When I began to realise that the Bible was the truth, a big part of me was actually disappointed. I can remember going out for lunch one grey January day at the beginning of this year to meet a friend who’d also seen through the COVID lies. We were eating outside due to our vaccine status, and it felt so grey, cold and bleak. The hope that I’d had that we were going through a ‘great awakening’ had vanished and it seemed as if there was nothing to replace it. One of the few Christians I’d connected with online, had a rather rigid interpretation of end times events, that we were all going to end up in concentration camps, beheaded because we didn’t take the vaccine. I had no idea at the time that there are multiple different interpretations of the Bible. While Christians do suffer persecution, more than any other faith group, and will do so increasingly as time goes on, there is still so much that is open to interpretation.
I know that there are people out there who have massive 360 degree transformations, where Jesus speaks to them, and it seems as if suddenly they are a brand new person, but that didn’t happen with me. It was more gradual, and sometimes there were moments when I almost didn’t want it to be true. There were also moments when I didn’t feel good in my body, or mind, as I tried to figure out; what exercise should I do? What new age practises would I have to ‘give up’?
Another aspect of it was that Christianity is just not fashionable or cool. I don’t really consider myself a particularly image conscious person, but looking back now I see that a huge part of my not wanting to be a Christian was all about image. Buddhism, yoga, remembering past lives, or talking to spirit guides. It all felt enticing and alluring to me. And it’s more socially acceptable. Christianity on the other hand is boring. It’s a dusty grey old book, it’s a boring monotone sermon, it’s an old granny who judges everyone and certainly doesn’t approve of fun.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I actually think that Satan has a long term marketing plan that has been going for thousands of years. Allow people to worship the Christian God, but strip the churches of the truly aliveness of the Holy Spirit, and make it look so dull that only the most conventional of conventional people will attend. Then use all the lights, and glitzy glamour of the ‘new age’ to lure the rebels in.
Christianity is the one spiritual path I did not choose because I was seeking healing, spiritual experiences, or because I wanted to feel better in my body or mind. I was only seeking the truth.
It’s taken me the best of the year to fully realise that while I came to Christianity with no expectations that it would actually make me feel better, it has actually done that. Even my mum, who can’t understand how her rebel daughter turned conventional Christian has noticed that I’m calmer. I wasn’t looking for calm, I wasn’t expecting it. But what I realised is this; there is ‘a peace that surpasses all understanding’ (Phillipians 4:6) that comes when we have a real relationship with God. It was like a weight that I’d never known I’d carried all my life had been lifted. I realised that deep in my heart God’s law was written down, and while I heard the stirrings of my conscience from time to time, I’d never met the author of that law. I’d ignored him, and that resulted in a heavy weight of pain. I went seeking to heal that pain in all the wrong places. I didn’t realise how simple it was that all I needed to do was say, hello, and thank you.
Dear God, I know that you are real now. and now I see your mark everywhere in creation, in the way you make beautiful things, like a walnut that looks like a brain, because it is a nut that has benefits for our brain. Or pretty flowers that are supposedly to attract bees, but also might just be for humans to enjoy too. And sunsets, especially Tuscan sunsets, because the Tuscan people have been blessed with some of the most beautiful sunsets in the world.
I felt so silly as I looked around me that I had believed all my life that this had all come about by evolutionary chance or something. I can’t say I’d ever given it much thought, because after all, ignoring God is something our modern culture teaches us to do.
The thing about Christianity, is it is not a path of seeking blissful, otherworldly experiences. In fact in the Bible Jesus told one of his disciples Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The Bible says that ‘now we see through a glass darkly,’ Corinthians 13.12. We are not meant to look into the spiritual realm in the way that many other spiritual practises encourage us to.
At first glance it might seem that it’s not very exciting or rewarding. Yet putting faith in what we cannot see, and reaching out and beginning a conversation with someone who may not reply in words, is, in my experience, more nourishing than any other spiritual experience I’ve ever known.
It wasn’t instant, it took the best part of this year to understand how to have this relationship. This personal relationship. It’s not always easy or instant to reach out to someone you’ve been ignoring your entire life, but the forgiveness is instant, thank you Jesus.
As for fun, we do have to remember that there is a difference between what Satan’s marketing campaign says Christianity is, and what Christianity actually is. If we look to the word of God, it says, ‘So I recommend having fun, because there is nothing better for people in this world than to eat, drink, and enjoy life. That way they will experience some happiness along with all the hard work God gives them under the sun.” Eccleisiastes. 8:15