My first book, Faith on Trial, rose from a longing to believe.
In I Corinthians:12 the Apostle Paul says an amazing thing—that the Spirit has given different gifts to different people, but that they are not all the same. Some get one gift and others another. Faith is one of these gifts.
But faith was not given to me.
I was raised in a Christian family. Our family life centered around church. But in the 1960’s when I stepped out into the world, I found myself questioning my childhood faith. I read philosophers who laughed at the stories on which Christianity is based, calling them mere myths and legends. Time magazine published an issue with a cover asking, “Is God Dead?”
So, I asked my pastor how we know the stories of Jesus are true The answer I received was, “We don’t. We just have to have faith.” That wasn’t enough. I became an agnostic. I had a son to support. Became a lawyer. Just got on that treadmill and started to run.
One day I decided to search for answers to the question I’d raised. The resurrection of Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament is the cornerstone of Christianity. It is stated as a fact by the four Apostles. Facts are verifiable. I decided to put the New Testament testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John on trial. Readers would be the jury.
The research took years since I was raising my son and working at the time. In the end, to my surprise I found an enormous amount of evidence supporting the Gospel testimony—contemporaneous manuscripts, some recreated from fragments, and artifacts, archaeological, scientific and medical evidence, and more. I linked each piece of evidence to the next, like building a wall with bricks. And my life changed forever.
The truth of the resurrection became my foundation for faith.
I wrote Faith on Trial so that others could have the information too, seeing it as a whole, not in bits and pieces here and there. My faith is strong. My hope is that others without the gift of faith might find what they’re seeking. I know what it is to sit in an empty church and beg for answers.
As I write this, the corona virus rages and our world is in crisis. But through the resurrection and the Gospels I now know that He is real and his love for us, his children, is real. God bless our country and the world and those who’ve passed on because of the virus. We will get through this crisis with His help. And this year, as in every in other year, when the sun warms the earth and flowers bloom in spring, we can be certain that his love will help us to trust, to learn to take each day as it comes, one at a time as a gift. This certainty of His love is the meaning of Easter for me.
Pamela Binnings Ewen is the author of one non-fiction book, Faith on Trial, and six novels, including The Moon in the Mango Tree, awarded the 2012 Eudora Welty Memorial Award. She practiced law for many years before retiring to write. Her newest book, The Queen of Paris, a novel on Coco Chanel, is the story of Chanel’s secret life during the Nazi occupation of Paris in WWII. Pamela lives in Louisiana, near New Orleans. Visit Pamela at pamelaewen.com.