Once an atheist, now a Messianic Jew

‘I looked at the sky and declared my atheism…but who was I announcing it to?’

By Mark Ellis
Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
LOS ANGELES (ANS) -- He absorbed the complicated rhythms of the Sixties, which left him drug-dependent and filled with emptiness and pain. But then he encountered God’s glory in a blaze of light so powerful he couldn’t stand -- and his life changed unalterably forever.
“When I first heard about the holocaust it was incomprehensible,” says

Rory White

 Rory White, who grew up in a Jewish family in Los Angeles. He spent his earliest years in post-war Germany, due to his father’s work as a radiation researcher. He recalls that he played in bomb pits that covered the fields as far as he could see. “They filled with water and we caught pollywogs at the bottom,” he says.
After the family’s return to the U.S. and White’s bar mitzvah at age 13, he quickly fell into agnosticism and atheism. A voracious reader ahead of his peers, he devoured Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell, whose book, “Why I am not a Christian,” left a deep mark.
White’s compassionate nature couldn’t come to grips with the seeming indifference of God. “I remember looking at the sky and declaring ‘I am an atheist,’” he recalls.
“But who was I announcing it to?” Part of White’s anger stemmed from his view that God seemed to allow so much suffering in the world. In high school, White wrote a paper that argued the Bible was an example of propaganda, similar to communist or Nazi propaganda.
The teacher, who happened to be a Christian, gave White a C-minus, which infuriated the young man. He spent several hours arguing with the teacher after school, until the man wearied of any further quarreling.
“Well Rory, I guess in the end you’re right. It’s not a matter of intellectual logic, it’s a matter of faith. I can’t talk you into this,” he said. “I can’t blame you for not having faith. So I’m going to change your grade to an A-minus.”
The teacher’s gracious act resonated with White as he left the meeting. “I had been railing against him and he had been loving toward me,” White noted. “His act of humility mixed with his brilliance impressed me.”
By age 16 White concluded there is no God, but in the midst of growing feelings of emptiness he attempted to find “a spirituality” through his study of Buddhism. “Buddhism can be very appealing for an agnostic, atheist, or scientific mind,” he suggests. To White, it became a viable alternative to belief in God, even as it involved spiritual dangers from unforeseen influences.
In 1968 he won a Regent’s scholarship to UCLA and began in the Asian Studies department, then shifted his focus to art. After a transfer, he finished his art studies at UC Santa Cruz, which was ground zero in the counterculture movement. Despite his rebel nature, White became disillusioned by the counterculture.
“I felt more empty and isolated. I turned to drugs to find the happiness my art originally gave me. The drugs got terrifying,” he admits, so he turned to alcohol.
By his mid-twenties, White felt like a shattered person. In 1975 his house burned to the ground and he lost all his art. A taste for 100-proof Yukon Jack exerted a toll, as his life spiraled downward.
A friend of White’s went to prison, accused of murder. He visited her one day and was amazed by her newfound faith in God, and the seeming transformation this brought to her life.
When he saw her in prison, White was impressed by an irony. “She had much more than I had and she was in prison,” he reflected. She seemed richer and freer in her confinement than he did in his liberty.
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Mark Ellis is a senior correspondent for ASSIST News Service and the founder of www.Godreports.com.  He is available to speak to groups about the plight of the church in restricted countries, to share stories and testimonies from the mission field, and to preach the gospel. mark@Godreports.com

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