Earlier this year, Ben Weller, a photographer based in Japan, was assigned to take photographs for Sophia Lee’s story, Growth is Good. Survival is Too. While Ben doesn’t call himself a Christian, the Christianity Today story deeply resonated with him, and the assignment came at a time when he was really beginning to explore his faith.
“The Christianity Today assignment was awesome; I felt very tuned in when doing the photos,” said Ben. “I read Sophia’s story several times, and I felt an emotional connection to the story and people in it.”
The story was about four pastors in Japan and the difficulty of establishing and growing the church in the country. For the assignment, Ben visited three churches and met with one other pastor in Tokyo.
“I really enjoyed it, and to date, it is one of my favorite stories that I’ve worked on,” said Ben. “Part of it was the spiritual aspect of it and how it aligned with what was going on in my life at the time.”
Ben grew up going to a Church of the Brethren with his family in Indiana. He was active in the church and youth group through high school, but around middle school, he became an atheist even while still attending church. When he went off to college, he stopped going to church altogether and was an atheist for about 20 years.
After college, Ben took an English teaching job in Korea and ended up wanting to live there. However, he didn’t love teaching English, so he went to journalism school at Indiana University with the hope of returning to Korea after graduation. After he took a visual communication course, his professor encouraged him to pursue photojournalism.
“I also realized that photography, in some ways, is easier than writing for me,” said Ben. “I was in journalism school, but writing felt a lot like homework, and photography didn’t feel that way to me, so I shifted gears.”
After graduate school, Ben had some photography internships, and eventually took another teaching job at a University in Korea. He used his free time to launch his freelance photography career. While in Korea, Ben met his wife, who is Japanese, and in 2015, they moved to Japan, where Ben has been doing photography full-time since.
“For me, my photography is mostly about people,” said Ben. “It’s an excuse to talk to people and get nosy about their lives. Photographing people’s lives up close creates interesting dynamics and conversations, which gives me a window into their world. I experienced that quite deeply with the CT story.”
This was the first project that Ben had done with Christianity Today. Working on the Christianity Today story was an important stepping stone in Ben’s faith journey. The pastors he met were all very different, but he connected with each of them in deep, personal ways.
One of the pastors who made a strong impact on Ben was Pastor Lam from the Church of God. Pastor Lam was also an atheist in his college years, and he had read a lot of the same atheist authors as Ben, so they connected and discussed faith.
“He knew where I was coming from and had had the same questions that had made him doubt Christianity, but then also saw the same flaws in the atheist arguments that I had begun to see,” said Ben.
Originally, another photographer in Tokyo was going to take the assignment, but when he was unable to work on the project, he suggested Ben instead.
“It was very interesting timing that CT reached out to me,” said Ben. “Was it a coincidence? I don’t know, but it certainly came at a pivotal time in my life.”
Ben described himself as an atheist for about 20 years, but even when he wasn’t as focused on it, he just didn’t have faith. Around four years ago, he started to question his own beliefs around the existence of God.
“I wasn’t really questioning my core values, but more how to realize those values in the world and what would be needed to do that,” said Ben. “I started to question my faith, or lack thereof, and I began to take the possibility of the existence of God more seriously.”
Ben was working through these questions when he was contacted to work on Sophia’s story. He didn’t go to church or to the temple with his wife, who is Shinto Buddhist. He had noticed how his family didn’t have any faith in their life or any religious community around them, and that’s when CT contacted him for the story and put him in touch with multiple pastors and churches.
“I had been thinking about going to church, especially because I had grown up in the church, and even though the belief didn’t stick with me, the community aspect was very important to me,” said Ben. “I am still close with many of those people, and I felt like I had gained something from the experience that helped shape my values. As I am raising my own children, it was something that I wanted.”
One thing Ben realized through my collaboration with Christianity Today was how vast the Christian religion is. After meeting the different pastors, he started to think about what kind of church he would want to attend. For the story, he visited three different churches but wasn’t able to make any of them his church because of the distance from his home.
Ben is taking his faith journey slowly. His family just moved to a new city in Japan, and with all the life change, he hasn’t had a chance to go to church yet. But it is still on his mind every day, and he is still exploring and reading and thinking about Christianity.
“I am obviously no expert on Christianity, but my understanding is that it’s about a personal relationship with God, so at the end of the day, maybe which denomination I choose is less important than what my relationship with God is like,” said Ben.
Ben is also talking with his sons a lot more about his faith. His sons, who are four and nine, have been a large part of his faith journey and are part of the reason he started to question and think about what he believed in the first place. They are at the ages where they are curious and asking questions, and it has made Ben become more curious as well.
“I am glad I can have these conversations with my sons and say, ‘I do believe in God,’” said Ben. “I don’t know many things about God, but I am very curious about God. And I see them thinking about things too, which I think is good.”
Ben also believes that faith in God opens more space for curiosity than atheism does. While Ben feels that he did get something of value out of studying new atheism, he now views the certainty of new atheists as arrogant.
“Atheism is so sure of itself,” said Ben. “It’s very hubristic and shuts down curiosity. I am glad to be done with that, especially with having kids, because you don’t want to display arrogance or hubris in front of your children.”
Right now, Ben is okay with not having all the answers but staying curious in the in-between. Instead, he is focused on listening to God’s voice speaking to him and finding his direct connection with God, and Christianity Today has become part of that journey.
“It’s been a very interesting journey so far, and I am glad that CT has been a part of it,” said Ben. “It has definitely made me appreciative of the work that you do.”
While Ben knew about Christianity Today before being contacted for the story, he hadn’t interacted with it much.
“I knew CT was well respected within the journalism world; it has a good name among journalists and photographers, even if they aren’t Christian,” said Ben. “It is a quality publication.”
Since doing the photoshoot, Ben was given a year subscription to Christianity Today, and now, he reads it regularly. He likes how CT deals with current events and current topics, but through a different lens.
“It has a lot of diverse perspectives in it, which I appreciate,” said Ben. “Not every article feels like it is written from the same standpoint. I am exploring my beliefs around many topics, so I appreciate the diversity of perspectives. And the photography is very good too. It just looks great.”