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Seeking the Truth in Heart and Understanding

A word before the questions

Most people who come to faith as adults don’t arrive in one leap. They take a series of steps, each one answering a question and opening the next. The questions below follow that path. Consider them one at a time, at your own pace. Honest questions are not the enemy of faith; they are often the road to it.

Some premises

Before taking up the big questions, it helps to agree on how we’ll look for answers. These are the ground rules I try to follow, and I invite you to hold me to them as well.

1. Truth exists, and we can come to know it.
Sound understanding is built on what is true. We come to know true things in different ways: some through careful reasoning, some through scientific evidence, some through history and reliable testimony. Each kind of question calls for its own kind of evidence, and no single method is the only path to knowledge.

2. Every claim must meet the same standard, including criticisms.
Whether an idea supports faith or challenges it, it deserves the same scrutiny. Some criticisms are sensational, even compelling, but a claim isn’t true because it’s loud, popular, or often repeated. It’s true only if the evidence bears it out. That cuts both ways: believers shouldn’t accept weak arguments just because they like the conclusion.

3. History offers reasonable confidence, not laboratory proof.
We can’t replay the past in a laboratory. But careful research that weighs sources, eyewitness testimony, and corroborating evidence can reach conclusions that are probable, sometimes highly so. We rely on this kind of knowledge for every figure of the ancient world, and it’s fair to apply the same method here.

4. Fair-mindedness matters as much as intelligence.
Following the evidence wherever it leads takes honesty about our own hopes and fears. We all bring wishes to these questions. Some of us hope God exists; others hope he doesn’t. Naming that openly helps us weigh the evidence rather than our preferences.

5. The mind and the heart work together.
Seeking truth isn’t only an intellectual exercise. Conscience, longing, beauty, and love are also ways we encounter what is real. In the Catholic understanding, faith never asks us to abandon reason. St. John Paul II described faith and reason as two wings on which the human spirit rises toward truth.

The questions

Is there a God?

This is where the journey begins for many: wondering whether the universe is all there is, or whether something, or Someone, stands behind it. Thoughtful people have pointed to several clues: that anything exists at all rather than nothing; the order and intelligibility of nature; the moral law we all feel bound by, even when we break it; and our longing for a joy and meaning nothing in this world fully satisfies. None of these clues forces belief, but together they make a reasonable case that we are not here by accident. You don’t need certainty to take this step, only openness to where the evidence points.

To go deeper...

Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist. A warm, readable exchange with a young skeptic. A good first book.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book One. “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe” is the classic moral-law argument in plain language.
Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God. For readers who want the full philosophical case.
Jennifer Fulwiler, Something Other Than God. A lifelong atheist’s honest, often funny account of reasoning her way to faith.

If there is a God, has God spoken?

If God exists, the next question is whether he has made himself known, or left us to guess. The world’s religions offer different answers. Christianity makes an unusual claim: not that humans climbed up to find God, but that God came down to find us. It roots that claim in history, in a particular people, Israel, and in a particular person who lived, taught, died and, his followers insisted, rose again. A claim made in history can be investigated like history, so this is where the search becomes concrete.

To go deeper...

Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans. Kreeft’s guided tour of Pascal’s Pensées, on why the heart’s restlessness points beyond itself.
G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man. Why Christianity stands apart among the world’s religions. Richer going, but it changed Lewis’s mind.
Holly Ordway, Not God’s Type. An atheist English professor’s journey, drawn by literature and reason.

Who is Jesus?

Nearly everyone admires Jesus as a good teacher. But he didn’t leave that option open. He forgave sins, accepted worship, and spoke as one with God. C.S. Lewis put the choice plainly: a man who said such things was either deceived, deceiving, or telling the truth. Then there is the resurrection. His followers went from hiding in fear to dying for their testimony that they had seen him alive. This step asks you to look honestly at the man and the evidence, and to notice what happens in you when you do.

To go deeper...

Brant Pitre, The Case for Jesus. A Catholic biblical scholar on the reliability of the Gospels and Jesus’s own claims.
Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock. A short, provocative book on why no one who truly meets Jesus can stay neutral.
Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. The historical evidence, laid out step by step.
Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth. For the reader ready to go deep, from a scholar and a pope.

If Jesus is God, does it matter how we follow?

If Jesus is who he said he was, then following him is not one hobby among others. It reshapes everything. Yet Christians follow him in many different ways, and many earnest believers disagree. It’s fair to ask whether Jesus left us on our own to sort it out, or whether he left us something more: a way to know his teaching faithfully across centuries and cultures. This question bridges personal faith and the Church.

To go deeper...

Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Rome Sweet Home. A Presbyterian minister and his wife wrestle with this exact question as a couple.
Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist. Why the early Christians took “This is my body” literally.
EWTN’s The Journey Home. Hundreds of episodes of converts telling their stories, many of them from other Christian traditions.

Did Jesus start a church?

The Gospels show Jesus gathering apostles, giving Peter a unique role, and promising to remain with his followers to the end of the age. The earliest Christian writers, some taught by the apostles themselves, describe a visible Church with bishops, sacraments, and the Eucharist at its center. For many who take this journey of exploring history, this was the turning point: the decisive factor in conversion was the Church’s claim to be the one Church historically founded by Christ. Read the early Church Fathers and ask which community today they would recognize as their own.

To go deeper...

The early Church Fathers, in their own words. Ignatius of Antioch’s letters (about AD 107) and Justin Martyr’s description of Sunday worship (about AD 155) are short and startlingly Catholic. Mike Aquilina’s The Fathers of the Church is a friendly introduction.
Peter Kreeft, “Hauled Aboard the Ark.” His conversion essay on the Coming Home Network site.
Peter Kreeft, From Calvinist to Catholic. The full story behind the essay: his recent autobiography, tracing his path to the Church and his 1960 conversion.
John Henry Newman. The 19th-century Anglican scholar who studied the early Church so closely that it brought him into the Catholic Church. His Apologia Pro Vita Sua tells the story.

How can we move forward as a Catholic?

If you’ve come this far, you may sense an invitation. The Church offers a gentle, structured path for adults called OCIA (the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults). It is offered through local parishes, and you can explore it without commitment. You don’t have to walk this alone. Beth and I are glad to talk with you, listen to your story, and walk with you as companions along the way.

To go deeper...

OCIA at your local parish. The Church’s path for adults, with no commitment to begin.
Peter Kreeft, Catholic Christianity. A clear, warm walk through the Catechism.
The Catechism in a Year podcast with Fr. Mike Schmitz (Ascension). About 20 minutes a day, start to finish.
Bishop Robert Barron, Catholicism film series (Word on Fire). Beautiful and well suited to watching together as a couple or small group.
Spiritual direction with Patrick or Beth.

Reflections on the Human Condition

You can read some of my reflections here... not directly on these questions but from the conclusions as we consider humanity and our human condition in the light of these conclusions. https://towardhealthandhappiness.blogspot.com/

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