| It
all started when I was born (or maybe earlier, I am not sure).
Seriously, I vaguely remember some witnesses coming and visiting with
my mother when I was maybe three or four years old. Shortly there
after, she became a witness and my parents got a divorce. My mother
got custody initially. The only thing I remember about going to
meetings with her is going to the bathroom to get spanked with a
ping-pong paddle. Right before the custody hearing, she ran off with
me across the country. I remember stopping here and there and staying
with other witnesses (isn’t that called "aiding and abetting?)
Every night she used to drill me on how I was supposed to pray about
something if we were ever to get arrested. I never could remember and
I have yet to remember what it was. My Dad finally found her and she
went to jail for a time (according to the Watch Tower, this was
persecution and evidence that she was a Christian). I thank God to
this day that it all happened this way because I did not get
indoctrinated into the Watch Tower way. My father and step mother are
basically godless people and I never really learned anything
religiously growing up.
My
becoming a Christian started at about age 20 when I was in the Marine
Corps. I had a few "close calls" that made me look at my
life and wonder what the purpose of my life was. The evolutionary
Theory told me that we came from apes and there isn’t much noble in
that. I mean, if we are just the result of accidental chemical
reactions, what difference does it make if I live or die, or kill or
steal for that matter. I was very confused and felt very empty and in
need of something to fulfil my life, but I wasn’t sure what was
missing (an education, money, love maybe). I began looking in all the
wrong places. Finally, one day my room mate at Camp Lejeune invited me
to a bible study with him and I went. I didn’t learn a lot and it
didn’t immediately fulfil my need, but it got me started. I got a
paper back bible at that study and started reading it, not as
"the Word of God" but just as a book. I went into it very
pessimistically, looking for the errors, because I felt that I knew
what God was all about and what He wanted (looking back now I was so
arrogant to think that I knew better than God. Thankfully I realized
that when I was interested in any other topic I would read and study
up, so why shouldn’t I do the same with God? If I believe in God
doesn’t it make sense to know what I believe and not just make it up
as I go?) As I read I looked for inconsistencies or for any reason not
to believe what it was saying. I must say at this point that I had
previously looked at some of the other "religions" and had
found inconsistencies. Some of them even believed utter nonsense
involving praying to stone statues and such. I began to realize that I
could not disprove what was found in the New Testament and I even
found documents written by various Romans and other non-Christians
that confirmed what was written in the New Testament (specifically,
the existence of and even accounts of the miracles and resurrection of
Jesus). So the evidence supporting the New Testament was great. This
meant that I could either 1.) not believe the things that I had just
proven to my self or 2.) believe them, but this would require me
actually changing my life.
I
chose to ignore the whole thing for a time. I did not want to "be
a Christian" because I looked at the people that claimed to be
Christians as hypocrites for one reason or another (again I was very
arrogant in this point, thinking I was a good person already and
didn’t need to go to church with all those hypocrites. I was wrong
to base my view of all Christians on the actions of a few. And I was
also wrong about the purpose of the church.) It also bothered me that
the churches I had attended (here I mean denominations; Catholic,
Protestant, Methodist) were very different from what I had read about
in the New Testament. They had their own creed books and statements as
to the "official view of the church" as to what you should
believe. They had popes and presidents and councils (of which there is
no mention in the bible). Some even taught things that went against
the teachings in the bible, things like not allowing some to get
married (catholic priests) and many, many other issues. Since I had
this new found knowledge about God and Jesus, I knew that I really
would be a hypocrite if I went somewhere that they didn’t actually
do what I knew was in the bible.
When
I came to Texas, a neighbor friend of mine started a conversation one
afternoon and religion came up. I can remember what he said very
clearly, "The church that I go to . . . well, we’re different
than most other churches. We stick to what the New Testament says.
Like we don’t use instruments when we sing because the New Testament
says to make melody in your heart." And I thought to myself,
"maybe there is a church out there like the ones I read about in
the bible." And the rest, as they say, is history. As I began to
study more often and actually go to church, I learned just how little
I actually knew about God, my relationship to Him and Jesus, and the
purpose of the church. The idea of Jesus dying for mankind was a
familiar one to me, after all, that was what I had been willing to do
in the Marine Corps. But one day it really hit me what the importance
of Jesus was, He was the Son of God and He gave up His life as a
sacrifice for His own creation. It overwhelmed me how much God must
love us and this is when I found what I had been seeking after all
those years and the emptiness inside me was filled. |
