My research in cognitive psychology had to do with how people integrated information in order to make judgments and decisions. The research in this area did not specify what one should believe or how one should value things; but rather given one's beliefs and values, how they were to be combined. Values were just the X's in the equations. But in my own life it was not working.

I was bothered by the current day philosophy of relativism. The fact that I could choose what was right for me meant it was arbitrary. If it was arbitrary, it was a variable in my equation -- an unknown. I wanted to solve the set of equations and see if there were true values. But how? In the terminology of mathematics, the system of equations was indeterminant, that is, any number of solutions would work. Life did not result in one answer given the set of equations that I had.

The answer had to be outside or above psychology and the material world. It could not be philosophy since that was just another system of unsolvable equations. The answer had to come from something having to do with God and with an absolute. Religion per se was not the answer. This was clear from my experience with Unitarianism. I was seeking a belief that was absolute not relative. What I now know to be the truth.

I started to read the Epistles of St. Paul. These were new to me. I had read the Gospels and knew much about the life and teachings of Jesus. But I had never really heard the arguments pertaining to our need for salvation from sin and death, the person of Jesus Christ as savior, and His atonement for our sins on the cross.

Initially, my academic nature and skepticism recoiled from the text that I read. How could I believe that all of this was true? How did I know that it was not one more road among many? Yet there was one interesting clue. Jesus said, "I am the way. No one comes to the Father except through me."

After several weeks I was ready to believe. I was ready to make that jump from one life to the next, from an unsolved set of equations to a solution. I knew that there was no returning, as a child brought to birth I could not go back.

I knelt down beside my bed (a waterbed to be specific) and prayed, "Lord Jesus, I believe in You. You are my Lord. You are my savior. Help me to believe. Save me from my sins."

At that point I felt as if the hand of a potter was beginning to turn me as a wet piece of clay, beginning to reshape my life according to a design from above. Yes, I was still Kent Norman, in the same body; but there was something new. I was born from above and I was beginning an infant to understand and live in a new order of things.

It might be thought that one can by a series of causal events shift from one belief to another. While this is generally true for mundane beliefs and sometimes true for critical beliefs, it is not true when it comes to believing in Christ. One may point to precipitating factors such as near death experiences or adolescent crises. But these are only correlational events and by no means serve to determine the direction of one's leap to faith or fall to depression or worse. Furthermore, there is no rational argument by which one can cross the chasm between unbelief and belief. Unbelief denies even the existence of the other side. Consequently, no bridge can even be contemplated for there is no other side to support it.

No, the traversal from unbelief to the belief in God, and in particular the belief in the Savior, Jesus Christ, requires the intervention of the object of belief. It requires, as I now understand it, the grace of God. It requires the intervention of God's mercy and His gift of faith. Needless to say, this entails a mysterious collision of God's predestination and man's free will. It can only be described as a miracle; and hence, not subject to causal explanation as stated earlier.

Be that as it may, there I found myself getting up from my knees a new creature with a new perspective on life.