False Religion

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed in March 2024 after being struck by a container ship. Six people were killed.

n 1991, Maryland was among the states that helped develop a test to evaluate bridges for the likelihood of collapse if they were to be struck by a ship. The risks varied according to a number of factors, including the speed of the vessels passing underneath, the depth of the water, the geometry of the bridge and what systems were in place to protect a bridge’s support structures.

Even as the vessel traffic crossing under the Key Bridge grew over the years in size and volume, increasing the bridge’s vulnerability, Maryland transportation officials never conducted such a risk assessment. An assessment by federal officials after the collapse revealed that the bridge’s risk level was almost 30 times the recommended threshold. Given that Maryland officials helped developed the test, one official said, “there’s no excuse.”

But many other states have not conducted risk or vulnerability assessments on their bridges. Investigators found that dozens of bridges in 19 states had not been assessed for risk of collapse in recent years, even though the volume of vessel traffic passing underneath these bridges suggested a strike by a ship was a distinct possibility. The National Transportation Safety Board has contacted the operators of these bridges — in most cases, state transportation departments and regional port authorities — to urge them to conduct assessments and, if needed, come up with measures to reduce the risk of collapse.

Almost half of Americans (48%) believe that the rise of artificial intelligence has made them less “scam-savvy” than ever before. With AI working its way into education, finance, and even science, a new survey finds people admitting they can’t tell what’s real anymore.

The poll of U.S. adults revealed that only 18% feel “very confident” in their ability to identify a scam before falling victim to it. As the United States enters a new era of tech, AI is continuing to blur the line between reality and an artificial world.

One in three even admits that it would be difficult for them to identify a potential scam if the scammer was trying to impersonate someone they personally know. Between creating fake news, robo-callers with realistic voices, and sending texts from familiar phone numbers, the possibility and probability of falling victim to a scam may cause anxiety for many Americans.

This may be because 34% of respondents have fallen victim to a scam in one way or another over the years. For others, the sting is still fresh. According to the results, 40% of people have been impacted within the last year — with 8% indicating it was as recent as last month.

BOSS Revolution VP Jessica Poverene said in a statement, “As AI technology advances, so do the tactics of scammers who exploit it. It’s crucial for consumers to stay vigilant.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The question “Can You Spot an AI Scam?” can apply to Christians with a slight change. The question becomes, “Can You Spot a Doctrinal Scam?” In this age of deception, there are many false doctrines being spread by false teachers and it is important to be informed and vigilant. “But evil people and impostors will flourish. They will deceive others and will themselves be deceived.” (2 Tim. 3:13)

In a 2024 interview the actress Julia Fox was asked, “Do you meditate or journal or otherwise practice mindfulness?” She replied:

I don’t, but I do pray. When I was little, I [prayed to] Jesus Christ. Now I pray to the universe, the collective consciousness, the karmic force behind everything. I used to pray for things that I really wanted. Now I pray to be guided, stay on the right path, for strength, for positivity. But then I also definitely do pray for things I want, too.

Anthony Levandowski makes an unlikely prophet. Dressed in Silicon Valley-casual jeans, the engineer known for self-driving cars, is laying the foundations for a new religion. Artificial intelligence has already inspired billion-dollar companies, far-reaching research programs, and scenarios of both transcendence and doom. Now Levandowski is creating its first church.

Levandowski created the first Church of Artificial Intelligence called Way of the Future. It was founded in 2015 but shut its doors a few years later. Now the recently rebooted church, which shares the original’s name, now has “a couple thousand people” coming together to build a spiritual connection between humans and AI, its founder said.

Papers filed with the Internal Revenue Service in May of 2015 name tech entrepreneur and self-driving car pioneer, Anthony Levandowski, as the leader of the new religion. The documents state that WOTF’s activities will focus on “the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software.”

“What is going to be created will effectively be a god,” Levandowski said in an interview with Wired magazine. “It’s not a god in the sense that it makes lightning or causes hurricanes. But if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else are you going to call it?”

But WOTF differs in one key way to established churches, says Levandowski: “There are many ways people think of God, and thousands of flavors of Christianity, Judaism, Islam … but they’re always looking at something that’s not measurable or you can’t really see or control. This time it’s different. This time you will be able to talk to God, literally, and know that it’s listening.”

Levandowski said he’s rebooting his AI church in a renewed attempt at creating a religious movement focused on the worship and understanding of artificial intelligence.

He said that sophisticated AI systems could help guide humans on moral, ethical, or existential questions that are normally sought out in religions. “Here we're actually creating things that can see everything, be everywhere, know everything, and maybe help us and guide us in a way that normally you would call God,” he said.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This has always been the conceit of those who try to replace the true God with man-made “gods.” Humans wants a visible god, a god they can control, and a god that they can know is listening. True biblical religion is based on an eternal God who sees everything, is everywhere, knows everything, and who hears all of our prayers. But he can only be approached through faith in his Son (Heb. 11:6; John 14:6; Heb. 4:15-16) who provides access and fellowship with our Father (1 John 1:1-5).

In Buddhist Japan, they now have robot priests. Mindar is a robo-priest which has been working at a temple in Kyoto for the last few years, reciting Buddhist sutras with which it has been programmed. The next step, says monk Tensho Goto, an excitable champion of the digital dharma, is to fit it with an AI system so that it can have real conversations, and offer spiritual advice. Goto is especially excited about the fact that Mindar is “immortal.” This means, he says, that it will be able to pass on the tradition in the future better than him.

Meanwhile, over in China, Xian’er is a touchscreen “robo-monk” who works in a temple near Beijing, spreading “kindness, compassion and wisdom to others through the internet and new media.”

In India, the Hindus are joining in, handing over duties in one of their major ceremonies to a robot arm, which performs in place of a priest.

In a Catholic church in Warsaw, Poland, sits SanTO, an AI robot which looks like a statue of a saint, and is “designed to help people pray” by offering Bible quotes in response to questions.

Not to be outdone, a protestant church in Germany has developed a robot called BlessU-2. BlessU-2, which looks like a character designed by Aardman Animations, can “forgive your sins in five different languages,” which must be handy if they’re too embarrassing to confess to a human.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Computer scientists and programmers pursue their goal of creating their own god from AI. They seek wisdom and guidance apart from the true source. “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2:13)

Formerly the Religion Editor for the Atlantic, Sigal Samuel now writes about the future of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience, and their "staggering ethical implications." She describes much of the hope for artificial intelligence as mimicking what Christianity and other major religions have been espousing for centuries. She writes:

Suppose I told you that in 10 years … you will live in a sort of paradise. You won’t get sick, or age, or die. Eternal life will be yours! Even better, your mind will be blissfully free of uncertainty — you’ll have access to perfect knowledge. Oh, and you’ll no longer be stuck on Earth. Instead, you can live up in the heavens.

The more you listen to Silicon Valley’s discourse around AI, the more you hear echoes of religion. That’s because a lot of the excitement about building a superintelligent machine comes down to recycled religious ideas. Most secular technologists who are building AI just don’t recognize that.

These technologists propose cheating death by uploading our minds to the cloud, where we can live digitally for all eternity. They talk about AI as a decision-making agent that can judge with mathematical certainty what’s optimal and what’s not. (It is) an endeavor that guarantees human salvation if it goes well, even as it spells doom if it goes badly.

Jack Clark, co-founder of the AI safety company Anthropic, recently wrote: “Sometimes I think a lot of the breathless enthusiasm for AGI is misplaced religious impulses from people brought up in a secular culture.”

Sigal Samuel summarizes the beliefs in this nutshell: "When we put all these ideas together and boil them down, we get this basic proposition:

• We may not have much time until life as we know it is over.
• So, we need to place a bet on something that can save us.
• Since the stakes are so high, we should ante up and go all in on our bet.

Silicon Valley’s vision for AI? It’s religion, repackaged

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, best-selling author and Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan thinks back to how promising and exciting the advent of the internet and artificial intelligence was expected to be. Things aren't looking so well today. She writes:

But a small, funny detail always gave me pause and stayed with me. It was that from the beginning of the age its great symbol was the icon of what was becoming its greatest company, Apple. It was the boldly drawn apple with the bite taken out. Which made me think of Adam and Eve in the garden, Adam and Eve and the fall, at the beginning of the world. God told them not to eat the fruit of the tree, but the serpent told Eve no harm would come if she did, that she’d become like God, knowing all. That’s why he doesn’t want you to have it, the serpent said: You’ll be his equal. So she took the fruit and ate, she gave to Adam who also ate, and the eyes of both were opened, and for the first time they knew shame. When God rebuked them, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent. They were banished from the garden into the broken world we inhabit.

A.I. tech workers are stealthily taking a bite out of the apple:

I believe those creating, fueling, and funding it want, possibly unconsciously, to be God and on some level think they are God. The latest warning, and a thoughtful, sophisticated one it is, underscores this point in its language. The tech and AI investor Ian Hogarth wrote that a future AI, which he called “God-like AI,” could lead to the “obsolescence or destruction of the human race” if it isn’t regulated. He observes that most of those currently working in the field understand that risk. People haven’t been sufficiently warned. His colleagues are being “pulled along by the rapidity of progress.”

The alleged prophet Nostradamus is more popular than ever in these troubled times. Books about him and his prophecies are high on the best seller lists even today. His predictions are fraudulent not because they contradict Scripture, but by pure logical reasoning.

The British daily paper the Guardian recently exposed the prophet's devious methods. The reader can read into Nostradamus' vague words whatever he or she wants:

Circumlocution and evasion of directness play a large part. He usually waffled in his astrological datings, since conjunctions are repeated. He invoked obscure Latin words to create possibilities of double meanings; he omitted prepositions, articles, reflexives, and connectives, and favored the infinitive as a timeless, personless form that can be read many ways.

Nostradamus has the virtue of vagueness combined with apocalyptic fervor. That’s not unusual. Many sayers of sooth, from Merlin and Geoffrey of Monmouth onwards, have done the same. This vagueness lends itself to what we now know as confirmation bias. In desperate times, soothsayers have a ready audience for their insane nonsense. It’s the meeting point of cynicism and gullibility.

When life seems chaotic and the future uncertain, people look for patterns, narratives and meaning. At moments of great change or social anxiety we do tend to go looking for explanations. We want the past and the future to make narrative sense.

Anna LeBaron grew up in a violent, polygamist cult—a radical off-shoot of the modern-day Mormon church. The leader was her father, Ervil LaBaron, and he demanded total allegiance. He commanded followers to carry out mob-style hits on those who opposed him or fled his cult. Media outlets nicknamed him “the Mormon [Charles] Manson” for the atrocities he committed, and authorities in multiple states (and Mexico) issued arrest warrants for him.

Anna and her family moved often, living in constant fear of getting caught. The FBI and Mexican police would raid their home, looking for her father and the others who had carried out his orders. Anna writes:

We experienced poverty of mind, spirit, and body. One man cannot support 13 wives and over 50 children. Everyone, even young children, worked long hours in grueling conditions to ensure we didn’t starve. Even so, we regularly scavenged—or stole—to meet basic food and clothing needs. We were never allowed to make friends with anyone outside the cult. Eventually my father was taken into custody by the FBI agents, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in a Utah prison.

Even though I grew up in a religious group that claimed to believe the Bible, I had no idea who Jesus was. When anyone in our tight-knit community spoke the name of Jesus or mentioned Christianity, they did so with contempt and derision. But God had his eye on me even then.

My older brother Ed, who lived in Houston, wanted a better life for us. After my father’s imprisonment he showed up in Denver with a U-Haul truck. After about a year the phone rang and the caller reported that my father had been found dead in his prison cell. I was shocked, but I found it difficult to mourn as a normal child would.

After hearing the news, her mother decided to move back to Denver and the chaos of the cult. Anna called Lillian, an older sister who had married and had begun distancing herself from the cult. She told her, “Start walking.” Anna walked out of the house with just the clothes on her back. Her sister hid Anna in a hotel for three days while her mother looked for her that night. When she couldn’t find her, she drove her siblings back to Denver.

I (Anna) moved in with Lillian, her husband, Mark, and their six children. They enrolled me in a Christian school. Several students there showed me love and acceptance quite different from anything I’d ever experienced. I could tell they had something inside them that I was missing and desperately needed. I learned about the Good News of God’s love for me. I learned how Jesus, God’s Son, was sent to earth to die on the cross for my sin. I learned that Jesus lived, was crucified, and was raised from the dead.

My sister allowed me to go on a retreat with the church youth group. The youth pastor gave me the opportunity to ask Jesus to come into my life and change me. That night, God took the broken heart of a 13-year-old girl in his hands, and since then he has been gradually restoring the wholeness that my chaotic childhood smashed to pieces.

My faith has carried me through the dark valleys and has helped me persevere through intense fear, tragedy, and multiple murders of people I love. As a child, I knew myself only as the polygamist’s daughter. But when I came to truly know God as my father, he shattered the evil grip my earthly father had on my life. I began to find my identity as a daughter of God and learned to experience true freedom in and through Jesus Christ alone.

In an article written by Neil McArthur at the University of Manitoba, he said:

We are about to witness the birth of a new kind of religion. In the next few years, or even months, we will see the emergence of sects devoted to the worship of artificial intelligence (AI). The latest generation of AI-powered chatbots have left their early users awestruck —and sometimes terrified — by their power. These are the same sublime emotions that lie at the heart of our experience of the divine.

People already seek religious meaning from very diverse sources. For instance, there are multiple religions that worship extra-terrestrials. As these chatbots come to be used by billions of people, it is inevitable that some of these users will see the AIs as higher beings. There are several pathways by which AI religions will emerge:

First, some people will come to see AI as a higher power. Generative AI that can create new content possesses several characteristics that are often associated with divine beings:

1. It displays a level of intelligence that goes beyond that of most humans. Indeed, its knowledge appears limitless.

2. It is capable of great feats of creativity. It can write poetry, compose music, and generate art.

3. It is removed from normal human concerns and needs. It does not suffer physical pain, hunger, or sexual desire.

4. It can offer guidance to people in their daily lives.

5. It is immortal.

Second, generative AI will produce output that can be taken for religious doctrine. It will provide answers to metaphysical and theological questions, and engage in the construction of complex worldviews.

Third, generative AI itself may ask to be worshipped or may actively solicit followers. We have already seen such cases, like when the chatbot used by the search engine Bing tried to convince a user to fall in love with it.

Finally, AI worship poses several notable risks. The chatbots may ask their followers to do dangerous or destructive things, or followers may interpret their statements as calls to do such things.

Possible Preaching Angle:

False Religion; Idols; Idolatry; Technology – Since the Garden of Eden humans have been vulnerable to being lured away from worship of the true God. The sad history of mankind is filled with the creation and worship of idols made by human hands.

In the horror of 9/11, Charles H. Featherstone turned from Islam to Christianity. In an issue of Christianity Today he shared his story:

Although both of his parents were raised as Lutherans, his mother never had much use for religion, and his father lost his faith in God in the jungles of South Vietnam. When his father left the army, the family settled down in Southern California where Charles attended school. He writes:

I had been on the receiving end of my father’s intense but sporadic violence for years. I learned to both fear and hate him. School quickly became unsafe as well: I was bullied, terrorized, and abused regularly. There was no one to trust. I was frightened, incredibly alone, and increasingly angry. Would anyone ever love and value me?

Searching for something to do with his life he began studying journalism at San Francisco State University. Charles said: “That’s where I found Islam. A friend introduced me to the Qur’an, and I was entranced by its words. The Muslims who first taught me welcomed me as no one else had before.”

But Islam also provided religious and political fuel for his anger. At one mosque he fell in with a group of jihadis. They discussed the texts of revolutionary Islam. One brother went to fight in Bosnia, and Charles wanted to join him. But there was Jennifer, whom he’d met at San Francisco State. There would be no one to care for her. He said, “I belonged to her, and she to me. This was a turning point. The anger that had burned in my soul was beginning to burn itself out.”

He started a journalistic career which eventually took him to offices in Lower Manhattan, right across from the World Trade Center. He was there on the morning of September, 11, 2001.

In the chaos and terror of the streets below, as I looked up at the burning twin towers and watched people tumble to their deaths, life-changing words came to me—words I suddenly heard inside my head: “My love is all that matters, and this is who I am.” I knew then that everything I understood about God, about sin and redemption, about the whole human condition, had changed. What happened was the kind of divine intervention that drove Abraham to leave home, trusting in God’s promises. The kind of force that struck Saul blind on the road to Damascus.

Charles and Jennifer began attending a church in Virginia.

The people showed me that it was the risen Jesus Christ who had spoken to me. They taught me the gospel, proclaiming the forgiveness of sins for the entire world. This is who I had met that horrible day in September. It was Jesus Christ who, in the midst of terror and death, assured me that his love is all that matters.

I belong to Jesus. He saw me and told me to follow. I left everything and obeyed. So, I trust God. For the first time in my life, I know who I am. I know whose I am. And that is all that matters.

Editor’s Note: Charles H. Featherstone is the author of The Love That Matters: Meeting Jesus in the Midst of Terror and Death .

A Lutheran church has stood at 400 S Logan Street in Denver since the early 1900s, but as of recently it has become unoccupied. In April of 2017, the church was reopened as a place of worship for the followers of a brand-new religion: “Elevationism,” dedicated to the spiritual benefits of cannabis.

It’s only fitting that the home of the International Church of Cannabis is in Denver, a city that is literally a mile high. The church’s overgrown, antiquated exterior is in striking contrast with its flamboyant technicolor interior, complete with a huge “WEED” sign, rows of pews to smoke on, and a neon rainbow mural on the ceiling.

Elevationism does not have any specific dogma, nor does it require conversion from other religions, so long as its adherents recognize cannabis as a sacrament.

The church was opened on April 20 (420 is a popular code for marijuana) and recently launched BEYOND, a fully immersive, meditative experience with projection mapping, laser lights, and sound. BEYOND begins with a nine-minute guided meditation and contemplative journey through the wisdom of the ages, followed by a 25-minute psychedelic light show set to your favorite classic rock songs.

The Ganges River is one of the world’s largest fresh water outlets, after the Amazon and the Congo. The headwaters emerge from a glacier high in the western Himalayas, and then drops down steep mountain canyons to India’s fertile northern plain. Just after it merges with the Brahmaputra, the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal. It supports more than a quarter of India’s 1.4 billion people, all of Nepal, and part of Bangladesh.

But sadly, the Ganges has also long been one of the world’s most polluted rivers. The river is befouled by poisonous bi-products from hundreds of factories and towns. Arsenic, chromium, and mercury combine with the hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage that flow into the river on a daily basis.

But despite countless studies and evidence proving the river's polluted state, environmentalists have gained little traction in cleaning up the river. Why?

The Ganges River is a sacred waterway worshipped by a billion Hindus as Mother Ganga, a living goddess with power to purify the soul, and to cleanse itself. A recent article in National Geographic explains: “There is this belief that the river can clean itself. If the river can clean itself, then why should we have to worry about it? Many people say the river cannot be polluted; it can go on forever.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

False gods are capable of cleaning neither themselves or their worshippers. Only Jesus can purify the pollution of the human heart.

As recently as five years ago, author and speaker Doreen Virtue was the world’s top-selling New Age author. She enjoyed a phenomenally lucrative lifestyle, living on a 50-acre ranch in Hawaii. Her publisher treated her like a rock star, flying her and her husband first class to give sold-out workshops across the globe. She rubbed elbows with celebrities.

Virtue described her life and teaching this way:

New Agers often view Christianity as having dogmatic rules, but they have their own rigid standards about what an “enlightened person” must and mustn’t do. During my 20 years as a New Age teacher, I promoted techniques like “positive affirmations,” believing and teaching that “your words create your reality.” We held up our wealth and fame as evidence that our principles were true and effective. Yet despite this worldly success, we were unrepentant sinners with lives marred by divorces and addictions. Having sold-out workshops, standing ovations, adoring fans, and celebrity friends gave us swollen egos. I remember believing my every thought was a message or a sign from God or his angels.

In January 2015, she was driving along a Hawaiian road while listening to the Scottish-born pastor Alistair Begg. It was a sermon called “Itching Ears” taken from 2 Timothy 4, where the Apostle Paul writes that in the end times, people will want their itching ears tickled by false teachers who offer false hope (v. 3).

I could tell he was describing people just like me. God used Begg’s sermon to convict me for the first time in my life. His words pierced my stony heart, and I felt ashamed of my false teachings. Then when I read Deuteronomy 18:10–12, I encountered a list of sinful activities that included several I was practicing, such as divination, interpreting signs and omens, and mediumship. I was broken, deeply shamed, and humbled. I dropped to my knees in shame and sorrow. “I’m so sorry, God!” I kept wailing in repentance. “I didn’t know!” On that very day I gave my life to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

The decision had far-reaching consequences. Doreen and her husband left their fancy Hawaii home. Her New Age publisher ended their professional partnership. New Agers treated her as an object of scorn.

Having to admit that I was wrong to the entire world—my books were published in 38 languages—has been deeply humbling. Even so, I needed that humility to better learn how to lean upon God. After seeking but never finding peace in New Age, I have finally found it in Christ.

When Marquis Boone first heard the gospel song “Biblical Love” by J.C., he listened to it five times in a row. “This is crazy,” he said to himself. What amazed him was not the song, but the artist. The person singing “Biblical Love” was not a person at all.

J.C. is an artificial intelligence (AI) that Boone and his team created with computer algorithms. Boone said his interest in creating a Christian AI musician began when he started hearing about AI artists in the pop music genre. He said, “I really just started thinking this is where the world is going and I’m pretty sure that the gospel/Christian genre is going to be behind.”

Christians, he said, are too slow to adopt new styles, new technologies, and new forms of entertainment—always looking like late imitators. For him, it would be an evangelistic failure not to create Christian AI music. Boone said, “If we don’t want to grow with technology or we don’t want to grow with this. I think we’re going to miss a whole generation.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

What is the nature of worship music? Should we be singing songs written by AI to praise God? Matt Brouwer, a Canadian Christian singer-songwriter with four original top-20 hits, said that the more he thought about it, the more strongly he disliked the idea. He said:

If ever there was a desperate need for a human connection and a moment when the world is longing to unplug from technology, social media and Zoom calls, it’s now. Christian music should be an invitation to join a faith journey. That invitation means more when it comes from someone who’s already on that road. The idea of opting for a nonhuman machine to produce pop Christian hits instead of engaging with true worshiping hearts and young people who need encouragement to pursue what God is leading them to, is pretty grim.

LifeWay Research and Ligonier Ministries have once again examined the theological awareness, or lack thereof, of American evangelicals. This time, instead of defining “evangelical” by whether participants identify as such, they used a definition endorsed by the National Association of Evangelicals. Below are the areas where believers have most gone astray in their theology:

People have the ability to turn to God on their own initiative. 82% Agree

Individuals must contribute to their own salvation. 74% Agree

Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God. 71% Agree

God knows all that happens, but doesn’t determine all that happens. 65% Agree

The Holy Spirit is a force, not a personal being. 56% Agree

God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 48% Agree

My good deeds help to earn my place in heaven. 39% Agree

God will always reward faith with material blessings. 37% Agree

In an issue of CT magazine, Kim Phuc Phan Thi shares how a napalm attack in Vietnam scarred her body, but it also led her to Christ.

You have seen my picture a thousand times. I am nine years old, running along a puddled roadway, arms outstretched, naked, shrieking in pain and fear, the dark contour of a napalm cloud billowing in the distance. Those bombs have brought me immeasurable pain. The emotional and spiritual pain was even harder to endure.

As a child, she was raised in the religion of Cao Dai (pronounced cow-die). For years, she prayed to the gods of Cao Dai for healing and peace. But when her prayers went unanswered, it became clear that either they were nonexistent or did not care about her.

One day in 1982, in Saigon’s central library she opened the New Testament. As she read through the Gospels, at least two themes became abundantly clear. The first was that although Cao Dai said there were many gods, Jesus made a straightforward claim: “I am the way you get to God; there is no other way but me” (John 14:6). Second, Jesus had suffered in defense of his claim. He had been mocked, tortured, and killed. Why would he endure these things, she wondered, if he were not God?

I had never been exposed to this side of Jesus—the wounded one, the one who bore scars. I came to believe that he really was who he said he was. And most important to me, he really would do all that he had promised in his Word. Perhaps he could help me make sense of my pain and at last come to terms with my scars.

My salvation experience happened on Christmas Eve. It was 1982, and I was attending a special worship service at a small church in Saigon. How desperately I needed peace, love, and joy. I had so much hatred in my heart. I wanted this Jesus. So, I made my way to the front of the sanctuary to say yes to Jesus Christ. I experienced the kind of healing that can only come from God. I was finally at peace.

Nearly half a century has passed since I found myself running—frightened, naked, and in pain— down that road in Vietnam. I will never forget the horrors of that day. (But) my faith in Jesus has enabled me to forgive those who have hurt and scarred me. Today, I thank God for everything—even for that road. Especially for that road.

In an issue of CT magazine, Lisa Brockman shares her testimony of leaving the Mormon Church and became a born-again Christian:

As a sixth-generation Mormon girl, I believed that the Mormon Church was the one true church of God. I believed Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. By age six, I was convinced that having a temple marriage and faithfully obeying Mormon laws would qualify me to spend eternity in the highest heaven—the Celestial Kingdom. There, I would exalt into godhood and bear spirit children. This was my greatest dream.

But there were temptations to resist. Throughout high school, Mormon friends of mine began drifting into the world of partying. Alcohol seemed to release them from the striving and shame that comes with performance-based love. For three years I resisted, feeling like a pressure cooker of unworthiness waiting to explode. As a senior, I gave up resisting, I jumped into the party world with the same passion I brought to the rest of my life, funneling beer without restraint.

Yet even as I felt liberated from Mormon legalism, I didn’t waver from believing that the Mormon church was God’s true church. During my freshman year at the University of Utah, I met Gary. Gary told me he was a born-again Christian—I’d never heard of one. For the first month of our relationship we avoided the subject. Then, on a wintry December day, Gary cracked open the door of this conversation.

Gary asked, “How do you know Mormonism is true?” I had never heard this question before. He continued, “Have you looked into the historicity of Mormonism? How do you know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God? How do you know the Book of Mormon is God’s Word?” More questions that had never crossed my mind. Within minutes, my unease turned into terror. What had felt like a firm foundation was dissolving into quicksand.

Nevertheless, our affection for each other was growing, and we knew this lingering division needed to be addressed. So we agreed to study the Bible together. It only took one Bible study to send me into a tailspin. I was shocked to find several crucial disparities between biblical and Mormon teachings. For five months I battled with Gary and the Bible, defending Mormonism with passion. But my fortress began to crumble as I compared the historical authenticity of Mormonism and Joseph Smith with that of the Bible.

This was devastating and infuriating. At the same time, it opened my mind to the biblical view of my nature—sinful, not divine. It also opened my mind to better understand God’s nature—three persons in one God, the Father being Spirit instead of flesh and bones. The Mormon God was a man who worked his way into godhood. The biblical God had always been God, unchanging. I struggled to wrap my mind around this.

I saw, too, that God was inviting me to walk into his kingdom through trust in Jesus. Covered in Christ’s righteousness, I would always be worthy of the Father’s delight and presence. But rejecting the faith of my forebears and risking the wrath of my family terrified me. I wanted further assurance that I was right to take this plunge.

After five more months of research, I was still wrestling with the idea of a Trinitarian God. One day, as I sat in bed conflicted, God drew near to me in a vision. I saw a sea of people around Jesus, who sat on a throne. They bowed before him, singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. Who was, and is, and is to come.” As they worshiped, I fell to my face and wept. I received Jesus into my heart and walked into his kingdom. I was free of the shame that had suffocated me for 18 years.

On my 21st birthday, after consuming large quantities of alcohol, I spent the night fending off drunk guys who wanted to take me home. I steadied a friend’s forehead as she vomited into the toilet of a urine-soaked bathroom. I craved a different kind of life.

That same December night, I returned home and fell face-down before God. With fists clenched and tears streaming, I offered each addiction to him, inviting him to have his way in my heart, my mind, and my body. I asked him to free me to live fully surrendered to Jesus, the One who gives life.

When I awoke the next morning, I felt born again, as if God had performed a total heart and mind transplant. I was released from my addictions, and peace filled my entire being. The Mormon girl inside me breathed a sigh of relief. Set free from the burden of proving myself worthy, I rested in the arms of the One who had loved me enough to cover me with worthiness all his own.

Editor’s Note: Lisa Brockman is currently a staff member of Cru.