Teena Myers

Rory, my husband, suggested I attend the Louisiana Book Festival, a literary celebration offering book lovers an opportunity to interact with authors. I suggested that he bring me. We strolled through the grounds of the Louisiana State Capitol, weaving our way through a maze of tables stacked with books and overseen by authors ready to tell us about their labors of love. By midafternoon, the weather grew warm. We headed toward a tent to escape the sun’s beating rays. Within the tent were more tables, books, and authors.

Wishing to remain in the shade, we took our time at each table. I stopped to peruse the back cover of Walk Back the Cat (rereleased in 2010 as Secret of the Shroud). Pamela Binnings Ewen stood, waiting patiently as I read: “Walk Back the Cat is an intense fictional work based upon actual details of a real artifact, the Shroud of Turin, the purported burial cloth of Jesus.” Jesus interested me. Fiction did not.

Pamela handed me a copy of Faith on Trial, a nonfiction book she wrote to prove that the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and resurrection are credible evidence, acceptable in a court of law. I looked at my husband. No words needed. He fished his wallet out of his back pocket. I walked out of the tent with my book and a new friend in Pamela. Four years later, I asked Pamela if I could write about her experience with Christianity.

Pamela’s family attended the Catholic Church but remained detached from its activities. She loved the mystery of a Mass spoken in Latin, the rituals, the incense, and the candles. When she was in the fourth grade, her family moved to a small town in southern Louisiana, where the Episcopal Church became the center of their lives. Pamela studied the Bible in Sunday school, sang in the choir, and attended the church’s youth group with most of her friends. During Christmas, they cut down pine trees and decorated the inside of the church.

Pamela smiled. “To this day, the smell of pine boughs reminds me of the time I spent in the Episcopal Church. I loved the priest. The congregation became my family. Going to church was comfortable, like being at home. I lost that when I went to college.”

Pamela graduated from high school and moved to New Orleans. Far from the watchful eyes of her parents and priest. The lure of the big city intoxicated her. Swept up in the party atmosphere for which New Orleans is known, Pamela flunked her first year of college. She walked off campus with “You are not college material” ringing in her ears and looked for a job.

While working in New Orleans, Pamela found a new moral compass—Ayn Rand. Rand’s books and philosophy offered powerful arguments against religion. The objectivism Rand preached gave Pamela strong reasons to believe the Bible was little more than a collection of myths and legends. Daily newscasts about wars, starvation in Africa, and irreconcilable differences in the Middle East made belief in a man who rose from the dead to bring peace on earth seem unreasonable. Every ancient religion had a great flood, virgin births, and resurrected gods. Pamela wondered if the Bible was little more than the skillful spinning of gifted storytellers.

Unwilling to abandon her faith, she asked her childhood pastor, “How do you know the Gospel story of Jesus is true?” She hoped for a persuasive argument proving that Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead. His reply, “faith based on trust,” left her disappointed and disillusioned.

As Pam searched for answers, Time magazine published a cover story titled “Is God Dead?” The article pushed Pamela toward agnosticism. By the end of the 1960s, Pamela had returned to college to study law. She graduated cum laude, married an atheist, and strove to acquire the best life had to offer.

“My heart could not accept what my mind rejected,” said Pamela. “I asked God to show me something that would help me believe. When I moved to Houston to practice law, I’d often skip lunch to attend a healing service in a small Episcopal chapel. The priest would lay his hand on my head while I closed my eyes, wanting to believe. Sometimes I cried. God seemed to remain silent, and I descended deeper into agnosticism.”

Many years elapsed before a thought slipped into Pamela’s consciousness and refused to leave: What is the meaning of life if this is all there is? She loved practicing law, solving problems, traveling, and working with people she admired. But her success could not quiet the question that distracted her in noisy, crowded conference rooms and pursued her as she ran through airports to catch a plane. She was able to dismiss the unanswerable question until her father died. The idea that death was the end and that her father was nothing more than dust tormented her.

“One day, I gazed at the bookshelves in my office, filled with thick, gold-embossed leather binders, each one representing months, even years, of my life. One by one, I took them down and checked the dates. Suddenly, I realized everything that I’d accomplished as a lawyer was temporary—the concerns that drove these deals would abate and become outdated. Contracts would be modified, terminated, or replaced with new agreements to be negotiated and written by new lawyers. Goals would change. Friends, partners, and clients would come and go. As Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes, ‘Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless . . .’”

The depiction of Mozart in the movie Amadeus made Pamela think there might be something more than this life. His childish behavior contradicted the genius of his music. She read everything she could find about Mozart, searching for an explanation. The superficial, scatological man she found in Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life made Pamela wonder if his talent came from a higher power.

“I also began reading books by scientists who discussed their thoughts about God. After ten years of research, I decided it was probable that consciousness is not limited to our physical brains. There is more to life than what we see, feel, and touch—something that continues beyond our physical lives. But I wasn’t ready to believe in Christianity yet.”

Pamela turned her attention to the Bible after she read Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf. Greenleaf, a famous Harvard law professor in the mid-nineteenth century, wrote an influential treatise on the law of evidence in the United States. In Testimony of the Evangelists, Greenleaf treated Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the authors of the Gospels, as witnesses in a courtroom, subjecting them to the rigorous tests of law. His examination of the witnesses’ testimony led him to conclude that they were reliable and credible. Therefore, it was reasonable to believe that the Resurrection did, in fact, happen. Pamela also realized that, 150 years after Greenleaf published his conclusions, a new test using current archaeological and scientific discoveries might make his case stronger.

“The realization that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were witnesses and that I could use the rules of evidence to test their claims was manna from heaven. I don’t have to listen to my heart or believe what someone told me Scripture said. We have four books that are unique. There’s no other religion in the world that claims to have witnesses whose stories are tied to historical events. We can tie history to the evidence found in the Gospels. One thing leads to the next, and the next, and the next, and before you know it, you have a chain of proof that makes believing the Gospels reasonable. It’s easy to tell if someone is telling the truth when you have enough evidence. I decided to turn my research into a book, which became Faith on Trial.”

Before Pamela finished her manuscript, she returned to church and immersed herself in its community. Her atheist husband refused to attend services with her and forbade her from bringing church friends home. Her drive to complete Faith on Trial became a point of contention in their marriage. She already worked long hours as a lawyer, and her free time was increasingly consumed by writing and church activities. Their marriage deteriorated until divorce became the only option.

Pamela began writing as an agnostic but completed her manuscript as a woman of faith. She lay in a hospital bed, battling cancer, when an unfamiliar priest wearing an Episcopal clerical collar walked into the room. “I’m miserable,” she said to the priest. He smiled and handed her a publishing contract for Faith on Trial. Pamela survived her battle with cancer and later wrote The Moon in the Mango Tree, a novel based on her grandmother’s search for faith in the 1920s. The book became a 2009 Christy Award finalist.

She looked at me and spoke with confidence. “I remember reading Ayn Rand as a young woman in the 1960s. It was so powerful, but I really didn’t want to give up my faith. I wanted someone to say, ‘Faith doesn’t conflict with reason.’ That’s why apologetics is the root of all my writing. Fiction is more fun, and it may even be a stronger tool than a head-on confrontation. But my core being—the center of everything I do in life—is in Faith on Trial. My faith is solid now because I have reason to believe Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John told the truth.”

While I don’t usually read fiction, I have read all of Pamela’s novels. Her love for apologetics is something I identify with. To believe something without good reason is foolish. When Jesus said we must become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven, he wasn’t talking about blind faith that trusts without reason. My husband has worked in children’s ministry for thirty years. Set a child in an unfamiliar place, and he or she will scream to return to the comfort of someone familiar. In the same way, our faith should be in someone we know and have reason to believe we can trust.