So I decided to make this blog entry about me for those of you who don't know me very well.
People today look around them and formulate reasons why God does not exist — or rather why they refuse to believe in Him, on a more personal level. When I observe my surroundings, however, I cannot help but see reasons as to why I must believe in His palpable existence. Let us journey back into my post-toddler stage, 5-years-old in the ghetto of Detroit, Michigan. It may be difficult to imagine, but in 1995 it was still difficult for people to grasp the diversity of being biracial, at least in the ghetto of Detroit, which was my unfortunate predicament. It was a very dangerous place for me to grow up. Neither white nor black people accepted me because my father is Caucasian and my mother is half Puerto Rican and half African American, making me a multiracial anomaly; so needless to say, my shortage of friends was not very substantial. From what I can remember, I can only recall having one friend of whom I seldom saw. So I was a very lonely child, in spite of my close connections I felt with my older brother and my mother. (My father worked a lot for the benefit of supporting the family, so I didn't quite have a connection with him, but I don't blame him for it. In fact, I highly admire and respect him for his hard work.) Anyway, what I recall the most is getting beat up by a Caucasian 5th grader on the walk home from school every day, as well as being called African racial slurs. Mind you, I was a tiny kindergartner (my small physique has been a curse for most of my life) compared to this tall, much more menacing 5th grader, so I was completely incapable of defending myself. However, God was there for me even though I was oblivious to His existence. This was actually before I ever learnt of God's existence, and He was still there for me. He assured that I was not harmed in any life-threatening ways, which would've been very probable had He not been there. He was there for me because He has always had an important plan for me ever sine He created this earth. God eventually set my father up with a better job in Pennsylvania in 1996, where we moved to for a year, then back to Michigan in a safer area in the town of Canton in 1998. Then we moved to Canton's neighbouring community, Plymouth, in 2006. Throughout twelve years of my life (1995-2007) I suffered through major depression, and it was an insidious demon of the mind, growing worse and worse throughout time. However, God was still there in spite of my professed atheism during that time. (Let me tell you: being atheist in a Christian raised family is no easy task. Although technically, I was agnostic because you cannot blame all your problems on a Being that you claim doesn't exist.)
At age sixteen my parents divorced, and my depression and professed atheism sank even deeper. A year later in 2007 I somehow found the fortitude to be saved through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ the Messiah, the Son of God. I have my father to thank for that. Were it not for his persistence in my attending church every Sunday, I would not have associated and socialised with Christian peers and thus inspiring me to attend that year's Acquire the Fire (ATF) Battle Cry — an enormous Christian conference with concerts for adolescents held annually in large cities around the country. This particular one was in Detroit during March of 2007, and this is where I got saved. The bands we got to see perform were P.O.D., Unhindered, Kutless, Hilsong United, Superchick, Skillet, and other bands, including Philip Joel and Jeremy Camp the following year. But it wasn't just concerts at this large event. A famous pastor, Ron Luce, would preach in between worship times as well as there being very well acted drama skits to portray a biblical message, all of which contributed to my encouragement of being saved. I find it beyond coincidental that I lost my faith in Detroit in 1995 (or more accurately the cause of never forming it) and regained it back in Detroit in 2007; it's what God had always intended it to be. However, I could have easily decided to ignore the love from my Christian peers (ultimately God's love, which I almost did ignore), refused to go to church (which I did not want to attend on many occasions but did anyway in obedience to my father), and I could have therefore chosen to instead fill my heart with hatred and rebellion against both my dad and my heavenly Father. Thanks be to God that I made the right choice! I still have no idea why I went through all the depression and heartache I suffered through, but perhaps I will find the reason by the end of this entry, if not at a later time. Since that very moment I got saved, I have been on a wild journey with God, and He has gotten me further than I ever thought possible — achievements and blessings I never foresaw. Where therapy and Prozac medication has failed, Jesus Christ prevailed. Therapy was completely ineffective (I don't discount therapy after my experience; it just didn't work for me, for it does not work for every patient, which is actually rare). I wanted help in therapy; it was just ineffective. And the medication I had to consume just made me worse, which only happens to 2% of people who take the medication. The receiving of the Holy Spirit is such a powerful and ineffable feeling — what I like to call "that sweet emotion." It will be the understatement of a lifetime that I should say: God is truly amazing.
People will ask me, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Usually, I would rightly respond with, "No one is good," paraphrasing from Luke 18:19. Besides, who are we to decide who's "good" and who's "bad?" You can't really decide that unless you know every single aspect of the person — the heart is different than their outward appearance, which is what God examines (I Samuel 16:7). We always bring God down to our level of thinking, but He is at a completely different vantage point than we are (Isaiah 55:8-9), which for us is unattainable and unfathomable. I think we would be more right to ask why bad things happen to people in general, which we do but not because of the realisation that not one is good. To only care about the well-being of "good" people and ignoring that of "bad" people is inconsiderate. Each of our opinions of "good" versus "bad" varies from person to person. Anyway, let's be more analytical about Jesus' saying, "Not one is good." Romans 8:28, We all know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. But do YOU know that? God can easily transform our bad things into something good, but we have to believe and trust that He can. How do you think people become motivational speakers after a tragic incident? I am confident that God gives them their strength, even if they don't admit it. Second Corinthians 1:4, He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves received from God. God will comfort us in our troubles, which gives us the ability and willingness and humbleness to sympathise with and comfort others who've experienced the same thing, or lesser things or even greater things. However, it doesn't matter how less or great a tragedy is; in God's eyes the suffering of His child is the same.
In a perfect world, good things will happen to all people all the time, but we don't live in a perfect world; everyone will inevitably face bad and terrible tribulations from time to time, even excessively because of the sin in the world as a result of the Fall of Man. We need to face and recognise this reality as opposed to dwelling in a wishful thinking world that good things need to happen to everybody on this planet all the time, especially "good" people. For claiming to be in the "Age of Reason," we sure do illustrate an over abundance of fallacies. For the longest time I blamed God for everything that had happened to me, and I blamed Him for my depression. I blamed Him for twelve years! That's an awfully long time to blame our almighty God for something that He wasn't even responsible for, yet He still forgave me and protected me. This is when I realised that for atheists claiming to not believe in God, they sure do blame Him for a lot of things and put many accusations upon Him. Everybody needs a scapegoat, and for some dastardly strange reason we like to use our invisible, powerful, perfect, wise Creator as the scapegoat for all the faults in the world when it was Satan and man who brought it upon mankind. That's just one of Satan's fanciful tricks that we often fail or even refuse to recognise.
Two years after accepting Christ, at age nineteen, upon graduating high school I enlisted into the United States Army Bands as a professional saxophone specialist. I auditioned and passed in May of 2009 and signed my contract on June 16th; left for basic training on February 11, 2010 and graduated early on April 23rd. On that same day I left for AIT (Advanced Individual Training) to the Armed Forces School of Music located on the Littlecreek Joint Expeditionary Navy Base in Virginia Beach, Virginia and graduated AIT on June 4th. I deployed to the 2nd Infantry Division Band at Camp Red Cloud in Uijeongbu, South Korea of the Gyeonggi-do province on July 13th; and served my next and final duty station at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma on August 2, 2011 (and what a dump it was). And now here I am today, honourably discharged from the army (I got home January 5, 2013) and am now attending Concordia University in Ann Arbor, Michigan doing my pre-seminary studies with a minor in theological languages while pursuing a secondary degree in theology. All of this happened in a span of just four years, and already I've accomplished so much. I'm 23-years-old now, and I already had a full-fledged career and about to pursue another. I hope you see what I see here: that from the beginning of my life until now, God has been with me in seemingly impossible ways (and a lot more left unmentioned that may later be unveiled in this blog), and it is absolutely breathtaking. It leaves me in awe every time I ruminate upon it.
I began this entry with seeing reasons as to why I must believe in and love God when I observe my surroundings. Everything mentioned above is that first reason why. I examine my life from the beginning to where I'm at now and I cannot deny that there is a God who is with me. Not everyone can examine their life and draw the same conclusions I have; that isn't the point of this blog entry. This is simply my own personal beliefs due to my very specific life experiences. If God hasn't been there for you, little faith may be the reason and if this is you, you need to earnestly pray and accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour and recommit your life to God, which is achievable through baptism and/or self-discipline. I'm not saying this is definite, but it is very probable. The other possibility is that He actually is there; you're just failing to recognise Him.
Keeping all that in mind, my second reason is my family, more specifically my immediate family. When I look at them or even think of them — my mother, my father, my stepmother Deanna, my older brother Daniel, and my younger sister Julia — I cannot help but be filled with so much love and joy for them, even though my brother and sister are having a crisis of faith at the moment. I still love them very much and would sacrifice my life for them if I had to. Both my parents have sacrificed a lot for this family, including their own happiness. (The specifics of their sacrifices shall not be unveiled due to family privacy and respect.) When I remember what my parents have done for my siblings and me (even what they did before I was born), I cannot help but feel immensely blessed to have such loving, caring, and sacrificial parents. And seeing the sincere efforts my stepmother puts into being there for us and loving us, treating us as if we were her own but not trying to take the place of our mother (for she is still around and active in our lives) while taking the time to understand and know each of us, I feel immensely blessed to have her. I'm not sure if she knows this, but at some point in my life I will let it be known to her when I'm comfortable enough to do so. I'm not the type of person who readily expresses their deep emotions like that. If I am to have my own children, I don't know if I can be half as good a father as my own father has been. Because of how fortunate and blessed I am to have the family I have, I cannot deny that there is a God. As I'm sure you can already tell, I do not hold the divorce against my parents either. Most would hold it against their own, but my parents are truly happy now, which makes me happy. It is simply for the better. I was devastated, of course, when I first received the news, but it didn't take me long to realise that they were becoming happier than they've ever been. This pretty much hit me when my father almost broke down in tears (which is extremely rare of him) because he thought I hated him, which was completely untrue, so I got over it; and due to the portrayal of my actions at the time I can't blame him for thinking that. Because of the divorce I have grown closer to my father and continue to grow closer to him. And because of the divorce I can sympathise with and comfort others whose parents get divorced, especially since the divorce rate in America continues to increase exponentially (remember II Corinthians 1:4).
My third and probably last reason why I cannot deny that there is a God is the nature of this beautiful planet that we live on. That may sound odd, but that's fitting because I'm an odd person. When I go out and do photography (a great and expensive hobby of mine), I observe the wild animals, the trees, the flowers, the sky, the mountains, the hills, the waters, the stars, and the rest of the mysterious space. I see all of this and I just cannot accept that everything — known and unknown — were created by sheer, dumb luck. Scientists call life a "lucky" coincidence. Luck is the most quintessential human delusion. I ignorantly don't believe in luck for the very same reason people ignorantly don't believe in God: I can't see it. "Luck" is gambling and black jack, which is all just mathematical probability and exactly why mathematical geniuses can cheat and learn to count cards. Anybody with sense will know this if they've seen the production film, "Rain Man." Slot machines, as an example of gambling, also function mathematically, for a skilled mathematician can calculate the likelihood of the machine selecting certain symbol combinations. And "luck" is also something very fortunate happening at a very abrupt moment in our lives without any warning (or "bad luck" for the reverse effect), which is also mathematical probability when considering the time of all the little things you did (and/or opposing parties did) to get to that "lucky" or "unlucky" moment. This is not luck or bad luck; it is purely mathematical whether it was affected by divine intervention or not. People utilise "luck" to replace the absence of God in their lives.
I just refuse to believe that everything I see and the rest of the universe that we can only speculate upon were caused by some cosmic coincidence, but rather that there is an infinitely intelligent and loving Creator who desires to know each and every one of us intimately. To me, if God didn't exist and everything in existence were created by sheer, dumb luck, then what's the purpose in living? I have heard this rationalisation by unbelievers and agnostics alike: "Well, life is what you make of it — doing what makes you happy, cherishing those you love, and being a good person to the best of your ability" (in a nutshell, that's what they all similarly say). Okay, sure, that's justifiable to an extent, but once you die all of that will be forgotten throughout history and will no longer matter — you will no longer matter. You can only be remembered in peoples' memories for so long before your memory just fades into the obscurity of history. Nowadays, only if you're famous or a celebrity will your memory last longer, but even they will be forgotten. I can tell you right now that the human race will not live forever, whether it's because of Christ rapturing His Church and those left behind still not choosing God after the end and being dragged to Hell, or if the earth just decides that she can't support life anymore. This may sound depressing but that's because it is! Life without our loving God is just far too depressing to even imagine. Because of how depressing that is I just cannot accept that there is no loving Creator who deeply desires to adopt us all as His children. Humans becoming a fading memory just seems an impossible and purposeless fate; our fate is to become God's children through Christ and to dwell with Him in His kingdom for all eternity. With God, you always matter for all of your earthly life and all of eternity after this life. Life as a believer is not an easy one, but did God ever tell us it would be easy? No! He never said that. Anyone who expects the Christian life to be an easy, soothe sailing life has believed a lie, and should they choose to believe in and love Christ and come into the faith with these false and unrealistic expectations, they will live a miserable Christian life when we are called to joy, praise, faith, and hope. God, Jesus Christ, and the apostles have taught time and time again that we must expect tribulations, and plenty of them. Necessary tribulations, too. If we think times today are hard, just wait till after the Christians today (and those already dead) disappear to Heaven, and those left behind (including the new believers after the Rapture of Christ's Church) will have to face tribulations that will be a hundred times more sufferable, and that is no hyperbole. They'll realise that they will desperately need us to teach them and guide them after already having us, but we'll be gone. I'm not trying to scare anybody; I'm just giving an urgent warning about something stringently realistic. If your'e scared, you probably should be. Use that fear to desire Christ and live for Him in servitude and that fear will quickly, if not instantly, turn into peace and comfort. However, fear God reverently, not penitently. Living a life in commitment to Christ is not supposed to be a comfortable lifestyle; it's supposed to be challenging and difficult.
I want to conclude this entry with Hosea 4:1-3. It delineates perfectly how we are today: Hear the word of the LORD, people of Israel, for the LORD has a case against the inhabitants of the land: There is no truth, no faithful love, and no knowledge of God in the land! Cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another. For this reason, the land mourns, and everyone who lives in it languishes, along with the wild animals and the birds of the sky; even the fish of the sea disappear. Sounds a lot like us, doesn't it? This is not a prophecy of modern times; it was one of God's case against Israel. This is an ancient time, yet in modern times we are identical to what Israel was like for a time, and we like to think we're predominant because of the technology we now possess. This hilarity amuses me. So those who complain about how the world is today, it is nothing new! The world has been like this for millennia. Human behaviour that sets itself apart from God is unchangeable and primitive.
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