Misinformed –> Informed

Submitted by Samantha…

I was born in Guangzhou, China as the only child to loving, atheist parents. My elementary and middle schools denounced superstition and celebrated naturalism, patriotism and communism. Therefore, I developed a firm impression that only illiterate fools could be superstitious enough to believe in anything supernatural. My parents encouraged me to study and play hard, and so I did. I excelled in school, won math competitions and planned to become a great scientist. I was proud, self-sufficient and felt no need for any god.

When I was 14, my parents and I moved to Massachusetts. In high school, I adjusted quickly to the culture shock and language barrier. I excelled in many Advanced Placement classes, won math competitions, and saw a secured future as a great scientist. I once wrote a letter to my homeroom teacher defending my refusal to recite the pledge of allegiance because it endorsed the existence of a “God.”

After high school, I attended Caltech for my undergrad studies. Most of my close friends were liberal atheists who shared my belief that nerdy equaled cool. We had a lot of “good clean fun” – we studied together and did all things quirky, geeky and dorky. College was also an eye-opening experience that showed me that studying was not all there was to life. I tried out many hobbies such as juggling, skiing and rock-climbing. I enjoyed intense outdoor activities because they were as close to a “spiritual” experience as I could have possibly had. All these activities were my new-found sources of happiness. My worldview was naively optimistic – that people were inherently good and that knowledge was leading the world in a generally good direction. In such a liberal and atheist-leaning environment, I majored in biology, a field populated by Darwinists. My professors taught evolution as a fact and one of them made fun of intelligent design during lecture. I attended a lecture by Richard Dawkins, one of the famous atheist biologists. At the end of the lecture, I applauded and cheered along with the ecstatic audience. I thought evolution fully explained humans’ unique intellectual complexity and innate sense of morality, such that religions have lost power in the scientifically advanced society. I rejected religions while ignorant about them.

I started grad school at UC Berkeley as a settled atheist with a cheerful worldview. For the first time, people tried sharing the Gospel with me. During the first week of grad school, I was looking for new clubs to join, new opportunities to volunteer and new hobbies to take on. That is when I met Patty at an ultimate Frisbee game hosted by Gracepoint church. After New Student Welcome Night, Patty and Caroline of Koinonia suggested that I go to International Graduate Student Ministry (IGSM) bible studies. Even though I was not seeking, Karen encouraged me to attend bible studies whenever I could. It struck me that the Christians at Gracepoint Church were definitely neither illiterate nor foolish. I kept going because I wanted to learn more about this group of nice people and to eat free food. All the while, I would go to happy hours, bars and parties and boasted about my growing alcohol tolerance. I would sometimes skip bible study to stay longer at the Friday happy hours. Although I learned that Jesus was a wise moral teacher, I did not value the true purpose for which He came (which is to offer us eternal life by taking away our sins).

In the second semester of grad school, I went on the IGSM winter retreat. The guest speaker presented the fine-tuning of universal constants (evidence for statistical improbability of human life) and the evidence of Jesus’ divine resurrection. The scientific analyses appealed to my reasoning. Objectively, I would have believed in God right there, but I just could not place my trust in an invisible, supernatural Being. During the retreat, the messages on sin, the vineyard workers and Pontius Pilate (parable/real people in the bible who rejected God) gave me an overview of the Gospel and made me identify with the people who rejected God. I cried at the retreat because I was touched by the prayers and faith of others, but I could not describe what I was feeling. I assured myself that just like how I would cry during good movies, my emotions were only temporary. So I remained a stubborn skeptic.

During that winter, Mia and I started Course 101 one-on-one so my schedule remained flexible to allow for skiing, mountaineering, backpacking and rock-climbing trips. Before we started, I warned Mia that she should not have to waste time on me because of my science background the probability of my conversion was extremely low. In the beginning, I was only intellectually interested in learning about Christianity, so I looked forward to staking out my atheist/naturalist standpoint throughout C101, so that I could reject religion with greater conviction after I became more informed about the subject.

In the introduction week, I rejected almost every concept presented and tried to argue for my naturalistic views. And then in the later weeks, I had a difficult time identifying myself as a sinner because I thought I could not offend a God I did not believe in. I thought I was an overall moral and relatively selfless person. My moral relativism lead to the conclusion that unproductive people such as the retarded and the paralyzed have no value, yet I fought back tears as my moral conscience shouted that every human being ought to be valued and loved regardless of his utility to society. I had not realized then that it was God who had set a moral code in my heart as part of His revelation to me. So instead of acknowledging that there is Absolute Truth, I tried to keep it at a distance. I figured that I could at least understand the material assuming that God existed. I thought: “Yes, if God exists, then He must be grieved for my rebellious ways. Yes, if God exists, then I need Jesus Christ to save me from eternal death. Since I cannot see God, how do I know He exists unless He shows up in an obvious way?” So I suggested that if a pink flying bunny appeared when I wished for God to show me His existence, I would totally believe in God. Mia reminded me that I would have no choice to believe if God made himself known like that and without choice, love is not possible. On the other hand, if the sign from God was not absolute proof, then a person who rejects all supernatural things would have to explain the sign as a rare natural phenomenon. I would need to take a leap of faith to believe. The leap seemed too far despite the accumulating evidence supporting Christianity as truth. One of the biggest obstacles was that I could not resolve the apparent discrepancy between evolution and the creation account in Genesis. Mia suggested that I read ‘The Language of God’ by Dr. Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project. Dr. Collins presents a satisfactory case for the perfect compatibility of evolution with Christianity. Yet I felt that I needed answers to my many other intellectual questions.

During the summer, I regularly attended home church at Chul and Sharon’s home, where we watched The Truth Project, a series of lectures by Dr. Del Tackett. Since the lectures targeted a Christian audience, many of the ideas were new to me and even seemed outrageous. During the post-video sharing times, I learned more about Christianity and corrected some of my misconceptions. For instance, I was not thrilled when I sensed Dr. Tackett’s intolerance toward other worldviews. I later learned that his intolerance was well-founded if Christianity was the highest truth instead of a mere personal opinion of worldview. Dr. Tackett claims that the bible teaches wives to submit to their husbands while the husbands love their wives. I later learned that submission does not imply inferiority or inequality. Dr. Tackett also discussed the relationship between government and church. I later learned that Christians do not vote Republican by default nor must they participate in conservative political activism.

Later I read a book called Letters from a Skeptic by Dr. Gregory Boyd, which dispelled many of my doubts so that I can see the Gospel message more clearly. As I read the book, I experienced what Dr. Boyd called “cognitive dissonance” – a torturous state of indecision between atheism and Christianity. It was a decision between what’s rational vs. irrational, logical vs. nonsensical, and the abundance of love vs. emptiness. I regretted taking Course 101 because I was constantly troubled by the possibility that God might very well be real. I actually regretted knowing about God because if Christianity was true, then I would face an eternity of sorrow for explicitly rejecting God. I wanted to drop out of Course 101 and reject God. However, I decided that I should at least be polite and wait until the end of Course to reject God. The more evidence supporting Christianity, the more skeptical I needed to be to continue denying God. So I held on to the possibility that Christians are just psychologically weaklings who could not deal the fact that humans are just accidentally advanced molecular assemblies. Therefore I continued to hang out with my secular friends.

One week before my decision, my curiosity drove me to take a bite of a cookie made with pot (marijuana) that my friend had offered. Later, as I was heading to the bus stop to go to Oakland, I felt strange visual distortions and slightly dizzy, so I decided to return home. I regretted eating the “special” cookie because it did not bring me the joy that I had hoped for. Then I thought about how I have led my life to this state of trying to escape from reality. I had spent my whole life seeking happiness but never satisfied because I had been searching in all the wrong places. Then maybe where I had refused to search was the right place. Perhaps God was real and wanted to offer me true happiness through Him. If so, then He must be watching me and reading my every sinful thought. He was inviting me to inspect my imperfect self as I cringed in reluctance. During the following Sunday Service, I felt quite rotten that I could not get myself to sing along to praise songs because I had never praised God in my whole life. I needed to review the facts and decide to accept or reject God. During that weekend, I spent time with some of the IGSM sisters in Alameda. The experience reminded me of the genuine interpersonal relationships God wanted me to have. During the following week, I considered how life would be totally different if I were Christian. One of the “inconveniences” was that my weekends would shrink from two days to one day because I must attend church on Sundays (implication: I could no longer take three-week backpacking trips). Another “inconvenience” was that my potential pool of marriage prospects would be shrunken dramatically as I would have to marry a Christian. During that week, I had a Course 101 meeting, in which Mia referred to the trilemma (Jesus was lunatic, liar, or Lord) and asked me to think about what was preventing me from making a decision. She also assured me that I would not regret becoming a Christian despite the “inconveniences” I foresaw. I reviewed the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection by reading a book called “The Case for Easter” by Lee Strobel. The evidence was again compelling.

There would be severe implications of accepting Jesus’ resurrection. It meant that everything I had learned in C101 was true, that I was created by God with a purpose which I refused to honor – yet He still loves me and wants a relationship with me. As I reflected on my life apart from God, I saw how my heart had actually been lost, restless, insecure and rebellious. To feel like I am really “living”, I had pursued fleeting idols such as pleasure, academics, my family’s approval and the admiration of others at the expense of neglecting the only worthy pursuit – after God. I had felt entitled to do whatever pleased me with my life, body, mind, and possessions depending on my mood. For example, during several bouts of depression, I seriously strategized how I should kill myself without being a hassle to the world. I realized that my potential to do good (such as curiosity, intelligence) was often misused to do bad things. I had been veering away from God by asserting that I was capable of leading my own life in the right direction. I finally understood why God, my Creator, was absolutely justified in letting me head straight into the eternal darkness of hell because of my sinfulness. However, He loved me and valued my life so much that He presented a way for me to reconcile with Him. God sent His Son to die on the cross along with my sins even before I sinned, and Jesus’ resurrection promised me an eternal life. Therefore, believing in Jesus meant that I would be made righteous by handing my whole self along with my sins over to Him, and I would finally be able to live my life how it was originally intended – a meaningful life directed by God.

I recalled the ways in which God progressively revealed Himself – by guiding me to this church, by allowing me to partake in many meals, bible studies and trips with caring sisters and brothers, by having me take Course 101, by giving me innate moral standards and by showing Himself through the bible. Even though I did not understand why everyone does not have the same opportunity to hear the Gospel as I did, I was grateful for the fact that I did have the chance to hear. So it was up to me to humbly receive God’s grace. How loving and powerful is Jesus Christ that He laid Himself down, then defied death and showed us that we could also defy death through Him! For twenty-four years, these truths had been obscured by the darkness of society and the pride in my own heart. My faith was little, but certainly not blind. The Christian worldview made more logical sense than the atheistic one. I did not have to abandon my rationality to find the truthfulness of Christianity. On the contrary, my science training helped reason against my atheistic preconceptions. My investigation into Christianity had been the most intellectually- and emotionally-stimulating journey thus far. A verse in the bible summarizes it: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13.
On Sunday September 13th, 2009 during a meeting with Mia, I made the decision to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. I thank God for finding me even though I was not looking for Him. I am thankful that my innate curiosity had taken me one step further to develop interest in seeking. I am also very thankful that the pink flying bunny never appeared (Actually, if it did, I would have probably dismissed it as an overheating Energizer Bunny rather than a sign from God). I am thankful that somehow I decided not to go to Oakland while under the influence of marijuana. Finally, I am thankful to Mia for teaching course 101 over 8 months and patiently answering my many questions.
After my conversion, my faith has grown significantly as I experience the new, satisfying sense of rest and purposefulness that I was not able to find elsewhere. I no longer view my success in society as my goal in life because I know that it is never-ending and dissatisfying. My new mission is to be used by God to share His love with the world. For example, I tried teaching Course 101 to my parents when I went home in October, although unsuccessfully. I then took Advanced Course 101 during J-Term and am teaching Course 101 with Angela, which have further deepened my understanding of the Gospel. My personal relationship with God deepens as I read the bible, reflect on devotional questions, pray and experience community with my sisters and brothers. Also, I see that the biblical description of humans’ fallen state is accurate for the people I see everyday, including myself. I realized that I had been a selfish, inconsiderate, ungrateful person with a cold, empty heart, who had been disconnected with myself and with others. As I uncover more areas of my sinfulness, I cling onto Jesus’ promise that He has cleansed me from all sin. I want to be a living testimony to the world; therefore I actively try to obey God by being more selfless, honest, patient, and kind, and have stopped degrading my body with substances. Going to Sunday services did not end up being an inconvenience but something that I look forward to. I am grateful of the many opportunities to serve in church and I look forward to walking with God for the rest of my life and beyond.