Conversion Story-- Fall

Fall (2005-2007)

You know, people say Autumn follows Summer, but for this post, I found Fall seems more appropriate.

I can't remember how it happened, but the service in the military destroyed me emotionally, socially and intellectually. As much I would like to blame the army for changing me, rather, I thank the military for exposing who I was at that time.

And I was insecure, selfish and snobbish. As the months passed by, I became darker and more obessive. I wanted to be respected and loved by any means necessary. So I was not above backstabbing and sabotaging people, in order to get a good grade on my army peer appraisal. Although it may sound stupid of me then, that was the way I saw the world.

But the same thing happened to me. I was also manipulated and plotted against. At that point of time, my heart demanded justice. But I halted myself. Why justice? Who am I to say something is more right than the other> To be fair, I tried arguing that all morality was relative, but somehow, that line of reasoning seemed weak to me. "Could there be a relative without an absolute?", I wondered.

And then there was another issue. After I was posted into my unit, I had a conversation about religions with some of my army friends. And painfully it was revealed how little I knew about the religions of the world. It was very easy for me to disbelief in caricatures, which was exactly the mental images of religions that I had. In other words, I was no true atheist-- I was ignorant.

So I decided to be agnostic, but I hated that term, as it seemed to imply that I didn't care about the issue. I did, so I went to the library often to read up on major religions. I read parts of the Bible, the Quran (the English translation), the Buddhist Sutras, but did not understand them. So I read books on them.

At that time I found Christianity most convincing as weirdly enough, I felt it was the most falsifiable. Here was a man claiming to be able to forgive the sins of all mankind, but to be God. If he really did the things he did, and said the things he said, then that would be really strong evidence for Christianity. On the other hand, if he never existed, never died or never came back from the dead, Christianity would instantly fall apart. (Interestingly, the Bible says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15: 12-19).

So I checked up on mainstream scholarship (Roman historian Tacitus and Jewish historian Josephus) and discovered that this man Jesus probably did live and did die and did come back to life again. But to be honest at that time, I still hard trouble accepting the Christian God as the on true God. So I was a less strong atheist, a weak agonsitc and leaning towards Christianity.

One of my Christian friends then challenged me. If the historical Jesus was as the New Testament described him, who did I say He was? Was he mad (for thinking He was God)? Was he evil (for misleading us)? Was he God (as claimed by him)?

And I could not answer him. Maybe it just wasn't the season yet.