As a student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, professors taught me that the key to conducting an effective interview wasn’t just asking questions, but also listening closely to the answers.
Throughout my search for God, my busy brain has always been filled with questions—How do I know that God is real? Which religion is the truest? What happens when I die? Do I believe in heaven? Can the Bible be believed?—and my seeking answers to these questions has been the fuel driving me forward on my freeway to faith.
But for me to ask questions without listening—to others and myself—would be like driving down that highway with a blindfold, missing an opportunity to enjoy what’s passing by and risking major personal injury. So I have been trying to pay more attention to everything and everyone around me, being more mindfully aware of the moment, tapping into the divine power of listening, and just being in the moment. It may sound very New Age–y and Power of Now–y, but living mindfully like this has taken a profound hold on me.
When I meditate—and I have done Headspace series on Creativity, Relationships, Stress, Anxiety, Happiness, and Focus—I have gotten to know my inner self more intimately and in that calmness I have had moments where I didn’t think, I didn’t feel, I was just being. By turning off my brain—really, losing my mind—I am finding I am less confused about what I believe. I am going clear—and I didn’t need Scientology to do it. I just needed to be mindful.
Yet I still have many questions about who God is and how to know this supreme creator and exactly what my relationship is to it. Of course, I could say, “Ken, just chill out and stop thinking. You’ve already found God—within!” But while I would like to fancy myself a full-time meditating monk, I am not quite that advanced on my spiritual journey. Intellectually, I have some loose ends. And perhaps the loosest one remaining is the one that dates back the furthest into my spiritual life: the Jesus Question.
Ever since attending Easter services with Pastor Brad and the Kardashians, I have been wanting to talk privately with Brad. We have tried many times to connect in person, but invariably bad L.A. traffic, or conflicting schedules, torpedoed our plans. So today I closed my office door, sat down, and called the peppy pastor.
After some small talk, I get right to the heart of what’s been most on my mind.
“I am really struck by your conviction of how much you believe in Jesus and how passionate you are about sharing your faith,” I tell him. “It really is beautiful and inspiring, to be honest. But I’m just not there, I don’t think.”
“Where are you trying to go?” Brad asks.
“I guess I’m trying to believe in the God you believe in,” I say. “But how do you, intellectually, take what the Bible teaches and the stories in it so literally? Because I have serious doubts. Do you really believe in all your heart and soul and mind that, without a doubt, the God in the Bible is the one, true God?”
“I really do have a belief that there is a singular, personal God, and He is revealed to us in the Bible,” Brad says. “The reason for that is Jesus. Up until the coming of the Messiah, which represents all of the Jewish faith, there was this impersonal, distant Me-Thou God. Then Jesus said, “When you have seen me you have seen the father. Jesus was described as the word that became flesh. And he lived with us. For me it is the idea of God wanting to be more than vague and more than a concept and more than distant. He really wants us to know him personally. Not just an idea, but personally. Ideas become opinions, but Jesus wanted us to see fact. To see how to live. And Jesus lived exactly what he promised and delivered.”
“I respect that, but why should I believe Jesus just because he says it’s true?” I ask. “I mean, Kanye West likes to say he’s the best, and calls himself ‘Yeezus’ as if he is a messiah, but a lot of people don’t take him seriously.”
Brad laughs. “It’s a good question. There is a book called The Case for Christ. The author reminds me a little of you, because it seems like you want to assemble evidence to help you make a decision. The author is this guy named Lee Strobel; he was a journalist for The Chicago Tribune and a real cynical skeptic. He had a sign in his office that read, ‘If your mother says “I love you,” check your sources.’ In terms of faith, he was a card-carrying atheist. He had even donated money to the American Association of Atheists. He had an ID card. But his wife began to follow Jesus and he was struck by the changes he saw in her life.
“So he went and investigated all the claims Jesus made, analyzed all the stories and compared them to what we know of the historical record. He went one by one through all the events that were prophesied hundreds of years before they came true—from a baby being born in Bethlehem to the crucifixion to the resurrection—dozens of promises about the Messiah. He did this with the intention of debunking all these stories as myths. After he researched it all, and found that, incredibly, they were accurate, he went to a mathematician and asked him what the odds were of the Bible predicting so many events, and the professor said there is a greater likelihood that a tornado could rush through a junkyard and assemble a 747.”
“Sounds like a David Blaine magic act,” I joke.
“Remarkable, right?” Brad says. “The Gospels are eyewitness accounts and give testimony to all these miraculous things. Just think about this: Five hundred people gave testimony of having seen Jesus alive and walking and talking after he had been executed and buried. So even the evidence for the resurrection is compelling and overwhelming. Now, cynics and Doubting Thomases might say, ‘I want to see five hundred and one sources!’ But it is compelling enough to me to conclude that, yes, the Bible is the real deal. So we must conclude one of three things about Jesus: (1) He is a liar, like David Koresh or Sun Myung Moon or some other cult leader, or (2) He is a lunatic, meaning he believes what he is saying but his perception is very warped, or (3) He is the Lord and exactly who he claimed himself to be.”
I almost ask whether Jesus could have been all three things—a liar, a lunatic, and the Lord—but I stop myself because it seems disrespectful and not in the spirit of my newfound “listening campaign.”
Brad continues, “If you take the weight of evidence, I will stake my claim on the side of believing that he is God’s son and I should give my life to following him.
“I remember reading once something along the lines of, ‘If I am wrong, and I die and there is no heaven, then I had nothing to lose. But if I’m right, I have everything to gain.’ So there really isn’t a downside in trusting and believing in Christ.”
That logic is exactly why my dad prayed with my brother Kevin a few months before he died and accepted Jesus Christ as the Lord. He was hedging his bets.
“So, in other words, he who loves Vegas should love Christ?” I joke.
Brad has a very good sense of humor and as such laughs pretty hard. “Well,” he says, “I think the evidence of Jesus is greater than the Vegas odds.”
“Brad, the truth is that I’m getting the sense that I am not going to think my way into believing anything,” I say. “I am concluding that, ultimately, I need to feel my way to the truth.”
“Well, my friend,” Brad says. “God wants you to know Him. He is there. You just need to listen to your heart.”
“I’ve been trying to do that, actually,” I tell him. “I have been meditating every day, sometimes twice a day. And it’s really helped me get in touch with my inner self, my inner voice.”
“And what is it saying?” he asks.
“Keep meditating.”
“Then do that,” he says. “Meditation and prayer can be one in the same. It can be divine.”