Nothing too big to give up

Submitted by Andrew… I grew up in a Christian household and have been attending church for as long as I could remember. From the time I was 3 we had people outside of the family living at our house for years at a time. Despite having a very open home, I grew bitter from a lack of a strong sense of “family.” Growing up my parents were often gone on long business trips, during which I wouldn’t see them for weeks. When I was 5 my dad stopped working and my mom took up the sole task of breadwinner for the family. The fact that this meant spending longer hours at work, often causing me to see her for only an hour or so a week, made me even more bitter to my dad.

When I was a first grader I remember making my first “salvation decision” during a winter morning class at my private Christian school. My teacher had used an analogy of a rock climber, about to fall, in need of the “helping hand” of salvation. The analogy of the rock climber was lost on me, as I doubt I even remotely understood the basics of what we call “sin” at the time, much less its implications on the hopelessness of our fallen state. Over the years I would begin to think of God in terms of my own understanding of the analogy, I was the rock climber, about to fall, and God would just step in and help me out—I’d then be back on my way up the mountain side of life, left to my own means of ascending. At times I would slip and feel bad about myself, I would turn to this conception of God, and, guided by emotionalism, I would be back on my merry way doing whatever I wanted until the next incident would occur that would make me feel bad.

When I was a junior, a friend of mine started getting into the music scene. With the shows at clubs in Hollywood, drinking became another daily experience, drugs soon followed. As I started to get deeper into substances I started becoming more and more isolated from my family and friends. I remember times where I wouldn’t talk to my parents for days at a time. My day became a routine of getting high, sleeping throughout all my classes, going to volleyball practice, coming home, getting drunk, looking at pornography, and playing online video games until a couple hours before I needed to go to school again. Sometimes I would do all of this with friends, often I would do it alone. As my isolation from the world grew, my isolation from God grew, my hatred towards authority figures grew, and depression started to consume me.

For the next year my life became stagnant and empty. Then, the beginning of my senior year, an accident happened. My apathy for the nameless victims as I drove past the wreck outside my school soon became much more personal. I found out a few hours after I had left school that I knew the people involved in it. Two of them were dead; the other was in a coma. One of the kids that died I had known since the 5th grade and had considered one of my personal “rivals” in academics. The other who died was on my volleyball team. The horrifying thing was that even with this personal aspect of tragedy I really couldn’t bring myself to care. Every time I would try and think about them my thoughts would wander back to games, wander off into fantasy, or drift back to alcohol. My relationships began to break down even more and I would often find myself over at my friend’s houses just to avoid the fights that were bound to break out between me and my dad. The accident became a catalyst for the darkest depression I have ever experienced.

My strong emotionalism to Christianity as a child had led me to have a strong conviction of sin throughout this time. I knew I was a sinner, however, my distrust of authority figures and my self-loathing really caused me to question the notion that there was a God who actually loved me. More than anything, my arguments for an unknown God stemmed from a desire to be unknown by God, I didn’t want him to know anything about me because I was sure that any sort of personal God would hate me for all the things I had done.
My relationship with my dad had been even more rocky once I had first applied to colleges. Our “discussions” about colleges quickly degenerated into arguments that ended with each of us walking off in separate directions, avoiding each other until the next day or two. The day after a particularly bad fight my dad picked me up from school. When I got in he started talking about colleges again, but this time what he said was very unexpected. He told me that he had come to the realization that he was unfairly pressuring me to try and go to a school I didn’t want to and that he had been wrong about the way he had approached me with his own opinions—he told me that he loved me and wanted what was best for me and he actually asked me for forgiveness. This was definitely one of the last things I would have expected to hear from him.

That experience with my dad made me think of the way I approach God. It wasn’t that God needed to apologize to me, but rather the fact that God’s love seemed such an unexpected reaction to me. As I saw my relationship with my dad start to turn less antagonistic it really softened my heart to the notion that God loved me.

In the spring, having overcome my last real hurdle, the thought that God could never love me because I hated myself, with Jeremiah 29:11 fresh in my mind, I made my first real intellectual and volitional commitment to Christ.
While I had been convicted of my own sinfulness and the way in which it had isolated me from all of those around me, I really had no mentor or role model to turn to. Additionally, I still harbored in me the lingering feelings of mistrust to those in positions of authority in my life. As I came to college, just a few months a Christian, still struggling very much with the reality of substance abuse and pornography, I had no real desire for strong involvement in a Christian community. In fact, some aspects of the Christian community I had come from were so off-putting to me that my notion of Christians in community was fairly negative. I church hopped a little, but mostly found myself without a firm foundation the first semester of my freshman year.

During spring 2006 a friend of mine from my floor invited me out to ABSK bible study on Friday night. My first impression, besides being weirded out by the fact that everyone was Asian and the fact that I was at “Asian Baptist Student Koinonia” when I was neither Asian nor Baptist, was that everyone was very friendly. As I delved deeper into ABSK I noticed that my life started to change even more. Initially, when I became a Christian, I had made volitional goals of quitting alcohol, drugs, getting out of depression, and other “big changes.” Now God really began to work on my character, slowly breaking down my pride, temper, and ambition that had built up over the years. Rather than just the big “lifestyle” changes God has slowly shaped me into one of his followers.

Looking at my identity in Christ now, I see Jesus in 3 main ways. I see him as the savior who serves as the only hope for the redemption of my sin. I see him as the lover whose loving sacrifice I won’t ever fully understand. And I see him as the mold which I aspire and am challenged to be fitted to.

Since I became a Christian my behavior has changed dramatically. Simply put, I don’t drink anymore, I don’t smoke anymore, I don’t do drugs anymore, and, rather than spending most of my time playing video games, I spend my time hanging out with my friends from church and serving alongside my brothers and sisters in this community.

My outlook on life has also changed, but sometimes I find it hard to describe. The numbing isolation I experienced by rejecting those around me has turned into a desire for relationships. Honestly, I used to hate spending time with others. If I wasn’t playing video games or watching TV, I was usually driving around Los Angeles with no real aim just to get away after spending time at volleyball practice. Through Christ I have experienced the opportunity to serve others alongside like-minded Christians, the result of which has been nothing less than joy—frankly, I wouldn’t exchange the time used to serve and develop communal relationships for anything else. The depression has turned into hope for the future. A few years ago, during a summer when my house burned down, my mom had a brain aneurysm, and my uncle died, I found comfort, not in any sort of stability or life circumstances, but rather, from the fact that I was loved by God, knew he could use bad situations for the good, and because I was surrounded brothers and sisters who were praying for me and my family. Before I had become a Christian, I would have spent that time allowing myself to be overcome with self-pity which would eventually turn into a loathing for the world around me. The self-serving self-righteousness has slowly turned into a desire to serve. Honestly, the highlights of my week comes from serving the kids in ImpACT—I don’t exactly do much, and what I do usually happens behind the scenes, but the thought that I can give a little time and effort and give a kid the opportunity to learn about Jesus and experience some loving mentoring makes me want to give even more. The mistrust of authority is still turning into an appreciation and love for those who have been placed over me. When I first came to this church I was deeply ingrained with the thought that authority figures act solely with the desire to express their authority over others. Slowly that’s been broken down, over the years I have really come to see those above me as not only mentors, but my friends.

While I’ve had to give up substances, ambition, self-reliance, money, and many aspects of my pride along the way I have gained so much more. Once I used to think that I was what people usually refer to as a “lone ranger,” someone who thought that church attendance was just another requirement of Christian life. I thought that no real, lasting relationships could be formed through what I considered necessarily superficial interactions. The past four years have changed my perspective, through experiencing life with my friends, leaders, and co-laborers I can now see why the church is called a spiritual family. There are many things that I still need to work on and give up, but, with the help of my family here at Gracepoint Berkeley, and armed with the faith I have in the redemption that God has given me through Jesus, I realize that nothing is too big to give up.