Switched values

Submitted by Dino…

I went to church a few times while in elementary and junior high school; however, I wasn’t very familiar with the God that everybody knew or talked about. I did not know nor understand how a Christian ought to behave or the meaning behind it all. At that time, church to me was just another place where I had some friends, can sing and eat a meal. I never seriously thought about the meaning of life, nor understood why the things Christians called “sins” were bad. Very naturally after high school and college, I began to drift further away from the church and adopted more secular values.

Like many young people, I took pride in rebelling against my parents in order to gain peer recognition and to look “cool.”  To appear unique, I did a lot of things that people considered “cool.” I joined many clubs, carried myself in deliberately bizarre demeanors, and even fiddled with a guitar, bass, and joined a band, all just to make myself look different – though I didn’t understand very deeply or wasn’t even really interested in some of these things.  I lived before the eyes of others. I felt empty inside but I did not dare to admit it. I didn’t really own my life nor cared for the people close to me.  I just wanted to please others, wanted others to care for me and to be the center of their attention.  I wanted others to see me as someone special. I was only concerned about my own selfish desires and had no room to care for others.  My relationship with others naturally drifted apart. I didn’t feel like I had people with whom I could genuinely share my thoughts and feelings with.  I had an estranged relationship with my parents and never really communicated with them because I wanted to look cool.  It was not until my junior year in college, when my mother passed away, that I discovered that I actually never took the time to get to know her or talk with her about her many years of struggle with cancer.  I constantly missed the important things in life, and in the end, I did not even know who I really was.

In the summer of my junior year, I attended the 2007 NTHU English Camp.  Aside from the opportunity to get to know many friends, there were messages that reminded me of things that I once heard at church before and of a God that I vaguely remembered. But soon after that, I went back to my original life style.  In the summer of 2008 when I visited old acquaintances from English Camp, I got to know friends from Gracepoint Hsinchu. And so, in my super senior year, I started attending Koinonia’s Friday Night Plus.  In the beginning, I went because I just wanted to solve the issue of boredom as I studied for the graduate school entrance exam again. After locking myself in the library to study for a week, it was nice to be able to chat with other people, play some fun games and eat free dinner on Friday, and occasionally, there would be free dinners during the week as well.  The more I got to know these people from the other side of the Pacific, the more I felt their enthusiasm and sincerity.  Through messages brought by Eugene, I began to get interested in this value system that I had been exposed to before, and I realized that these messages could help me re-examine myself.  I had thought that as long as my conducts met my own standards, I would not have the need to examine myself and I do not owe anybody anything.  Yet, at Friday Night Plus, many of the messages challenged my “impeccable” moral values.  Of course, I also enjoyed the friendship and food here so I started attending Koinonia more and more regularly.

Later, I decided to start Course 101 with Tim. This course provides a reasonable and comprehensive overview of the Christian faith.  Contrary to my previous belief that Christians were just superstitious, Christianity is actually quite logical.  Tim’s wealth of knowledge could often address many strange questions that I had, which had bothered me and which I thought could perfectly justify my refusal to believe prior to taking this course. I started to consider questions that I had always neglected or did not want to face – for example, is the plan I had for my life perfect? Will I achieve it? Can my moral values withstand any challenge?  Am I a sinner?

As for my life, I planned to find a stable job and have a wonderful family – to live an ordinary but happy life and then die.  When I took a closer look at my life and sin, I had to painfully admit that I could never achieve the kind of life I wanted to have by my sheer will.  Even if I achieve success as defined by society and possess much wealth, I would still be discontent and empty because of my sin.  When I recalled the lives of older relatives around me, I was even more convicted of my conclusion that our selfishness and desires can only blind ourselves and turn ourselves into those terribly snobbish, self-seeking people that we wish we would never become. True peace can only be found in God.  It seems foolish to pursue this invisible God instead of trying to accumulate wealth for ourselves at first glance, but who is to say that this is not how life ought to be?  If we are looking for true peace, given our insatiable desires, how can we ever hope to find that peace by accumulating earthly treasures?

Another area in which my value has been completely reversed was my view of other people’s worth.  I did not care about others and selfishly indulged myself before.  I was very self-centered.  I was unwilling to understand any idea that conflicted with mine and any background that was different from mine because I thought I was superior to others, and more valuable than others.  I learned that God has high regard for each person because God made each person a bearer of His image and wrote His law on each person’s heart, which totally challenged my usual attitude to look down on people.  I realized that I had absolutely no other reason to refute the Christian view, except that I was used to my own view.

As the number of areas in which I needed to change increased, and as there was a growing sense of unease, I could not help but begin to seriously consider the need to become a Christian and receive my salvation.  In my life, I saw more and more stains that I could not ignore, not to mention that I could not bear to face them. Instinctively I just wanted to run away from the reality of this inner darkness.  Can I possibly hope to change myself on my own?  If I simply try to avoid looking at the reality, can I really expect that these things would not ever bother me again?  Yet, I know the God that has been waiting for me knew all that I have done.  Even if I can deceive myself, I cannot deceive Him.  If I stop lying to myself and start seeking His holiness, He has already had enough grace for me.  Through the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross and His resurrection, a sinner such as myself can be born again.

After clearly understanding the options before me, I faced a dilemma: to continue my life that I was used to and therefore deceive myself? Or to accept God’s salvation and seek Him? Becoming a Christian means that the focus of my life and my lifestyle have to change completely, which in turn means that I have to put away the lifestyle that I was accustomed to, and I have to learn to sacrifice myself for the sake of the Gospel, which is against my own nature.  I did not wish to be a half-hearted Christian and I had no confidence that I could be a good Christian, but my mind repeatedly reminded me that I had no better option than receiving my salvation. I struggled over this for many days, and I went back and forth on the same dilemma.  On a Wednesday afternoon in late May, before Course 101, while doing my part-time job at the NTHU’s Arts Center, I asked a staff member there who is also a Christian about this issue that has troubled me for awhile.  She shared with me her testimony and her decision to become a Christian.  What challenged me in particular at that time was this one point she brought up: “If becoming a Christian means you have to give up a certain lifestyle, then such lifestyle must not be pleasing to God to begin with.”  Indeed, since I have already acknowledged the evil in me, how can I expect to keep it in my life?  Another student who was also working there at that time overheard and said, “Not everyone recognizes what you recognize.  Since you have already recognized this, why not just do it?”  So at that moment, I decided to become a Christian since I knew my life was a mess and it made no sense for me to feel nostalgic about my old lifestyle.  That night, after Course 101, Tim asked whether I wanted to become a Christian and at that moment, I made my decision to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.

The real challenge began after I became a Christian.  In the beginning, I did not realize how true that was, but in the last few months, I really experienced it.  Every step that I have taken seems so unbelievable, and I truly believe that God is with us and is leading us to Himself.  By God’s great power, I can overcome many challenges in the end, and experience a life that I could have never imagined before becoming a Christian.