Transcript

So, well, good evening and welcome to the Journey Home program.

I'm your host tonight, John Mark Grodi, and we're back with another story—another story of how the Lord has worked in our lives to bring us deeper into Christ, into His Church, this great Church that He's given us.

We're blessed today to be joined by Dr. Jason Reed.

He's a former evangelical seminary professor.

Jason, welcome to the show.

Pleasure to be here!

And we were talking beforehand, you know, as always when we have someone on to tell their story, the places, the names—there are so many connections.

You know, we were talking about Doug Beaumont, Keith Nestor, Dr. Dom, who was my graduate director—so many connections.

That's one of the cool things about these stories.

As soon as we begin to see our life as a story that God is the author of, we see all the connections, all the ripples, all the waves.

And so it's exciting.

So I'll start you off; I'll let you go.

Where does this story begin?

Well, thank you!

It's great to be here.

I've been watching the show for a long time, so this is a real treat for me.

So I was raised in eastern Iowa, a small town, and I remember about the journey is when we were always going to church as a kid.

My mother and my father—it was very important to them that we went to the hometown church.

So I can remember getting up in the morning, getting dressed.

I can smell, even today, the Methodist basement that mustang.

I can smell the pot roast that Mom would have coming home.

So I grew up in church; it was very important to us.

So that, you know, was a very normal upbringing.

And then when I was about sophomore or junior year, then things really changed.

I'm not sure what happened, but there was some falling out of the church, and the denomination that we were in was going in the wrong direction.

So my parents were rethinking everything.

So from about the time I was 16, I didn't go to church anymore.

But that year was important because I was in a youth group, and I liked going to the youth group.

We had a Sunday school teacher who asked us, Do you want a personal relationship with Jesus?

I'd never heard that before.

I was like, Okay, sure!

How do you do that?

She said, Well, you say what's called a sinner's prayer.

And I've said this probably a million times: Lord, I know I'm a sinner.

I need You to forgive me for my sins, and I want You in my life.

So I remember doing that, and I thought, Okay, I'm a Christian, right?

So that happens, and all of a sudden, we're not going to church anymore.

That was at the Methodist church.

Yeah, so I went to college and didn't really like school.

I was really lost.

I mean, I look back now, and I went to college because that just was the next step.

Yeah, yeah.

What was your experience of, you know, what did Methodism look like at the local level, and did that personal relationship take?

I think so.

I mean, I think it did at some level, but you know, when you're 15 or 16, you do it, you know?

And I think it did maybe more than I thought.

Mm-hmm.

But it was a typical Methodist church.

We followed the calendar; it had some sort of liturgy there.

Everyone sat in the back, and the pastor always had to come up forward.

So, I mean, it's kind of uneventful in that sense.

But in that context, still, it was not until your teen years that you had the suggestion that you encounter Christ personally.

Exactly, exactly.

So that was, I think in hindsight, that was in the back of my mind.

Gotcha.

Oh yeah, so I go to college, and the first two years are a blur, really.

I wasn't interested in school.

I liked sports; I did what I could, but I really didn't know what I wanted to study.

So, like I said before, I went to college because that's just what you did.

My best friend was going to the university; we got to a fraternity house, and we thought, We'll just do this.

So after two years of that, my mom came down with cancer, and that was a game changer—a big game changer.

I saw something in my mother and my dad.

I mean, my mom was at home; she was losing her hair, and she was reading her Bible.

I just was really thinking about, What's this all about?

So I had a crisis.

I'm like, What is this all about?

I had a book called Out of the Blue, written by Earl Hershiser, that my dad's best friend, who was a former pastor, gave to me.

It's his story.

I read that.

Of course, I love baseball, so I'm reading this baseball player talk about his journey to faith.

I didn't know baseball players had journeys to faith.

And so I read that book, and I thought, Wow!

So that kind of connected me, but not a whole lot changed personally.

Still, you know, living a typical college life, partying on the weekends, things like that.

But then a good friend gave me a book called Comeback by Dave Dravecky.

Dave Dravecky was a Major League Baseball player, and he had two bouts of cancer.

The first time, they cut out a major part of his arm, and the comeback was that he actually came back from cancer and returned to the Major Leagues and pitched.

Wow!

But then the problem was, I don't know, maybe it was the first year after a few games, it broke again, and cancer returned, and his arm got amputated.

So this would have been the summer, I think, like 1991. So this is between my sophomore and junior year of college.

I went home, and the Memphis church that was in, uh, had a new pastor—very evangelical, very interested in a personal relationship with God.

We had lots of long conversations about the faith, and he said, Dave is speaking in Cedar Rapids at the Kennedy Auditorium.

You've got to be kidding me!

So I was all excited.

Unfortunately, he couldn't make it, so he sent an audio tape.

So my best friend and I went.

This was in June.

I even had the ticket somewhere at home—the attendance ticket—and sat in the back on June 28th.

So it's coming up on—I won't say how many anniversaries—a lot!

A lot!

Yeah, not that many.

Not that many.

That's not that many!

Exactly.

So during the testimony, one thing I remembered was when he had his—and this is a Major League pitcher—and his throwing arm is gone.

He looked into the camera; I was the only person in the room.

He said, If God wants me this way, and if He can reach people, that's the way it is.

And I tell you, John Mark, it's like the Holy Spirit just hammered me.

It's called conviction to the viewers.

So I sat there, and my whole life was going through me—all the sins I committed, the direction I was headed.

I'm in trouble.

I'm really in trouble; I need to get right with God.

So in 1992, I went into my bedroom in my little town, Springville, and I asked God to come into my life.

I said, I need to change.

I didn't know what that meant whatsoever, but I knew that I had changed.

That was really significant.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know what that meant.

I always think that's interesting too.

I mean, Christ in the Gospels says, Repent and believe.

You know, sometimes we take that step before we even understand what it's all about.

I knew I needed to do this, but that moment when the Holy Spirit touches us and we know we need to make some sort of change...

Well, it gets funny.

So I go back to college, right?

And so I'm in a fraternity, and most of them—let's put it this way—most of them were not following God, put it that way.

So we go out, and I'm hanging out.

I just got, you know, I'm not drinking, not partying anymore.

And my best friend in the world—we've never had a crossword—his name's Dave.

We're sitting out at the bar where another friend of ours was the bartender, and he was just sharing with us some mistakes he had been making and what he should do.

So I'm on one side; our other friend's on the other side—right, angel and demon.

I don't know what I said to him; I started talking about Jesus to him, and he's just turning white.

Now, Dave was raised in a very God-fearing family, so Dave knew what I was talking about.

You've got to get right with God.

And my other friend, who was a former Catholic, he's always saying, Catholic!

Don't listen to that stuff!

I'm Catholic; you don't need to learn.

That was my first introduction—like, what?

So if you're Catholic, you're not doing this stuff?

So that kind of started the whole thing.

I'm talking to him, and he's thinking, Oh my gosh, I think Jason's right.

So later, we're back, and Dave said, I'm going to go home.

He comes into my room, and he looks like he's dead.

He said, I need to get right with God.

I'm going to call my parents, and I'm going to go home and become a Christian.

Yeah, so we had our fraternity meeting that night, and all the brothers are sitting there, and they're wondering where Dave is.

I'm sitting in my chair, one of those three moments—I think we're...

I'm not saying nothing.

I am not saying anything.

And all before I knew it, I'm standing up.

I say, Yeah, Dave went to become a Christian this weekend.

Dave and I became Christians this summer.

And you could hear a pin drop.

I'm like, What just happened?

Why did I say that?

So Dave becomes a Christian.

We don't know what to do; we don't know where to go; we don't know who to get involved with.

Well, Dave's dad knew a Campus Crusade director at Iowa State, so that's our first introduction to a Christian group on campus.

They had music, and this was completely foreign to us.

So we show up; we didn't know there were such things as campus Christian groups and Bible studies.

We were just blown away.

This was pretty exciting!

So we started getting informed by this.

But as I found out real quickly, not everyone on campus is excited about Christianity.

So I came in against objections—Mormons, skeptics, atheists, agnostics—and I found out pretty quickly I needed to get some answers.

Yeah, so in the meantime, I'm excited about Christianity, but I'm not excited about school.

I did not know that you could withdraw.

I didn't know you could do that!

So I just quit going to school.

I quit going to class; I just read my Bible, and I just quit going to school.

I wasn't interested anymore.

So Iowa State asked me not to come back for a semester.

I didn't know that!

I said, That's fine; I'll go home and start working.

So I did that, came back, and the only way to get back to school was I had to go to a community college.

That's where everything starts to change when it comes to my philosophy background.

So I'm going to be a pastor, I assume, so I'm taking religious studies.

Well, there was a philosophy class that fit my schedule that I did not want to take.

So I figured, I'm going to show up, and they're going to tell me, 'How do you know the chair is there?

How do you know it exists?'

I'm going to be really irritated.

John Mark, it was nothing like that!

Dr. Hyslop is his name, and actually, a couple of seminars ago, we reconnected.

I thanked him for what he did for me.

Wonderful!

Yeah, and it's interesting—the same thing happened to him.

So I'm sitting in class, and I said, What's this joker going to tell me?

He puts up on the board, What is the good life?

I stared at that.

What is justice?

The one that got me was, Can you think you're happy and be wrong?

And I sat there.

Exactly!

I did not know that philosophers asked the same questions I was as a Christian.

Yeah, it's a handmaiden of theology, right?

I could not believe it!

There actually was an academic thing you could do this.

I'm like, You can do this?

I couldn't believe it.

So I fast forward a little bit.

Now I'm a philosophy major and enjoying it, but what do you do with this thing?

Well, you've got to keep going on with school.

So in the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how does a Christian do this?

My roommate had a book called Introduction to Philosophy: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Norman Geisler.

And of course, this was back in the day when they had audio cassette tapes.

So it was either in the book or somewhere where you could buy audios of his debates and things.

And so I got his debates and his lectures.

I remember sitting there listening to Dr. Geisler debate philosophers whose textbooks I had been reading.

And he was winning the debate!

I did not mean this—Christianity, you can debate it?

Something called apologetics?

I'm like, What is philosophy?

So Christians are philosophers?

I could not believe it!

So on the back of the book, he was a professor of philosophy at a college or seminary at the time.

So you know what?

I'm just going to call him.

So back then, we had things called answering machines.

I call his office; he's not in.

I'll let you know that he called and took his number.

So I go on my bike, go back, go off to school, go off to class, come back, and it's flashing—one message.

I push it: Jason, Norm Geisler.

I could not believe it!

Yeah, it was unbelievable!

Dr. Geisler was on my answering machine!

I called my good friend Drew; I called the office.

He invites us down to his house.

He didn't even know me!

So my buddy Drew and I fly down to a conference, meet him and his wife.

We stay at his house, and I had a book on someone called St. Thomas Aquinas.

St. Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal.

Should old Aquinas be forgotten?

I actually was in the book yesterday; my version is falling apart!

I read that, Who is this St. Thomas Aquinas?

I'm reading him, and Dr. Geisler said, We study Thomism here at the seminary.

So I'm going to go to seminary; I'm going to study under him.

I met some of the professors there—this is life-changing!

Yeah, I can do this!

And so I went home and told my parents.

They said, Well, that's great!

Just make sure you can find a job.

So before I left, I'm at the last pizza party, I think, of the fall.

I'm about ready to graduate, and I'm sitting there, and the rain's coming down.

There's this girl over there talking to a good friend of mine.

I've never seen anybody like this before.

So my plans get a little delayed.

I meet Holly in 1996, I think it is—something like that.

Yeah, like, she's got to be a Christian!

So we met, got married within a year.

Yeah!

So she stayed there, did some schooling; I did some schooling, and then we moved to Iowa City, did some ministry there, and finally in 2000, moved to Southern Evangelical Seminary and studied down there.

Yeah, yeah.

We're speaking tonight with Dr. Jason Reed, former evangelical seminary professor.

So you're heading to the seminary with Dr. Geisler.

You know, I was just talking to Dr. Francis Beckwith the other day.

Oh, he was there, actually!

Yeah, right!

Well, he comes into the story because he turned Catholic while I’m there.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah!

Get ready because now everything starts to change fast.

So I go down there, and I work with Dr. Geisler in the house.

I love it down there—great community.

And Dr. Geisler said, You need to go get a graduate degree.

I'm like, I don't want to do more school!

And I didn't have the greatest undergraduate experience since they asked me to leave for a little bit.

So I said, Well, you know what?

I'll put this in God's hands.

I'll put this in God's hands.

So I took the GRE, put out applications, and the one place I wanted to go more than any place was St. Louis University because I've always been fascinated with God.

The reason I'm in philosophy is because I want to know if there is a God, and I really want to know if He exists and what He's like.

Because nothing else really matters if I can't know those things.

It's not really a theological question.

No, it's very personal!

It's a philosophical question to establish on which the theological question sort of ends.

Yeah, I want to know if there is a God and what He's like.

I keep running across this philosopher named Eleanor Stump.

Yeah, absolute simplicity, eternity, and defending the classical conception of God.

So I got into a couple of schools, and I called one school that was maybe a little bit higher ranked, so it seemed like the wise decision to go there.

But the person I wanted to work with only teaches, I remember, every other semester—sorry, every other year.

I called St. Louis, and Father Vitale said, No, Dr. Stump teaches every semester.

Like, wow!

Done!

Yeah, I did not know he was Jesuit.

I didn't know what Jesuits were.

I didn't know he was Father Vitale—all these sorts of things.

So Father Vitale called me to invite me to the school.

He said, I've seen your transcript; you partied for a while, but you got it turned around.

We'd like you to come.

It's great!

We had two kids at the time, so we moved up with these two little rugrats to St. Louis.

I walk on campus, and I see all these priests walking around.

Where are these priests?

Is this a Catholic school?

I had no idea!

It just tells you what I knew about Catholicism.

And so, well, I guess I'll stay, right?

Yeah, I wasn't too bad; I wasn't too anti-Catholic at the time.

You mentioned that you had that one experience with your friend earlier.

Yeah, that's about it.

That's about it!

That's a good question because the only other Catholics I ran into were at the ministry where I was part of at Iowa State, and they were former Catholics—right, a lot of former Catholics.

So what I knew about Catholicism was that it was a works-based faith, they didn't read their Bibles.

And actually, when I was at the seminary, I would help people out of Catholicism.

My wife is a cradle Catholic; that's going to come back too.

One of the things I wanted to ask you about before we went any further is just what was your sense of church history?

Because it seems like from some of the things that you experienced, and you said that you didn't really have a sense—none, zero.

It was all ideas; it was all philosophy, systematic theology—that's all it was.

But even the idea that it would be weird that Christians and philosophy even mix—if you have a sense of history, that wouldn't be weird at all.

We really often are so cut off from a sense of the history of our church or faith.

Well, even at the seminary, we had a historical theology class, but there was no church history class at the school.

But I remember talking about the classic historical Christian faith; we talked a lot about that at the school.

So the word historical crossed my lips, but no deep study of it.

So I go to St. Louis University, and for the first time in my life, I'm meeting, for me, God-fearing Catholics—people like Michael Roda and Paul.

I just wonder about Brian Cross next to me; he's going through the same time thinking about these things.

And when I talked to Mike, he quoted the Bible at me!

Like, maybe these Catholics are Christians!

And Father Vitale was so patient.

I wasn't the greatest student, always thinking, not writing—it's a little bit easier.

Yeah, I wasn't the greatest student.

I kept thinking about a topic; I just didn't want to write about it.

I kept thinking about it, but Father Vitale was always patient with me.

I started getting attracted to the Church more.

I didn't really realize it at that time, but this time we were going to a church in the northern suburbs.

As far as Catholicism, I liked a lot of it.

I loved Thomas Aquinas; I liked my Catholic classmates.

But it was getting too attractive to me, and this is strange coming from an evangelical background.

I almost felt like I was losing my faith.

So when I convert later, that's something that will haunt me.

For me, at this time, I would say the Catholic Church was not the faith for me.

So maybe they're Christians in some sort of quasi-sense, but they're not full-blown.

You were more open to it; you were more fair to it, perhaps, than I would like to be, which is interesting.

I really liked Thomas at this point.

I was told I could believe St. Thomas' philosophy but not the theology, so I just read the Primordial—it’s just the first part.

I didn't get a whole lot into the other stuff you mentioned.

You guys were going to church at this point—is it Methodist?

It was First Christian Church of Florissant.

Still probably not?

I was too busy in grad school.

I had some seminaries around, but I didn't really know.

I was just trying to survive.

But it's just sort of, for you, it's just normal Christianity.

Normal Christianity, yeah.

But they did have communion every week.

I forgot about that!

They did have, of course, grape juice and a cracker, but every week we had communion.

So still a little bit of a sense of liturgy—a little bit.

Yeah, so after three years there, Dr. Geisler calls me and says, Come down and teach to do a module.

I'm like, Absolutely!

So after the module I teach, he says, Would you like to come down and be a professor?

Yeah!

So that's where the former—that's the job I wanted.

That's what I wanted to do.

So we just had girl number three, little Mare, and we moved to Charlotte.

I thought this was going to be it, right?

We're going to come down here, I'm going to teach Thomas, we're going to raise our family here.

It's quite a ways away from Iowa and Charlotte, but we'll be okay.

So in Charlotte, teaching a lot of theology, a lot of philosophy.

And then what happened?

I'm teaching—this might be my second or third year, beginning of classes one semester.

Dr. Geisler resigned or retired; I'm not sure of all the details, but they needed someone to teach systematic theology.

We'll give it to Reed!

We'll give it to Reed!

So I was teaching systematic theology.

Now I'm looking for a textbook to teach evangelical theology.

Yeah, not finding a whole lot that I like.

I'm like, I don't see any systematics.

Norm's book hadn't been out yet, or maybe it had been out, but I didn't want to just regurgitate his stuff.

So I thought, I'll use the Summa.

So I'm teaching systematic theology at an evangelical school using the Summa Theologiae, not thinking anything of it.

During that first semester, I'm teaching a class on Christology, and the dean is in the back doing his reviews.

So we're going over the humanity of Jesus, and I put on the board an argument, right?

And the argument was that, well, if Mary is the Mother of God, and He's fully human, she's not just carrying Him—Jesus is her boy.

So the dean puts his hand up in the back.

He says, Are you saying that Mary is the Mother of God?

To me, this was just Christianity.

This is just a simple syllogism.

Yeah, a simple syllogism!

And he said, I guess the Catholics are right.

I didn't know what he meant.

I didn't know what he meant!

It's like, why is this controversial?

So I didn't think about that, and I kept saying some Catholic things in class.

We had a class on virtue ethics, and we were talking about the integration of virtue and faith and these sorts of things.

I kept referring to all these Catholic authors all the time in classes.

And I think if we didn't have a problem at church, I think I'd still be there today.

But really, it wasn't like I was looking for the Church; I wasn't looking for Catholicism.

What blew up the whole thing was when the church we were a part of split.

So I look back now, and every church I'd ever gone to was kind of predetermined for me.

So the church I went to as a kid, the one I grew up in—when you're part of Crusade, they're associated with this church.

Went to the Salt Company; they're associated with the church.

Went to seminary; they're associated with the church.

Went to graduate school—the church right next door.

So for the first time in my life, where do I go?

What churches do I go to?

And I had to come—this was a very dark time for me because I had to come to grips with something I'd been ignoring for years, and that is, I don't like going to church.

I feel like, in a sense, a fraud because why am I here?

I'm here for an hour and a half; my life isn't changing.

Do I really believe these things?

So that was hard for me.

So if it were up to me, I wouldn't go.

And so we started going around to different churches.

The next two—maybe three—but for sure the next two churches, we show up to the service, and the church is splitting that day.

Oh my!

Like, what just happened?

We just left one!

Mm-hmm.

So at this time, there's a whole lot of stuff going on with my wife.

I didn't know any of this at the time.

So God’s working on her, and she thinks she wants to get back to liturgical.

So she’s teaching the kids the Nicene Creed; she’s teaching the kids—we’re doing more liturgical church calendar.

I don’t know any of these things; I’m busy teaching.

So I have a crisis of faith.

I don’t want to go to church anymore.

So she said, You need to talk to Pete.

Pete was my advisor, the director of the Salt Company, who’s a very, very sharp guy.

So I said, Well, I’m going to invite him to the seminary.

He’s an Anglican priest at the time.

I said, I want you to come to the school and talk about what it means to be an intellectual and to be a pastor.

Because we had a lot of students studying philosophy for the pastorate.

So Pete came down, and he’s wearing his collar, and everyone’s freaking out.

I said, No, I’m not Catholic; I’m Anglican.

And during that visit, I just shared with him, I don’t want to go to church anymore, Pete.

I know you’ve gone through similar things.

I don’t know what to do; I’m burned out.

I’m not getting anything out of it.

Help me out.

He said, You need liturgy.

That’s what he said to me.

I’m like, I don’t know what that meant.

Do you mean the reading out of the book at the Anglican church I went to?

He said, You need to get some liturgy.

Huh!

He said he went through a crisis; he didn’t want to go to church anymore or something like that.

Liturgy—not an answer you were expecting!

Not an answer I was expecting!

So I go home, and he mentioned a church in Charlotte.

I tell Holly, I said, you know anything about liturgy, honey?

I think we need to go to a liturgical church.

And then, like that, my wife in the background said, I’m going to go back to Catholic Church.

Oh wow!

Yeah, didn’t tell me!

You know, because at that time, I’m an evangelical at school.

I do not want to cause problems for people.

I don’t want to, you know, mess with other people’s faith.

I don’t want them to have my problems be their problems.

So we went to this Anglican church, and I loved it.

But it was interesting because they tried to marry liturgy with an evangelical format.

So it was like two hours, so it was kind of a long time, and it was a 45-minute drive up there.

So it was like an all-morning, afternoon event.

I kept going up there, and I was really being Anglican.

You’re probably like this too because you’re a philosophy student.

When you have a topic, you get all the books on the topic, right?

So I wanted to be Anglican, so I went out and got all the books, right?

Principles of Theology, whatever—I had the books!

I was meeting with the pastor, and I said, I want to be a Catholic—I mean, sorry, Anglican!

I want to be an Anglican!

Here’s the books!

So I’m ready to talk to him, and he looked across from me and said, Oh, you’re more Anglican than I am!

I said, No, no!

I want to study these things.

I want to go through the process.

I want to become Anglican.

And he said, Ding!

You’re Anglican!

Like, what just happened?

Like, what?

That’s not how it’s supposed to work!

Really, really disappointing.

We better take a break.

But it’s interesting—here at the Coming Home Network, we often encounter that where people read their way in and they encounter a church which is a bit messier on the ground.

But that’s even more so in that case where Anglicanism, very unfortunately, many times on the ground, what people are encountering when they’re yearning for liturgy—they’re yearning for what they’re reading about.

It’s fallen.

Depending on where you go, there’s some fallen far; right, there’s some real difficulties, there’s some real decline, as with many of the mainline denominations.

And so it can be a real shock, right?

Yeah, it wasn’t quite what you were looking for.

No! Yeah, well, let’s—we’ll talk more about that.

Um, we’re talking tonight with Dr. Jason Reed.

He’s a former evangelical seminary professor, and we’re going to come back here in a couple of minutes for the rest of his story.

I want to remind you that if you yourself are thinking about becoming Catholic, if you’re somewhere in one of these stories—and you are in a story—we’d love to walk along that journey with you.

So check out chnetwork.org.

I’ve got great resources there, many stories like Jason’s. But we’ll hear the rest of his story here in a couple of minutes.

Welcome back to the Journey Home program!

The second half of this program tonight, we’re talking to Dr. Jason Reed.

You’re going to hear the rest of his story.

He was a former evangelical seminary professor, and when we left off, you were teaching Thomas, and you just talked to your wife about feeling this pull back towards liturgy.

So you get your stack of books on Anglicanism, and you show up, and it’s not quite what you expected.

Dang!

You’re Anglican!

Dang!

You’re Anglican!

What a letdown!

Yeah, now what was going on personally?

We were pregnant with our fourth child, and we lost that child.

Oh yeah, that was really rough.

Yeah, it’s the second one we had lost.

So I always tell people we have six kids—two in heaven, four with us.

Yeah, that’s right.

Really rough.

And that hit both Holly and me.

We felt we were too far away from home.

The kids were young; I can’t remember what this time of holiday was.

Lisa, Genevieve, and Mary—they were really young at the time.

And she said, I need to go home.

They’re never going to know their family.

So we left Sunday evangelical—not because of any—when I become Catholic, not for me or anything like that, or because I was pulled away.

It’s just sad.

So all this stuff’s happening at the same time.

I’m sad about my faith; I don’t want to go to church anymore.

I put my heart and soul—hoping this liturgy thing will work.

Ding!

I’m like, What just happened?

I’m Anglican!

So we’re going to come back to Iowa.

I don’t know what that meant, but it was the right thing to do.

And that was really hard to leave that job, but my kids need to know their families, and I want to go home.

And to raise them so they can know their families.

I remember just sitting there one time—Lisa was in soccer—and I thought, My mom's never going to see her play soccer.

I can't have that.

So we knew we were leaving for Iowa.

And so after we had given this Anglican church a try, it got to the point where it was driving too far.

My wife came to me and said, I’d like to go to the Catholic Church.

And of course, the church we were a part of had split, and I just didn’t want to be involved because they were spread out.

I was trying to avoid that because of all that pain of the breakup.

So I knew that if I went to the Catholic Church, none of my friends would be there.

But I said, Honey, if you want to go—at this point, I’ve been studying up to—if Thomas Aquinas can go to that church, then I can’t object.

But I thought, There’s no way I’m going to do it.

I’m not being Catholic.

And as a matter of fact, I’m not being Catholic!

So much so that your mentor—or quasi-mentor—at Steubenville was my grader at SES. I remember being in my office, and I’m working on something.

I knew Dom had been—at this point, as far as I remember, for Brandon, it was like an intellectual thing.

So he was part of a group of guys—really sharp guys.

I just loved these guys to death, and they were thinking about things.

And they’re always—Brandon’s always like, But— he’s always, no matter what I say, he’s like, You need to think about this too.

That’s what he’s like!

Yeah, because he’s doing the same thing.

So I walk out of there, and I said, Now you’re trying to tell me that Catholics really believe you should eat His body and drink His blood?

In total Brandon-Dom style, he puts down the papers, opens up his Bible, reads John 6, closes it, and goes back to grading.

And so I say, If you become Catholic, I’m not talking to you ever again!

And he’ll go back in my office and slam the door.

So this is happening at this time.

I’m not interested in being Catholic; my wife returned to church, so I don’t go to church for a while.

And how do I say this so it sounds okay?

I enjoyed it, and I didn’t like that I liked it, but I felt relief because at this point, I knew I wasn’t very evangelical.

At that point, whatever that happens to me, I just have a lot of questions about evangelicalism.

But I’m not close to being Catholic at this point.

But my in-laws came, who I adore—the late Jim and Carol—and they came and went to church.

Well, I was going to honor my family, so I went to Mass with them.

This might sound bad, but when I went to Mass, I walked in the doors, and I was completely ignored.

And it was wonderful because I’m so used to every church we’ve gone to; they’re out there beating you.

And there’s nothing wrong with greeters, so if you’re a greeter out there, I’m not throwing greeters under the bus or saying anything disparaging about greeters, but it was different.

Yeah, and they’re all just— it wasn’t just that I was being ignored; everyone was just walking in, like, intentionally.

They’re going in, and I said, Holly, what are they doing?

They’re just walking in!

And she said, Well, the Lord’s in there!

What are you talking about?

So I walked in, and they’re kneeling.

I’m like, I don’t know what they’re doing!

This is really confusing me.

They’re genuflecting; I didn’t understand that.

And then I didn’t like the missal; I didn’t know what was going on.

But in a strange way, that attracted me.

Like, this is—if you’re going to do this, yeah, this stuff shows me if this matters to you, you put the time in and figure it out.

And I actually figured out the missal finally!

Yeah, how that works with the missal works.

But this just shocked me.

And to see—and I never am I seeing the reverence—and I said to my kids, I’m like, this is different.

They’re here; it’s quiet, and they’re all praying.

So thank God, this is a very good, reverent body of people.

So I said, Okay, our remaining time here, I’m willing to go to church with you because it’s important to be a family.

I’m not going to let my—I apologize to the girls about not going to church.

I hope I did!

If I did, they’ll correct me when I get home, I’m sure.

So we went to Catholic Church the remaining time there in Charlotte.

So then we moved back to Iowa, and I don’t remember how I got a hold of his name, but Father Nienhaus at St. Patrick’s—you want to talk about a godsend!

I love that man.

He is such a patient guy; what a great priest—very dry, totally German.

So I called him and said, Is this church Catholic?

I want the stained glass.

He said, It’s one of the beautiful churches in town.

Because I told Holly, This is going to sound terrible, but I wanted the least evangelical church to go to.

I didn’t want a community center; I wanted the church—St. Patrick’s. So I went there, and Nienhaus was patient with me, answered my questions.

I was still adjuncting at the seminary because I was attending with my family.

The girls had just gotten baptized before we left.

And for Holly, what really mattered to her was when she talked to—either she talked to or read something about Peter Kreeft, because she had some hang-ups.

She’s a former Catholic or cradle Catholic, prayers to the saints.

And so it was either he told her or she read it, and Kreeft said, We ask our friends to pray for us, and He is a God of the living, not the dead.

And that was it!

She said, Got my prayers answered.

So she came and started going to church, so I’m going to church to be together.

We moved back to Iowa; we’re going to church there.

I’m still adjuncting, not thinking about Catholicism, but I’m studying it, and I’m going, and I’m being attracted to it.

But I don’t realize how much I was being attracted to it.

So I didn’t think it was any big deal.

I figured that I could go to church, not become Catholic, and be okay.

So I’m down teaching a class, and this just hit me out of nowhere.

There’s a friend of mine that we’re staying with, and she’s asking about—they got back from Rome—what’s this whole worshiping Mary thing?

I’ve been studying, you know, devotion to Mary.

So I said, No, it’s not worship; it’s devotion to Mary.

I started explaining it to her, how Luther had a devotion to Mary.

And as I’m explaining it to her, I find myself wanting to do it.

Yeah, I feel like I’m going to hell; like I’m losing my soul.

I’m being attracted to—do I mean—I call Holly in a panic.

I said, Honey, I think I want to go to do a rosary or something.

This is not good!

This is not good!

I mean, I don’t like this!

But I just said, Keep your mouth shut and just come home.

So I came home, and I said, I did not see that coming.

And just quietly—and this is actually true—the classes at some colleges I was teaching at in Iowa were starting to clash with the schedule at SES. So just objectively, I couldn’t teach down there anymore because the schedule changed.

So I used that as a way of just saying, Okay, I can’t do that anymore.

Let me start thinking about these things.

And so I kept praying, but I kept getting hung up—very hung up—on Mary and the Pope.

And I’d study and I’d read, and I’d study and I’d read, but just emotionally, I couldn’t get there.

Really hung up on it.

So Father Nienhaus, being very patient with me, keeps talking to me.

I’m like, Man, I don’t know what to do here.

So I keep praying about it, thinking about it, and I talk to Father Vitale.

And Father Vitale said, If you do become Catholic, you don’t have to figure everything out, and it’s going to be messy because it’s a family.

Yeah, yeah, it’s a family!

And that just really hit home.

So I went back to Mass the next time with the kids, and there were these kids in the front pew, and they’re playing with their cars, being really loud, and the parents are just trying to keep it together, right?

Trying to pay attention.

Father Nienhaus isn’t even paying attention to it; he’s just giving his homily, going through the summer.

And I’m sitting here annoyed, and I’m like, Why are they doing this?

And either my wife said it to me that time or at some other time, she said, Well, they’re here; they’re in church.

You know what their week is like?

This is the Catholic Church!

Wherever the church I went to, they asked the kids to leave.

And then my father-in-law said, Hey, the kids can talk all they want; they’re the only innocent voices in the room.

They’re the ones that get to.

To this day, when I’m sitting there in a Mass and I hear little kids talking in the back, I’m like, Yeah, you can talk all you want; you’re innocent!

So it’s that earthiness.

I started seeing the catholicity of it, so that was a real stepping stone—seeing that.

And then I went up to Loom Booksellers.

So again, it’s all these little huh moments.

That’s a good way of describing the journey—huh!

Huh!

Another huh moment up at Loom Booksellers—a great book up in Stillwater, Minnesota.

It’s not there anymore, but it used to be in a church—a quarter of a million volumes!

Wow!

Yeah, Catholic Church.

It had Catholic theology, but it was basically run by Catholics.

And I had my Iowa Hawkeye shirt on, so I’m sitting there, and I’m looking at the Thomas Aquinas section, of course.

And this guy walks by; he said, Hawkeye!

Yeah!

He said, Well, I went to Ames.

I forgot to talk.

He said, Well, I have a good friend of mine who’s an Anglican priest.

And he said, What kind of Anglican?

Which kind of Anglican?

And I sat there, I’m like, What kind?

And so I went through several, and he said, Nope, nope, nope.

And I finally got the right one, and he said, Oh, that kind of Anglican, and walked away from me.

And in that moment, I’m sitting there kind of stunned a little bit because I wasn’t expecting that.

And all of a sudden, the unity!

Here I am in this bookstore; there’s a quarter of a million books.

You’ve got all the Church Fathers—you’ve got Augustine, you’ve got Thomas, you’ve got everybody—and just I could sense the oneness.

They’re one for all the different theological debates, for all the discussions they have, for all the different minutiae that the Catholic theologians and philosophers—all the logic chopping they do—they can say the Creed; they’re one.

And the Anglicans can’t do that.

Maybe there’s something to this oneness.

I can feel it.

Yeah, and then I also saw that at a philosophy conference, seeing all these heavyweights.

Mm-hmm.

Eleanor Stump was there, Pauli Battaglia was there, Alexander Proust was there, Josh Hochschild was there—real intellectual giants.

And to watch them go up and bow to the Lord and receive Him and singing and worshiping, I’m like, This is just—this is different!

And I don’t like it because, again, the Mary thing was really a hang-up for me.

I really feel like I’m losing my faith; I feel like I’m joining a cult.

And it was just emotion.

So I’m talking to Father Tully about this.

He said, Just keep praying about it; keep praying about it.

But he said, You may not get an answer.

You may not get an answer to your question.

Maybe you just need to come in.

And so thank God for Thomas Aquinas!

So I’m going to go back to the Doctor Communis, right?

The Common Doctor!

And I was reading the issue on faith, and there’s a question—I can’t remember what question it is or what article—but it’s about whether or not the heretic and the person of faith both have faith when they believe the same thing.

So let’s say the heretic believes in the Trinity.

So the heretic has the right orthodox belief.

Does he have faith on that point?

Yeah!

And Thomas says no, because he’s not—so materially they’re the same; it means the same belief.

Because he’s separated himself from the body, yes, formally he’s not believing it because of God’s authority.

Like, holy cow!

And all of a sudden, John 6 is going through me.

And here’s the thing about John 6 that I would like people to know: it’s one of the few times that actually your question that you would ask Jesus, you get a straight answer.

So in that discourse, He’s talking about eating His flesh and drinking His blood.

He’s giving His flesh for the world and all these things—you need to eat My flesh and drink My blood.

And I’m reading this just after reading Thomas, and then they ask—the Jews said, How can this man say this?

which is my question, right?

And He quadruples down!

And I thought, This is what Thomas is talking about.

This isn’t—either I’m going to believe Him or I’m not.

And then later, He said, Those who leave because this is a difficult teaching.

I found myself right there.

And when He asked Peter, Are you going to leave Me too?

Peter didn’t say, Oh, I’ve got this figured out.

I mean, for all we know, we’re supposed to eat your thumb; I don’t know.

But he said, If you say it, for only You have the words of eternal life.

And I thought, I have to!

I’m going to have to believe; I’m going to have to have faith here.

And I knew enough at the time—there are good reasons, so I wasn’t sacrificing my head.

There are good reasons to believe that Mary is immaculately conceived; there are really good reasons to believe that she was sinless.

There are good reasons for those things—very good reasons to believe in the papacy.

But it wasn’t sufficient for my heart to go in.

And I remember praying and praying about it, and I got the sense from God, like, You’re going to have to come in just like this.

I’m not going to answer these things for you.

It’s not going to be from your head; I’m done with that.

You’re going to have to come in by faith, like Thomas said.

And so I called Father Nienhaus and I said, I’m ready to join the Church.

He said, Okay.

And I didn’t want to be any big fanfare, so God bless him, it was on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning—I can’t remember what it was—in our chapel.

My mom and dad came; they’re not Catholic, but they still came.

God bless them!

My kids were there, and my in-laws were there.

And I remember when my wife came up; she was a sponsor.

And when I was joining, I was shaking—at least existentially.

I felt like I was leaving the faith; I felt like I was in trouble—literally fear and trembling!

Like, I don’t want to do this!

I don’t want to do this!

I can’t believe I’m doing this!

And then once I received, I have never felt that way since.

It was gone in an instant!

And so afterwards, I felt great.

I’m like, Wow!

I’m not worried about those things anymore.

Thank you, God, for all that grace!

And then we went to a pizza place/bar to get pizza and beer, and my dad said, We’re going to get beer and pizza.

I said, I’m Catholic!

I get to be with my people!

Yeah, I enjoyed that!

Yeah, so that’s how I became Catholic.

And then to this day, since then, I have loved the earthiness.

I love when the kids talk.

I have never for one second regretted it.

I lost not all my friends, but they think, What happened to him?

I’m still the same guy I was before, but confronting these things, finding out what real Christianity—the fullness of it—seeing what Thomas Aquinas taught and the Eucharist.

And that’s a common story, I’m sure.

Yeah, yeah!

Yeah, it’s a great story.

I wanted to circle back on a couple of things.

Sure!

You know, so one of the things that strikes me again about the story—there’s obviously a part of this where you’re working through the intellectual stuff, but there are many points in your story where you have these huh moments, right?

Right!

And it’s more a sense of, Does this faith fit the kind of being that I am?

Right!

That’s good!

You can’t necessarily figure it out, but you can put it on and say, But this seems to fit human being—my human nature—in a way that what I had before didn’t have.

Right!

Yeah, so there’s definitely something called Catholic culture.

Yeah, yeah!

So to be evangelical, the background—this was totally foreign to me.

You’re right!

It’s like getting converted—the whole part of you.

Because when I went to a couple of different Protestant churches growing up, it was very—it’s an auditorium-type thing, and they welcome you to the meeting, but the body isn’t there; the blood isn’t there.

There was one time—okay, so we went to a church in Charlotte.

I forgot about this!

Just before we left, they said, Hey, we’ve been reading in this liturgical book, and we’re going to have every month a Lord’s Supper.

Mm-hmm.

And so how they did it was they’d tear off the bread, pieces of it, and they’d hand it to you, and they had a cup.

And I think you were supposed to dip it and then eat it.

But my wife went right for the chalice because that’s where she grew up, and they’re looking at her.

She said, Oh, I’m supposed to dip it.

Sorry!

You know, but they said they picked it up.

This was the second time I went there, and I’d been reading St. Thomas and Peter Kreeft.

They tore it apart in the body of Christ.

Embarrassing!

I said, No, it’s not!

And I went back and sat down.

Yeah, not a good move!

But not a good move!

But I don’t know where that came from—like, why would I say that?

Why would I say that?

So I kind of sat down and got embarrassed, but then I went to the Catholic Church.

It just fit!

I mean, this is something that fits.

When you’ve got the vestments, and you’ve got the reverence, and you’ve got the table, and you have the prayer—I could not believe all the Scripture!

So someone who’s raised—so when you’re evangelical—and to this day, I am so thankful for my upbringing, especially people like Jeff Dodge and Peter Matthews, because they emphasized Scripture.

So we had tests on Scripture in our group.

I remember going over, and Harold questioned me on the Scripture.

We had Scripture tests, prayer—we had Monday morning prayer every morning, whether you liked it or not!

Get up early and go to the union and pray.

Evangelization, right?

Sharing your faith, right?

And then the high standards of morality.

So those things I took with me.

And then when I went to seminary, they threw in faithfulness to the truth in church history.

So ironically, becoming Catholic, I just think I’m just a good evangelical, to be honest with you.

So the prayers—I didn’t feel like I gave up anything.

And I think that’s maybe something I would try to get across: I didn’t give up anything.

What happened is because I started listening to these things—they trained me to believe the Bible.

Now, in evangelicalism, they have debates in eschatology—whether there’s rapture, millennialism—all these debates that unfortunately divide those groups.

But taking the Scripture literally, taking the Scripture for what it says, and when I would get to John 6, they were actually training me to believe when He says, Look, this is My body.

It’s not metaphorical!

So it wasn’t like reading—I didn’t become Catholic because I read a whole bunch of Catholic books.

The Scripture has what I call Catholic verses.

He’s breathing on them the Holy Spirit.

And so again, being evangelical, the reason why I think I’m just still evangelical is because when God says something, I found this in the Catholic Church: when God says something, the Catholic Church says, Okay, yeah, that’s the point!

I wanted to bring out, too, your sense of liturgy again—the sense that when you went in, nobody talked to you.

Now, sometimes that happens because we’re not doing our job hospitality-wise.

Right!

Yeah, yeah!

So this was just, for me, significant.

But primarily, it’s not a hospitality thing; it’s not a social event.

It’s an event where it’s not so much that we’re going to seek God, but God is there to encounter us.

And it’s interesting because oftentimes Catholicism is accused of works righteousness or there’s too much religious stuff.

But really, if one way to negatively define religion is man’s search for God—like us doing a bunch of stuff—Catholicism, in so many ways, is we’re stepping back and letting God do it.

The sacraments are God meeting us; the liturgy is us getting out of the way and encountering that, you know, entering into something that we didn’t make, that we didn’t originate, that didn’t start with us.

And so you had a little bit of that sense entering in there—that, oh, now it’s no longer like I have to kind of fill in the blank here.

Oh yeah!

Yeah!

If I can give a plug for confession— Yeah!

Oh, so I just went to confession before I came here, so I could give a good interview.

I don’t want to have, you know, any—so hopefully it took!

Yeah, we’ll see, right?

24 hours, maybe?

Well, it did!

You know, it did!

Because that’s one of the things that’s true!

That’s true!

So I’m in there confessing, and like any father, you struggle with certain things.

And the priest said something, and this is just why I love being Catholic.

He said, God is so glad you’re here; you’re not fooling Him.

Like, true!

Before you go in, I’m like, Do I have to admit this?

Like, here, He knows!

I just go in; I’m going to agree.

And he said, Without the grace of God, you cannot love your wife; you cannot love your family.

I’m like, That’s right!

I’m not on my own!

And I think that’s where the darkness came from.

I always felt like I was doing this on my own.

So to your point, no, I didn’t—yes, this fits well!

I love it!

This sounds like Christianity!

I’m not—the sacraments—you’re not on your own!

And when he said, And I absolve you, I’m like—because for years, how do you deal with the guilt?

Because even I would confess sins.

I remember reading 1 John and the Our Father—why in the world am I confessing my sins?

I’ll go around again!

These Catholic verses: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Forgive us this day.

Why?

1 John: If you sin, you know He is faithful and just and will forgive your sins.

I’m like, Why?

Why?

I thought I was forgiven!

I mean, I think that’s probably where a lot of the sadness came from because I knew I wasn’t. Yeah, yeah!

And that’s what I was longing for.

That’s the reason I became—that goes all the way back to saving Dave Dravecky, right?

Seeing all of that.

God, when He started there, He started there.

Okay, I’m going to bring you in, but I can’t—if He tried to bring me in at that point, I would have been hostile.

Yeah!

I think in many people’s lives, evangelicalism gives them a great start.

It introduces them to Christ.

Absolutely!

We have many students who leave the Catholic faith because they never quite met Christ.

I’ve met a lot of those people.

Yeah!

And evangelicalism introduces them to Christ, and that’s good!

We praise God when that happens, right?

But then oftentimes, what they’re lacking—what they’re yearning for is, Well, then how do I walk this?

How do I live this life out?

What do I do with my sins?

What do I do with the fact that I was saved and now I still am a bum?

Yeah, a bum is an excellent way of saying it!

Yeah, it’s true!

It’s true!

I mean, I’m trying, right?

Some of the moral failings—you’ve got to be kidding me!

My works aren’t enough, and I’m close!

I’m close!

And what I love about Catholic spirituality—there’s one book I read that has two spiritual truths: the first is put zero confidence in yourself and put all your confidence in God.

Yeah, yeah, that’s very good!

Well, we have about two minutes left, and I have like a thousand other things that I wanted to talk to you about.

Sure, sure!

But maybe next time!

But in the short time we have left, if you would—well, first of all, where are you now?

What are you doing now?

Oh, okay, great!

Yeah, so I’m a professor of philosophy at Divine Word College in Iowa, teaching Thomas Aquinas in the Society of Divine Word.

It’s such a great place!

It’s a little town in Iowa, and we have people from all over the world.

We have students from Haiti, Vietnam, Nigeria, Texas—you guys are the Texas people!

That’s right!

Yeah, and yeah, so teaching full-time there.

Yeah, that’s great!

Yep!

All right, and so, yeah, just a brief word, if you would—if someone’s coming from a similar background to you, you know, maybe from a broken church, you know, as you did when you grew up, but who’s yearning for something—maybe yearning for liturgy, yearning for, you know, something—what would you say to them?

I would say this: do not—it's what Father Dubé said.

Yeah, Father Dubé is a man that teaches a lot of great spirituality.

So he teaches that you do not judge a system by people who don’t follow it; you judge it by those who do follow it.

And the Catholic Church—if you want to be a saint, if you want to see God, if you want to have the presence of God in your life, it’s there!

They can’t take it from you; nobody can take it from you.

Everything you want out of the Catholic, out of your Christian faith—the Church offers, and you can get it.

That’s beautiful!

Thanks, Jason Reed!

No, thank you!

Thank you!

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

Pray for us!

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Journey Home program.

I do pray that Dr. Jason Reed’s story touched your heart.

And again, if you’re on a journey or if you have a story to tell, we’d love to hear it.

So check out chnetwork.org

for more stories like Jason’s. Again, thanks for being with us tonight.

God bless you!

We’ll talk to you again next week.

Thank you!

Thank you!