No longer a lone-ranger

Daniel’s story…    I was born in 1972 in South Korea.  Although my grandfather is a minister, my parents were not Christians – mere reluctant church-goers, and they made it clear that they were merely that; as a result, I had a paradoxical life of growing up in church yet having a secular upbringing.  My whole life philosophy, as it was taught to me, was that “success” was defined by how independent you can become.  Ruthless independence was what I held on to with incredible fervor, and I soon became a pragmatic opportunist at an early age.  Just when kids my age were trying to make friends, I was trying to find out ways to take advantage of those around me.  I did outrageous things such as charging my friends who wanted to play with my toys; I saw the world as one gigantic cost-and-benefit analysis game.  I had already decided (in the first grade) my field of study, and I never veered from it – as such, in all that I did, I was quite cold and calculating, earning me the nickname “scary guy” from my relatives and friends of my parents by the age of 10.

When I immigrated to the U.S. at 10, I had already become so cold that I intentionally stopped responding to the letters that came from my old friends, because I now saw them as mere hindrances to my new life in this country.  This kind of monstrous life continued on, and as I started to do well in school in the United States, I felt that I was well on my way to reach the ephemeral “success” that I had dreamed of.  I remember specifically thinking that my life goal would be to “make others feel self-hatred and jealousy because of me.”  Driven by this life goal, I made the most of every opportunity to do evil – to hurt others, to rub in the fact that I beat them in academics, etc.  I was attending church all this time, and when I was at church I acted the part.  I figured that church was there to teach me good morals in a certain sense – after all, that’s the reason that my parents sent me to church.  Yet in the midst of this wide road to success that I found myself on, I started to feel ever more lonely and hollow.  Despite my efforts to dismiss the emptiness as a mere sign of weakness, I started to grow more and more anxious about the ticking of time, perhaps becoming more aware of my mortality.  As I approached high school, I had become quite disheartened with my goal self-glorification as I started to question the destiny of such a life, and I started to pay close attention to the messages at church that I had been hearing for all my life.  The gospel message hit me as if for the first time, and I realized that my life had been one long rebellion against God.  In trying so desperately to live for myself, I had rejected the rightful owner of my life and had placed myself as the king and god of my life.  As I started to question where that kind of life has led me and, more importantly, where that would lead me in the eternal future, I came to understand that I was headed toward an empty, hollow life enslaved by sin.  I repented of my sins and my rebellion against God, and I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior in the summer of 1987.  Immediately after I accepted Christ, I knew that this was the beginning of a whole new life.  It was a brand new day indeed.  I asked God if I should let go of my career plans of becoming an engineer, but I  couldn’t really discern His answer at that time, so I decided to leave that area open to God’s intervention in the future.
I decided to get baptized by immersion in 1993, at which time I gave my testimony to my congregation.  Although I gave my testimony with a lot of confidence and gusto, I know in retrospect that I had (and still have) such a long way to go – that the point of my salvation was not the end, but only the beginning.  God worked in my life to mold me and change me throughout the years, and I am so thankful to God.  Even after I accepted Christ, my old ways of life was incredibly resilient.  There were some immediate changes; however, one thing that stuck with me was my deeply-ingrained independence.  Having grown up as an independent opportunist for such a long time, that personal quality just moved right into my new life found in Christ.  I became a lone-ranger Christian, and I was quite an extreme one at that.  Going to China mission trips alone, making commitments alone, I started to derive a very sinful spiritual pride out of all the things that I did.  I figured that the church was a failed institution, and if any one is serious about following Christ, he must detach himself from the church.  But God had mercy on me and led me to a body of Christ that would shake my solid belief that church was something to be shunned.  Through Gracepoint Fellowship Church, I started to see that God could really work wonderfully through a body of Christ.  I also began to see that God’s foremost command is to love.  And as I looked into myself, I saw that my independence and spiritual pride was an ugly antithesis to love.  While love embraces others, I was detaching myself from others.  While love is busy trying to sympathize and cling onto someone, I was busy trying to set myself apart.  I saw the folly of such a life; I saw that this is not how God meant for Christians to live.  I repented of my spiritual pride in the beginning of 1995, and I committed to live a life of love and commitment – no longer chasing after the next spiritual conquest that will set me apart.  I thank God that He had mercy on me.  Although I hurt so many people in my spiritual journey with my spiritual pride and hypocrisy, God had shown me mercy.