I returned to school I proudly challenged one of the kids that was popular, telling him that I could solve the cube. He did not believe me and we agreed that if I could do it I could slap him in the face, if I failed he would slap me. Many kids surrounded us with disbelief. I did solve the puzzle, but the slapping did not give me much joy; I felt rather stupid for accepting such a deal. Rapidly, things changed at school. I was still sometimes joked at and very awkward in relationships, but through my budding intellectual capacities I felt a new sense of value and dignity in front of the other children. Even at home, specially when I showed that I could do the last sets of moves to solve the cube behind my back, I felt many in my family were impressed, and this gave me a new sense of worth and esteem.

At that point, my father had changed his job from general practitioner to social security doctor, and had some time to spend with me. It was the beginning of personal computing in France. My father purchased what was then called a pocket computer, a Sharp PC-1500, with basic programming capabilities, and allowed me to use it. I quickly learned, with binary calculations and the basic language, how to make a little train cross the tiny display line. In 1983, I asked him if we could get one of these new personal computers, which he agreed. He purchased a small computer, the Oric 1 from UK, which had the then impressive Random Access Memory of 16 kilobytes (about a million times less than most smartphones in 2016). I became more aware of my capacity to learn on my own, and the impact this could have on the outside world. I learned on my own programming, with a very rudimentary manual. My father learned in parallel to me. I believe that he also had developed from his childhood years the capacity to learn alone. After a few months, I had developed a little game, similar to Pac-Man (a famous game of the period), and my father brought me to the computer shop, where we proposed to sell it. Personal computing was in its infancy, and things were pretty informal, like developing or selling software. My game was too simple, and was not retained to be sold, but I was very proud of my accomplishment. In all this, the support of my father was very important to me, although it took me years to recognize it.

I found out that in the domain of analytical thinking and mathematics I could be a good student, and this encouraged me not to abandon school but to rather fight my way through. Instead of being humiliated, I would impress or even humiliate others through my intellectual capacities. For instance, I would come to my one year older sister and show her how to solve her math problem, letting her feel inadequate and clearly inferior to me in this domain. Today, I am very sorry about these kind of attitudes I had toward some people, doing my best to encourage children who struggle with things like maths.
In some ways, it was like if I was exalting in me the capacities of analysis and despising the inner turmoil of emotions. I would do my best to forget all about the years of humiliations and focus on proving to the outside world that I could succeed. With all this came a growing pride and disrespect for others. I was not a nice guy, I was rather what some would call pejoratively a “nerd,” pushing others down when I could in order to elevate myself.

This period of my life would last about twelve years, before the season that would bring healing and profound joy.

From Atheism to Faith in God. Part 1: Family Background

My testimony: From convinced Atheism to joyful fellowship with God
Part 1: my family background

As I look back at my life, how I became a Christian and where I am now, I see very clearly that I did not seek God but that God did seek me.
Please allow me to share with you, in the next days and weeks, how I perceive that God led me to this wonderful journey.

I would like to begin with my family background.

I did not grow up in a Christian family.
My father, Georges, was a Jew from Tunisia, born in 1932. He grew up in Tunis, the capital, speaking mostly French and Arabic. During the second World War, in November 1942 the Nazis occupied Tunisia. They began to implement their repressive laws against the Jews. For instance, in each class only one Jew could go to the next level. The others had to repeat the class. Since my father was the second in his class, he had to repeat the class. That was a ‘minor hindrance’. The Nazis began quickly to prepare for what they were calling the ‘final solution’, the extermination of the Jews. They began to make lists of the Jews in Tunisia and started sending them by boat to one of their concentration camps in Europe. Yet, they did not have enough time to implement all of this wickedness, thanks to the precious help of the Allied forces who defeated them in the Tunisia campaign in May 1943.
His mother, my paternal grandmother, came from a wealthy family. She was sent to a school that was then considered the best for girls in Tunis. In this school, which was Catholic, she secretly converted to Christianity. When this became public, this conversion created many tensions with her family. At one point, she was married by force to my grand-father, whom she never much loved. My grandfather was a simple man, a member of the Jewish community, with not much schooling. He dearly loved her, although she did not reciprocate this love. My grandmother struggled psychologically most of her life. Was it because of the negative attitude of the Jewish community? Was it because of the forced marriage? Was it because of the lack of wisdom or counseling on the Catholic side? Was it because she moved from being the darling of her father to the black sheep of the Jewish community? I will probably never know clearly. What I do know is that for my father and his brother, faith in God did not seem balanced or appealing at all. Through his life, my father would often have to care for his mother, with the challenges of psychiatric hospitals and the use of medications.
Being a good student, my father came to France to study Medicine in Paris. After his studies, Tunisia became independent from France in 1956. The Jewish community then had the choice to either forfeit the French nationality and stay in Tunisia, or to leave Tunisia for France and forfeit all their properties in the country. They chose in almost unanimity to leave for France, accepting the challenge to start again with almost nothing. They probably felt more safe in secular France than in the predominantly Muslim Tunisia.

My mother, Annette, was born in Paris in May 1940. A few months after her birth, her family fled on the roads as the Nazis seized Paris. Her father fled and at one point fought with the allied forces. In the process, he abandoned his wife for another woman. My grandmother died in poverty and despair after the war in 1946. My mother and her two brothers were then taken with the new couple of her father and step-mother. This woman never had much love for these added children, perceived as demanding and lacking gratitude. On their side, my mother and her brothers learned to face together a world they clearly perceived as aggressive, with the fundamental help of their loving maternal grandmother.
As my mother grew up, she had a very negative view and experience of the Catholic faith, seen as oppressive and full of incomprehensible rules. In these days, mass was in latin, and frequent confession was a requirement. If her confessed sins were considered important, the priest would repeat to the father and she would get a beating; and if it was considered too small she was further interrogated. Like many kids in these days, my mother learned hypocrisy and how to lie in confession, sharing sins neither too big nor too small, so that the priest would let her alone.
In her family, as in many French families in these days, antisemitism was widespread. In these days, antisemitism was ripe in most of Europe, not only in Germany. As a teenager, one time at school my mother repeated to a friend something she had heard many times at home: “I hate the Jews, I cannot smell them.” To her surprise, her friend responded: “Annette, I am a Jew”. Then, my mother was shocked by the stupidity of what she had just shared and apologized. She told me: “I never felt more foolish than at this moment, in my whole life.” In the next years, she did her best to get rid of this stupid antisemitism. A good student, she entered in 1960 the paid training of Bull, the first computing company in France. She then became an engineer in computing, starting with punched cards and machine language, and accompanying the evolution of programming and computers through her professional career. For her first paid vacations, to show to a Jewish friend at work that she was no more antisemitic, she went to Israel. During this trip, she met another participant of this tour, a young Jewish man, my father. On the borders of the Dead Sea he protected her from a pushy Israeli soldier, and a few months later they married and started their life together in a suburb of Paris.
They both had challenging family background, my father caring for his parents and my mother caring for her grandmother, so that when they married they were practically already a family of 5.
They both had in common negative experiences of the faith in God, or what they perceived as faith in God, and were convinced atheists.

My parents, Georges and Annette, had three children: my sister Cécile, me and my brother François. As our parents, we started as clearly atheists. Growing up, I was certainly the most convinced atheist of my siblings.
How would I move from being a convinced atheists to now a Christian missionary? It is something I can today laugh about with my mother, although it is still mysterious and surprising to her.
For this transformation to happen, God had to bring me closer to him one step at a time, as I will share in the coming posts.

Resurrection, Judgment and Final Destiny

Resurrection, Judgment, and Final Destiny

Jesus said in John 5:25-29:
Truly, truly I say to you, an hour is coming - and is now here - when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and the ones who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, thus also he has granted to the Son to have life in himself. And he has granted him authority to carry out judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be astonished at this, because an hour is coming in which all those in the tombs will hear his voice and they will come out - those who have done good things to a resurrection of life, but those who have practiced evil things to a resurrection of judgment. I am able to do nothing from myself. Just as I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the one who sent me. (LEB)

This text is a good summary of Jesus’ teaching on the resurrection, judgment and final destiny. What is striking is that Jesus’ judgment is an expression of his obedience to the Father, his choice to first seek first the Father’s will. It is out of love and obedience to the Father that Jesus judges.

The judgment of the Father and Jesus is an expression of their love. Yet, we have a hard time understanding this key point because we are so used to judge out of our limited understandings, out of rules and not out of love. This is shockingly manifest in sentences like this: how can a righteous God slaughter innocent people? In such a sentence, which is common in our modern culture, we learn more about our pride and judgmental attitude than about God. Such a sentence just highlight how we judge without even being aware of it: how do we know is someone is innocent, how can judge that something is a ‘slaughter’ without knowing more details? Fundamentally, our problem is that we are used to think we are right, and humility is mostly an abstract notion.

We are in a culture were we confuse God and us, where we expect God to be simply ‘tolerant’, and where we therefore judge whoever dares to judge a situation and give a punishment. This is expressed in our law courts as much as in our schools, where some people don’t even want to give grades to children for their work.

At its simplest level, any teaching needs two elements: encouragement for what is right and correction for what is wrong. In any society, if one of these two is lacking the persons will not learn well. The Western culture, in the recent past (around 1900), tended to emphasize correction without encouragement, yet in this 21st century the pendulum has much shifted toward encouragement without correction. This is clearly reflected in theology: in the past we had many theologians emphasizing strongly election, judgment and an all-knowing God. Today we have most theologians emphasizing unconditional love and a limited-knowing God.

To cut short and get out of this apparent dilemma, this mutual exclusion between love and judgment, we can mention a biblical word and its implications. In Hebrew, the word ‘paqad’ (פקד) can be translated: to visit, observe, number, be gracious (Jer 15:15), punish (Jer 49:8). These translations are so different that at first they seem not to fit together. Yet, we have to understand that in the Bible, when God visits a situation he delivers the one oppressed and punishes the oppressor. What one will describe as love or deliverance or salvation, another one will describe as destruction and condemnation, it is simply a matter of different viewpoints.

Jesus will not judge because he wants to. He came not to judge but to save. As the beloved biblical verses John 3:16-21 say: For God so love the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (ESV)

Judgment is a logical consequence of real love. When you love you also want to protect. To avoid God’s judgment is shockingly simple: we have to trust Jesus and his message of love for God and for our neighbor. We are invited to listen to his love, to welcome the Holy Spirit of love in our lives, and to let this love guide us. Not a selfish and blind love, but a love guided by our heavenly Father. God wants to expand our hearts, to guide us into all truth and love.
If we reject Jesus, we reject the light of the world and are walking in darkness, thus risking to be condemned. Some of us would like to say: I don’t need Jesus, I know how to love already. Really? How can we really love without having a clear vision of what love really is? For instance, if we sow encouragements without corrections, then we will reap young monsters. This is already happening, very sadly, in many homes and in many schools even as I am writing.

With much humility, Jesus came into our world to remind us of the Father’s love. His real love has two facets: his desire to save each of us, and the correction that comes from rejecting his love and teaching. There will be a time when Jesus returns, when he will be accompanied by angels to carry out the final judgment.

If we are doing things that don’t come out of a loving relationship with God, we are invited to repent. If we are lacking love for our neighbor, there is still time today to repent and to ask for help.
To repent means to turn away from the things that displease God, that are not expressions of his pure and holy love, and to learn from Him how to love him and our neighbor.
We have to learn to listen to Him, and to do what he tells us. It is not the one who says ‘Lord, Lord’ who will be saved, but the one who does the will of God.
How can we listen to God in order to do His will? Through Scriptures, through His Holy Spirit, through faithful communities of believers in Jesus, and ultimately through all His creation.
How can we learn? In general, it is a good path to find a trusted person who is a disciple of Jesus, and to ask for their help. It can be a precious help, to learn key lessons from Scriptures and to invite the Holy Spirit to purify us and to guide us.

Resurrection

Judgment

Final Destiny

The picture shows the image of a person resurrected,

The gavel represents the judgment
In the picture of final destiny, the fire represents hell and condemnation, while the angel and the gates represent the entry into heaven. 

Jesus will come back, there will be a resurrection and judgment. For some it will lead to eternal life, for others it will be judgment. The defining element will be whether we have learned to believe and know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, whether we have learned to listen to him and follow him as our loving shepherd.
Do you want this eternal life?Do you want to welcome the love of God, to obey to His gracious guidance? The door is open, simply start by repenting and asking Jesus for His forgiveness and guidance, he will not reject you. Jesus is really the way, the truth and the life.