Confessions of a New Creation Person…

I have always been impressed by other people’s testimonies.  Each one of these stories is an example of the transformation that Christ performs in a person’s life.  The Bible speaks of Christians as being “new creations.”  The stories of people who have overcome all sorts of debilitating personal problems or devastating tragedies really speak to me of the transforming power of God through faith in Jesus Christ.  My story, while not as dramatic, is still a testimony of the dramatic effects the gospel can have on one’s life.

I had a normal childhood with loving parents.  I lived in the same house for most of my childhood.  I went to one of the best high schools in the city of Chicago.  My parents made sure that I was exposed to Christianity by bringing me to church.  I even ‘professed’ faith in Jesus Christ and was baptized when I was 16.  Yet, I turned away.  Why?  The first reason was pride; I began to think that I didn’t need Jesus or Christianity in my life.  Life up to this point was relatively easy.  I became proud and self-confident.  In college, I was drawn to people and ideologies that conflicted with the word of God.  Because my faith was not grounded, I wasn’t able to articulate what I believed or why I believed it.  This left me extremely vulnerable to the anti-Christian ideologies I was exposed to during my college years.  The faith I ‘professed’ was just that, a ‘professed’ faith.  Like the seed on the stony soil, my faith shriveled up under the heat of criticism and attack.

The question that begs to be asked is:  What changed?  In a real sense, nothing changed.  Human beings strive for truth and meaning, the problem is we reject the only true source of truth and meaning (God).  However, since nature abhors a vacuum, we must fill that void left by God with something else.  For me it was philosophy.  In my college years, I gravitated to philosophy thinking it could provide the answers to life’s greatest questions (“Who am I?”, “What it the meaning of life?” and “Where will I go when I die?”).  All the philosophy classes I took in college didn’t offer any lasting sense of satisfaction.  I bounced around from one ideology to another depending on whichever one carried the most relevant “truth” to my life at the time.

This led to an overall sense of cynicism.  In my quest for truth and meaning, I was finding out that human philosophy wasn’t giving me adequate answers.  I embraced a philosophical atheism, which led to a practical atheism.  I had created my own “god” to fill the vacuum in my heart, and was completely happy with him because he made no demands on my life.  That was when the bottom started to fall out.  I became sexually promiscuous, and that finally caught up with me.  My girlfriend at the time became pregnant, and I got married for all the wrong reasons.  To make matters worse, we brought two children into a loveless and less than satisfying marriage. After three and a half years of marriage, we separated and were eventually divorced.  I was devastated!  I was an immature, selfish young man raising two children on my own (with the help of my parents).

Three years later I met my current wife, Linda, and it was during the process of planning our wedding that I began to re-examine my ideologies.  I had begun to ‘awaken’ politically speaking and came to fully embrace political conservatism.  I was impressed with the common sense wisdom of the conservative movement, and I began to think maybe here I could find some truth and purpose to life after wasting away intellectually for the past seven years.  However, just like with philosophy in college, I came to realize that politics is a ‘no-win’ situation too.  No matter how hard you believe in the truth of your position, there is someone else who believes just as passionately in the opposite.  Not that I gave up on politics, but I quickly realized that this wasn’t the path I was meant to travel.

My trek to political conservatism did have an interesting side effect; it made me a little more tolerant of Christianity.  Christians and conservatives share some common ground ideologically speaking.  Shortly after Linda and I were married, I began an earnest search into the truths of Christianity.  I began reading some of the modern classics in Christian apologetics.  As I examined the truth claims of Christianity, I was exposed to arguments and facts that were not amongst the popular anti-Christian reading.  I began to feel deceived (intentionally or not) by those who helped me in my prior rejection of the faith.  Once my research was completed to my satisfaction, I was faced with a choice:  I can continue to reject a Christianity that I was becoming more and more convinced was true, or I can accept the conclusions I felt compelled to accept.  This meant I needed to do some major mental house cleaning.  I eventually submitted to the absolute authority of Holy Scripture, and jettisoned anything that did not conform to God’s word.  I also realized I needed to devote myself to the needs of my wife and children, and to devote myself to the study and application of God’s word.

The burning question now becomes, am I there yet?  Have I arrived?  Am I the man, husband and father that God wants me to be?  Sadly the answer is “No.”  The Christian life is a journey.  It begins the moment you accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and continues the rest of your natural life.  As much as I would like to say that my life stands as a ‘living witness’ to the gospel, the reality is that I struggle with sin everyday.  However, by God’s grace, I’m definitely not the man I used to be!  I fervently cling to the promise of Philippians 1:6 that the work God began in me He will continue doing in my until it is complete on the last day!  Christians (myself included) are ‘works in progress.’  The Gospel isn’t so much a story of what God is doing in my life (or in the lives of other Christians) as it is the story of what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ!  Jesus Christ is the Son of God!  He was born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.  He lived a perfect life in complete accordance to God’s law and died by the hand of Pontius Pilate.  The death he died was an atoning sacrifice — a propitiation — for the sins of his people, the Church.  This salvation is a measureless gift of God’s grace that we receive through faith.  I received that gift in August 2001.  Since that time, I have been striving to serve God with my life as an offering of love and thanksgiving for His love, mercy and grace.  I invite you to receive that gift too and join me on this journey!

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!