American influencer Brian Guan set himself a peculiar experiment this summer: to live for thirty days as if God existed, even though he himself was not convinced of His existence. He would pray, read the Bible, practice gratitude, and try to behave according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. On day 20 of his public challenge, he stopped pretending.
“Pretending is over. This is real,” Guan declared, visibly moved, to his followers. “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior,” he added. His experiment, dubbed Faithless Christianity—“Christianity without faith”—had ended up becoming a profession of faith.
The story was later recounted by Guan himself in an extensive interview given to Glen Scrivener for The Speak Life Podcast and in statements to Premier Christian News. His social media posts also allow followers to trace much of the process that led to his profession of faith.
From rejecting Christianity to trying it for thirty days
Guan’s story is not exactly that of an atheist who had never had any contact with Christianity. He himself has explained that he grew up in a Christian environment and was exposed to the faith during his childhood. It was later, during his university years, that he ended up rejecting it.
Over the years, he entered the world of technology and cryptocurrencies. The religious question, however, resurfaced. When he decided to begin the experiment that would eventually be called Faithless Christianity, Guan did not present himself as a man who had already reached the definitive conclusion that God did not exist. His position was more precisely that of an unbeliever who did not know whether God was real and decided to see what would happen if he began to live under the opposite hypothesis.
“I don’t really know if God exists, but action produces information,” he later explained while reconstructing the reasoning with which he began the experience.
Instead of waiting to intellectually resolve all his doubts before taking a step, he reversed the procedure: for thirty days he would live as if Christianity were true and observe its consequences.
The idea behind Faithless Christianity was simple. Guan set out to “pretend that God is real for a month,” pray daily even though he did not yet believe, read the Bible—starting with the Gospels—practice gratitude, attend church, try to live according to the teachings of Jesus, and finally, “see what happens.”
The public experiment did not start from scratch either. Guan later explained that he had already been approaching Christianity in this way for several weeks before beginning to systematically document the challenge for his followers. That is why “day 20” corresponds to the twentieth day of the series published on social media, not necessarily the twentieth day since he began his entire approach to the faith.
As the days progressed, he also began to connect with Christians and to incorporate more naturally the practices he had initially assumed as an experiment. Guan claims he perceived concrete changes in his life: he found himself treating strangers with greater kindness, and he stated that his nicotine dependence, which he had carried for years, began to disappear, according to what he later told Premier Christian News.
The initial question—what would happen if a man who does not believe begins to live deliberately as a Christian—thus began to transform into another much more uncomfortable one for Guan himself: what to do if he begins to believe that what he was pretending is true.
“Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior”
On day 20 of the series came the turning point. Guan appeared visibly moved before his followers. He was no longer merely experimenting with Christian practices.
“Pretending is over,” he stated. “This is real.” Then he made his profession of faith explicit: “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.”
Guan then explained that he had reached a point where he had to decide whether he truly accepted Christ, His death on the Cross for sins, and His Resurrection. The hypothesis he had decided to test for a month had ceased to be, for him, a mere hypothesis.
The change was even reflected in the way he presented his posts. He moved away from the formula with which he had started the experiment—“pretend that God is real”—to speak of “believing that God is real.” He also shared that he had finished reading the Gospel according to John with his girlfriend and that they were beginning the Acts of the Apostles.
“I’m no longer pretending,” he said.
An experiment surprisingly similar to Pascal’s advice
In his famous Pensées, the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal directly addresses the objection of the man who wishes to attain faith but discovers that he cannot simply force himself to believe. Pascal recommends observing the path taken by those who were in the same situation and beginning “acting as if they believed”: he even mentions concrete practices such as taking holy water and having masses said.
The proposal is deeper than the well-known simplification of “Pascal’s wager.” The unbeliever cannot produce faith through a simple act of will, but he can begin to order his life according to what he would do if faith were true. An analysis published by the University of Notre Dame addresses precisely this dimension of Pascal’s proposal.
This is practically what Guan did three and a half centuries later: praying without being sure that anyone was listening, opening the Gospels, attending church, and trying to live according to the words of Christ.
The coincidence was not intentional. During his interview with Speak Life, Guan explained that it was a pastor named Jeff who, upon hearing what his experiment consisted of, pointed out its similarity to Pascal. Guan was familiar with the famous wager, but he had not started from Pascal’s recommendation to develop Faithless Christianity.
His initial approach was also somewhat different. He was not primarily calculating the eternal consequences of believing or not believing. He wanted to see what would happen in his own life if he began to behave as a Christian: whether he would be more grateful, have greater peace, and treat those around him better.
Lope de Vega already brought “what is feigned is true” to the theater
The story also has a striking Spanish literary precedent, even earlier than Pascal.
Lope de Vega brought the life of Saint Genesius of Rome to the stage in Lo fingido verdadero, a tragicomedy published in 1621. The Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library preserves a digital reproduction of the edition held by the National Library of Spain.
Genesius is a pagan actor whom Emperor Diocletian commissions to portray on stage “the imitation of the baptized Christian.” What begins as a performance ends up becoming reality. While playing the Christian, Genesius receives the faith he was pretending to represent and ends up willing to die for Christ.
The other characters initially believe that everything is still part of the play. “There is no difference between this and the true case,” one of them comments while watching the scene. But Genesius is no longer acting.
When they reproach him that the new speech was not in the theatrical text, he replies that it is God who has introduced those words into his role. Later, imprisoned for professing the faith he once represented, he explains the change with a theatrical image: “Since I have another Author / I perform in the divine way.”
Four centuries later, without having based his experiment on Lope or Pascal, Guan followed a surprisingly similar path. He did not move from an atheism completely alien to Christianity to a sudden conversion: he had known the faith as a child, rejected it during his youth, and, years later, once again faced a question he still did not consider resolved.
This time he decided not to limit himself to thinking about it. He began to pray, read the Gospels, attend church, and live as if God existed.
Twenty posts later, he announced to his followers that the performance was over: he was no longer pretending.