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.