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What would it look like if the sort of mind that conceived an online encyclopedia became convinced of Christianity? Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has answered that question for us, in a remarkable testimony detailing his long road to faith. And it is a long road indeed.

In one sense, it’s a road back, because Sanger was raised in a conservative Lutheran church-going family. But his parents drifted away from the church, and following their example, so did he. To make it worse, when he asked a pastor for guidance with tough questions, he was turned away.

You might think this is the beginning of a story where the church is the main villain, but you’d be wrong. In fact, it’s very much the opposite. Although Sanger is honest about the pain that pastor caused, he also takes responsibility for the intellectual arrogance that caused him to assume only incurious, “dogmatic” people believe in God. In fact, it wasn’t until well into middle age that Sanger even understood what theology was. 

As a trained philosopher, Sanger prided himself on being more nuanced than the New Atheists, whose arguments always struck him as obviously lightweight. Not that he was wowed by their Christian apologist opponents either, he just knew he could mount a much better argument. His innate sense of fairness would later motivate him to speak out against the obvious bias in Wikipedia’s article on intelligent design. But he could never commit to a side in the debate himself. He always felt just a little too clever for that.

Meanwhile, he had Christian friends who were not just intelligent, but unusually kind and gracious under pressure. That was noteworthy, and if Sanger was honest, it felt a bit strange.

Politically, Sanger leaned right, and as he started his own family and observed the declining culture around him, he became progressively more troubled. His testimony links back to some of the equally methodical old essays he wrote for himself as he wrestled with deep questions around the nature of good and evil, wondering how God might or might not play into it all and wishing people still took religion seriously. Writing a little over ten years ago in his quiet corner of the internet, he foreshadowed the sorts of conversations about the social utility of Christianity that have become all the rage in recent years, with the rise of figures like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland. Except, unlike a Peterson or a Holland, Sanger didn’t have a large public profile riding on where his journey led him next.

The revelations surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein cult drove Sanger to consider the reality of a dark spiritual underworld. He didn’t quite buy it, but the thought spooked him enough that he thought he’d better start seriously reading the Bible, just in case. If there was a good God out there, “I wanted to be on His side.”

The story doesn’t take any lurid turns from there. Sanger never encounters a demon, an angel, or the voice of God. Instead, God speaks to him through Scripture. As he chips steadily away at his personal study project one day at a time, little by little, he discovers that’s enough.

Christians love a good dramatic testimony. We love stories that end on a climactic high with a properly emotional “come to Jesus” moment, all the better if it’s motivated by a personal crisis or delivers someone from extreme sin. But Sanger’s humble story lacks any of these clichéd markers for what makes a testimony compelling. It’s not a “movie” testimony. It’s cerebral, slow-burning, a little eccentric. It doesn’t always hit exactly the beats you would want it to hit in exactly the places you would order them. But then God didn’t ask anyone else to write Larry Sanger’s story. 

Personally, I found this testimony in some ways more compelling precisely by virtue of its quietness, precisely because it felt less like a movie and more like, well, life. I was also humbled by how diligently Sanger pursued answers to his questions, not just dipping into the Bible but closely reading it cover to cover. When was the last time I read the Bible cover to cover? When did I last take the time to marvel properly and fully at the genius of God’s plan of salvation?

God has revealed himself in many ways to many people, some direct and blinding, some still and quiet. As Sanger discovered, walking by faith doesn’t mean abandoning reason or believing without evidence. Yet having evidence doesn’t mean we won’t need faith either. We still need it even when we have enough, when just enough doesn’t feel like enough. We could always wish we had more. We could always wish we had a sign. But Sanger’s journey reminds all of us to be grateful for the light we’re given and follow it as best we can. 

For a public figure of his status to deliver such a testimony is welcome indeed, and it couldn’t have arrived at a better moment. With great joy, we say, “Welcome home.”