Yesterday I blogged about the type of criticism I most often read from believers commenting on my videos. I don’t just get complaints of course. There is another type of comment that I’ve often gotten. My new favorite example of that was in my inbox this morning and is copied below.
I’m sure you get plenty of letters thanking you for what you do, and I’m sure you get just as many (if not more) letters that are angry with your stance. This is obviously one where you get some praise.
I was, until just about three weeks ago, a believing and practicing Jehovah’s Witness.
Four weeks ago, I met a man at his doorstep during my preaching work. he patiently listened to my presentation, and then caught me unawares by asking if we believed in science and history. To make a long story short, he directed me to your Youtube channel.
All the tiny, nagging contradictions and confusing reasoning I’ve been fed since I was 12 and my father died just . . . evaporated.
You laid out so much evidence, in such a plain, straighforward and logical manner, that I have no doubts about my faith anymore. It has utterly changed my outlook on my future, my interactions with others, and my responsibilities towards those same people.
Thank you.
Thank you for shaking me awake.
What can I say to that but to thank him back for sharing that story? Now I want whoever that was who referred him to me to know this story too.
Over the last couple decades of my activism on YouTube, I’ve received many letters bearing this sort of sentiment; where folks have told me how they’ve shrugged off religion or had gone back to college or changed their major to focus more on science, because they heard or read something I said that resonated with them in a life-changing way. I feel honored and yet humbled at the same time.
In every case, even when they report new hardships associated their changed perspective, it’s always described as an improvement. I don’t get messages like this more than once a month or so at most, but these more than anything else are what has kept me going and doing this for so long.
