Welcome to my brand-new blog!
My name is Kyle Zunker. I’m a husband, father, construction attorney, writer, ultra-distance endurance athlete, and former atheist turned Christian. I have spent the last eight years studying, reflecting, and writing in private as I have labored to understand faith and God.
For most of that time, I felt unqualified to share my thoughts on faith. I’m not a pastor, never attended seminary, and have done my quota of things that are not God-honoring, like expressly rejecting Him and ridiculing Christians. But the more I learn about faith, the more I believe the Church needs more voices, not fewer. After all, the Bible itself comprises more than sixty books written by more than thirty authors over more than 1,000 years. And, if we’re being honest, we each have our favorite books—the one or two that have deeply impacted us.
So, rather than isolating myself for fear of judgment and rejection, I’m adding my voice to our collective effort to help each other understand faith and know God.
To that end, my first book, Amazing Courage, releases in May of this year. It is the fearlessly honest account of my effort to save my father from esophageal cancer, built around the raw and unedited letters I wrote to encourage him with the good news of the gospel. Drawing on my own struggles with fear as an atheist, Amazing Courage shows what it looks like to choose faith in the face of life’s hardest moments.
But before that, I’m launching this blog with a series called 20 Tough Questions, in which I’m going to ask and discuss the questions about faith that troubled me most as an atheist.
My purpose — help us understand the choice of faith
When I was an atheist and asked Christians why they believed in God, they often responded with something like this: “I’ve experienced God, so I know He exists.” While that may have been true, it wasn’t particularly helpful to me.
I’m not suggesting Christians who have experienced God should stop sharing the news of that experience. If a miner is trapped in an underground shaft and discovers a way out, he ought to return to his trapped companions and tell them about the exit passage, even though his explanation would be based on experience rather than logical proof.
But we as Christians should also explain the reasons supporting our belief in God. Because if we do not explain those reasons, then people will assume there are none. That is exactly what I assumed for years.
As a former atheist, I know what it’s like to look at Christianity from the outside. I have struggled with questions at the threshold of Christianity that many believers raised deep inside the house of faith have never contemplated. And as a Christian, I know what it’s like to look back out at the world from within the faith. I have come to understand some things I could not grasp until I crossed the threshold.
Ultimately, choosing faith is not merely an intellectual exercise but a life transformation that acknowledges God’s gracious gift of salvation and produces action. (Ephesians 2:8-9; James 2:17). My book, Amazing Courage, dives into that topic and shows how faith in God can help us conquer fear. But we cannot ignore the intellectual component; choosing faith involves understanding what choice we are making. Helping us understand that choice is the purpose of this blog.
My promise — honest, fearless, and judgment-free discussion
Given the purpose of this blog, many of its readers may be atheists, agnostics, or Christians troubled by doubts. I want everyone to know up front that I will never shame people for having doubts. I am going to ask the questions about faith that troubled me the most as an atheist (some of which still trouble me today as a Christian). When I discuss those questions, I will explain why the doubt is erroneous and advocate for belief in the truth because I want us to overcome those doubts. But as a former atheist and someone who still wrestles with doubt, I will be especially careful to “be merciful to those who doubt.” (Jude 1:22 NIV).
A lot of Christians dread being asked the question: “Why do you believe in God?” It’s a hard question to answer, and, if you ask it, you will likely receive a nervous and defensive response. It’s easier to provide a canned truism or dismiss the question than it is to thoughtfully answer it. If you read this blog, here’s what I promise: I will give you my straightforward analysis of the toughest questions about faith with fearless honesty, respect, and humility. I cannot promise that you will agree with what I say, but I can promise that you will have something real to evaluate.
My plan — philosophical and legal analysis to help us hone in
The 20 Tough Questions are tough because they are deceptively complex. They appear to be simple, and that makes them powerful because we start to develop complicated answers that feel outmatched by the seemingly simple questions. But the 20 Tough Questions are far from simple. They smuggle numerous hidden premises and assumptions into the conversation.
My plan is to unpack the 20 Tough Questions to level the playing field. I do not claim to have the authoritative and final answers to all the questions. However, as a trained philosopher and practicing lawyer, I am skilled at identifying the precise issues in a given dispute and articulating how we should evaluate competing claims.
Sometimes I will offer what I believe to be the true, definitive answer to the question, and sometimes I won’t because I don’t know the answer. But I will always break the question down into the key issues to help us have a more productive and honest analysis, just like I would in any legal case.
Some of the thoughts I will express in this blog are original (so far as I know), but many are not. I have spent a lot of time studying what some of the great thinkers said about faith. The virtue of this blog will be in the analysis, synthesis, and presentation of ideas more so than their generation.
If you join my newsletter, you will be the first to know when each new blog post comes out.
Over the course of the year, I will start with questions about faith in general and move into more specific questions about Christianity as we advance through the series.
I hope you will join me for the ride.
Respectfully,
Kyle Zunker
