When I was studying in high school, the God described in Christianity did not make any sense to me because I did not believe in miracles. I did not understand why God would allow evil in this world, and I could not comprehend why a loving God would send people to hell. I also did not want to serve God or be manipulated by Him because I wanted to live my life my way. Everyone I knew who did believe in God seemed to feel that way only because they grew up in a religious family.
In other words, their faith in God seemed like it was based on family tradition, not on truth.
Yet four years later, after I had become a Christian, I too came to believe that living my life in accordance with what God wants for me, was wiser and more important than how my parents, my peers, society, or even I myself believed I should live my life, because an all-knowing and all-powerful God knows what is better for me than any other person could possibly know. Evidently, over the course of the next four years, I had made a definite shift in what I believed about God, religion, and especially Christianity.
Today I want to share with you the events that changed my heart from being someone who questioned the existence of God, to someone who now seeks His will for my life. In addition, I want to discuss some of the obstacles I faced in becoming a Christian due to my ethnic heritage.
My sister became a Christian when she was in college and I was still in High School. I became curious as to why she would claim to believe something that opposed the beliefs of our cultural heritage. Although my parents were raised as Hindus, they had never formally introduced my sister and me to the beliefs of that religion. But, because religion and culture are so closely linked in Indian society, we believe that the culture a person is born into determines the religious beliefs of that person as well.
Also, the close connection between religion and culture often causes Indians to believe certain things about the universe, even when they personally may not identify with a particular religion. As a result, I grew up believing many Hindu ideas even though I did not consider myself to be a Hindu. For example, I believed that if there was a God, then many paths would lead to Him or It.
In other words, I thought that all religions were true, at least partially. Also, I thought that Christianity was a religion for people in the West, while religions like Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism were for people in the East. Since I felt this way about religion, my sister’s decision to become a Christian made me curious and confused. But since my sister had independently come to believe in Christ, and I had always admired my sister’s judgment, I began to wonder if the claims that the Bible made about God were in fact true.
So, for the next two years, my sister and I had many conversations about the existence of God, but nothing she said could change my mind, until, one day she gave me two books to read: ‘Mere Christianity’ by C.S. Lewis and ‘More Than a Carpenter’ by Josh McDowell. I read both of them and discovered two interesting things about Christianity.
The first thing I noticed was that the Christian faith did not hinge only on philosophy, but on the validity of historical events that could be proven as true or false: namely Jesus Christ’s life, crucifixion, and resurrection. The second aspect I noticed about Christianity was that while most religions claimed that people must live a perfect life to be reunited with God after death, Christianity admitted that humans are not perfect and that some other route must be provided to be with God after death.
The combination of these two elements in Christianity made me realize that although religions may have some similarities, the striking differences between them demonstrated that they cannot all be true; either they are all incorrectly describing God, or only one of them is correct. Because Christianity’s basis and claims were so different from other religions I knew about, I wanted to learn more.
Early in my sophomore year in college, I used to talk a lot with a Christian friend of mine from high school. Since I knew he was Christian, I would ask him questions about what he believed and why. Because I had so many questions, he told me about an Investigative Discussion group for non-Christians who were interested in finding answers to their questions about God and Christianity.
I started going to one and got answers to questions like “How do you know God exists?” “Why is Christianity the only way to God?” and “If God loves us so much, why do people go to hell?”. After a year of asking questions and challenging the leaders of the group about what they believed, the intellectual doubts I had about Christianity were erased.
Yet, somehow this was not enough for me. The Christians I talked to told me that God was relational and actively loved us, and I would not be able to believe in Christ unless I actually experienced Him in my life. So I prayed fervently that God would reveal Himself to me. As the months passed, I began to notice little things like the differences between people who lived a life with Christ, and those who did not. Those who did, seemed confident in decisions they made, because they knew God had helped them make their decisions. I also noticed the love that they demonstrated towards others, even non-Christians, because of their love and obedience to for God.
Although I knew non-Christians were good people, they still lacked the visible peace that comes from knowing that Something more powerful was in control of their lives, for their benefit. Noticing the increasing differences between Christ-led and self-led lives over the next few months, I realised that living a life with Christ is better than living one without Him.
But even after realising this, I was afraid of how my parents and friends would react if I became a Christian. I was particularly concerned about my parents because I knew they did not approve of my sister’s faith in Christ. My father felt that Christianity was too exclusive because it ruled out alternative views of God and the universe. He did not dispute the Christian claim that Jesus was God, but he said that religious figures like Krishna and Mohammed were also manifestations of God who were sent to meet the needs of the people at a particular time in different places.
My mother on the other hand, felt that rejecting Hinduism meant that we would be rejecting our culture. She was afraid that our family in India would view her as a bad mother because her children had rejected the beliefs of Hinduism while embracing the claims of Christianity. Also, she was afraid of the increasing likelihood that we would not marry Indians because there are few Indian Christians, and very few Hindus would consider marrying a Christian.
When my parents presented these objections to me about becoming a Christian, I considered them seriously. Yet, because I had experienced Jesus’ love in my life and I knew that all religions cannot be true, I found that I could not agree with my father’s objections. As for my mother’s objections, I viewed religion and culture as two separate things, and I knew that I would continue to embrace my Indian culture even though I did not agree with my religious heritage.
I also realised that because I believed in Christ, I was willing to risk displeasing my parents and relatives in order to have an eternal relationship with God. In other words, it was not worth rejecting an eternity with God for the approval of my parents, friends, or non-believing society. It was only then that I felt I had come to a point where I was confident enough in my beliefs to be ready to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
If you are earnestly seeking God, but you do not know Jesus, I encourage you to pray that God will reveal Himself to you. In Luke 11:9-10, Jesus tells his disciples, “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”
God Was Faithful In Answering My Prayers To Know Him, And He Will Be Faithful In Answering Yours.
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