JOHN DEMPSTER: The call of 'something more' that changed a sceptic's life for good
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As a young man, David Sim was indifferent to Christianity. A thoughtful, intelligent Aberdonian, he was happy working in accountancy IT at Grampian, and then at Moray Council: science, he considered, had the potential to explain the universe satisfactorily; he was content.
But now David has graduated from Highland Theological College and is a probationary minister at Hilton Church in Inverness. He preaches with confidence, leads prayers with deep insight, and exudes a quiet certainty that he is where he is meant to be.
Thirty-something atheist to 50-something minister. “So what happened,” I asked, intrigued.
David had married Heather, a church organist and accompanied her somewhat reluctantly to significant church events. But the real catalyst for change was a growing sense that there must be “something more”: that some indefinable factor was missing from purely scientific explanations of reality.
He also felt a growing restlessness in his work. An inner knowing that there was somewhere else for him to be, grew until it could no longer be ignored.
David, a systematic researcher, explored various faith traditions – Buddhism, Islam, New-Age spiritualities – and found there many attractive insights. He left an exploration of Christianity to the last: wasn’t it the faith of his grandparents, a dated, establishment belief system, a cultural relic?
One day he was browsing in the book store at Gatwick Airport prior to flying north when he came across Making Sense of God: an invitation to the sceptical by American pastor Tim Keller. That subtitle particularly attracted David. He bought the book. And, he tells me “By the time I landed in Inverness it was ‘This is it! This is truth!’”
He realised that Christianity was philosophically persuasive, and in the next few days explored Christian faith further. He dipped into the Bible, and was astonished to find there similar principles to those he’d thought utterly modern when he’d found them in self-help books. He was aware of a growing sense of connectedness to God. When Sunday came, he said to Heather: “I want to go to church.”
And then, 18 months later he was helping his daughter from a previous relationship do her church-cleaning job. There among the pews he had a “sense of the quiet voice saying ‘There’s more you can do here’”.
Now after periods of discernment, preparation and study, David is on the cusp of becoming a fully-fledged minister. He is able to speak the language of those to whom Christian faith seems alien and those who, as he did, live with the irresistible tug of God in their deepest selves, the whisper “There’s something more!” And as long as God calls, and people respond, there will be no end to the Christian church.
