Sunday, January 15, 2006

Journey to Christ: Pt 1

Because a lot of what I talk about on this site will concern this topic, I want to use this post to give you some background on my spiritual journey. As I stated previously, it has only been 15 months since I accepted Christ. I think that it will help others to understand a bit more about me if I post a little more about how I got to that point.

In case you just want a short version, please see a previous post.

I wouldn’t say that my family was particularly religious. I do remember attending church on Sundays when I was little, but at some point we stopped going. When I was older I remember thinking that it was because my brother and I tended to cause a lot of commotion whenever we went. God wasn’t something we talked about a lot at home, it always seemed to be a very private topic for the most part. I also had a religious studies class during grades 1-3, which was mostly about stories from the bible.

However, as a child I suffered from almost debilitating pain, in the form of headaches and muscle pain, especially in my legs. To this day I still suffer from these pains, with the only cures being Aspirin and sleep. I do not remember a single day of my life where I have not experienced some pain in my joints, whether minor or major. At one time I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, a soft tissue disorder, but I no longer believe the diagnoses. What matters is that I constantly prayed for an end to the pain, all I ever wanted in the world was for that pain to stop. I believed that if there really was a loving, all powerful God, then He could make the pain end. When the pain didn’t stop, I rejected God, and all possibilities of a higher power. I turned completely away from God, and that was when I think I began to seriously turn to science. Although I had always had an interest in science, I now turned to it as the answer to everything in life.

That is kind of ironic now, as my study of science I believe ultimately brought me back to God.

This rejection of God happened at the age of 12, or somewhere’s around there. This disbelief in God was further strengthened by my studies of history, where I constantly found examples of atrocities committed in the name of God by misguided individuals in the church. Naively equating the church and religion with God, I became even more critical of anything to do with God. I also had negative experiences interacting with people who could not accept my beliefs. Now, I had no problem with other people believing in God, so I could not understand why certain individuals who believed in God could not accept my beliefs, and not try (in my mind anyway’s) to force their beliefs on me.

So for the next 8 years, I would periodically reexamine the evidence I had, and ask myself whether I still believed there was no God. And each time the answer was no. Until I turned 20. In that time I read much (never read the bible during that time, fancy that), and talked with a lot of people, and did a lot of thinking on the subject. Eventually, a personal experience changed my beliefs and forced me to confront them head on, and I did start to believe in a higher power.

But I’ll save the rest of the story for next time, as this has gotten a little longer than I expected.God_

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