My True Story

I ask that if you know me as friend or family, please take a few minutes to read this entire article. It’s important to me and may possibly be important to you too. Thank you.

Beginnings

I was born June 15, 1983 in a fast-growing California city called Chula Vista which sits between San Diego and the Mexican border. I had a great American childhood. My parents are loving and made sure I never had to worry about a thing. We lived in a nice suburban neighborhood where I could walk to my elementary school, a brand-new charter school. That was a fun time and place for me. Junior High was rough, as I’m sure it is for most kids during those awkward years. High school was not as rough in the sense that I wasn’t bullied, but it was an infinitely depressing period in my life. I longed for more, for whatever good the future might have held for me and for the freedom to spread my wings. My personality and learning style didn’t fit well in the classroom.

What I can appreciate about where I grew up is the diverse population. I checked the statistics for my high school and was not surprised to see that being white meant I was a minority, third to the Hispanic and Asian student populations. Children are innocent and so from my youngest years I never gave thought to the fact that my classmates looked and talked different than each other. In fact, I thought it was like that everywhere in America (and I thought America was the whole world while in elementary school). Knowing that so many people have prejudices, I count myself lucky to have been given the opportunity to grow up being a part of diversity.

A Sobering Moment

As a child I believed in God and I often prayed in bed at night that God would help the poor, house the homeless and feed the hungry people. From first grade to 10th grade I attended Catholic classes one day a week after school. They taught me to try hard to be as good of a person as possible and to help people in need. While I generally disliked those classes, especially as I got older, I didn’t doubt God’s existence until I was 14-years-old. While riding the school bus home I made a casual comment about God to my friend, Fred, who responded by saying, “I don’t believe in God.” I said nothing but internally was surprised that someone could not believe in God. A short moment later I realized that I had never even considered the possibility that God might not be real and that my belief in God was not actually a conscious decision I had made but rather a tradition that I was following automatically. It was a sobering moment.

Enlightened Atheist

During the next two years I became more convinced that there was no God, with all the suffering in this world, hypocritical Christians, the assumption that all those animals couldn’t possibly have fit on Noah’s ark, various [what I now know to be unbiblical] Catholic traditions such as confession to a priest, praying to saints (dead humans), etc. Thoughts like these ruined for me the idea of “religion” being divine. Clearly religion was man-made. I considered myself to be an atheist for the rest of my high school years and at the same time considered God-believers and Christians to be idiots of the grandest kind. I had the view that a) belief in God was for weak-minded people and b) I was being intelligent. I was proud to claim this newfound enlightenment with my friends at school but of course not with my family. At 15-years-old, I had my Catholic Confirmation… and not once during that year of preparation did anybody ask me if I even believed in God. All that “confirmed” to me was that religion was not where I could find truth.

Now What?

However, my unbelief in God wasn’t entirely satisfying. I still had a hunger for knowledge of something higher than myself. But rather than allow myself to be confronted with the possibility that God still may in fact be real (even independent of religion), I used the Internet to seek out alternate options. I started to grow an unhealthy appetite for anything paranormal or godlessly spiritual: ghosts and hauntings, the possibility of being created by aliens, attempting astral projection (that’s what I desired most), seeing auras, lucid dreaming, telekinesis and so on. I got to the point where I was so into these things (reading about and attempting them nightly) that I felt (but didn’t accept) that it was somehow ridiculous to be open to anything but the possibility that God could be reality. Nonetheless, I squelched that feeling and continued on my paths. It was more comfortable that way (now I know it was because to acknowledge God would have been to make my imperfect self accountable to a perfect authority - scary).

Meeting My Future Wife

While I was still in High School I met Sudi. She was an intern at my grandparents’ church from Mexico City who had graduated from a Bible College in Minnesota. She was living with my grandparents and she (other than a little girl on the playground in third grade) was the first person I recall personally raising the question of God with me. I liked her (there was something different about her) but I was done with religion and so I told her I didn’t want to talk about it.

More School… or Not

After what seemed like decades, I graduated from high school. I was thrilled to be done with that chapter of life. I must have been the only graduate to race off to the parking lot and leave without his actual diploma in hand. Community college came when summer ended and it proved to be an equally depressing experience. Two days into my second semester, after realizing that my “web design” class was a joke (no computers and an instructor with no experience) and that two to four more years in college would kill me, I dropped all my classes and returned my books.

Going Into Business

That’s when I started my web design business from my bedroom. I remember my dad being supportive by getting the “doing business in Chula Vista” packet (I was putting off the paperwork). He also bought me a nice phone and built me a really nice big desk (he can build anything).

Deep Questions

This now was the post-9/11 world we were living in and I found myself asking Sudi tough questions about the now possibly relevant issue of God. I needed a reason to believe there could actually be a God before I would give weight to anything the Bible said. She patiently answered my questions and when she didn’t have an answer, she would say, “I don’t know but I will find out and get back to you” and she did every time. Her answers about God, of course, all came from the Bible: answers that satisfied me (though I always had more).

I reluctantly accepted to go to a mid-week Bible-teaching at a church in the neighborhood with her and found myself deeply interested in the lessons which basically were just readings from the Bible (I never actually read the Bible for myself before this). Sudi encouraged me to pray and ask God to reveal himself to me. I figured that was reasonable so I did.

What If

Months later, I would be considered an agnostic by some definitions (after all, you would have to be God to know everything to know there is no God and you can’t be God and an atheist at the same time) who was interested in the truth, whatever it may be. I wanted to know if there really was a God instead of avoiding the big question altogether (laziness, fear) or making mockery of it (easy, unintelligent). At this point I was giving the Bible a shot: I read the Gospel of John and during the summer of 2002 I was listening to the book of Matthew in MP3 format each night before bed. I found the parts where Jesus spoke to be the most interesting. On July 31, 2002 I was having a very anxious time with my not-so-flourishing new business and decided it wouldn’t hurt to read something in the book of Matthew. I opened my Bible up and started reading the story of Jesus walking on water starting with verse 22 of chapter 14.

Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

A Liar, a Lunatic or Something Else

At that moment I realized I had the same condition Peter did. When I read that Jesus said “why did you doubt?” I didn’t have any more excuses. It’s like C.S. Lewis noted: Jesus didn’t leave us any other option than to call him a liar, a lunatic or Lord. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) This was the moment I believed Jesus was who He claimed to be. My heart beat hard and I prayed for forgiveness (this was also the moment I first realized I needed forgiveness), acknowledged that Jesus was the Lord of all creation and out loud told Satan to get out of my life. I literally felt weight lifted off of my chest. I was right all along: religion is man-made and not necessary for having a relationship with God.

Forever

About one year later Sudi and I got married at sunset at the beach in La Jolla, California. She is my best friend and the love of my life. I could go on about how my business finally took off and how I’m happily married and live in a beautiful place with perfect weather but that’s all irrelevant. What matters is what is eternal. And what is eternal is my soul. God promised me forgiveness of sin and everlasting life, not a “peachy” time on earth. In fact, He promised persecution for me; he says I will be hated for putting my trust in Him.

What I will boast about then as a believer is that I was a completely hopeless sinner destined for an eternity of deserved punishment (my sins were my choice) in hell that has been forgiven, not because of anything I did, but because a perfect God came to earth as my fellow man in the person of Jesus to be sacrificed as payment for my sins (including my future sins) and defeated death by His resurrection.

Do you think that I like to see wicked people die? says the Sovereign Lord. Of course not! I want them to turn from their wicked ways and live. (Ezekiel 18:23)

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

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