Former skeptic Chris Waghorn left his belief in the Christian God behind to embrace an Eastern, universal view of god. After several years, he rediscovered the Christian God as the One who is both truth and real. Chris's Resources: Twitter: @CJMindBody The Bible League Australia: https://bl.org.au Resources/authors recommended by Chris for further study on Christianity: William Lane Craig C. S. Lewis Tim Keller John Lennox Atheists Finding God promo code https://Rowman.com/Lexington promo code: LXFANDF30   Hello and thanks for joining in. I'm Jana Harmon, and you're listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics slip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist or skeptic but who became a Christian against all odds. You can hear more of these stories at our Side B Stories website, www.sidebstories.com. We also welcome your comments on these stories at our Side B Stories Facebook page or through email at [email protected]. Believing that something is true enough to give your life to it is not always clear or straightforward or easy, especially when it comes to religious belief, something that is not necessarily tangible in the ordinary sense. Religion not only entails answers to the big questions of life, but by its very nature, it also makes claims regarding the supernatural realm, that it is real, that God is real. And if God is real, then He can and does interact with our natural world. When someone is considering religious claims, there is a difference between intellectually believing that something is objectively true, such as God exists or the biblical text is reliable and for good reason, and the subjective spiritual sense that God is real, as felt through a personal encounter or religious experience. That is, for some, belief in God may not come easily through arguments or evidence, although this grounding may open the door towards serious consideration of God's reality. Rather, belief comes through a wooing of the Holy Spirit, as the former skeptic describes in this story today. Although Chris Waghorn encountered a substantive intellectual reason for belief and even a touch of God's presence, setting him on a path towards following after Christ, he left that behind to explore the world and its offerings. A few years later, he found the God he had left behind as both true and real. What made him reconsider? I hope you'll come and join in to find out. Welcome to Side B Stories, Chris. It's so great to have you with me today. It's great to be here, Jana. Thanks for inviting me. Oh, you’re so welcome. As we're getting started, so the listeners can know just a bit about you, Chris, tell us about who you are, where you live, a little bit about yourself. Right. I'm a Brit living in Australia. I currently live in Melbourne in the Yarra Valley foothills. My wife is an Australian, a Melbournian, so no choice in destination, although I'm not regretting it at all. We moved over here in 2019, and I'm originally from Hampshire, Petersfield in Hampshire, a small little village outside Petersfield, a traditional sort of place with a shop and three pubs, and blink and you'll miss it. So I grew up there, and then I went up to study at King's College London. Okay. All right. So you're a Brit who lives in Australia. So let's start back, then, in your early life and your British life growing up in what sounds like a very lovely small community in Britain, in England. Tell me about what your life was like growing up. Tell me about your family of origin. Did you go to church? Was it any part of your picture growing up? Well, religion was really no part of my picture when I was growing up. I was raised as a Catholic, and my mother and my father, they went to Catholic school. My sister went to Catholic school, but I didn't go to Catholic school. I had no real interest in religion, and because of growing up in England and being a Catholic, we were