The Question of God

Special Interview with Sean Nelson, Legal Counsel, Global Religious Freedom, ADF International

Roots—the Underlying Beliefs

Growing up in Florida I was raised a Christian. I lost my faith shortly after moving to Los Angeles for college, from a mix of not being able to find a suitable church and being introduced to all sorts of new and mostly radical ideas in classes and from classmates. So I fairly quickly became an atheist and quite a Leftist, even doing activism and fundraising work for Left and Liberal causes towards the end of college and for a short while afterward. 

During graduate school in Irvine, California, I moderated politically a bit because of some of my reading, particularly being impressed by Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, but it wasn’t until my second year of law school at Harvard, of all places, that I found my faith again, and it seemed to me, very suddenly. This would’ve been about nine years after I had first lost my faith.

During all this time as an atheist, I never had much angst with religion per se. I had some friends who were Christians, and I always respected them and continued to think of Jesus as a great man, but I just thought they were ultimately wrong, and that God, while an idea that had produced great thought and works of art, was not necessary to explain the world or live a worthwhile life. I refused to be an agnostic because I did not like fence-sitting.

Sprouts—the Beginning of an Awakening

For various personal reasons, I decided in the second semester of my second year of law school that I really wanted to take time to re-appraise things in my life and ‘work on myself.’ I used to have frequent and long philosophical conversations late into the night with my housemates, and one conversation began to have a strong effect on me. I have always been highly interested in the idea of beauty and aesthetics. I had studied English and Art History at the undergraduate and graduate level, and worked in art galleries, film sets, and performing arts centers to pay the rent, before heading to law school.

What became concerning to me in those conversations was my sense that I valued beauty greatly, but that for quite a long time now, beauty had become of very little importance in the world of the arts and literature, and was even held in suspicion. It seemed to me that previous generations had been able to create great works of art because they believed that beauty had some important and inherent positive power.

And so, I thought, isn’t it odd that beauty seems to point, in however foggy of a way, to some sense of greater truth, and doesn’t this seem evident in the great works of art and literature throughout history? There doesn’t seem to be a naturalistic explanation for that—at least, I couldn’t come up with one—and so I thought that would imply some kind of non-naturalistic or supernaturalistic explanation, some kind of teleology, or orientation of beauty towards truth. Which would raise the question, who or what would direct that sense within us? The obvious answer would be God. So I had a rather disturbing inkling that I could not continue to believe in the importance of beauty in the world without presupposing a God who created the importance of beauty.

Branches—A Search for More

To find the best arguments for God, I looked for some recommended books online and read G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. It ended up flooring me. The book wonderfully explained the limitations of a purely ‘rationalistic’ way of thinking and it convinced me that Christianity gave the best explanation of the seeming paradoxes of life. The things that I valued deeply—self-giving love, reason, moral thinking, free will—made no sense, like beauty, without a God who had created those things for man and directed them for his ultimate good.

So now I found that I had far many more grounds on which to challenge my atheistic beliefs. One of the blessings I think I’ve had from God is that I’ve always been very concerned with ascertaining the truth of anything I was interested in, and living by that truth. And so I had a very clear choice to make. I could recognize that I had been wrong for these past nine years, and live in accordance with the Christian faith, which would mean changing quite a lot in my life. Or I could ignore what seemed abundantly clear to me at that moment, and continue to live my life as I had been, knowing that I was deliberately living a lie and in sin. And so two weeks after reading the book, I prayed one night for the first time in nine years. I asked God to forgive me for my unbelief and help me live how I should.

The following Sunday, I went to church. I did not know much about denominational particulars, so I went to the only church in Boston I was familiar with, which was Emmanuel Episcopal Church, since I had attended classical musical performances there. They had open communion, so I took communion that Sunday, and had a very strong sense, almost like a vision, at the time that what was most important was the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. 

Fruits—Finding Joy in the Catholic Church

I began to consider different denominations over the next few months. I wanted to be part of a church that had the Real Presence in the Eucharist and orthodox social teachings so I started to seriously consider Catholicism. What impressed me most was the consistency of Catholicism’s teachings through the ages, from its teachings on the Eucharist to its pro-life witness and teachings on the family.

My major hang-up was with the idea of the papacy, but I began to see my issues with it as being largely drawn from pre-existing prejudices. When I came to view it along the lines Saint John Henry Newman had, as a visible guarantor and sign of the consistency and unity of the Catholic Church from the Church Fathers on down through the ages, I overcame those difficulties. I decided it didn’t make sense to try to find a church that was Catholic except for the Pope, so I made a firm decision to become Catholic at the end of that summer in 2015.

I entered the RCIA program at St. Paul’s in Harvard Square that fall. During this time, I developed an interest in religious freedom and worked as a research assistant on religious freedom issues for one of my professors. On the Easter Vigil of 2016,  I was confirmed and entered the Catholic Church. Because Saint Thomas Aquinas’s writings gave me the most convincing answers to all my questions, I ended up taking Thomas as my confirmation name. 

I moved back to Los Angeles after graduation to start working at a large litigation firm. My wife and I were married the following year in 2017. Shortly after, I began to have a strong sense that, while I enjoyed my work at the firm, I wanted to use my life and vocation for a greater mission. That’s how I started working for international religious freedom in 2018 and moving to the Washington, D.C., area. 

One of the things that I love the most about my current work is seeing the incredible faith of people who are facing some of the worst persecution imaginable, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Asia. It is a blessing to know and help these people, who are true heroes and Saints, and who give witness to the Gospel under the most difficult circumstances. I pray that I might always have the faith in Christ that they do.