Watching a few “how-to” videos on YouTube doesn’t make you an expert. To really know “how-to” change a tire, make puff pastry, or play the piano, you have to do it. Through experience, you discover new dimensions of your knowledge — from finding holes in your reasoning, to growing in flexibility and nuance, to even reassessing who you are and maybe even what you believe in.
In this episode, you’ll hear a story of such a discovery with guest Dr. Tom Rudelius, a theoretical physicist and string theory researcher with degrees from Cornell and Harvard.
Tom's story is shared in his new memoir: Chasing Proof, Finding Faith. This episode follows the arc of Tom’s book — how he and his twin grew up, the lie detector test that sparked his faith in Jesus, and the deepening of his faith even in the face of mental illness, anxiety, and doubt.
I started to realize that I'm actually not as good of a person as I'd like to think I am. And, all of a sudden, this message that my brother had been telling me about — about a God who who loves us, who offers us forgiveness through the death of his son — really started to make a lot more sense. I started to realize that I, too, was in need of that forgiveness.
It's been more than 13 years now since I became a Christian and, in that time, I've had seasons of really intense doubt and anxiety. Some days I've just kind of woken up and thought, "Wait, do I do I actually believe all this stuff?"
You might have thought that this whole experience of confession and admitting all these things I'd done wrong, that it would have left me feeling really paralyzed with guilt and shame. But coming out of the polygraph test, I actually felt really joyful. Like, I had this experience and understanding of God's forgiveness.
