Hi, I'm Anthony, a recent graduate student at the University of Houston.
I have a really complicated life story, but it started with a relatively secure childhood until the end of elementary school. My dad's mantra towards his kids for life was always "a good education is the greatest gift I can give to my children". I was given countless opportunities as a kid to explore extracurricular activities such as music, sports, martial arts, religion, and whatever else my parents thought would be enriching. Looking back I can honestly say I was really, really spoiled. As a result, one of my deepest bred beliefs was that I was talented enough to accomplish anything I wanted in life, with minimal help.
"Religion" to me meant the Catholic faith I'd been exposed to in my Catholic school. For someone who was 8, 9 years old it was really more of something to make fun of, rather than something to be committed to. But I see that it was essential in establishing in my mind a sense that a biological life is destined to end at some point, and that either I'd be alive in a "spiritual" form after death, or I'd be reincarnated. I never found it plausible for life to just-BAM-end, and my spirit or consciousness or whatever to just fizzle out, like when the Terminator dies and the movie shows his "vision" collapsing into a red dot and disappearing.
When my worldview that I was the smartest and most talented person in the world started crumbling down in junior high, I really started to think more about the question of the purpose of life. Because I regularly had to defy my parents to have any fun, got into heaps of trouble, and always seemed to be teetering on the edge in my schoolwork, I regularly had those "What is life?" moments where I would just stare off into space, wondering if there was free will, if I would be reincarnated if I were to die suddenly, wondering what made my personality, my family, my life the way it was. At school I would look at other people, cooler people, more academically successful people, more athletic people, more musical people, and wonder what they saw in life that spurred them to strive to be better or what their philosophy of life was that they could enjoy it so much. I could never seem to look at anyone, even my friends, without comparing myself to them in some way that made me feel like I had something to prove. I experienced constant torment in the fact that I couldn't motivate myself to do anything with my life, at the same time cursing my parents for raising me to be so spread so widely but too thinly in my abilities. But eventually after I considered everything, I would circle back to the reasoning that nothing mattered, because everyone was due to die someday.
Through a series of events I landed in Houston, Texas to begin my sophomore year of high school. I ended up living with my four half-sisters, one half-brother, their father, and my oldest sister's husband. I thought I would be happy living there, but I was shocked that the siblings who took me to the arcade or the mall every day of my previous summer vacations were really regular people with jobs and homework. I discovered the wonder of prime-time TV and video games and immersed myself in this new world, again driven by my insecurity around other people. I sensed something wrong with me and my inability to open up to people, and as much as this frightened me at times, I convinced myself that I would eventually grow out of it, again thinking that I didn't need anybody's intervention in this.
But I didn't grow out of it so much as circumstances pulled me out of it. Through a strange turn of events (I needed a subject for an English paper) I ended up going to church with my oldest sister and her husband one Sunday during my junior year in high school. Everyone at VBC was incredibly nice to me and seemed to treat me like an old friend, and I immediately felt comfortable there and knew that I would come back. I went regularly to church the last year and a half of high school, enjoying it for mostly social and recreational reasons, taking part in activities like the Easter play and playing guitar in the church band without ever really taking the time out to reflect on the sermons and how my life could be changed through this Jesus I was hearing about. When my friends and my bandmates began to make becoming a Christian a regular topic of conversation, and I realized I wouldn't have any luck in dating other Christians unless I became a Christian, I raised my hand during invitation time at a retreat and became a confessing Christian the summer before my senior year of high school. If after reading that you get that impression that I became a Christian for the wrong reasons, well... keep reading. (and you're right, BTW.)
I wanted to become a rich chemical engineer so I ended up going to one of the best chemE schools in the world, the University of California at Berkeley, a.k.a. Berkeley the nerd school, a.k.a. Cal, the school that Jason Kidd played ball for. I went to a church in Berkeley that really appealed to me because of the honesty of the people and the way the Bible studies and sermons revealed a lot of truth about human nature and life in general. But as the leaders at the church got to know me better and I continued to hear messages that challenged my thinking and my lifestyle, I began to feel like I didn't know Jesus at all, and what Jesus had done for me. I lived a very hypocritical life, acting like a good boy at church but really not acknowledging God at all outside of it. In my mind I knew that church and religion were good things and enlightened me to what was real and true in life, but in my heart there was only love for myself. As time went by it became more and more obvious that I had never really given my life to Jesus, and furthermore, I had never fully understood why I needed him.
But I still thank God that I at least had the sense of mind to attend church for my first three years of college because it really gave me the impression that worldly success and comfort, while temporarily satisfying, can never bring true peace. In the winter break of my senior year, while at home in Houston and attending VBC, I made up my mind that by the time I graduated from college, either I would by some miracle really meet Jesus, and if I didn't, I would stop this religious church facade that I was putting on and at least stop going to church-I really didn't know what I would do without my church friends, but I knew I owed it to them to be really honest with them. I began to think that God had better things to do then worry about a guy who went to church for years without giving his life to God.
Luckily before that thinking got any more depressing, or irrational, I went to a church retreat back in California where I just felt every word of every message speaking new and refreshing words to me, answering all my questions and revealing the bitterness and envy in my heart that caused me to doubt that God really loved me. The truth is, God does have better things to do than worry about a sinner like me. God has better things to do than to look after you, too. Because God has to control every detail and process in this universe, (and I can talk for hours about science and the space-time continuum and how it relates to God, but not now…) and because we're people who continually and habitually deny God's sovereignty over our lives, a habit called sin, it's pretty irrational and counterintuitive that this same God who controls the whole universe could love us. God has a constant dilemma that he's stuck with. He actually chooses not to forget about me or you, waiting and waiting until we turn to Him and present all of ourselves to Him. This is one picture that really started forming in my mind; God looking at me, and me just turning my back while He waits.
Another picture, one that is much more concrete, is in the New Testament, in the life of Apostle Paul, who before meeting Jesus made it a habit of killing masses of people of believed in Jesus. Of all the evil and heinous things a person could do against God, Paul probably did the worst. But Paul's life was not about his quest to redeem himself for all the families he destroyed and all the pain he suffered himself; I think we all know that there is no way to go back into time and undo the hurtful things we do. What Paul realized, and what became the driving force of his life, was that the redeeming had already been done for him when Jesus died on the cross, and that when Jesus rose again he gave every believer a reason to keep living. In my life I've done a few, not too many, horrible things, and they haunted me until I realized that there was nothing I could do in my own power to undo them. But there was a way for me to leave them behind and live on.
The grace of God is what I was trying to describe with that first picture-that we have no right to be loved by God and no merit to qualify for life, but God gives us life and love anyway. The second picture I was using to try to describe God's forgiveness, or more specifically, why I needed it. I realized that all my deception of my church leaders and friends, and my insecurity about calling myself a Christian but not really being one, could be forgiven. And I realized that to deny God's love and forgiveness would be to live constantly having to lie to myself and deny reality. Finally I left it to God to touch me and take my life away from me. That was the night of January 20, 2002, when I can truly say I felt the peace of God, and my heart was emptied of my love for myself and dependence on myself, and replaced with a new heart, that wanted to follow Jesus.
When I was growing up my worst fear of all fears was that I'd be buried while still conscious, and that although my body would be dead I'd still be conscious in my brain and crying silently for someone to dig me up. I figure this would be what hell is like for me, knowing that my whole life and its accomplishments simply led me to a hole in the ground. But now I know that my life means something, as long as it's built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. And one day God will evaluate what I've built and will test it to see if there's anything false or flimsy in there, and tell me what He thinks. Well, to make a long story short, I graduated from Berkeley in 2002 and moved back to Houston, rather unwillingly, in the summer of 2003 to live at home and go to grad school. I was pretty bitter about leaving the northern California weather and my friends and leaders at my church there, but VBC is where my spiritual journey really began, and where even though I still pledge allegiance to California, the people love me nonetheless. There's one lesson I'll always remember from my church in California, and it involves the key to happiness. You'll always notice that happy people are grateful. They say "thank you" a lot and don't waste or take anything for granted. Happy people are also humble. They don't puff themselves up or try to appear to be more than what they are. They acknowledge what is deserving of respect and admiration. And they aren't afraid to depend on others when they need to. I can admit that I've never been proud and happy and the same time, and I've never not said "thank you" to a person and felt good about it. I can also admit that whatever I've accomplished in life, even with my best effort, I couldn't have done solely by myself. What I'm most thankful for is this thing called life. I'm amazed and you could say humbled by the fact that life requires billions of chemical reactions and other physical processes to sustain it. And I'm thankful that I feel that my life has a purpose-to fight for the intellectual argument that God exists. The only thing that gives me life, and gives my life purpose, I believe, is the compassion and love that the creator God has for me. And so that's the only thing that makes sense for me to depend on, because I know my talents or abilities can't be depended upon.