In high school he dated a girl named Abbi. He always felt that in some ways, his hard-line opposition to God pulled her away from going to church. He was an atheist torn between the Christians he saw as unwilling to ask the hard-hitting questions, and the scientists who seemed dead-set on making their field out to be more than it was.
Tyler was a young man shaped by misconception. He used to look at an event like the Holocaust and wonder how a merciful God could allow such things to happen. “I used to look at the religious world as a burden,” he said. “I saw Pharisees following tradition without really thinking about it.” He was an atheist who “saw” Pharisees.
Tyler went on to study mechanical engineering at The University of Colorado Boulder. He almost made it all the way through to his senior year avoiding God. When he took went home for winter break this last December, he witnessed a scene he had no logical answer for.
It was at the movie Les Miserable, where Tyler, sitting in a crowded theatre with his girlfriend, felt incapable of explaining away God for the first time. In a previous scene, one of the main characters, Jean Valjean, had stolen from the bishop who had taken him in and cared for him. He was caught for this crime and it was punishable by death. When guards brought Valjean to the scene, the bishop claimed to have freely given him these items, and then set him free. The guards left, and the bishop turned to Valjean and said,
“But remember this, my brother, see in this some higher plan. You must use this precious silver to become an honest man. By the witness of the martyrs, by the Passion and the Blood, God has raised you out of darkness; I have bought your soul for God!”
Tyler remembers thinking, “I didn’t have a word for it. All of my logic told me Jean Valjean was going back to jail at this point, and he didn’t!” Here he was, a mechanical engineering student, who felt it was his job to figure out the truth and to be right, for the first time asking himself if he was wrong.Nate Lee, another campus student at the University of Colorado Boulder, was sharing his faith in four-degree weather inviting people to the upcoming Sunday service when he met Tyler. Tyler was the last of 50 people Nate shared with that day, and the only “yes” he received. He came to church that Sunday and remarked, “Everyone was really happy, and loved each other. It didn’t seem possible in the world.”
From then on, Tyler was dedicated to meeting with Nate and the campus minister, Chris Clawson, every Wednesday and studying the bible. Chris and Nate, along with his personal consistent time in the Bible gave him the answer to the movie scene that had left him speechless: God’s grace. He quickly learned the power of repentance as he asked his girlfriend to move out of their shared apartment, and began to focus on purity and to rethink all that had previously seemed natural to him.
He was baptized on April 29th this year. His girlfriend Abbi, who started studying around the same time, was baptized with him.
Since then, he has seen multiple examples of grace. He passed classes at the end of a semester that he really
feels he should not have passed. The final test for his summer class was scheduled to conflict with attending ICMC West, but then it was pushed back, freeing him up to attend. His supportive family even came through with funds to pay for the entire conference.
I have never met him in person, but as we sat on opposite coasts video chatting last week, I realized that this man in his Boulder standard-issue tie-dye shirt was a perfect example of someone forged by misconception, but transformed by grace.