Trying to get comfortable, I shifted my head on the hard table. “How is this volume?” asked a voice through my earbuds. I made a thumbs-up signal for the technician on the other side of the glass wall.
I exhaled and clutched the remote with the emergency exit button as the table retracted into the narrow MRI tube. I hoped that multiple doses of anxiety medicine would help me fight off a panic attack for the next half hour.
Seven years prior, in 2008, I had graduated from high school and left home for college. At the time, I considered myself a Christian. I was baptized at 14 and attended church on and off through high school, but my faith was nominal and insufficient to weather the storm I was about to create.
In college, I started living by an increasingly self-centered ethic. Whatever was going on—parties, classes, work—I wanted to do it best. I wanted to be the most successful, interesting, and important person in the world. The more self-oriented my life became, the more highly I thought of myself and the more I subscribed to intellectual arguments against the existence of God.
By my early 20s, I was a staunch atheist. I thought I knew God did not exist and thought I saw all the fallacies in Christianity. I ridiculed Christians outwardly on several occasions and inwardly on countless others.
As I pursued personal glorification, my health began to decline. I suffered my first panic attack at 19 years old. It was unlike anything I had ever endured. My heart raced, my face burned, my blood ran ice cold, and the inside of my body tried to rip through my skin.
Part three of three parts; click here to read part twoDocument in hand, Evans moves in for the rhetorical kill: “Here we have a text written in Aramaic from first-century B.C. Jewish Palestine that envisions the coming of a figure, probably a messianic figure, in terms of being called the Son of God and Son of the Most High. Bultmann and other critics said that the Son of God language that shows up in the Gospels was evidence of further reflections outside of Palestine in the Greco-Roman world. It’s not Jewish—it’s reflecting the worship of the Roman emperors as gods and sons of gods. Christianity must have adopted that terminology and now applies it to Jesus, but it really doesn’t come from Jewish soil. Well, when you have a first-century B.C. Jewish text that uses the same language, what does that mean? And it happens to be in Aramaic, which we think was the language of Jesus and his followers.”He cites another example—a phrase from 4Q521, one of the nonbiblical scrolls scholars could not access until the fall of 1991. On a first reading, the phrase seems but a familiar quotation from Isaiah 61, the same Isaiah passage Jesus alludes to when John the Baptist sends a message from prison asking if Jesus is the one who is to come. Jesus replies that the blind see, the lame walk, the poor have good news preached to them, and “the dead are raised.”This last phrase—which Jesus speaks but which significantly does not appear in Isaiah 61—appears in 4Q521, written in Hebrew around 30 B.C. More important, the Qumran phrase is used in the context of explaining the wonders the Messiah will do when he appears—when “heaven and earth will obey his Messiah.”For Evans, 4Q521 demonstrates that Jesus’ answer to John was a messianic one. “That’s what has been disputed in the past. Some have thought here was Jesus’ perfect chance to answer John, saying, ‘Yes, I’m the Messiah’; but he doesn’t do that. Instead, he allusively appeals to Isaiah 61. Is that the best he can do? Well, 4Q521 makes it clear that this appeal to Isaiah 61 is indeed messianic. So, in essence, Jesus is telling John through his messengers that messianic things are happening. So that answers his question: Yes, he is the one who is to come.”If an evangelical arguing that the words Jesus spoke were not completely unique seems an odd approach to defending the historical Jesus, it seems less so when it is understood that the real affront to the gospel accounts over the years has come from scholars discounting the Jewish context of gospel portraits of Jesus and denying that Jesus understood himself to be Israel’s Messiah.Today the consensus from almost all quarters of Bible scholarship is that the Dead Sea Scrolls do, indeed, root the Gospels inextricably within the Jewish tradition. If Bultmann and his ilk decried the Gospel of John as blatantly Greek (Gnostic) and of late origins because of its dualism between light and darkness, Miami University’s Edwin Yamauchi today believes it is “now shown by the Qumran parallels to be the most Jewish of the Gospels.”While none of the scrolls names Jesus or any other New Testament characters, they do shed light on some previously contested passages. For example, New Testament specialists were surprised to find in the scrolls an argument that “the works of the Law … will be reckoned to you as righteousness, in that you have done what is right and good before Him … ” Located in 4QMMT, the phrasing is the same as that found in Galatians, where Paul writes that Abraham’s faith was “reckoned to him as righteousness” (3:6). Paul, in contrast to MMT, insists that “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (2:16).Until MMT became available to the scholarly community in 1991, Paul was considered by many to be making a straw man out of his opponents. What evidence was there in Jewish history that anyone seriously made the case for righteousness by works of the Law? In keeping with his conversion to Christianity, it was claimed, Paul had unfairly caricatured Judaism by arguing against a position that didn’t really exist.“We don’t talk about a straw man any longer,” says Evans. “4QMMT seems to be the very argument that Paul is reflecting. He is definitely debating different aspects of Judaism and how it understood itself.”On occasion, Evans has been called on to debate representatives of the Jesus Seminar. It is an opportunity he relishes, he says, because of the simple fact that his use of the Dead Sea Scrolls allows him to argue from Palestinian manuscripts preceding and overlapping the first century A.D., when the New Testament was composed. The Jesus Seminar, on the other hand, relies chiefly on manuscripts found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, which were composed in the centuries after the New Testament texts had already been written.In one debate with John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar at an annual meeting of the SBL, Evans found that in making the case for the historicity of the trial narrative of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark he “had the overwhelming support of the audience. Crossan was basically shot down.”This reaction from the crowd, Evans believes, reflects a larger moderating force within Bible scholarship, due in large measure to the Dead Sea Scrolls. If the SBL includes a true cross section of 5,500 members of every religious background, the Jesus Seminar by comparison is “this funny, quirky little thing” that “started out with 300 members but now only lists about 75, and that’s inflated since only about 35 are even active. Their numbers are dwindling. But the leadership—Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan and a few others—are movers and shakers. They like to persuade the media that they are cutting edge, that they are out in front of the rest of us. They also like to portray themselves as a very fair representative cross section of Jesus scholars. All that is illusory. And their infatuation with the Gospel of Thomas and other apocryphal gospels is just laughable. In Europe they’re just laughed to scorn. It’s looked upon as a silly American phenomenon.”According to Evans, not only the scrolls but also the growing prominence of evangelical scholarship over the last several decades has changed the landscape of the profession. Seen historically, he says, when the modernists and fundamentalists split in the first half of the century, “the modernists ended up with the seminaries, libraries, and the endowments,” while the conservatives retreated to small, safe Bible colleges.Today, by contrast, a significant portion of members in the profession’s SBL is evangelical. This is especially true in the Historical Jesus section of the SBL, the area in which Evans specializes. Additionally, he notes, “Almost all the chairs of the biblical studies sections at SBL are evangelical.“Nonevangelicals have lost momentum because of a fragmentation of method. They’re into deconstructionism, and nobody can agree on anything. Does the Bible mean anything? Can you find out if the ancient texts mean anything? With authorial intent in question, it’s just fragmenting. In a lot of their seminaries, Bible isn’t even required any longer, and the biblical languages aren’t taught.“The only seminaries that are still growing and healthy, with a few exceptions, are evangelical seminaries. And in terms of biblical studies, who are the guys emerging who take the Bible seriously? They’re predominantly evangelicals. They do their homework, learn the languages, know their critical stuff well, go to Israel and do the digs. They’re doing what the nonevangelicals used to do well 30 or 40 years ago. So we’re taking over, partly through getting better on our part and partly because of the abdication and irresponsibility of the nonevangelicals.”By doing their homework with the Dead Sea Scrolls as their textbooks, Evans, Abegg, and Flint hope to do their part in shaping the modern history and interpretation of the scrolls and, indirectly, that of the Bible. “The scrolls don’t prove that the Gospels always have it right,” says Evans. “The scrolls don’t prove certain theological things like inerrancy. What they do is tend to corroborate and support what I would regard as responsible exegesis that interprets Scripture in the Jewish context, and it tends to run against the sensationalizing of the Jesus Seminar and others who want to drag Jesus into a different environment and say he was only a Cynic philosopher.”Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls 50 years ago, few believed any Palestinian manuscripts from the time of Jesus had survived. Today some archaeologists point to the possibility of even more scrolls being uncovered—literally—when the next big earthquake in the region loosens rocks and exposes hidden caves. For now, though, the scholars at the Seal Kap are more than content studying the scrolls they do have. By scrutinizing each jot and tittle, they are gaining new glimpses into first-century Palestine, a world ready and waiting for Messiah.Copyright © 1997 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.It is difficult to describe how desperate, overwhelmed, and irrational I felt during panic attacks. I remember one that came inside a minivan breezing down the highway. In that moment, I thought I would have been safer throwing myself from the moving vehicle.
As my panic attacks became more frequent and less predictable, an ever-present anxiety took hold of my life, and my physical health deteriorated further. My throat felt swollen to the point where I worried about breathing. My hands, feet, and face alternated between tingling, burning, and going numb. Muscles began twitching involuntarily. My legs buzzed so badly when I was trying to sleep that I would walk on my apartment complex’s treadmill in the middle of the night. My testosterone plummeted, my lymph nodes swelled to alarming proportions, and I broke out in shingles.
By my final semester of law school in 2015, I was terrified, desperate for relief and answers, bouncing from doctor to doctor and self-medicating to make it through life. When I finally got my MRI, the imaging came back clean—yet another inconclusive test that left the doctors guessing.
That May, I graduated and began studying for the bar exam. I took the summer off from work and adopted a rigid schedule of studying, exercise, and sleep. The regimented lifestyle kept me preoccupied, and I found some relief—but only temporarily. During the three-month wait for my exam results, anxiety retook control.
I fixed my hope on two things: passing the bar exam and proposing to my girlfriend, Hannah. A few months later, within an eight-day stretch, both went as planned. I was thrilled but also deeply concerned. My anxiety had not improved, and a new fear crept in: The two dreams that dominated my life had come to fruition, and if those hadn’t brought peace, then what could? I began despairing that I was incapable of fulfillment.
Then something strange happened.
Before our wedding, Hannah and I lived downtown at the epicenter of urban revitalization in San Antonio. Countless times, as we browsed nearby restaurants, coffee shops, and a farmers’ market, we passed a small building labeled “Pearl Street Church.” Every Sunday, smiling people lined up outside, covering the sidewalk and spilling over the bike lanes into the street.
One day, I suggested to Hannah that we should attend the church. I had no intention of believing in anything. I anticipated emotion-evoking music and a social-club vibe. I also suspected Hannah wanted to attend church, and if I went with her, it would boost my respectability as a future husband.
We attended our first 6 p.m. service sometime in late 2015 or early 2016. When we entered the building, I steered us to the least crowded section in the back, but I could not hide. Numerous people came up and greeted us in the minutes before the service, and the lead pastor welcomed us with an enthusiastic smile. When he walked onstage to deliver the message, I was skeptical, guarded, and ready to shred him in my mind. But he shocked me.
His sermon explored Genesis 22, in which God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son. This was one of the Bible stories I would cite as an atheist to debunk the faith and ridicule Christians. “Why would a supposedly loving God demand that someone kill his child as part of a test?” I would ask.
But that evening, as the pastor spoke, my eyes were opened. God’s instruction to Abraham was not a pointless or sadistic test; it prophetically foreshadowed the work of Jesus. It was God’s way of showing the inestimably high price he would pay for our salvation. And in the end, God did not require Abraham to pay that price but chose instead to pay it himself.
Leaving the church that evening, I knew my intellectual arguments against God and the Bible were not as ironclad as I had imagined. I was still an atheist—or at least highly skeptical. But the gospel the pastor preached was not the straw-man religion I had grown accustomed to attacking. It was something else, something I did not understand, something that left an ineffable impression of truth upon me. I needed to learn more.
Over the next few months, I read through the New Testament and several apologetics books, and Hannah and I attended the same church service each Sunday. All the while, anxiety continued to plague me, and I felt myself approaching a breaking point.
It came in April 2016, about four months after we had started attending church. It was 2 a.m., and I was having another sleepless night. I got out of bed and spread my yoga mat on our living room floor. I tried to stretch the buzzing and twitching out of my legs, but there was no improvement. After several minutes, I gave up and fell face down on my mat.
I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted. I was tired of trying and failing to carry the overwhelming burden of my own expectations. I was tired of the parade of physical ailments and the cold flood of anxiety. I was tired of fear and, most of all, tired of being tired. In that moment, face down on my yoga mat in the middle of the night, I was prostrate in every sense of the word.
Then, for the first time in years, I prayed. I prayed the only words I could think of: “Thy will be done.” I prayed those words over and over until I found the energy to pray in more detail. I even prayed that if God willed for me to die, then his will be done.
Everything changed that night. Philippians 4:6–7, which I encountered months later, captures the shift:
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (NLT)
The peace of God changed my life. It gave me power over anxiety and fear, and my body began to heal as joy and hope replaced depression and despair. Three years later, my father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer at 55. Had this happened when I was an atheist, it would have destroyed me. But I was armored with God’s peace, and God provided the courage I needed to support my father and encourage him with the Good News.
Kyle Zunker is the author of Amazing Courage: Letters to My Father on Conquering Fear through Faith and a blog dedicated to helping people understand faith.
