Life Above Reproach Testimony

By William Mothershed

I didn’t want to be a Christian.  I rebelled against my psychotic father by dropping out of school and becoming a criminal.  I was confused enough to believe that rebelling against him and rebelling against society was the same thing.  Before I figured out how wrong I was, I had murdered a police officer who tried to arrest me for a robbery I had just committed.  In the county jail, I wanted to get right with God, but I had no idea who God was or what He wanted from me.

When I was young, my family was into the occult.  I had seen the dark side at work with my own eyes, and I knew there had to be a good side.  I so desperately wanted to get right with whoever or whatever that side was.  I spent my first 9 months in county jail in a single cell at the end of a dead-end hallway.  I had plenty of time to read, so I read every book on religion I could find.  I didn’t know much about any of them, but I was fairly sure I didn’t want to be a Christian.  I didn’t care for the idea of all those “thou shalt do this” rules, and especially all the “thou shalt not do that rules.”  At first, I was attracted to the ones that told me I could control things if I only knew the secret.  They cater to your ego and don’t ask much of you, but they are traps.  The things you think you are controlling are just setting you up to be controlled by them.  I had seen enough of that already from my own childhood.  Buddhism and Hinduism seemed interesting, but they were just that same trap in a more exotic package.  I was surprised at how many of them were just the claim of one guy who said he had a revelation or talked to an angel.  He offers no proof.  You either choose to believe him or not, depending on whether or not he is saying what you want to hear.

In the end, Christianity was the only one that could stand up to honest scrutiny.  It was historical, not myth.  Jesus Christ’s miracles were done in public; He taught in public; He offered Himself up as a sacrifice for our sins in public; and after being raised from the dead, He spent 40 days afterward appearing in public.  What I couldn’t ignore was the witness of His disciples.  They knew the truth having spent 3-1/2 years walking all over Israel, watching His miracles, and hearing His teaching.  They either knew for a fact that the whole thing was a hoax, or they knew for a fact that their resurrected Lord was God in the flesh to create a way for their sins to be forgiven.

When they preached Jesus had risen from the dead, the disciples were arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and many were executed.  All they had to do to save their own lives was to change their story.  Their captors didn’t want to kill them, they wanted to kill the story of Jesus.  They maintained their faith because they knew the gift they had for all of humanity was worth more than their mortal lives.  And the people who watched them being executed in the most brutal ways knew the same truth that you and I know:  No one goes to his death to protect a lie, or a hoax of a misunderstanding.  This is the witness on whom the church was founded; and, it was the witness that brought me to a true faith in Jesus Christ—not a religion full of rules, but a relationship with a God who loved me enough to live and die for me.

I have been a Christian now for 37 years.  He has not let me down, and I can say that from inside prison.  There is more freedom and peace in my life than in the lives of many out there in physical freedom.  If I could change my life and I had to choose never knowing Jesus in order to avoid prison or never leaving prison now that I know Him, I would choose to know Him here.  This world and this life will all pass away, but the gift of God is eternal life and peace in His presence to all who will come to Him.  Nothing can be better than that.