Art Hutchinson

Running in Circles

I was exceedingly fit on the outside, but out of shape where it counted—in my soul

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The first few years of my life, my parents, my little brother and I all went to church. Around the time I was eight, we left and never really looked back. (It was a time—the early ‘70s—when many were leaving churches, but I suspect it also had something to do with my causing trouble in Sunday school!) In the extra time on Sunday mornings we’d go on family hikes or bike rides to “enjoy God’s creation”, as my parents said, but after awhile they didn’t mention God anymore, and I didn’t either.

In college, I took a few religion courses in addition to my science major. The professors in those courses did nothing to discourage my instinctive, unstudied sense that they must all lead to the same God somehow. A few of them even went out of their way to stoke my atheism. (I’m told it’s much too late to get my tuition back!)

Through early adulthood, I would describe myself as an agnostic or atheist, depending on who I was talking to. My grandparents went to church and I figured that made me a kind of Christian. When I got old like them, I reasoned, I might look into it further so I could go to heaven—but not before then. I had too much I wanted to do with my life. I went to church with my wife and two daughters a couple of times a year, but only reluctantly. I supposed it would be good for them. I still didn’t buy it though, and it irritated me to get dressed up just to sit still on a bright, sunny morning. It never occurred to me that my kids were smart enough to eventually see through all of my hypocrisy.

Then, one year, God kind of grabbed me. I wasn't planning on it. In fact, it interfered with my plans rather profoundly. I was running hard in the other direction, both literally and figuratively. Marathons and triathlons had become my constant idols and so riding my bike, running, swimming (or napping and eating) took up most of my weekends. I was exceedingly fit on the outside, but out of shape where it counted—in my soul.

I was at the top of my game career-wise also. As a management consultant in my ‘dream’ job, I was traveling constantly, advising big companies around the world on what to do. I was absolutely convinced I was going to retire on dot.com stock options within just a few years, or at least my frequent flyer miles.

Then, in the space of a few months, it all imploded. No job. No stock options.

About the same time, my younger daughter (then about eight) asked me: "Daddy, why don't you ever come to church with us?" I didn't have an answer, much less one that wouldn't have hurt or confused her, and so, for the first time in a long time, I had to actually think about that question: why didn't I go to church, exactly?

Then 9-11 happened. I don't know anyone who didn't ask larger questions for awhile after that. A friend invited me to a Bible study just a block from my house about a month after that. I was unemployed and so figured, 'why not?' I thought it would be fun poking holes in the lame arguments of ignorant, superstitious Christians.

Only that's not how it turned out. I came in with higher academic credentials, physical fitness and monetary net worth than any of them (plus a lot of pride). I came out realizing how little that mattered in the long run and how grossly ignorant I was about the Bible.

Despite my strongest intentions going in, I finally had to confess, a few months later: Jesus is who he says he is. Christianity is demonstrably true and it explains more about my life and the world than any other system of belief I have encountered. (And I have looked into all of the major ones.) I finally had to thank my friend for his persistence in teaching me the Bible and gently answering my many stubborn questions.

Three years later, my brother and only sibling got leukemia out-of-the-blue and died only seven months later. (Several other friends and family members died that year also). Yet in that dark and seemingly unrelenting time of grief and anxiety, my intellectual faith began to blossom into something much richer. I began to see how God was working in my life—holding us up through countless “little” miracles of reassurance. With my science-trained mind, it wasn’t hard to calculate how incredibly far beyond chance each of those little glimpses was—so perfect in their timing, intimacy, content and power that I’d often burst out laughing as I gave thanks to their source.

We bounced around between several churches for a few years, finding bits and pieces of what I could see in the Bible, but not ever really being “fed”. For many months after my brother died, I prayed to be directed to the church where God wanted me and my family to settle. I knew it wasn’t where we were—a church in steep decline whose teaching was hard to differentiate from the surrounding culture.

Then one evening, after a particularly frustrating meeting there, I sat in my car, praying for a sign from God to let me out of there and direct me to where my family and I could be fed and have our thirst for God quenched. I flipped on my car radio. J. Vernon McGee was preaching out of 1^st Kings, chapter 17, a book from the Bible I knew very little about. As I turned up the volume, I heard him recount God’s words to Elijah: “Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there.”

At home, I looked at a satellite map on the Internet and found the parking lot where I’d been sitting. There, just east of the church, was a small, dried-up brook. And just east of that—precisely due east within only a yard or two… was the front door of NPC. When I walked into the sanctuary for worship the following Sunday, I had to laugh out loud: they were playing the same song I’d been listening to in my car on the way over.

I’ve been well fed ever since by the warm people, true preaching and the living water Jesus promised, flowing from the many activities at NPC.