A Story of Finding God at Harvard

Contributed by Victoria T. Li

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

The most important moment in my life occurred on November 21st, 2022, during my freshman year at Harvard, when I became a Christian. Many people were surprised by this transformation, including me. As a child, I had attended church with my mother and grandmother, but I always had one foot out the door—in no small part because I also had a bitterly anti-Christian father. Soon, when I was about ten, I stopped attending church, dismissed Christians as hypocrites, and decided there was no God.

A slew of alternative worldviews readily embraced me. With technological advancements, humanity seemed poised to explain away mysteries and disprove that which religion sought to defend. Religion, I was told, was the opiate of the masses. Religion, I was told, was the epitome of irrationality. Religion, I was told, was the cause of strife, wars, and meaningless suffering. If people could only view the world sensibly and without religious fervor, we could all live better lives.

Yet, as I grew older, I discovered weaknesses in my secular worldview. We are taught to be good, and I wanted to take seriously the idea that I could choose to be a good person and live a righteous life, yet it was extremely difficult to define good and righteousness. I realized that life was not so easily understood, controlled, or even improved by human effort alone. I fell short of my own ideals daily. The world’s suffering and pain also became apparent: justice, and injustice, were no longer abstract concepts but became applicable to personal life. It was difficult to understand why people hurt each other, even those they love, in profound and seemingly unforgivable ways. I began wondering how we ought to adequately judge and hold one another accountable. What value system, what philosophical theory, what intellectual framework could fully explain the messy, wretched, yet infinitely beautiful state of human existence?

I also wrestled with the fact that belief in higher powers has been the rule, not the exception, throughout human history. The brilliant men who built the world we live in were men of faith. Many of the most profound pieces of music, literature, and art were made in devotion to God. The Bible is the most translated, distributed, and influential text in world history. Being an atheist meant saying that most of humanity was fundamentally deluded, that people’s time and labor were devoted to an empty end, and that I was, rather than their heir, superior to my predecessors. It meant saying that the Bible, while possibly a source of temporal wisdom, is wrong about all its divine claims. It meant saying that Christ, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, is either a liar or lunatic, but certainly not Lord.¹ “If God does not exist,” says Dostoevsky, “everything is permitted.”² If God does not exist, then human history is engulfed by a great lie.

Meanwhile, snippets of Scripture began to ring true. The verse, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you,”³ motivated me. The Christian golden rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,”⁴ seemed to be at least good guidance.

Pondering all this, I arrived at Harvard at eighteen, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Harvard prides itself on collecting and educating the best and the brightest. This institution is meant to be a great assemblage of human wisdom. Yet, even here, people sinned—at least according to the literal Hebrew translation of “sin,” which means to miss the mark. There was no shortage of people of sin, even at Harvard, making poor personal decisions, falling short of their expectations, and hurting themselves and others. Many were fraught with anxiety despite the immense number of resources and intelligence at their disposal. At the end of the day, we were no better than anyone else.

It became clear to me that more intelligence did not translate to more virtue. It also occurred to me that my moral system had internal contradictions. Daily, I felt guilty that I acted contrary to what I considered good, but I was confused about where the guilt came from. I realized my value system was ultimately contrived and bankrupt, because it relied on nothing greater than my intuition and personal philosophizing: it could have no claim to universality.

At the same time, Christian friends began speaking to me. I began to meet, for the first time, peers whose devotion seemed to grant them a peace and a light that I found foreign. I became curious about how they answered the questions I wrestled with. At the invitation of a friend, I attended Park Street Church on November 7th—the first time in my adult life that I had been back to church. While there were many aspects of the service that I recognized as meaningful, my first reaction to the sermon was that it sounded like propaganda. I was curious, but I maintained my distance.

Then, on November 21st, I walked by the pop-up used books sale by the train station and saw a beautiful, floral, faux-leather Bible. Feeling that an educated person ought to have a Bible, I purchased it for a mere seven dollars. That evening, a Christian friend reached out to me seeking forgiveness for a minor issue. It was a strange set-up for a conversation, but it soon became about first principles. As a Christian, he believed people should forgive because God commands us to forgive.⁵ He explained that forgiveness is an absolute virtue. Yet, if I had no basis for believing in God, how could I take his words seriously? I asked him, and myself, and whatever was out there: if I forgive others, who is going to forgive me?

God.

In that moment, as an answer to my web of questions, it became so extraordinarily clear that God exists—the God of the Bible—a fact that I can be more certain about than my own existence. God forgives our sins. God is the source of life, value, meaning, and justice; indeed, “for from him and through him and to him are all things.”⁶ Any attempt to create life, value, meaning, and justice from mere human intellect will ultimately end in sin—missing the mark, because God is the one who set the mark. It was not a rational understanding. It was a leap of faith, and one that has infinitely changed my life for the better. Having knocked, having asked for the meaning of life, I ultimately received Christ as the answer. For the first time, I could begin to glimpse what life could be in its fullness.

The rest of my time at Harvard has involved wrestling with what it means for God to exist. I read the whole Bible for the first time. I began to find fellowship with other Christians. Friends and mentors were eager to help me answer age-old theological questions, and I am forever grateful for their patience. I slowly reconciled what Christ demanded of me—of us—and what His Word and Love meant for my particular life. I later discovered that the day I first returned to church was the same day I, years earlier, had been baptized as an infant.

Almost four years later, I am only beginning to understand how God’s power, mercy, and righteousness shape my life and our world. I have an incomparable peace because I have faith in an eternal, almighty, and unchanging God—not in myself. I have also found the love of my life, and I can only be confident in our future marriage because it is defined by God—not by man. The problems in the world left unexplained by secular theories finally found a consistent answer. Life became infinitely more meaningful.

The reasons why one converts are difficult to distill; they are as plentiful as there are reasons to live and breathe. I am glad to say that my story is far from unique. Plenty of people, even those at Harvard, find God. A supernatural conversion moment is not necessary for a leap of faith—faith simply means trust in God. Go to church. Guide your days with Scripture. Open the hymnal and sing. Kneel down. Pray, and God will answer.

ARISTOCLEA

A version of this article originally appeared in City of God, the March 2025 print issue of the Salient.

1. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952.

2. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880.

3. Matthew 7:7

4. Luke 6:31

5. Matthew 6:14-15

6. Romans 11:36