The Question That Turned an Atheist into a Christian | Unscripted Faith

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Pedro Garcia, a successful saxophonist from Spain who initially identified as an atheist, set out to prove that Christianity was merely a crutch for the ignorant. However, his journey took an unexpected turn after he was invited to teach at MTSU in Nashville, where he began engaging with genuine believers. His skepticism shifted into belief primarily through three realizations sparked by studying the Sermon on the Mount: a desire for the world to be as Jesus described it, the expectation that a God would speak through such teachings, and a deep fear of death that Jesus seemed to conquer. Although Pedro initially viewed faith intellectually rather than emotionally, he eventually fell in love with Jesus, allowing his understanding of the cross to move from his mind to his heart, transforming him from a skeptic into a devoted follower. The core argument of Pedro's story reveals that the primary reason people leave Christianity is not intellectual disagreement but unprocessed emotional hurts, which are often shielded by intellectual arguments. Pedro shares a personal example from his Catholic school days where a teacher threw a chair at him, and the administration asked his father to lie about it; this incident created resentment that he carried for years without distinguishing between human failure and divine truth. He notes that many atheists and agnostics he met in college were actually dealing with deep pain or abuse they could not explain, using doubt as a defense mechanism. Pedro emphasizes that we are emotional beings first and intellectual creatures second, suggesting that faith must address the heart's wounds before engaging in philosophical debates to be truly effective. Pedro further challenges the notion that doubt is inherently sinful, distinguishing between doubting towards Jesus and doubting away from Him. He explains that doubting towards Jesus acts as a pathway to a deeper relationship, allowing believers to lean on Christ for guidance during uncertain times, whereas doubting away from Jesus leads to self-reliance and the creation of a personal god based on one's own terms. To help those struggling with doubt, Pedro suggests asking the question, "Is it because of Jesus?" to determine if the struggle stems from genuine faith issues or pain caused by specific individuals like pastors or family members. If the answer is no, he advises leaning on Jesus and trusting that He created people not to avoid pain but to redeem it, turning isolation into an opportunity for spiritual growth. In his current role as an ordained pastor, Pedro continues to facilitate conversations between believers and non-believers in public spaces, aiming to dismantle intellectual walls by focusing first on the person behind the questions. He believes that addressing the emotional story and vulnerability of an individual is more important than engaging in abstract debates about concepts like the ontological argument, as people ultimately face their fears and insecurities alone rather than in theoretical discussions. His journey from walking the streets of Spain denying God's existence to leading a congregation in Nashville illustrates how seeking God can bring every aspect of life into alignment, adding layers of beauty and meaning that were previously unseen, ultimately proving that faith is a transformative experience rooted in love and redemption.

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Born in Spain, Pedro Garcia was a successful saxophonist and a self-proclaimed atheist who set out to prove Christianity was nothing more than a crutch for the ignorant. But his search for answers led him somewhere he never expected. The skeptic became the believer and I can't wait to hear his story. Pedro, welcome to Unscripted Faith. >> Thank you, Angela. Thank you for having me. >> We are honored to have you. Tell us this story. >> Yeah, I was I was born in Spain and my family was I would say nominal Catholic, but that in Spain means almost like you're not religious at all. It's just a tradition. So, um, long story short, I started playing the saxophone. I became a finalist of uh the TV show Spain's Got Talent. >> Okay, Pedro. I love that. >> Yes. [laughter] And that allowed me to travel all around the world like teaching and performing. And then in 2012, I was invited to play at uh and teach at MTSU in Nashville as a guest professor. And even though I studied music, my passion has always been the big questions in life. So, I would have loved to study philosophy, but I never did it even though I like it a lot. So, when I came here, I was uh you know, I never had a faith um and then when I came here, I started meeting with Christians that claimed to have one. And of course, for me faith was just, you know, yeah, you believe this because you don't know anything about life or you're scared, you know, the type of things that that that we say when we get scared of there being an actual God, you know, that's that I know in retrospectively. But yeah, I started having conversations with people. I met a an an actual linguist that was a Bible translator, that was an expert on Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. And having conversations with him was uh was incredible. Actually, he ended up becoming my father-in-law. >> Wow. >> But >> [laughter] >> So, so it was it was everything was fantastic. For me, like it took me some time because I I needed a year to explore, but you know, philosophy, science, whatever. When I got to the Sermon on the Mount for the first time, I realized three things. The first thing was like when I finished the Sermon on the Mount for the first time, I felt I want the world to be like this and I don't understand why. The second the second thing that I felt was well, I mean, if God exists, I would I would actually expect expect God to say things like this and Jesus was claiming to be God. And the third thing was that I was really really scared of death. And then Jesus also claimed to have conquered it. So, that was the Sermon on the Mount is is for me, it's where my story began. So, I fell in love with Jesus even though it took me some time to understand the cross because Christianity was a thing of my mind, not not of my heart. So, it took some some time for that process to get there to really understand the cross and to start to hear the voice of the Lord and obey. So, it wasn't only Christianity as a thing that I learned, but something that I actually obey with my heart. But that story was a beautiful story and then I started having conversations with non-believers, bringing Christians and non-Christians together in public spaces to do this and after 10 years having conversations with them and Christians who are doubting, I realized Angela that no one ever told me, I promise you. Like there might be someone out there. I never met anyone that said, I left Christianity because of Jesus. >> Wow. >> blew my mind and that's why I wrote a novel that that's called For Those Who Doubt, Is It Because of Jesus? Because I want Christians who are doubting who usually are people that isolate themselves to read this novel so that they or at the end they need to face the question themselves. And usually the answer for that Angela is no. Can you believe that? Is it it's not because of Jesus. So that's a that's a summary of my of my story. >> Wow. So two things that stick out and the first one I want to ask you, what is it if it's not because of Jesus, what is the number one and maybe the number two reason why people choose not to follow Christ? >> So um people [snorts] usually hear this as a almost like an attack or a mock. It really isn't. Yeah, I promise you it isn't. The main reason why people leave Christianity is um unprocessed emotional hurts and then all of that is shielded with intellectual arguments. And by the way, I have no problem to tell people I became a follower of Jesus also for emotional reasons. We are emotional beings. That's fine. It's not because nowadays in culture saying that you have emotional reasons to do this or that, it has been weakened by culture. You have to be all intellectual. But usually they the most common reason is unprocessed emotional hurts that you don't know how to protect so what you do or process, sorry. So what you do is to protect it by building intellectual walls around it. >> Wow. That is so good and it is so true. I mean, we are more emotional creatures before we're ever intellectual. You think about the moments that people get caught up in things that they don't want to do or is because they were emotional, not because they were overthinking it, right? >> [laughter] >> So let me ask you, was there anything in your life, any pain that you felt like drew you away from the Lord or why you wanted to disprove Christianity? Hey friend, if this conversation is encouraging you, consider donating to Cornerstone TV [music] to make these programs possible. You can do that at ctvn.org/donate. >> It was for me, um I mean, we could go into that, but what happened something horrible happened in my Catholic school. >> Yes. >> Uh I guess I can I can say it, but there was a teacher that was bipolar and it's fine, uh but he got mad at one point and got a chair and threw it. That chair hit me. And then, when I was having a conversation with my father and the priest, the main priest of the school uh said to my father, "Please lie to the doctor. Please say that it wasn't the uh teacher doing this." And I need to be clear for the audience, uh this is not a criticism to Catholicism right now. It's just exactly what happened to me. At the time I was 12, I didn't know how to distinguish between people that claim to follow Jesus and Jesus himself. So, I just didn't know and just I forgot about it and I built resentment. My case was that, too. >> Wow. That is truly powerful. And you know, that that resonates with me. I had a lot of friends in college who claimed to be agnostic or atheist. And every single one of them, when I would talk to them, it would boil down to a deep loss, a pain that they couldn't explain, an abuse that they went through, and they were searching for why, if there was a god, why would he permit that to happen. So, I love that you brought that to the forefront. I also love the fact and the second thing that I was going to say from earlier when you were talking about your story, I love that not only did God bring you to himself, but he brought you to your wife. >> Oh, yes, absolutely. >> When when we seek God, he really does bring every add everything else to us. >> Oh, it's unbelievable. And yeah, my wife is Oh my gosh, I've been married to her for 13 years. And I love her so much and she's been very supportive supportive of everything. Actually 3 months ago I became a pastor myself as well. So it is it is beautiful. It really is like it blows my mind when I remember myself walking down the streets of Spain thinking that there wasn't a God and now I'm in Nashville as a pastor. >> It's amazing and I'm sure the rapsodies of glory that you can now experience that you thought you were experiencing cool things before meeting Jesus but now how the world has a whole another color a layer of beauty to it that you've never seen before. So let me ask you as you're still having these conversations as you're now pastoring or or ordained to be a pastor and you have these conversations once you get to that emotional point that people most people will finally divulge of what keeps them. What is the next step that you experience with them? What is the first layer of the wall the intellectual debate that they bring to you that you have to help dismantle? >> You so the when when when someone says for example all the ontological argument for for God's whatever it is the the crucial question for me is always okay tell me the journey that took you to ask this question because if you ask the question behind the question you're going to find out the story the person behind all of that and it's I mean I would say not like impossible but almost impossible to ask that question and for someone not to inject some personal relatable emotional story of them as they were wrestling with the question and it's not like the intellectual side of things should be avoided. I'm not saying that at all but if we don't focus on the person first then the intellectual debate is always going to be to the clouds to concepts to stuff and those are not the things that you go to when you are alone and no one is looking. You're facing the void and the fear or insecurity of life. You want to go to the person and after that, when you meet the person, you start a relationship, then the intellectual side of it could be important, but not it's not important first. >> I love that. And I also love how you talk about that we shouldn't be afraid of these doubts. We shouldn't be scared of them. And and and the big questions because they can actually draw us into a deeper understanding. >> Absolutely. And some people, Angela, think that doubt is a sin. And it's not. Now, that there's one thing about doubt. There are two ways to doubt. You can doubt towards Jesus or away from him. So, if you doubt towards him, you're going to walk into a deeper relationship. And it is expected in our faith that we're going to have uncertainty moments where we want to lean on on to Jesus so that he can teach us more. Now, if we doubt away from Jesus, that is going to take us to actually the tree of knowledge of good and evil, really finding good and evil in our own terms, and that is going to make us be at the God of our lives. So, that's what happens when people doubt. They think they're sinning, they isolate themselves, and then they think they automatically think that people would judge them if they share that doubt. And usually it's not that way. So, we need to be we need to be um uh open-minded about doubting and and always remember that it's very difficult to find one person in scripture that didn't doubt. Like, for example, the last prophet of the Old Covenant, John the Baptist, doubted in prison. And he saw he heard the voice of the Father, he saw the spirit descending, he saw the the uh the son coming out of the water. I mean, you see all of that and now you're in prison and you doubt. So, doubt is not a thing it's not a bad thing. It's an opportunity to get closer to Jesus. >> I love that you said that we can doubt away from Jesus or we can doubt towards him. For that person in our last few moments together who is maybe leaning doubting away from Jesus, how can they begin that process of doubting towards him? >> I would say it's the question of the book, is it because of Jesus? To be sincere with that. If the answer is no and the answer is pain because of a pastor or pain because of family, it could be and all of the all of the it is legit. But if the answer to that question is no, it's not because of Jesus, then just lean on him and trust that he got you and he created you not for not to go through that pain, but to redeem it from him. >> So beautiful. Pedro, thank you so much for being with us and I'm so excited for you in this new journey of being an official pastor. >> Yeah. [laughter] Thank you so much. >> You've been pastoring people all this time with these questions, but now it's an official occupation. Thank you so much, Pedro, for being with us today. >> Thank you, Angela. Thank you for everything that you do.