For the first post on the site, I wanted to give some explanation as to what my initial goals for this site are. This is not intended to be a full testimonial so this will be brief.

Growing up, I never truly believed in God and wasn’t surrounded by godly people much (I could probably count on one hand the number of times I went to a church before I converted). In high school was when I became most antagonistic against God and Christians as I, along with many others, was swept up in the New Atheist movement. I especially enjoyed debating surface-level Christians and tying them into knots intellectually. Several years later, I began toying with the idea that the Bible was a little more interesting than “grown-up fairy tales”. My fatal mistake was that I went to read the Bible no longer assuming it had nothing to teach me. Soon enough, I was baptized into the Christian faith on October 31st, 2020 (yes, really, on Halloween). But for the first several years I had mostly kept it to myself. Looking back, it is clear to me that there were several internal issues that needed to be worked out before I could adequately become more vocal about my faith.

Then something changed in January of 2024. As I was walking back to my car parked all the way in the Orange Lot at UC Riverside, I had a thought. This time though, this was not the normal experience of “having a thought”. It was as though a message was externally downloaded into my head. It was so vivid that I remember almost exactly where I was on the sidewalk when it occurred (see the image below, about there at the red X walking towards that parking lot).

It was nothing spectacular like Paul’s “Road to Damascus” experience, nor did I get to handle the crucifixion wounds of Jesus like Thomas the disciple did. And yet, I simply cannot say that this was no experience at all. Sorry for not producing a peer-reviewed scholarly, scientific paper on my personal experience. I actually don’t care if you believe my story or not, and neither should you.

So what was this message? Simply this: that I should use my natural interest in debates/deep conversations to now argue in favor of Christianity. This sent me down a long rabbit trail of apologetics, debates, books, and more. Long story short, here we are now over 16 months since that experience.

I have since become more courageous in challenging and being challenged with regards to Christian issues. The times I get to have these difficult discussions with friends and peers have become the times I look forward to the most. Looking forward, I wanted to address two major issues I saw. One, some of these conversations I was having were really good. How can I archive them better? Two, I’m not always able to have in-person dialogues, but I know there are still issues that need addressing. How can I help address challenges “asynchronously”?

This brings us finally to the purpose of this blog. My goal is to create posts that start with a question posed by you, the (skeptical) reader, that are then followed by my personal response. This is certainly starting out as postured towards those who are skeptical, but I can easily see room for dialogue between brothers as I sort out my own church-related beliefs.

I want to make clear that I DO NOT claim to be a superior/ultimate authority in my responses. I believe I am far from an expert on the faith, and the last thing I want is to lead you to believe otherwise. I am simply another layman wanting to share the Gospel and address barriers to belief as well as I am capable of doing so.

So, send me a question! Do you think the God of the Bible is evil? Do you think the resurrection story is a myth? What about Bible errors and textual variants? Hasn’t science replaced the need for God? I will do my best to answer these types of questions and more, prioritizing honesty and making sure my responses come off as personal, and not just simply the reverberations of an echo chamber (though I will certainly cite sources where I see fit in support of my statements). If at minimum I can demonstrate that Christian faith and reason are not at odds with one another, then I will have partially succeeded in my mission.

Send me your questions at gabrielgardnerblog@gmail.com

Please interact with the posts by leaving comments, especially when you have disagreements with me! Depending on the issue, I will either try to resolve it in the comment thread, or if it is a big enough can of worms I will treat it properly in a separate post.