What an Atheist's 30-Day Experiment Teaches About Daily Faith

Key takeaways

• Daily rhythm: The man in the videos prayed, gave thanks, read Scripture and applied Jesus' teaching every day, and his life began to shift.
• Obedience in small things: Paying back a ten-dollar chess debt showed him what a practiced faith looks like.
• Public or private: The hosts weighed the risks of a new believer posting online against the biblical examples of people told to go and tell.
• Conviction: A heart that is listening to the Holy Spirit gets more sensitive, even when that is uncomfortable.
• Gratitude: Thanking God for what you already have changes how you pray and how you raise your kids.

An atheist, a short experiment and four habits

On this episode of the Beyond the Letter podcast, Pastor Adam Mesa sat down with Aaron and Sammy and showed them a pair of videos from an Instagram creator who calls himself an atheist. He had decided to pretend God was real for 20 days to see whether it would make him happier and more fulfilled. He had noticed that Christians seemed to have more peace and joy.

He gave himself four daily habits: morning prayer, gratitude, reading Scripture, and applying the teachings of Jesus. Mesa pointed out that this was a Christian version of seeking God, with no generic higher power involved.

Day 6 and a ten-dollar chess game

In the day 6 clip, the man prays for safety before a bike ride through New York, then gives thanks for the city and the view. Later he plays chess in a park with a stranger, and the loser pays ten dollars. He loses and has no cash, and the stranger doesn't take Venmo.

As Mesa retold it, the man was convicted, went to an ATM and handed over the money. He said he had once walked away from a chess debt in the same city and felt fine about it. This time he felt something different. Mesa also noted that within the first days of the experiment he had gone to a church and started a friendship with a pastor.

The update: no longer pretending

In the later video, the man admits the experiment had run about two months, even though he had filmed 20 days of it. He says he teaches yoga and that the first months of the practice were just going through the motions. Then he leaned in with real intention, and he now sees that as a step of faith.

He compares four years of yoga, which never made him want to be kinder to a stranger, with three months of reading the Bible, after which he says he is. He also says an eight-year struggle with nicotine quietly faded without any big moment. Nightmares then returned, and he described a fear of God and, more than that, a fear of being away from God. He ended by declaring that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior.

Mesa said that the line about fearing being away from God struck him as profound. He used the clip to press a question on believers. Some people who have followed Jesus for years still carry an addiction. Is their faith a daily practice, or only a weekly one? As Mesa put it, "I know a lot of people who become like they believe in Jesus, but then their day to day never changes."

Should he be posting this?

The hosts did not agree at first. Aaron found the story beautiful but cautious. He thought a new believer's faith needs protection, the way a grandparent watches a toddler's first steps, and said, "some of this should just be done privately." He added that twenty years of living the other way and twenty days of discipline make for a hard road, and that the comments and the pressure of virality can wear on a young believer.

Others pushed back with Scripture. Jesus told the man freed from demons in Mark 5 to go home and tell people what happened, and the woman at the well in John 4 told her town to come and see. If social media is the modern town square, why shouldn't a new believer speak there? One host admitted to a habit of skepticism after seeing other viral conversion stories unravel. He chose instead to believe the man began as an atheist, and compared him to Lee Strobel, who set out to disprove the resurrection and ended up writing The Case for Christ.

Another host brought up Paul in Philippians 1. Some preach Christ from selfish motives and some from pure ones, and Paul rejoiced either way.

What does it matter? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. I rejoice in this, yes, and will rejoice.

(Philippians 1:18, WEB)

Sammy said we cannot know anyone's motive until heaven, and that he would rather see the story posted, given how many young people are watching. He also said the video ministers to Christians, because the man shared the reason behind what he did, and not only the action.

Sowing seeds without a perfect follow-up

Sammy described how the man later set up a table in Central Park with a sign telling people to pretend God is real. He handed a copy of the Gospels to a man who was Jewish and opening up about a hard season. His advice was to read them like Harry Potter, a story to take in without having to believe it first. Sammy liked that anyone could start there.

The hosts took on a common objection, that you should only share the gospel if you can also disciple the person. They pointed out that Jesus sent the man from Mark 5 back to his town and did not bring him along. Discipleship matters, and the church can do better at follow-up. But as the hosts said, we plant and water while God brings the growth. Sammy shared how he had spoken that week with a man named Ruben, who grew up in church and drifted away. He encouraged him to go back to a church nearby. In his words, "God has an encounter for every single person."

When daily practice makes you sensitive

Mesa tied this to a lesson from his own church's series on spiritual formation, that growing closer to Christ makes you more sensitive to the Holy Spirit. He told of circling a beach parking lot for about forty minutes with a friend when a young man in a small pickup cut in front of him and then cursed him and gave him the finger.

Mesa said he went through plans for payback, from tailgating to pulling in an inch from the truck. Each time the Holy Spirit stopped him. He stewed about it for the rest of the day, and he said, "I was mad that I had conviction." By the end he was thanking God that his heart had not hardened, because he could just as easily have gone on to preach a service the next day and ignored the Spirit the rest of the week. The chess player's ten dollars was the same kind of moment. Daily reading and prayer give God a way into the ordinary parts of a day.

Gratitude before asking

The conversation closed on gratitude. Mesa said he has changed how he talks to his sons, Matthias and Thomas. Instead of scolding them for being spoiled, which he found only produces guilt, he thanks Jesus with them for the kindness behind a trip to Disneyland or a meal at Chick-fil-A.

He told of a friend whose family flies private, and of that friend's kids asking Mesa's sons what kind of plane they had flown on. Mesa told his friend, "Your blessings are your blessings," and that he tells his own sons there are levels and that what God has given them is enough. He added that many believers practice desire more than gratitude, and their prayers are mostly requests. Asking is fine, but he wants thanks to come first. It fits Psalm 34 and the invitation to abide in Christ in John 15.

Oh taste and see that the LORD is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

(Psalm 34:8, WEB)

What this means for you

Sammy offered a simple challenge. He often says, "Try Jesus for 30 days. If you don't like it, you could get all your demons back." The point is to try it consistently, and the four habits from the videos are a plain place to start: pray, give thanks, read Scripture and do what you read that same day.

You might ask yourself when you last practiced gratitude, and when you last read something and obeyed it before the day was over. If you know someone far from God, you could invite them to try the four habits with you for a month and talk about it afterward. Nobody can say where it will lead them, but it asks nothing that you cannot do tomorrow morning.