For most of my life I’ve gone to church and professed to be Christian. As a child my Sunday school teachers taught about how Jesus died on the Cross for our sins and rose from the grave, and I accepted it without question. However, as I grew older, my faith was being challenged by those around me and I didn’t know how to answer most of their questions. In high school my faith began to crumble.

A month into freshman year of high school my friend who had been sick with the flu passed away. This was one of my first experiences with death and I couldn’t believe it. The next school day the reality that he was gone became clear. A flood of emotions filled me. I was extremely sad and angry at myself. We didn’t get along back in middle school, but by the end of 8^th grade and beginning of high school we were growing into close friends. As my friends and I were coping with what had happened, the following Sunday another death occurred within the family. It was too much to deal with. Two consecutive Sundays where people close to me passed away. I feared the next Sunday because I thought God was punishing me. It seemed like too much of a coincidence that those around me passed away on consecutive Sundays. The rest of high school would include three more deaths and the revelation that my best friend wasn’t Christian because at the age of five he witnessed is baby brother die from a rare disease and couldn’t believe in a God who would allow this to occur.

These deaths got me to believe in my friend’s sentiment that God wasn’t loving, but rather filled with wrath and anger. Death seemed to be everywhere and depression sunk it during my sophomore and junior year. By my junior year I believed that life was pointless. One of my friends talked about how he had to see a psychologist because he wanted to kill himself and another friend felt the same way. After some thought I didn’t see a point to living either. Society dictated that we jump through circles to become successful, but the end result is that we all die. I figured why go through all the trouble and suffering for meaningless stuff just to die. We all end up in the grave, why not skip a couple of unpleasant steps and just end it. Fortunately, I had some reservations about suicide because of my uncertainty about life after death and got over this train of thought during senior year hoping that college would bring new meaning into my life. By this time I rarely attended church.

My first semester at Berkeley I looked for a church with one of my floormates. I wasn’t too sure what I believed in anymore and mostly looked to please my parents. I wasn’t motivated to go to church and it was low priority so after a few months I almost never went. Then in November I found out that one of my friends from high school passed away. He was two years older than me and one of the greatest people I’ve ever met. He always saw the positives in life and genuinely cared about others. He brought joy to everyone around him, the type of person who could light up a room. When I found out that he passed away, I came to a conclusion that there was no possible way the loving God mentioned in the Bible existed. How could a good, loving God allow so many good people die? It didn’t seem consistent. There wasn’t a question about where a God existed or not because I figured that for everything around us to exist by chance was just too ridiculous. However, I thought God must be cruel and that we were all just a big cosmic joke being toyed with.

By the time my second semester rolled around, I decided to pursue what everyone else was going after and in the process compromised many of my values, morals, and beliefs. I started attending parties and eventually took up drinking to fit in more. After spring break under the pressure of my friends back home, I got into a questionable relationship. More of my time was being spent on trying to satisfy my own desires. I told myself that doing what everyone else enjoyed would make me happy as well. My grades were dropping and a gap was forming between me and my close friends. Had I been thinking straightly I would have realized how stupid I’d been and that my life was falling apart at the seams. Even now many of my regrets come from my actions that semester.

That summer I took classes while working at a machine shop in Santa Clara. Everything I did was fueled by satisfying me until one day I hadn’t slept much because of school and ended up working overtime. On the drive back I was tired and frustrated. I couldn’t handle the pressures of life. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with where my life was going as the thrills of not being a typical good Asian kid were wearing thin. Working overtime pushed me to the edge, especially when I got into a little altercation with my boss that day. Being tired I wanted to talk to someone so I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel. I decided to vent to my parents about how much Berkeley, work, and life sucked. During the conversation I was pretty emotional and angry. My body numbed up on me and I couldn’t move my arms or legs. My vision blurred and everything became dark except for small orange circular light in the middle of all the darkness. I followed the light and the when my vision came back I was off the freeway on a side street able to pull over. I’m sure this incident can be explained scientifically, but I took it as a sign from above that I needed to turn my life around.

I started going to church more consistently with one of my old floormates over the next year. Unfortunately, I only saw church as an obligation to prevent anything crazy from happening again. My bad habits were still with me, as I merely tried to reduce my amount of sin to avoid punishment. I tried refocusing my life on school and not make the same mistakes, and eventually things started turning around. However, as I began to settle down again the urge to satisfy myself crept up. Those things that I sought just a year ago that got me into such a mess, I was seeking again. I talked to my friends a lot during this time and realized after quite a bit of denial that I was rationalizing everything I did. I also noticed that while we all went to church, my friends had a much better grasp of the gospel, were more disciplined, and much wiser in their decision making. They also had a confidence and joy that I lacked. I soon had a lot of questions regarding life and Christianity. One of my friends suggested that I check out Kairos because they had a lot of staff who could help. To be honest I was skeptical about the staff members because I heard many were former Berkeley students who decided to stay and serve the church. Before the first Bible study I figured they must not have a lot going for them if they decided to stay in Berkeley. My only immediate goal at the time was to graduate, get out of Berkeley and never look back. I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to ask my questions, but I decided to check it out for two weeks with the intent of going back to the other church.

My first Bible study and the following weeks were quite different from my expectations. As a quiet person I thought I’d just sit there by myself like I normally do, or talk to my friend. I soon found out that you probably can’t go five minutes without being approached by someone, especially if you’re new. The friendliness of the staff and students was foreign to me. It wasn’t just during the Bible study, but during the week people would call just to see how I was doing. I also realized that many of the staff were really smart, so I was pretty curious why they stayed in Berkeley. It just so happened that I started coming out around the time for Thanksgiving Celebration preparations. When my “two week trial” was coming to an end one of the staff, Roy, called me because he’d heard I come out a couple times even though we hadn’t met yet. He asked me some questions and invited me to participate in the TC practices. I thought why not, and agreed. I found myself agreeing to take part in dancing, which I absolutely don’t enjoy. A combination of participating in TC and how much Roy reached out to me those weeks caused me to realize I had stumbled upon something special and I decided to stay.

After spending time with Roy it hit me that I wasn’t Christian and I was using it as a label. As an early Christmas gift he gave me “Letters from a Skeptic” to read during winter break to help me find out the truth. The book addressed some of my major concerns such as the existence of a loving God, the validity of the Bible, and the resurrection. The answers to my concerns were logical and made sense, but I still wasn’t convinced about the truth probably because I don’t enjoy reading. Spring semester I signed up for Course101 with Roy to learn more about Christianity. We met every week to go over the course material, which was great because many of the topics addressed my questions and without fail we would go way over our allotted time. I became convinced of the historical evidence of the Bible and that suffering isn’t a contradiction with the existence of a loving God. The trilemma lesson that said Jesus is either a liar, lunatic, or Lord struck me. I never thought about Jesus in this way and now my biggest obstacle was the resurrection because it would determine my response to him. Roy gave “The Case for Easter,” which discusses the resurrection and some conspiracy theories in more depth. One quote, “As long as the existence of God is even possible, it’s possible that he acted in history by raising Jesus from the dead,” made me think the resurrection wasn’t that farfetched and I became convinced. I’m thankful Roy took time from his schedule to share his knowledge and answer my questions. By the time the Course was over there was enough evidence presented for me to make a decision. Based on the evidence and the way the people at Gracepoint lived out their lives I knew Christianity is true, I’m a sinner, and I need Jesus in my life. However, even though my mind was made up, my heart was hesitant and needed a little more convincing. Roy asked me during our final week what was holding me back from making a decision. It was no longer an intellectual problem, but rather I didn’t want to give up control over my life. Roy knew me very well and gave an example that hit home. He said that making a salvation decision was time sensitive, similar to responding to an email from a friend. You read it and put off responding because you’ll respond later, but you keep putting it off until you feel it’s too late to respond because it would be awkward and decide not to email your friend back. Similarly, that desire to make a decision can wear off over time. The image of the person not responding to emails captured me perfectly because that’s exactly what I do and I knew if I didn’t make a decision it would never happen. So on that April night I made my salvation decision.

It’s been over half a year since I made my salvation decision and I’m seeing the gradual changes in my life. Even though I was told it was going to take time and my life wouldn’t change overnight, I thought I’d see some more immediate changes. Although it’s been a slow process, I can see and feel a difference in my life because I now have a purpose and reason to live. My salvation has been assured because of Christ Jesus and I no longer feel that hopelessness thinking that life is meaningless or I’m a lost cause due to my sins piling up. It’s like a burden has been lifted and I’m much more at peace because I don’t have to follow standard worldly conventions to satisfy myself and never succeed to do so. There have been a lot of struggles living a Christian life and I know more challenges will arise, but now I have direction in my life as I can build a personal relationship with Jesus.