Back story: This morning a cockroach crawled on me while I was sleeping and jolted me out of bed. I couldn’t go back to sleep even though it was only around 4:30AM so I went online and watched another sermon by Andy Stanley. After poking around online a bit for sources and keywords, I found myself on a forum and a stranger from Australia messaged me regarding something I posted about my personal faith. This is the conversation that followed (my words were edited a little to make the message clearer).

Him: I hope one day science will show you the way to the truth 🙂

Me: I already have found the truth. I pray someday you will too. 🙂 God bless!

Him: Science contradicts all religion texts, Christianity especially. I used to be one, now I am an atheist. It’s a shame so many people follow a false belief.

Me: I’m very sorry you feel that way and that you feel so strongly about it that you took the time to message me. I was an agnostic for a long time after being raised in a Christian home and I felt “forced” to go to church, etc. so I understand your point of view as hard as it may be for you to believe. But after my personal experience (which I pray you will also experience), I would be a fool to still not believe. 

I’m not going to argue because I know it’s futile but all I can say is this: trying to use science to explain God is like a blind man trying to use his nose to experience color. It’s only by his grace that I can even see.

Him: Agnostic is the belief of god without a religious persuasion. Why would you turn to a certain religion? Agnosticism is fine because its an on the fence approach. We don’t know for sure if there is a god or not. 

But Religion’s intent purpose is to take advantage of people under the guise of charity. It instills a blind faith into people to follow its ideologies. Its done this for millennia when people didn’t have any other way to communicate ideas, and science was in its beginnings. 

I am fine with people believing in a higher being, but via a religion is wrong. I’m curious what happened to you to change your mind.

Me: I know what an agnostic is, I was one. Haha. But I mean I understand where you are coming from on the anti-religion thing. I don’t want to argue theology, I am here to see if I can find like-minded people.

You probably won’t believe my story but since you asked I really want to tell you in the hope that someday you might remember this and come to a saving knowledge of Christ. This is not just because it’s what someone taught me, it’s a very personal and life-changing experience so I hope you will be sensitive enough to just walk away and not insult me after if you don’t believe. 

This is my story.

I left my hometown in 2005 to live in Manila and I absolutely could not wait to get away from my parents’ house.

Even though I had attended Sunday School and youth camps and things like that, I increasingly felt like church was always shoved down my throat. I considered myself a very logical and intelligent person and as I got older I felt like Christianity was illogical and silly, and that heaven was a lie people told themselves to feel better about death. I thought the people in church were tacky and I was embarrassed when my friends found out my dad was a church elder. Even while I pretended that I believed, I would cringe on the inside whenever anyone told me “Jesus loves you” or anything similar. I especially despised the way the modern church discriminated against people who are different. But although I dismissed the teachings of the Bible, I still found belief in a “force” or some form of divine being to be logical (let’s not get into that but this is how I felt at the time). And I didn’t want my parents to worry about me, so I had been pretending to believe for many years. 

So then I finally had my chance to live the life I wanted. I could finally choose to stop going to church. I could drink as much as I wanted, smoke without getting yelled at, stay out partying for 3 days if I felt like it. I had a good job, I had an active dating life, tons of friends, a great family (who still lovingly accepted me even with my lifestyle), and my own set of moral values. By anyone’s standards I should have been happy. I enjoyed these things, but whenever I was alone I grew more and more miserable and I didn’t know why. I thought it was because I wasn’t following my dreams so I changed careers, went back to school for it. I felt happier on the surface, but inside I still felt empty. 

Until one day (and this is the part I am sure you won’t believe but it’s true nevertheless) I was lying in my bed, reading, and I heard a soft voice speaking to me. It was one sentence: “My child, have you forgotten Me?” I sat up, scared and confused. I honestly thought I was going crazy. But I know I heard it. I was afraid of what it meant so I just tried to forget about it but I couldn’t get it out of my head. 

A few weeks later I asked my boyfriend at the time if he wanted to go to church. I couldn’t help but think maybe, just maybe, I might get some answers to many of the questions I had. So we attended services a few times and although I felt uplifted in some ways, I disliked the whole “repent and turn your life around” thing because I enjoyed my life too much and I still wanted to be in control. So I went on doing the same things, occasionally going to church just to “feel good”.

The defining moment came when after one service, my boyfriend and I decided to commute home since his car was in the shop and to save on cab fare. So we ended up on the train, and there was a man sitting there with a Bible and speaking to the crowd of passengers who were trying their best to ignore him. I initially dismissed him as just some raving lunatic but then I looked up and realized something. 

[Important side bar: You have to understand, there are many languages here in the Philippines and I speak one fluently, Cebuano. Conversational Cebuano is very different from formal Cebuano and I can barely understand the formal kind. Tagalog is the language spoken in Manila but I can barely understand and speak the conversational form. Formal Tagalog is like Chinese to me] 

So what I realized was this: even though the man on the train was speaking formal Tagalog, I understood every word he was saying! I asked my boyfriend (a native conversational Tagalog speaker) later if he understood what the guy was saying and he said no because the vocabulary was too deep. But while he spoke, the sounds of the words themselves did not matter because it was as if God spoke straight to my heart. What the man said was something like this, in that non-language way that I can’t even explain: “Jesus loves you. It is not too late. Come to Christ and you will never thirst again. While you were still in your sins, He loved you first.” I stared at the man and couldn’t believe what I was experiencing. 

I went home and realized that’s why I was so miserable. It wasn’t even my lifestyle that was the problem…it was that my life had no intrinsic purpose apart from God. With all my hedonism, logic and self-sufficiency I could not hope to find meaning in a life that was designed to be far more than just physical and material. I fell to my knees and cried, and for the first time ever I humbled myself before God and I asked for forgiveness. Not even just for my lifestyle, but for my pride and my arrogance, for thinking that a life apart from him could ever be enough. I didn’t even fully understand the message of the cross yet, but I just knew that I was unworthy and yet He loved me. 

I picked up my dusty old Bible and I was amazed when I read the familiar words I had highlighted and read over and over in Sunday School and in countless church services but never really understood. It was as if a screen had been lifted from my eyes. I know it was not by my power, but by God’s. That was when I understood that reading the Bible while rejecting God’s presence is futile and that’s why I never truly believed before. That I was a sinner, and that all my “good works” could never save me from the consequences of my sin, and that Christ was the spotless sacrifice, the one who died a criminal’s death in my place so that I would be saved. And that if I truly wanted to serve him, I would have to pick up my own cross daily and follow him. 

I wish I could say that after that my life was always happy and painless and that I completely turned my life around the very next day but that wouldn’t be true. It was easy to accept him as Savior…but very difficult to accept him as Lord. It has been a very slow journey through the narrow path. I fail God, daily. I’m human. I have backslid more times than I care to admit, and until recently I was still embarrassed to talk about my faith to anyone. But what I can say with certainty is that from that day on, my heart was realigned towards a new goal. And though there is still occasional pain, the joy of the Lord is something that is permanent. Even though my life is more subdued now, and I have given up dating since 2009, and I have fewer friends, and I have stopped indulging in all most of my enjoyable vices, I have never again felt as empty as I did during those times. 

I still disagree with the organized church about a lot of things. (You might want to listen to this: http://www.northpoint.org/messages/the-separation-of-church-and-hate) But now I realize that the reason why the church is imperfect is that it is made up of humans, and humans are imperfect. What really matters is my personal relationship with Christ and allowing his presence in me to touch other lives in a positive way, not my church attendance or my “self-righteousness” – even though I love attending church now. 

Still reading? I sincerely hope so. I myself have a hard time believing that these things have actually happened to someone like me. But like I said, I would be a fool to not believe after it did. 

I hope that after I took the time to write all of that, you will think about it. If you think I’m crazy, that’s fine. But I hope that you can walk away from this with a better understanding of why so many people still believe and why I choose to hold out for someone who shares my faith. And I still pray that one day you will have a profound experience with God the way I never thought I would, but did.

Him: I appreciate the time you took to type that. I did read it all, it was interesting. I’m surprised you describe exactly how I am, before you “found god” but the part I don’t do is drink and smoke and party. I used to, but have found other ways to bring joy. 

God would be one avenue for some. It certainly isn’t one for me. If God was required to bring happiness to our lives, why isn’t everyone a believer? Why aren’t all atheists depressed and unhappy? The majority are not. 

Me: I can’t pretend to have all the answers. Like I said, all I’m saying is that this is what happened to me and I can’t deny that it happened. Everyone’s story is different so I can’t expect everyone to experience it the way I did. My eldest sister’s story is even more amazing but it would take even longer to write about! Haha. 

However, I do notice that all of my atheist friends are young so most of them are living busy, event-filled, carefree lives and not thinking about their mortality or their intrinsic purpose. My dad is the unofficial counselor for the terminally ill at a local hospital where he works as a doctor. His experiences have shown that almost all people at the end of their lives become depressed and then start looking for answers. Some were people who rejected the message when they were healthy but personally requested my dad’s counseling once they realized they were about to die. Many came to a saving knowledge of Christ literally days or even hours before their death and even some family members who heard also came to God. It is an amazing ministry that he’s serving, he even published a book entitled “The Comfort That Only God Can Give”, which he often gives out for free. 

By the way, thank you for being more respectful than I anticipated.

Him: Fair enough. Well, there is only one thing that is certain. We all die. I only pretend to dream what afterlife is like, or if there is any existence after this life. Its just interesting to think about, ceasing to exist. But it doesn’t make me depressed or sad not having answers. I’m actually excited to see what Science brings forward in the coming decades. 

I’m happy enough to be living now, and enjoying this existence. I won’t turn to any man-made form of answers, which is what I think they are. There isn’t enough evidence to make me think otherwise. 

If I was presented with evidence to sway my belief, I’m not ignorant enough to ignore it. Perhaps you were presented with enough to be swayed. 

I don’t think this would happen to someone like me, an eternal skeptic. It just doesn’t make sense by the inaccuracies in all religious texts, and further, promoting the existence of religions such as Islam. A religion I truly despise, and its growing faster than ever. 

I hold moral values & respect highly. People think these are obtained from god, but it’s actually from your upbringing as a child. Family indoctrination is one of the biggest factors in beliefs. 

I don’t seek answers, because they aren’t there. God / Religion doesn’t have the answers I seek, simply because I believe its fabricated. I will wait for God to show me he exists, I can’t believe the word of people from 2000 years ago who witnessed Jesus, the same people who believed the world was the center of the universe, and later, thinking it was flat, and there was a cliff to the end of the universe.

Me: Like I said, I’m not here to argue theology and religion. I myself wasn’t afraid of death either (being young and carefree and all). But I do believe that if you are interested in truth, if you are honestly seeking it and not just trying to disprove religion, you will find it. 

You know what’s funny? Something woke me up at 4:30AM today (I ALWAYS sleep until about 9). And instead of going back to sleep I went online and had this conversation. Maybe God is trying to tell you something? 🙂

Anyway thank you for your thoughts as I will be taking this into account when I read my Bible. I will never stop looking for answers because I know God has them all, even if I don’t and probably never will. Me trying to make human sense of God is like a plant trying to make plant sense of a human. 

I need to go offline now but thanks, I still get a bit hesitant to talk to people about my faith in person because I’m not as eloquent with the spoken word so I’m glad I got to talk about this with you. 

God bless!