Dr. John Taylor, a former atheist, once ardently dismissed the very concept of God, fearing it would cost him his autonomy. Growing up, John was exposed to the traditions of the Methodist church but found himself increasingly at odds with its teachings. As a teenager, he embraced atheism, fueled by skepticism towards religion and a belief that Christianity lacked intellectual rigor. He relished debates with Christians, eager to challenge and dismantle their faith. However, his life took an unexpected turn.
Guest Bio:
John Taylor is a dedicated professor of New Testament at Gateway Seminary in California, positioned just east of Los Angeles. With an eight-year tenure, he leads the Department of Biblical Studies, focusing his efforts on preparing future ministers, missionaries, and Christian academics. Passionate about imparting his knowledge, John primarily teaches courses on theology unique to Pauline letters, aiming to inspire and equip his students to effectively carry out their ministries. Through his work, he actively seeks to multiply the wisdom and insights he has accumulated over the years, contributing to the growth and enrichment of the Christian community.
Resources Mentioned:
Fuller Theological Seminary
Fuller Theological Seminary and the University of Cambridge
Gateway Seminary Website: https://www.gs.edu/academics/faculty-directory/member/1356019/
Dr. Taylor’s blogs: https://thegateway.press/author/johntaylor/
Academic Profile: https://gs.academia.edu/JohnTaylor
Francis Schaeffer: “He is There and He is not Silent”
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Episode Transcript
John Taylor
00:00 – 00:31
I was on the way home, and I was walking along the road, carrying my bag and not thinking about religion at all or about God. And suddenly there was this voice in my mind, and I knew it was God, even though I didn’t believe in him. And he said to me, ‘John’, he said, ‘I love you’. He said, ‘I want you to give me your life. I want you to surrender to me.’ And I said, ‘No, Go away.’
Jana Harmon
00:38 – 01:51
Welcome to eX-skeptic, where we hear unlikely stories of belief. I’m your host, Jana Harmon, and here on this podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist or a skeptic, but who became a Christian against all odds. We explore the stories of those who have wrestled with doubt and emerged with new perspectives on life and faith. Have you ever resisted God, thinking he wants something from you rather than believing he wants something for you? Today’s story is about Dr. John Taylor, a former atheist who once rejected the very idea of God, fearing it would strip him of his autonomy in the life he envisioned for himself. He also dismissed belief in God as intellectually untenable, having never encountered a robust or compelling form of Christianity and doubting such a thing even existed. In fact, he relished debating Christians eager to dismantle their faith. So what led John to a complete change of heart? How did he go from a skeptic to someone dedicated to helping others find faith in Jesus? It’s a fascinating journey, and I invite you to join me as we explore his story. Welcome to eX-skeptic, John, it’s so great to have you with me today.
John Taylor
01:52 – 01:55
It’s a true pleasure to be talking with you, and thanks for inviting me.
Jana Harmon
01:55 – 02:10
You’re so welcome. John. As we’re getting started, can you give us a brief introduction to a bit of who you are, the kind of work you do, the credentialing you hold, the education that you have, even some of the passions in your life, where you live?
John Taylor
02:11 – 04:56
Sure. So right now I’m in California as I’m speaking to you, and my job is professor of New Testament at Gateway Seminary, which is located just east of Los Angeles. So I teach New Testament there, and I’m Chair of the Department of Biblical Studies. I’ve been there about eight years, so that’s my main occupation. I love teaching people who are going into ministry or intermissions or who are going into Christian academics, trying to equip people to do the work of the Lord and try to multiply what know what God has given to me over the years into the lives of others for the sake of the kingdom. So that’s what I’m doing. So going further back, I did a Master’s in Divinity at Fuller Theological Seminary not that far from here, and then a PhD in New Testament at the University of Cambridge in England. And I was so grateful to have that education. Before that, I was in missions for quite a long time, mainly in England. And that’s where I met my wife, Heidi. She’s from here, from Orange County, California, where I am now and where we married and had our children. And so that’s me. In terms of other things that I do. We talked already. I do a bit of amateur painting, watercolors, landscapes mainly, and my wife does oil portraits. And so I was kind of there. But we inherited, if I can say that, from our daughter, who is a proper artist living in Germany, doing a professional artist. And so it wasn’t really until she got into it that we did. In fact, when I was younger, I was wanting to be an architect and people told me, you shouldn’t do it, you shouldn’t do it. You can’t draw. You’re rubbish at drawing. So I didn’t do it. My first degree was in urban planning, downtown regional planning, urban economics and things like that at the University of Melbourne in Australia, where I’m from. Later discovered I could draw, but by that time my life had changed. I’d met the Lord, I had a call to ministry, and I was always going to go in a different direction anyway, so if you’re wondering about the accent. So I’m born in Australia, brought up there in Melbourne, was in England for about 20 years, and then, of course, the last 20 years or so been in America. So my accent is somewhere mid-Pacific and mid-Atlantic, which means that no one ever thinks I belong – everywhere I am.
Jana Harmon
04:57 – 05:35
Wow, you have been a world traveler, living around the world in so many wonderful places. But you said, you mentioned here that you were raised in Australia, so why don’t we start there? Take me back to your childhood and. And give me a picture of, as an artist, you can paint a verbal portrait, I suppose, what your childhood looked like growing up in Australia, the culture around you. Was it religious at all? Was your home religious? Was God any part of your life or your family’s life? Talk to me about that.
John Taylor
05:35 – 07:18
Yes. So my family, my mother and father and two sisters on the middle child, we certainly were involved in church, was a Methodist church growing up, which eventually changed, sort of amalgamated with some other churches, became called the Uniting Church. And so definitely my parents took us to church and those sort of things, Sunday school, and that it was, I would say, a church that was increasingly moving away from traditional Christian theology and faith to be in that sort of liberal theology movement that was spreading a lot of places in the 60s. And so there was still the form of religion. And I’m thankful for those people because they were very sweet, but somehow along the way, they kind of lost the message. And I think that affected me quite deeply. So I say the basic message was, let’s all be nice people and make the world a better place. And that’s what they tried to do. But there’s more to life than does and simply goodness and trying to improve the world. And so that’s something that for me, ended up being a huge challenge, intellectual and faith challenge to me is what’s the reality behind this religion that I’ve been going to as a child and into my teens?
Jana Harmon
07:19 – 07:59
So as a child, I presume you accepted the tenets of faith, the things that they were saying from the pulpit before you, I guess, moved into your teenage years and became a bit more critical in your thinking, critical in the rational, reasonable part of criticism, although you said it was more of the liberal, critical theology that influenced the church that you were in. But as a child, would you say that you had a childlike faith at all before you started to become a little bit more thoughtful about what these beliefs were?
John Taylor
07:59 – 08:48
I think so. I, you know, I would. My parents would pray with me when I went to sleep and that sort of thing, say sort of standard prayers and there was grace at tables. I don’t know that I had any kind of deep understanding whatsoever or even a shallow understanding of anything we might call doctrine or theology. The things I remember are mostly from hymns that we sang. And this is where I praise God for John and Charles Wesley and some of the Methodist tradition that stayed, that was imparted in some of the hymns that we would sing. And that ended up being, to some degree in conflict with where the church was actually going. But I suppose I did, although it didn’t seem to affect the way I lived at all.
Jana Harmon
08:50 – 09:06
So as you were moving along and you started to question, I suppose, some of the things that you were hearing, what was that as you were getting a little bit older, as you said, in your preteen or early teen years.
John Taylor
09:06 – 12:19
So I suppose when I was about 14 or 15, maybe 14, I really started to question what this was all about in my mind, despite the fact that there were sweet people in the church who were trying to do good in the community, I didn’t really see any fundamental difference between, between people inside the church and outside the church. And I started to question. I was also going to a school that was church based school. And this was on a similar kind of, it was Anglican rather than Methodist, but it was on a sort of similar theological trajectory as to where my church was. And you know, we had religious classes and religious education class. But all I can remember is what color altar cloths you could put on, different seasons of the year and rather formalistic. And so I think, I bet my mind was inquiring, I’m asking these questions, what’s this all about? What’s the meaning of life? And we’re talking now in the 70s and in that period, I mean there were lots of other people suggesting answers to terms of what’s life about? What’s the meaning? People were doing, you know, encounter groups or they were doing what’s called transactional analysis or they were doing things where they’re trying to discover themselves in order to make sense of the world. Of course, I later came to realize that if my search for meaning means searching within myself first and foremost, you know, that’s a way to get completely the wrong answer because we’re not considered, we’re missing the big picture of what the world’s about. But I started to become very skeptical of all things religion and faith and of God and very cynical, I suppose. By the time I was 14, I decided I was an atheist. I didn’t believe God existed. It was all completely wrong. And this doesn’t mean I was particularly critical of my parents or anybody like that who had some kind of faith. But I decided for me, I didn’t believe it. In fact, I thought I was trying my hardest to bring in other ideas into our Christian youth group I chose to go to but those groups really became more interested in talking politics than they were, there was very little Bible. I used to joke that even the sermons, there was probably more poetry than Bible in the sermons. And you know, that’s probably not quite doing them a proper service. But it felt like that, that there was very little that you could settle on as being true and right. And there wasn’t the right, there wasn’t a foundation for faith. So I became very cynical about these things all through my teenage years really.
Jana Harmon
12:20 – 12:52
So as you were Reaching this decision you were seeing, or I guess really being a bit disappointed in what you were hearing in church and in these groups, did you ever confront, is probably too strong of a word, have any discussions with church leaderships or your parents or anything to talk about more substance behind the beliefs or what was this? Or why is this true? Were any of those conversations even available to you?
John Taylor
12:52 – 13:57
I didn’t have any of those two conversations. I mean, you know, we’re talking. I probably was too insecure and too young to even think about, even imagine initiating a conversation like that. It certainly wasn’t initiated with me by someone else. So I didn’t even think of that. I was coming to conclusions in my own mind and so I became very cynical about things. By the time I got to university, which was in Melbourne as well, where I grew up, I went to university, to college with the intention in my mind of finding Christians and destroying their faith. So that was part of, that’s one of my projects was I went to first year college, you know, was I’m going to find Christians and argue with them and debate with them and destroy their faith. Yeah, so that was, I mean, it’s a sad, it’s very sad way of living, but that was the truth.
Jana Harmon
13:57 – 14:39
It’s interesting to me because it’s one thing not to believe something and turn in another direction, perhaps intellectually, and I am curious as to what direction you turned and if. And how you grounded whatever beliefs you had as an atheist, because you said you called yourself an atheist. But also there’s a difference between, again, not believing something and wanting to destroy the other side, having contempt for the other. What do you think informed that contempt? And secondly, how did you ground your atheism? Or what did, what were the, the verbal or intellectual arguments that you came against them with?
John Taylor
14:40 – 16:50
I don’t think there was anything too unusual except that I wanted to persuade other people. I’m partly simply, of course, it’s simply pride, it’s intellectual pride to think that you’re right and everybody else is wrong and you’re going to demonstrate that you’re right and they’re wrong. And so that’s part of it. And when I’ve come to a certain conclusion in my mind, I don’t believe these things. But some of the basic, we’ll call them what you would might call apologetic issues with things that I wasn’t convinced, you know, that the Bible was the word of God or that Jesus rose from the dead or that there was any kind of proof for the existence of God or so these kind of approach. My education was mainly sciences and I suppose I was influenced by that, by maybe I would, might call this pseudoscience now, but it was a kind of trying to be scientific in my approach to life. And of course we’re talking in Australia where, you know, there’s very few Christians relative to the perceived in proportion to the population, certainly in terms of what we might call evangelical or Bible believing Christians or people or people who share their faith and read their Bible frequently. And those kind of things pretty rare in my world. And so of course I started to meet some of them. That’s sort of the next part of the story. But it was a question where I couldn’t see that this thing could be true. Usual questions people have, why is there so much suffering in the world? Why is there, if really God is real and if he is who you say he is, he should fix all this and he hasn’t. So maybe, you know, you’re making all this up.
Jana Harmon
16:51 – 17:07
You’re making all this up. So what was your view of Christians and Christianity at that time? Did you think that it was just a man made religion? It was wishful thinking? What was faith to you at that time in your life?
John Taylor
17:08 – 18:00
Well, I think I saw it as a kind of a crutch, you know, something that people needed something to lean on, to depend, something to look for help when things went wrong. And I didn’t probably, I probably was thinking that this is the product of, you know, what we might call religious evolution, you know, and society has moved on, you know, and especially now in the Western world. And we’ve kind of moved on from this dependence on ancient dogma and ancient stories. And now we’re more, we don’t need all this. And so that kind of worldview that you sort of see coming through, you know, Darwinism and so many other aspects of, of Western philosophy.
Jana Harmon
18:01 – 18:18
So in your, in your experience growing up and even into college, you hadn’t had a lived example, I guess you could say, of this authentic, robust form of intellectual or substantial Christianity prior to going to college.
John Taylor
18:19 – 19:37
Well, if I, if I did, if there were those, I didn’t realize it. So I’m not saying of course that there was nobody I knew that was a genuine Christian or something like that, obviously, but I didn’t, if there were, if they were there, I didn’t notice. And so I said there were people I met here and there who were Christians. And of course there were people at the church I grew up in who I would call it a genuine faith, even if it wasn’t strongly theologically informed, it was a genuine faith. I’m not even sure they realized how liberal theologically the church had become, but I only sort of realized that later. At the time, I was just skeptical and just determined in my mind, I don’t want to go this path. And I was, you know, effectively. It’s effectively a kind of, for me, it was just a selfish way of living. That’s what it was. I realized later, but it was, I want to live my own life. I don’t want to be bothered. Oh, I don’t want to just accept things because someone told me I want to know for myself.
Jana Harmon
19:38 – 20:10
Right. And within the atheistic worldview, you were living, as you said, in a fairly secularized country. So it was an easy view to absorb from those around you, I’m sure, in education and, and whatnot. Did you, did you consider the implications of what it truly meant to live as an atheist, or did you adapt a materialistic, naturalistic view of reality?
John Taylor
20:11 – 21:00
I think I became a cynical person and it affected all sorts of things like my sense of humor. That’s something I had to realize later on was the way I joked or my sense of humor reflected this worldview in terms of finding others to criticize, looking down on other people, finding a victim and, but that doesn’t mean I was happy at all. No, no, no, I was. In some ways, I was. You people. I was quite miserable. People sometimes say, you know, teenage years are the best years of your life, and for me, they were utterly the worst. Just compounded my work, my own skepticism about the existence of truth and love and about God.
Jana Harmon
21:03 – 21:27
So as you were moving along, you’ve mentioned that you began to encounter perhaps some authentic Christians or an authentic form of Christianity that you hadn’t yet experienced before or seen embodied before. What happened there at college that started to open you to the possibility of something else, right?
John Taylor
21:27 – 28:44
Well, I suppose it began in a couple of ways. One is, at the church that I grew up in, the people who had been running the youth program there left, went on to do something else. And we had a young couple took this over, and they had been growing up in the same church as I had and grown up, they were older than, than I am, and they, they, they went off to Europe and to India. So what’s called a hippie trail, back in those days, young people were kind of dropping out and starting in London or Amsterdam and, you know, getting in a micro VW microbus and wandering across Europe and Middle East. In those days, all of you could drive through those places, through Afghanistan and everywhere, down to India. And they were kind of looking for, you know, maybe Eastern religion or drugs or something that it was trying was different. And they went over there and they met some Christians in Delhi and met Jesus. They went to Kathmandu and spent a year in discipleship. And he came back to our church and took over this group of young people who were basically, you know, it was a combination of a political discussion and a dating club. And they took it over and they basically shrank it because they started teaching the Bible. And somehow I stayed with it. I don’t know why. I mean, it’s just one of those things that I found myself interested. I mentioned that when I went to college, I was looking for Christians to debate. So I found it interesting to go and talk to them about the Bible, about God, and they did seem to have authenticity. I should say that this couple became very, very close friends, still are. Well, she’s passed away now, but they, Bert and Hilary Pratt, I’ve met people all over the world, literally, who they have led to Christ. So just an ordinary couple. But they met Jesus and but they were one couple. There were some other people I met through different places that when I was at some of my lowest points, just emotionally, what have you, some of the people who took the most interest in me would show care or kindness or interest in me as a person turned out to be Christians. And all this time I was looking for Christians to debate and, and to argue with. And if I ever won a discussion, in my mind, I won that debate. You know, I felt some kind of self validation, you know, and I was kind of excited about it. But of course, if you’re an atheist, but you go looking for Christians if you want to remain an atheist, it’s a really bad policy, you know, because, you know, you keep meeting Christians and they keep loving you and telling you the gospel and praying for you. And some of these people started to pray for me. And so I think that was a big part of it. And so they give you answers. I was never satisfied with the answers, but I just kept coming back for more because I wanted to debate and discuss and I was trying to, if you like, convert them. And they were just as hard as they were trying to convert me and. But so that’s what happened. And they would show me love and care and kindness. And that was quite moving at times. And I realized that some of these people were far more authentic than I had given them credit for. And they had a far more authentic life and love than I was, than I previously been willing to allow on the part of the church. Then eventually there was one summer, my family and I, we were down on a summer vacation. What Americans call it this vacation we call holiday. But it was down at a beach outside of Melbourne. And a local, there was a ministry called Scripture Union. And they had set up a sort of an outreach thing. They’d taken over a local hall, like a scout hall or a village hall. And they’d taken over this and set it up something like a nightclub. And they were inviting people to come and turn it into a kind of a coffee house. And over the vacation period, so we were down there for a couple of weeks and a friend of mine was staying with us as well as with my family. And so they started. We got invited to go along and we went along and kind of debating with them. You know, I thought this was great fun. But again, it was the same thing. I thought they were the most totally uncool people I’ve ever met. They didn’t put demands on me, just come along to be or come and do what, just get involved. They didn’t put any demands on me. They just tried to answer my questions, even when I was really quite rude to them. And so this was over the course of the southern summer, which is the northern winter. So it was over Christmas and into the New Year. And I went to a thing there which was a New Year’s Eve event. And they had a guy who, I suppose he was a singer, and he had his guitar and he sang. And then he sort of gave what would be his story, and we would now probably call his testimony. He gave his story about how he met Jesus. I found myself quite moved by all this, even though I didn’t believe. And so it got to New Year’s Eve and I thought, I’m going to make a New Year’s resolution. And I’d always said to myself, I’m not going to become a Christian. I don’t want to be one. I don’t want to be like those people. But I said, if I ever did, I’m going to be totally committed. Because I knew in my mind, I knew so many wishy washy, half hearted Christians, you know, they were enough to make you sick. And you know, part of that’s just my arrogance looking down on them and what they did. But that’s what I said. If I ever go that way, I’m going to be completely committed. And so that New Year’s Eve, I had never before made a New Year’s resolution and ever since, but I made a New Year’s resolution that night because I’d realized that something was, I was actually starting to seriously consider, you know, Christianity. And so I made a news resolution sometime this year. That following year I would make a decision either totally for or totally against Jesus. And that was my New Year’s resolution.
Jana Harmon
28:47 – 29:12
So was there something, obviously you were moved when you heard this young man’s testimony and these were authentic people who seemed genuinely loving and kind toward you and were drawing you in. It was enough for you to open yourself to the possibility of considering Christianity in a serious way.
John Taylor
29:12 – 29:13
That’s right.
Jana Harmon
29:13 – 29:48
Was anything brought forward during this time more than just, I don’t want to minimize this, the power of the testimony. Obviously we’re giving a testimony right now. Or, that they made you feel good. Was there any substance to make you think, well, perhaps it’s true. Were they able to give you some robust answers when you were pushing back or asking questions? Or was it, was it a combination of things?
John Taylor
29:49 – 31:10
I think it’s a combination of factors, but I think yes, I mean I had some pretty earnest debates with some of them and I would go along, try to cause, you know, try to fight my win my side. But I did realize that there were at least possible answers on their part. Not at that stage that I was willing to accept them, but I realized that there were certain answers that they were able to give which were at least, you know, to some extent reasonable even if I didn’t accept them or believe them. And so I realized that for these people, and they were thinking Christians, that they were working through, trying to be reasonable, trying to have a richer understanding of their own faith. And so there might be answers out there. So that sort of created that puzzle possibility along with the way they lived and, and so on. Then I suspect, you know, prayer and those sort of things were going on. But it did start to open me up to the possibility that this was all, that this could be real. And, so that’s, you know, that sort of set the agenda for that. That year, I was going to make a decision.
Jana Harmon
31:11 – 31:19
So how were you going to pursue the answer to that question? How are you going to, yes, make that decision?
John Taylor
31:19 – 34:36
Like a lot of New Year’s resolutions, I probably forgot about it or at least pushed it to the back of my mind and carried on living the way I was. And so. but there were certain things that happened along the way. So through that year, as the year went on, I started to, every now and then, I get a little twinge of guilt that I hadn’t done anything about that resolution, like a lot of people do have a New Year’s resolutions. So I think I kept putting it off, right? One of the things that I had misunderstood about Christianity and about life with Christ is that they had told me, you need to be completely committed to Jesus. You need to make him Lord of your life. This kind of language was being used by some of the Christians I met. And to me, that sounded just awful because it sounded as though you’d become some sort of robot or zombie or sort of. You lose any sense of will that you somehow giving up yourself to someone. Whereas I was, you know, my journey was to find myself. But here you had to try to give it up and then let someone else take absolute control and that was very scary. I thought, no, I don’t want to do that. And so that’s one of the reasons I kept pushing this off. Of course, I realized afterwards that this was a complete misreading of what it meant for Jesus to be Lord of your life. That, you know, that there’s a liberty of an actual release from the things that previously bound you and enslaved you. And so that it’s never a point when you lose your mind, you just become a robot or something. But that was a fear in my mind. And so I kept putting it off. But what happened was that God started to speak to me. Now, I didn’t believe in him, but one day as I was walking home, I was on my way home from college that day, and I had carrying my bag of books, and I took the train in from where I lived into the center of Melbourne, and a tram, or some people would call it a streetcar. And I took that in and walked, and it was quite a long journey, but I was on the way home, and I was literally walking along the road carrying my bag and thinking and not thinking about religion at all or about God. And suddenly then there was this voice in my mind and I knew it was God, even though I didn’t believe in him. And he said to me, ‘John’, he said, ‘I love you.’ He said, ‘I want you to give me your life. I want you to surrender to me.’ And I said, ‘No, go away.’
Jana Harmon
34:36 – 34:38
Oh, okay.
John Taylor
34:39 – 42:36
And of course in my mind, ‘I don’t even believe in you!’, you know. So I pushed it away and He seemed to go away. And then a few weeks later, when I was least expecting it, I was wandering along somewhere, suddenly, there he was speaking to me again. ‘John, I want you to give yourself to me. I want you to commit everything to me.’ I remember going, ‘No, go away. Go away.’ And it was, you know, I will say this. God, I don’t think forces anybody to be a Christian, but he can certainly put the pressure on. You know, the Apostle Paul got knocked to the ground and blinded. I mean, it wasn’t forced, but that’s pressure. And so, I just resisted. I had to resist this impression of God speaking to me. It wasn’t audible in my mind, but it was very strong. And this is what happened. This went on forever, for a few months where this would, every so often, God would speak to me and I would resist with all my might. I felt like I had to resist it because I would somehow lose my authentic self. Of course, that’s total rubbish. I would go to find myself, as Jesus says, you know, of course, you want to find your life, you lose it. If you lose it for the sake of the gospel, you’ll find it. And then, really there came, by this time, it got to July. So one day there was a couple of friends, and I decided to go up the mountain outside of Melbourne. There’s a little mountain range, not exactly huge mountains. They’re kind of, you know, maybe large hills, but they’re called mountains. And there’s a forest up there, and there’s a bird up there called, that lives in what we might call temperate rainforest in Australia called the lyrebird. It’s named after the musical instrument, the lyre, because of the beautiful tail that the male bird has. It kind of unfolds, it’s kind of white. And this bird, in the mating season, he builds a huge mound from all the forest debris. And he gets up on it and he unfolds this gorgeous tail. It comes right back over his head and he dances and sort of to attract you know the female bird. And when they sing, they’re renowned mimics. They will mimic anything in the forest like a chainsaw or a car or something. And you know, if you hear some whistle in the forest, in the bush, we say, you don’t know whether it’s a lyrebird or it’s the real thing. So anyway, we said, let’s go up. It was Sunday morning. Let’s go up and look for these birds because they’re quite a treat, you know, to find this shy. So we’re wandering through this forest and somehow the others were kind of, you know, everybody’s having a good time and they were chattering. And I was thinking, you’re making so much noise. These are very shy birds. They will scatter when we come near. We’re never going to see these lyrebirds. So I said to myself, look, I think I’ll go off on my own. Maybe I’ll be quiet. I can sneak through the bush and see if I can find some of these. So that was on my mind. And so I went off on my own. I told them, we’re going to meet you back at the car park, this kind of thing. So I went on my own and never found a lyrebird. But while I was out there, literally on a mountaintop, that’s when I met the Lord. So I was in this forest and God started to speak to me again. And for some reason I knew this was it. I really had to make that decision. One thing that happened as I pondered this issue was I’d come to realize already somehow that I could never, I was not prepared to make a decision totally against Jesus. I wasn’t quite prepared at that point to say yes, but I don’t think that I was now prepared to be completely adamantly never to be a Christian. And even though I’d said, I’ve got to make a total commitment for or against at the New Year, as the year went on, I started to realize, I don’t think I’m able to make that no decision. And that’s because I started to realize maybe there’s something I missed, particularly when God was speaking to me. And so there I was, and He was speaking to me and insisting that I surrender to him. And I realized that I had to do something about it. It was, to some extent, Jana, it was a matter of integrity, of my own conscience, of saying, ‘I really know you’re there, even though I’m denying and denying, I hear Your voice.’ And so I thought to myself, ‘Well, I’ve got to do something about it.’ So I literally sat down under a tree in the forest and I didn’t know what to say. How do you, what do you pray? So anyway, I said some words. I gave my life to Jesus. I said the same words twice over, just in case, you know, I didn’t got quite what you’re supposed to say. I didn’t have the right language, but that’s what happened. And I met Jesus on the mountain. And it was to extend a matter of, of my own intellectual integrity that I knew that if I kept ignoring, pushing it away, I would be simply now, rather than being a truth seeker, I’d be a truth denier. And so that’s what happened. I went to church that night, the same old church, because I felt like, well, I’m a Christian, you’re supposed to go to church, aren’t I? So I didn’t know much about anything, but I went along and there was a visiting minister, our minister was on vacation or something and a visiting guy who happened to be a Bible believing Christian. It was a small congregation and he said to the church, just talk to the person sitting next to you and tell them something that’s happened to you in the last two weeks. So there was a guy I knew who was sitting next to me and I was the first one I called. And then the minister said, anybody like to tell the whole church what you just told your neighbor? And I found myself on my feet. You know, they knew me, so they didn’t realize, I suppose, where they drift. Some of them didn’t know really where the church had drifted theologically, but they knew I was pretty skeptical. So I found myself on my feet in a tears, the usual thing, telling them, I became a Christian this morning and this was a big deal. And so that was the first public moment for me of acknowledging Jesus as my Lord and Savior and really meeting God literally on a mountaintop outside of Melbourne.
Jana Harmon
42:36 – 44:13
That’s amazing. Amazing. So many things come to mind as you’re telling that story and how beautiful and how intimate and how personal. And I think of C.S. Lewis’s framing of the Hound of Heaven was pursuing him and you had, you had opened yourself to make a decision and He was persuading you. He kept coming back and back and back again until you reached that point where you could not deny him. A question comes to mind. I’m thinking of perhaps some curious skeptics who are listening and one of the things that I can hear them whispering is, how do you know it’s God? How do you know it’s Jesus? How do you know it’s. You talked about back in the 70s, people were pursuing all kinds of spiritual experiences all over the world and there are a lot of supposed gods in the universe in India and all of these other places. And the skeptic might say, well, you grew up with that framework in a Methodist church. That was your cultural milieu, that was how you perceived God. But how do you know that is the God of the universe? The triune God, Father, Son, Spirit, Jesus who came to you?
John Taylor
44:13 – 48:39
Right? I mean, partly, of course. The fact was that I was not seeking God. I was not searching for another religion. I was running the opposite way entirely. And so for me it was, it was, as you say, a matter of being pursued by the love of God, by his voice. So it wasn’t that I was experimenting with different religions. I was convinced there was no God. So I had no, I suppose, you know, one could argue, well, even though you were an unbeliever, you had some kind of church background, that’s what you knew. But you know, I was at Melbourne University. There was plenty of other ideas going around and so I listened to those as well while I was a college student and certainly I wouldn’t say explored them in terms of knowing their meetings or that sort of thing, but I’ve certainly talked to lots of people. So I was aware of plenty of other beliefs. Maybe not an expert on them, but I was aware of lots of other beliefs and none of them appealed either at the time. But to me it was this combination of the authenticity of Christians lives that matched with the message that they were giving along with my own personal encounter with God was sufficient. I’m not saying I had all the answers then. It took a number of years for me to come to a more fuller knowledge of, you know, what was the Trinity all about or how did you know, how did Jesus fit into the Bible story? So it was young, it was very young and faith that I had, but it was real. I often think about that lyrebird that I never found. Those birds, you know, they, they got this big moment in their life where they, or in the year where they, it’s all for show, right? They’ve got to find this mage and they put on this huge display and dance and often think that’s probably how I was to some extent, you know, just my life was living just to follow the applause or the welcome of others rather than for the truth. But my heart was oriented towards truth. I really didn’t want to know the truth. But I was just as self centered, just as proud and just as self piteous as anybody. And of course there’s a lot more that I had to discover about what was this truth that I was now committed to, who was this person, this Lord that I now had committed my life to. But that was the sort of the time when I met the Lord. My parents persuaded me to finish my degree, which I did. And I’m thankful for that because that gave me entry later on into my master’s program and that helped me get into my position, Ph.D. and that was all many years down the track. But I finished that and then went into missions in Australia and then got called to England fairly shortly after that. And I went to England and was there for many years. And you know, of course not just in England, mainly in England, south of England. Spent years in London in the East End, ministering there in what would be the poorer part of the city, urban missions ministry in the southwest of England, and several years itinerating around the country with a team of people working with churches and then traveling and preaching and teaching probably over, maybe 25 countries. So God opened up all these doors for me, but I never would expect it, just as I never would expected this. Some kid from Melbourne would end up in California teaching New Testament at a seminary. Back to seminary, Gateway Seminary. Who would have ever predicted that? But the Lord has mysterious ways.
Jana Harmon
48:39 – 49:07
Well, it reminds me of your fear of letting go and surrendering to the Lord and that you would lose yourself in a sense. But it sounds as if you have lost yourself in all the best ways and that the Lord has given you an incredible and full and meaningful and abundant life.
John Taylor
49:08 – 49:19
Well, I can’t say it’s been without trials and difficulties, obviously, but there’s been many of those and they don’t seem to stop but God has been so faithful.
Jana Harmon
49:19 – 50:53
Now I’m going to ask another question before we move on to the end. And that is a lot of times people will have an experience of God and they’re convinced, they know that. They know that God is real. That experience for them are, in your case, multiple experiences of an intimate knowing and experiencing of God. But it’s not as convincing for the person. I mean, they may say that’s great for you. I’m glad you had that experience. You have that intimate knowledge. But how do you know that it’s true? And I there, I don’t mean to take away from the experiences, but I just hear skeptics and they’re trying to ground things outside of a subjective or personal relational experience. So it sounds like obviously you’ve done an amazing amount of due diligence and rational and intellectual work and theological work all the way getting your PhD at Cambridge, that I presume you wouldn’t believe it unless you believed it were true in the most reasonable intellectual sense. It’s the revealed word of God and we have a sense of knowledge about that. So how can you talk with a curious skeptic who would push back against your an experiential faith? How do you know that it’s true?
John Taylor
50:53 – 58:20
Yes, look, first of all, I think that most skeptics would agree with me on this, I think, is that all knowledge is to some extent subjective. Right? There isn’t anything we know that isn’t viewed through the lens of our own life and experience. And so whether I’m a skeptic or a committed believer or an atheist or a theist, that understanding is viewed through a culturally conditioned lens, through a lens of my own life experience. And so there’s never completely objective knowledge. But one of the things that came to me that I’ve started to think about years ago was how can I know that what we might call revelation from God is authentic? How do I know that this is true? And, partly it’s the concept of God. So one of the reasons is a lot of people have troubles with Christianity is they have the wrong concept of God. They’re rejecting the concept of God that isn’t actually related to the God of the Scriptures or it’s only tangentially related. So in other words, they’re rejecting something that doesn’t actually exist. But one of the things that is, I hope you understand, is if God exists and if he is infinite in wisdom, knowledge, power and so on, just positing that, that God would exist and has infinite capability to do whatever he wants, then I think we can say then, and this has helped me in the years back, was that God is infinitely able to communicate himself. And so that’s something that I realized that despite my human inadequacies and human limitations of my own mind and knowledge, or to put it colloquially, no matter how spiritually deaf I am, God can shout louder than that. If God is in any way like this infinite being who, you know, can do whatever he wants and has all power and knowledge, then there’s nothing to stop him from communicating himself to others. And we sometimes think that God’s revelation is limited by us. But of course, if you look at the Scriptures and if you look at the story of the Scripture, we see God making himself known in all sorts of wonderful ways. And of course, primarily in Jesus himself. Jesus said, you know, in response to Philip’s question. And Philip had this question because Jesus was talking about going to the Father, and they talked about God as his Father. The Gospel of John and the apostle Philip said to Jesus, you know, after Jesus had mentioned the Father or God as Father, he said, ‘Show us the Father. I’ll be satisfied with that.’ That sounds really like a pious prayer, like, oh, Jesus, show me the Father. Because this Jesus was in the flesh, right? He’s there in front of you. But Father, it’s much more hard to conceptualize. He seems to be invisible. After all, Jesus said to Philip, he basically told him off. He said, ‘You’ve been with me so long, you don’t know me.’ He said, ‘Have you seen me? You’ve seen the Father.’ And he’s saying there, that’s what God is like. If God has decided to reveal himself, he’s chosen to make himself known and he’s infinitely capable of doing that. And he did it through becoming a human being. And of course, we have that life that Jesus lived that’s well attested in the historical literature, the death and resurrection of Christ. These historical realities are foundational for my faith and for every believer, every Christian believer. But this founded on this concept of God, that God is able and willing to reveal himself. And so it’s not my job, in a sense, to establish every little thing. It’s my responsibility to listen, to receive the revelation that’s given by God preeminently in Jesus and of course in the Bible, and to recognize this communicating God. One of the early books that really made sense to me was from Francis Schaeffer, famous Christian philosopher and, and thinker and of the 20th century. And he had a little book, it was called God is There and He’s Not Silent. And it made a big difference to me in my young days as a Christian. And I started to read him and I realized this is a God who’s chosen to communicate. And of course that’s what I’d experienced in coming to Christ. But I realized that this was who God was. I think to understand that this is a God who is proactive towards the world he created, has chosen not only to create the world but to engage with the world who has walked with people is there and is reaching out still, obviously through the work of the church. If we ask what has God done in this world, we can list a million things that God has acted to resolve the issues that tend to keep us away from Him. He’s acted Jesus Himself, the life and death and the resurrection of Jesus and the communication of God through him and through the Scriptures. That’s really convinced me that this is authentic. I may not have everything absolutely figured out in my mind, but it’s sufficient. It’s another thing that I learned from Francis Schaeffer was that truth to be persuasive doesn’t have to be completely comprehensive, but it has to be sufficient. And so what we know about God now, what I know about God now, when, you know, I meet him face to face when Jesus returns. That knowledge, that new knowledge will be in accordance with, will not be contradictory to what He’s already revealed of himself. However, there’ll be more, but it’s going to be on the same lines because he is consistent, he’s authentic and he’s able to communicate himself. And he has done that sufficiently in Jesus that we have enough to go on, more than enough to go on to make those kind of radical life changing decisions that he then upholds by His Spirit, that He works in us by His Spirit. Nothing too hard for Him.
Jana Harmon
58:21 – 58:42
That’s beautiful, really beautiful. And especially you are such an embodied example of that. You were fighting against him, but he kept gently nudging and pushing. You opened the door. It was almost like an approach avoidance, you know.
John Taylor
58:42 – 58:54
I embarrassed bout it now, really. Just to say that, you know what happened, what I was saying to God is so, so rude, you know, ‘Go away!’ I’m embarrassed about it, but I’m grateful that he kept at me.
Jana Harmon
58:55 – 01:00:04
Absolutely. And I’m thinking of there, there might be some curious skeptic who’s listening to this, John, listening to your story. And in some ways they, they, they hear you, they, they know that you’ve encountered the real God. And, just the way that you speak is so, it’s just so full of God and the Holy Spirit and an intimate knowledge of, and a solid knowledge of who He is. Even though of course, again our knowledge is not comprehensive as you say. But if someone was thinking to themselves, I wish that I had what John has, what would be a good step for them to open themselves to the possibility? Would it be looking on their bookshelf for that and dusting off the Bible that they might have had as a child. Is it – you prayed, you know, that’s the first thing you thought to do was pray or go to church. You did, you met, you talked with Christians. There were so many things that you did early on that helped open you and move you along this road.
John Taylor
01:00:04 – 01:02:43
All of the above. I think, you know, it’s not one thing and it depends on who you are. But I do think that, that one of the things that really makes a difference is, and I’m not saying that I’ve mastered all I’m talking about, but I think to find the truth, we have to be intellectually honest with ourselves. We have to recognize who we are, where we’re at. To recognize it was, for me, I had to recognize that, that my resistance to him was as much arrogance as it was unbelief. You know, it was fear, it was arrogance, it was unbelief, it was self pity, it was all these things put together. And to recognize who I was and be willing for those things to be challenged in our lives and to be honest with ourselves as well as with others, with God, ultimately with God, it’s really important. And because we’re so self deceptive so often, so easily. In John 5:44, Jesus says, to the Pharisees there he says, ‘How can you believe? You seek glory from one another and don’t seek the glory that comes from God.’ It’s an interesting verse because it suggests that pride or seeking of the opinions of others, of good opinions of others, keeps us from faith. That when we’re so concerned about what other people think of you, and that’s what it was as a young man, we were so concerned about what other people think of us that then it’s really hard to be concerned about what God thinks of us. And so it that kind of pride and that kind of fear, it prompts a lot of unbelief. And so but to recognize, for me to recognize that I had to, that my unbelief was not a matter of my spiritual, my intellectual prowess or my great wisdom. It was a problem, that my unbelief was in fact the resisting of truth rather than seeking for truth, all of that is so I think for us to be people of the truth, we have to be willing to say about this.
Jana Harmon
01:02:43 – 01:03:08
Yeah, we all struggle with that, don’t we? We all have a form of self deception. And in some ways we don’t want to know the truth about ourselves because it’s hard sometimes to deal with that. I was just reading scripture about how God really desires those who are humble, who are contrite in spirit, who who actually tremble at His Word.
John Taylor
01:03:08 – 01:03:10
Yes, exactly.
Jana Harmon
01:03:10 – 01:03:19
Right, exactly. Coming before him, knowing that he sees us warts and all, but he loves us still.
John Taylor
01:03:19 – 01:03:58
And when you finally do get to that point that you mentioned of humble contrite heart, and it’s very painful, but there’s this tremendous realization that this was the team you intended to be with all along. This was a team that God intended for all humans. This was a way of life that God wanted for his whole creation. And so this is real, it’s authentic and it’s absolutely life changing.
Jana Harmon
01:03:59 – 01:05:18
Yes, it’s a full and a life of flourishing really when you give up your own selfish ambition. Finally, John, I know we’ve had you for a while, but the conversation is just so rich. There are many who have a heart like you to draw others into relationship with God. Of course it’s the Spirit of God that draws them, but because we want for others what, what we have found. And you are about the multiplication business and, you’ve worked in ministry and in missions for decades and you’ve been such a multiplier. And in your own story you had Christians who were there, who cared, who were loving, who were authentic, who were informed and intelligent, could speak with you in substantive ways when you were asking questions or pushing back so many things in your story. How can you advise us as Christians – it probably may have something to do with pride in ourselves – in terms of reaching those who seem somewhat resistant to the idea of God or Jesus.
John Taylor
01:05:18 – 01:07:56
Right. And look, I don’t think there’s one simple answer that fits everybody. I mean the most important thing is to pray because it’s God who acts to in the human heart through His Holy Spirit, the human life. And so that’s the very most important thing. If you know people that you’re trying to reach, whether you want, you have a heart for them to pray, to come to Christ or back to Christ, then I think prayer is the single most important thing to keep loving people, you know, that’s important as well. If you’re showing compassion, show love. And it doesn’t mean that you have to agree with everything. Know that you have to just be kind of nice guy or nice. It’s not a matter of being nice. There’s a matter of learning to love other people and, and have A kind of hospitable heart to those we’re trying to reach. And then, you know, look for those opportunities that God gives to engage in conversation and find ways to show that you are praying for people and look at them. But I don’t think it’s a simple answer because everybody has a different journey. And it depends what the people you’re talking about and what that we’re thinking of in the human minds, what they’ve been through. You might have to find particular answers to particular questions that they have. I tell my students I’ve got to answer every question because I can always say I don’t know. And so sometimes I’ve had to say to people I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’ll try and find out. I think it is so important not to give up, just to keep having phone and to trust God with, with, you know, the person, the people we’re talking about and that he is going to be with them just as he is with you, right? He didn’t force me to follow him. He put the pressure on, sure. He didn’t force me. He’s not going to force them either. But he’s going to work in their lives and their hearts by his Holy Spirit, through the word of God, through the gospel and as being told. But find opportunity to tell them about the gospel.
Jana Harmon
01:07:57 – 01:08:28
That’s yeah. Again, so beautiful. John, this, this conversation, your story has been so rich, so many things that are really beautiful about it. I love the struggle. I love the journey. I love the honesty, the resistance to go away. God, you know, even though he was trying to basically wrap his arms around you and tell you that he loved you and you weren’t ready and he gave you time.
John Taylor
01:08:28 – 01:08:50
I’m very grateful for the opportunity to tell the story and one more time and to and thank you for that because I know that, you know, I do want him to get to recognize that it’s God’s work in my life. Nothing, you know, special about me one little bit. It’s the Lord working in it.
Jana Harmon
01:08:50 – 01:08:59
Yes. Well, we so appreciate your coming on. You’re telling your story. I know that so many people are going to be encouraged by it. So thank you. Thank you so much.
John Taylor
01:09:00 – 01:09:01
You’re welcome. Thank you.
Jana Harmon
01:09:02 – 01:10:15
Thanks for tuning in to X skeptic to hear Dr. John Taylor’s story. To learn more about his work and explore his recommended resources, please be sure to check out our show notes. If you have any questions or feedback about today’s episode we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out via email@infoxsceptic.org if you’re joining us for the first time we’re excited you’ve joined us. Visit us at www.exskeptic.org to explore more than 100 more stories and sign up for our monthly email updates. You can also find us on YouTube where we bring these powerful narratives to life through video. For those who may be skeptics or atheists wanting to connect with one of our former guests to explore your questions, we’re here for you. You can reach us again at our email at info@skeptic.org and we’ll help get you connected. This podcast is part of the CS Lewis Institute Podcast Network. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, we’d appreciate it if you could follow, rate, review and share it with your friends and social network. Your support helps us reach more listeners with these powerful stories of transformation. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next time where we’ll share another unlikely story of belief.
