Paul Garcia

Hi everyone, before I introduce myself I’d like to say that it’s an honor to be given the spotlight on this extremely meaningful page!

My name is Paul Garcia. I’m 24 years old and am the proud host of @ThePaulGarciaShow - a weekly online show and podcast on which I speak to remarkable people from the midwest about their incredible lives, experiences, and insights. I’m blessed to say I love what I do, but the course my life took to get to this point was rather absurd. Growing up, my parents divorced when I was in 3rd grade. From a statistical perspective, it should come as no surprise that my grades soon plummeted and I spent most of my time out on the streets, skateboarding, rather than at home. Prior to the divorce, I was a solid student as many are, but from that point on I became an A or D student. No in-between. My brainpower was devoted entirely to that which fascinated me: Art, Speech, High School Wrestling, and strangely, Morality - while totally resistant to subjects like Math, Science, and History that were unenticing.

By the grace of God, I was able to pass high school and even attend Millikin University with a partial scholarship to wrestle. I developed a love for psychology and video production, but it was also here where my faith was challenged to such an extent that it's almost comical. On the first day of classes, my humanities teacher conducted an experiment where she asked the class to stand on a “NO” side of the classroom in response to her questions, or a “YES” side. She quickly began asking polarizing questions. That’s when I began to question if what I believed was right when I found out I was alone in this classroom in my principles and beliefs on major issues. That same semester I had a communication theory professor explain that none of us really believed in God. If we did we’d act entirely differently, firstly, but secondly, we’re too rational to truly believe in some unproven metaphysical entity. I hadn’t the knowledge to refute his point at the time, so I sat and absorbed his opinion. After careful consideration, I came to accept that he was right! God isn’t real, nor was Jesus real, nor anything fundamental to Christianity.

Having accepted this for a few weeks, I thought I’d just make absolutely certain that God wasn’t real by listening to some experts in atheism, like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, defend the notion. In doing so, Youtube showed me a collection of “evidence for God’s existence” videos in the “Recommended For You” section on Youtube. I watched some that would stimulate me intellectually, but many others that did an absolutely horrible or even counterproductive job at proving the existence of God. Ironically, those terrible ones caused me to think even deeper about the topic! I thought “If you really wanted to prove the existence of God, you might start with whether or not Jesus was real and if He was actually God.”. Then I thought to myself “Hey, that’s actually a question I’m curious about!” And so I began doing my own careful research. After reading the many documents of trusted philosophers and historians from antiquity, many of who were the furthest thing from Christians, I was assured at least of Christ’s existence. Then after more research on the more complicated issue of the authenticity of His claim to being God, I learned of the many novel aspects of his ministry, including the trustworthiness of the gospels, the fact that men were willing to die after his death in the name of preaching his Gospel, among many other interesting aspects. I even collected the numbers of many different priests and called them regularly when I couldn’t find satisfactory answers to my questions on the internet.

With every new nugget of golden information, my stash of support for God’s existence became undeniably, frighteningly large. Each new piece uncovered swelled my curiosity and amazement with the idea that this metaphysical deity that gives meaning to our reality might actually be real! Finally, I found that to believe that there is no God is less sensible than to believe there is one, given the facts (of which few know of well, albeit). So thus, I came to believe in God. Truly, more than I ever had before. My prior belief in God was merely a proclamation of what my parents had told me I was to believe. It was hollow - I apparently believed in God according to my words, but behind them was darkness and silence. And what's more, all of the historical information I’d consumed made it painfully clear that the only sect of Christianity that is accurate through and through, is Catholicism. After that year of college, I dropped out. Soon after that, my mother had a series of strokes and a brain hemorrhage that required half of her skull to be sawed off and her to be put into a coma. Doctors informed us of her likely death. At this time I came to realize, more so than ever, that our earthly life is finite and unpredictable and we, therefore, must strive to do the most good for the world using the tools and gifts at our disposal, all in order to get as many people around us as possible to Heaven.

When contemplating my future at this moment, I asked myself 3 important questions: What am I good at, that I like to do, that serves God and the world around me? The answer, although it took some wrong answers first to find, appeared to be filming and broadcasting meaningful conversations with remarkable people in order to educate and inspire the masses. That is exactly what I do now, and it is very meaningful work. As far as my future career projections go, while admittedly some visions and goals come to mind, I ultimately seek to act according to my Catholic conscience and to please God with all that I do - and just see where that takes me. I cling to God’s hand and let Him drag me to wherever I need to be dragged, sometimes it’s through beautiful meadows and sometimes through thorns. But there’s always some good that comes out of those thorny chapters, so long as you don’t let go when you’re being pulled through them. All I can really do is make morally sound decisions, work hard, pray often, make people laugh, and see where that takes me. So far, the formula has worked well. Jesus has taught me not to concern myself with the trials of tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough concerns for itself. I concern myself with what I control and am thankful for every single day I wake up. I’m in constant amazement with the reality that there is a God and am thankful I’ve found my way to the one true Church.