How I Became A Christian
The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?
-C.S. Lewis
Should I hide?
I could hear him coming down the hallway, getting closer. I knew what he was after.
Could I squeeze into my closet? Or under the desk? Too late.
"Hey man, bible study's about to start - come on out!"
Shoot.
It was my freshman year of college. I had hoped to distance myself from “the religious thing”. I was failing.
It's not that I had a bad experience with faith growing up. I'm thankful for my Lutheran roots - hotdish, ham buns and all. I had gone to Sunday school, been confirmed, and even played in a youth group worship band.
But college was here. It was time for freedom.
Freshman Year: The Freedom
The only snag was that my freshman dorm hall advisor was starting a bible study for anyone who was interested.
I was not. But he wore me down. Over the first few months of school, his enthusiasm and persistence won out and I checked out the bible study.
When my next door neighbor joined up (and subsequently swung by my room every Wednesday to pick me up), it appeared there was no way out. I was as flaky as I could manage to be, but somehow I managed to keep attending through my freshman year.
Oh yeah, one more thing about my freshman year - I was partying.
Not like a rockstar. More like an idiot kid who had never had alcohol trying to figure out why droves of 18 year olds were jamming themselves into nasty frat house basements, drinking piss-tasting beer and then standing around like they knew what they were doing.
It wasn’t a word yet, but my FOMO was running the show.
So that was freshman year. Wednesday nights were bible study with my Christian friends. Friday nights I was doing shots with the marching band.
I didn't feel like a hypocrite. Cultural Christianity was still a thing at this time in the US and so for every truly practicing Christian I knew up to that point, I probably knew three (or more?) nominal Christians. These were nice folks who popped into church on the occasional Sunday and then just did whatever they wanted with the rest of their lives. Their faith didn't dramatically change how they thought or felt or lived. Maybe I could just be like that.
So everything was great - until sophomore year.
Sophomore Year: The Tension
When I came back for my second year, the seams holding my double life together began to fray.
My “party life” had started to solidify with friends and routines that ensured I could find a beer pong game every Friday and Saturday night. I had even started dating girls from these circles. I was getting in deeper.
At the same time, my "religious life” was pulling me in its own direction. The light, topical bible study material of freshman year had been replaced with deeper, more challenging content. We were talking about topics like the "Lordship of Christ". Basically I was learning that Jesus isn't a spoke on the wheel of a Christian’s life - he is to be the “hub” around which everything else turns. That didn’t sound like freedom to me and it certainly didn’t sound like fun.
We learned about fighting sin in our lives. Most of all, I was starting to understand the gospel message - about who Jesus was, why his death was so important and what it called us to.
Worse yet, I started to meet people - lots of people - who were really committed to Jesus. Their lives did revolve around him. While their joy, peace, and vibrant community were attractive, c'mon- these were the weird "way too into it" religious folks. Who wants to end up like that?
Things came to a head about halfway through the year.
The Breaking Point
I had grown increasingly uncomfortable with bible study. Between the girl I was dating and the alcohol and partying that my weekend life was centered around, I knew these things were what these Christians called sin.
As we sat in bible study, talking about the seriousness of sin and our need to fight it, I felt about as comfortable as a pregnant nun at mass. Each week, I’d count the minutes until the study was over. Always I felt awkward. Sometimes the inner dissonance was so bad I'd almost feel sick.
I told the guy leading it that I wanted out.
He was surprised but accepted my request. His only ask was that I stick around until the end of the semester.
Those next two months would change my life forever.
Everything went wrong. My study abroad plans for second semester fell through. My engineering classes got extremely hard and started to seem pointless. I wondered if I was in the right major (though I was almost halfway through college).
Then came the anxiety. I remember sitting in a study room one night, heart pounding out of my chest in full fight-or-flight panic attack mode. I had no idea what was going on, no one to talk to, and no words to explain it even if I did.
The unfortunate events of first semester culminated when the girl I was seeing broke up with me. I thought it was going to break me.
The weird thing was that it didn't.
The Surprise
Two weeks before the breakup, the wider Christian campus group kicked off a seemingly arbitrary challenge to spend extended time "with God". For whatever reason, I decided that this would be the first non-bible study activity that I’d go along with. The structure was open-ended, so I decided to just read a few bible verses and then sit quietly “listening for God” for about half an hour.
Nothing magical happened. But by the end of the two weeks, I was starting to feel a sense of peace and an increasing sense that God was walking with me through my day.
Then I got dumped.
I felt like existential barf.
The next day, as I descended into the abyss of self-pity, my Christian friends interrupted me. Wasn't I going to the Valentine's dinner that night?
Well, that sounded about as fun as a sledgehammer to the kneecap.
Whether it was the fear of being by myself at such a low point or the promise of a free dinner, they somehow pulled me from "not a chance" to "fine, I'll go".
The dinner was unremarkable. The guys served the girls a big dinner and there was a dance at the end.
What was remarkable was that somewhere in the process of bussing tables and forcing myself to dance like an idiot, all the heaviness of my life lifted. I felt light.
I had thought my life was unraveling- this didn’t make sense. It felt like something was happening to me.
Surrender
On the walk home, I ran it all through in my head. My wrong major. My study abroad that wasn't. My failed relationship. The anxiety and all the dissonant tension of my double life.
This is where my best thinking had got me.
Then the question. Whether it was Someone putting the thought in my mind or just my subconscious bubbling up what was needed, I don't know. But there it was.
"Do you surrender?"
It's the question I had been confronted with all year, the question I had said "no" to, consciously, many times.
This time, though, I was seeing things differently. I had no idea what God wanted to do with me. But maybe he had something better than this life that I had conjured on my own.
A simple midnight prayer on University Avenue. "Alright God, my life is yours." I went back to my dorm and slept.
Then everything changed.
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