Dear Professor Theophilus:

I'm a recent convert to Christianity, but I got here by a rocky road. Last year I discovered that I was pregnant. When I told the father, he told me to have an abortion. I didn't do that, but I was completely scared and slightly crazy. I even told the few people who knew about the pregnancy that I'd miscarried. When I began to show, I made up a story about having a disease which makes you look like you're pregnant but you're not. When reality came home to me, I considered an abortion myself, but a Christian guy I'd begun to date, and who didn't know about the pregnancy, changed my mind without realizing it. He and my mother and my best friends were the only people who found out I was pregnant -- on the day that I delivered my beautiful baby girl.

I gave her up for adoption. I struggled with the decision. Physically, I could have kept her, but I wasn't in any way prepared to raise her properly. I mean, I'm a 19 year old college student.

I just finished reading your book Ask Me Anything. In one of the letters, you advise a guy who got his girlfriend pregnant that if the two of them aren't morally able to raise the child properly themselves, they should give up the child to Christian adoptive parents. Here's my problem. When I gave up my own little girl, that was my condition. I wasn't morally able to raise her properly. The adoption has already gone through, and I chose the family myself; so far as I can learn from the portfolio, they are good Christians. There is nothing I can do now, but since I've finally become a Christian myself, I feel like I'm responsible for ensuring that she grows up to know Christ. I can't help but feel guilty.

I know "Ask Theophilus" isn't an advice to the lovelorn column, but ... one last thing. My Christian boyfriend (not the father of the baby) broke up with me over me lying to him. As he should have. But even if he's not "the one," am I still considered marriageable? I bring a lot of baggage -- what Christian guy would want me now?

I've talked to others in and outside of my new church, but I would like your opinion. I'm new in God's family and need all the advice I can get.

Reply

I'm glad you wrote. Please don't feel guilty that you gave up your baby for adoption. You weren't morally prepared to raise her yourself, and giving her to a loving Christian couple was a wonderful gift, not only to them but to her. To do what was best for her, even though it was not what you may have wished, was truly an act of sacrificial love.

Even though a lot has changed since you became a Christian, your life is still being put back together by Jesus Christ; that takes time. Your child is with parents who are prepared for motherhood and fatherhood already. When your baby is old enough to understand, she will be grateful to you for the sacrifice you made for her -- and you will always have the assurance that you gave her the gift of life, instead of cutting her life short. God bless you for doing the right thing.

Your guilty feelings about doing the right thing may come partly from having become pregnant by doing the wrong thing. We often carry terrible and unnecessary burdens, either because we don't fully repent, or else because, even though we do, we don't fully trust God's loving promise of forgiveness. Your repentance should come not just from fear and shame, but from the love of God and the desire to honor Him with a pure and holy life. Your trust should come from the fact that He loved you so much that He died for you, and He promises to put the sins of those who are penitent as far from Him as the East is from the West. This is the Savior who said "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Do you have too much "baggage" to hope for a Christian marriage? Not at all. Every Christian has "baggage" -- some of us more, some of us less, but we all have it. That's why we need a Savior. Besides, you aren't the only convert, you know. If you cooperate with God's grace, you'll find that over time your life comes together more and more. Of course, if you and a Christian man reach the point where you are considering marriage, then you'll have to be honest with him about your past, and he'll have to be honest with you about his. I also strongly recommend that you take advantage of whatever premarital counseling may be offered through your church.

May God rest your soul in the ocean of His healing love.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

HARDER THAN I THOUGHT

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I received How to Stay Christian in College when I graduated from high school, and for two and a half years it has been a great encouragement to me. My parochial high school was biblically-based, but I also knew what it would be like to be around non-believers, because my family isn't Christian. Even so, I had no idea how spiritually arduous college would be!

I'm considering a liberal arts major. Are there any tips you can offer for my studies?

Reply:

There sure are.

Get to know the great works of the classical Christian writers, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. A number of Protestant and Catholic websites make these works available for online reading. Two of the best are the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, www.ccel.org, and New Advent, www.newadvent.org.

Read widely in the great Christian writers of the last few centuries. You probably know C.S. Lewis's prose, but I bet you don't know his fiction. G.K. Chesterton is indescribable, and I won't even start. One of my personal favorites is the English novelist Jane Austen. She doesn't wear her Christian faith on her sleeve, but it penetrates all of her writing.

Make sure you know your own Western civilization. After all, it was deeply influenced by Christian faith, even though it is now deep in rebellion and self-indulgence. The Western heritage is no longer well-taught at most universities, but with help, you can fill in the gaps. Check out the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, www.isi.org , and read the Student's Guide to Liberal Learning, by James V. Schall. It's available there for free download (though you can purchase a copy too).

Try to find a Christian mentor in your academic field of study. It's good to have guidance to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute is helpful here too -- I can recommend most of its free Student's Guides to the Major Disciplines.

Track down other Christian students who want to develop their minds, and get to know them; iron sharpens iron. Not even medieval monks spent all their time in their cells -- they knew that the mind requires society to grow straight and full. In the same vein, I'd urge you to look into the Christian professional societies in your own discipline. If you major in philosophy, for example, check out the Evangelical Philosophical Society and the American Maritain Association. Many such Christian scholarly organizations have sprouted in the various disciplines, and some of them offer student memberships. Not all are equally good, or even equally Christian, so exercise judgment.

In the meantime, make sure that you're in a sound church. Worship there regularly, and become part of its community. Other Christian activities are not a substitute, and as I say over and over in this column, there is no such thing as a solitary Christian. Christian intellectuals sometimes think they need only the company of other Christian intellectuals, but as the Apostle Paul pointed out, we are members of the Body of Christ. Who am I, an ear, to say that I don't need the eye? A foot, to say that I don't need the hand? A pancreatic duct, to say that I don't need the islets of langerhans? I'm getting carried away -- but you grasp the point.

May God shed the blazing light of His Wisdom on your studies.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

OUT OF AN ERROR, STILL SEARCHING FOR TRUTH

Dear Professor Theophilus:

A year ago, my wife and I left the only "church" we had ever known -- you would call it one of the pseudo-Christian cults. It was an all-encompassing matrix, and the saga of our departure could fill 300 pages. I was an adult Sunday school teacher and leader in the congregation, but as I researched lesson after lesson, I began to realize that my "church" was a fraud. The people who invented it hadn't told the truth. I was swamped with evidence. When I found that last smoking gun, everything that my wife and I and our children thought we knew simply vanished. We wouldn't have thought this was possible.

When we told our friends and relatives in the cult what we had discovered, they thought we were evil and refused to listen to anything we had to say. Once upon a time we would have reacted in the same way. We've spent the last year recovering from the terrible shock of rejection. It seemed like social and spiritual suicide.

As you can imagine, it has become rather hard for us to have faith in the teachings of any religion, including traditional Christianity. But I am beginning to recover my belief that truth really can be found -- at least truth about right and wrong. I'm reading C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity and I'm planning to read your What We Can't Not Know. It has been an encouragement to discover that Christians have written on the subject.

I'm sorry, I'm rambling. We don't have a lot of people to talk to -- all of our neighbors in our northern region belong to the cult we've escaped -- but now that this "church thing" has happened, we're planning to move. I just wanted to say thanks and hello.

Reply

I had to shorten and reorganize your letter for publication, but even so it's compelling. I'm glad you haven't given up on the search for moral and spiritual truth, and I do hope my book will be helpful. It must have taken great courage to leave the cult after the crushing discovery that its founders were deceivers and that you had been betrayed by false teachings. God seeks such seekers as you.

Let me reassure you about truth itself. The very act of recognizing error presupposes the possibility of truth, and truth can be known. Some truth was known even to the pagans, and our gracious God has revealed to us those things that we could not have found out for ourselves. The reason your former cult let you down wasn't that it was a religion, but that it was a false religion. Just as the fact that some food is poisonous shouldn't keep you from seeking wholesome food, so the fact that some religion is fraudulent shouldn't keep you from seeking true religion. Proceed with caution, but not with so much caution that you starve!

It's interesting that you've written, because I once accepted an invitation to speak about moral law to a group of people who belonged to the very cult that you've escaped. They were gracious; no doubt they had hopes of converting me, but I appreciated their hospitality just the same. After the talk we shared dinner, and one of them remarked "Since we all believe the same things, why is it that you Christians won't accept that we're Christians too?" The whole table came to attention.

I replied, "Forgive me, but that's a frank question, and you deserve an honest answer. It is not at all true that we believe the same things. About the most important things ?? the nature of God, the nature of man, and the relation between God and man ?? the teachings of your faith and Christian faith are radically opposed." A long conversation followed. Some of them admitted that my statement was true. An official of the group who was present seemed rather distressed at the direction in which things were going.

I urge you not to lose heart ?? and I encourage you to learn what Christianity actually teaches. The teaching of the faith may be quite different than what you think it is. In certain parts of your letter, which I've removed to protect your identity, I notice that you use certain Christian terms not in the sense that Christians give to them, but in the sense that members of your former cult give to them. In my offline reply, I discussed this at greater length. Because you'll have to do some investigation, allow me to suggest another book to help you along the road: Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics.

May the true God set lights before you at every step along the way. I am so glad to know that you have been set free to find Him. Let me know from time to time how you are doing.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

Footnote

The author of the previous letter wrote back to say, "Thank you so much for writing to me. What you say makes a lot of sense, and I couldn't help but choke up. I continue to keep a stoic smile on my face for my wife, but inside I feel really banged up, and I'm often close to tears at the prospect of trying to make sense now of my life, the universe and God."

I'm sure this truth seeker would appreciate the prayers of other “Ask Theophilus” readers. Though I didn't know it at the time, a great many people were praying for me when I made my own return to Jesus Christ years ago; how I thank God for them now.

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If you have a question you'd like Professor Theophilus to consider for this column, please send it to asktheo@trueu.org. Please note, all questions that are selected for "Ask Theophilus" may be edited for clarity and privacy and become the property of Focus on the Family.