How I Became Christian

I have always believed in God. 

I have always believed in God, and yet I couldn’t sincerely say I have always known that God, been a Christian, or even understood what Christianity is. 

My earliest memories of Christianity were on the playground with my friend DJ. He told me that his mother (a Pentecostal) had told him that Christ was coming back in our lifetime– that we ought to prepare ourselves by repenting. What that meant exactly I was not sure. I was only sure that I was terrified. He told me about a coming rapture– that the true followers would disappear into the clouds and leave the sinners to wander around asking what had happened, empty piles of clothing marking where the ascended once stood. Sensitive young child I was, I went home crying to my mother asking if it were true. I naively trusted that all adults knew everything about theology. 

My mother, a Baptist upset by her child’s tears, one day during drop off, asked if DJ’s mother could please tell her son not to proselytize such unnerving things to me during recess. To DJ’s mother, hysteric fundamentalist she was, this confirmed what she and so many other christians were taught to look out for– that is, requests from the world to compromise their Gospel. She huffed at my mother as if at a demon. DJ and I drifted apart. 

My mother had no conception of the differences between Baptists and Pentecostals, save for their dress code. There lay no further understanding of the theological differences that had led to their disagreement. My mother was Baptist for likely the same reason that DJ’s mother was Pentecostal; their families before them had been; that was simply the denomination they were raised in. Likewise, I was only Christian in the way that my fellow Baptist friends were. All my friends were “Christian” (which meant fundamentalist or agnostic but never really sorting out which was which). 

We went to church on occasion, prayed occasionally, remembering only fragments of stories from vacation Bible school. A long long time ago Jesus had died on a cross and rose again and that had something to do with me somehow. What was sin? I lost my virginity in high school and don’t remember anyone telling me it should be any different. It was expected that everyone would be having sex. Anyone who talked about abstinence was seen as out-of-touch. I cite this only to say how totally unaware we were of any sort of prohibition against premarital sex. It wasn’t even a thought. 

Eventually at church camp I got “saved.” The camp counselor asked if I had felt any different. “Sure,” I said. I came home and got baptized in the Baptist church I had always gone to. We got a new, less popular preacher. Attendance became less frequent, until we sort of stopped going altogether. 

The God of my childhood was a glorified imaginary friend. 

But my religion suited me. I was popular at school. I was confident in my moral standing before God. If anyone did try to place any restriction on my behavior they were definitely taking it way too seriously. I remember thinking I was God’s favorite because I was one of those “cool” Christians that didn’t judge anyone for believing things totally contrary to me. As far as I was concerned, the Bible nerds of my high school were giving God a bad name by their lack of cultural capital. 

I went to college, got a long-term girlfriend, and got bored with everything. Seeking some novelty and a journey, I started down the path of psychedelics and philosophy, convincing myself that the psychedelic path was where true spirituality lay. 

During my third trip on psilocybin, I had a complete ego death– my friend had recommended I supplement THC to cure some nausea caused by the mushrooms– and was fully convinced I had died and gone to hell. I lost consciousness, forgetting I ever existed. At the same time, I was plunged into an eternal torment of my own making– every evil deed I’d ever willed was now returned to me tenfold. All the pain and shame I’d ever inflicted on another was reflected back on me. This went on for what felt like days. 

A few hours later I awoke in tears and sweat, my personality forever altered. I wouldn’t realize it for many years, but my loss of ego had plunged me into an experience of reality totally unmitigated by the protective filter of my ego. 

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” 

– Isaiah 6:5

Wholly convinced of my own inadequacy in the face of God, yet still unaware of what I could do about it, I began to seek understanding with a greater fervor than ever before. I knew hell existed, but heaven was still uncertain to me. From the glimpse I received of what waited for me beyond consciousness, I was sure that if nothing changed I would spend eternity in a place similar to where I had just come. 

I continued doing psychedelics, reading philosophy, and even digging into some christian literature. I considered myself a Christian; but again, in a different way. I understood now that the religion which had appeared out of touch to me was genuinely pointing at or trying to illustrate something that was far too terrifying for us to fully comprehend, and I wanted to understand it however it could be understood.  

At the same time that my reverence for Christianity grew, my spiritual pride also became far more pronounced. I believed that on account of this direct experience with what I thought to be the metaphysical realm, I was far closer to the truth than anyone who had not had such experiences. Even though all christian sources near to me (almost exclusively protestant) told me psychedelics were dangerous and bad, I took this about as seriously as being told by a virgin that sex was dangerous. That is, I was offended that someone without first hand experience of something would claim to know more than me about it. 

I became much more political in my thinking. I read Nietzsche, while still believing myself to be Christian. His critiques of Christianity were things I overlooked, admitting that the rest of his writing seemed wise. Becoming “great” was my only focus. I hardly prayed. My days were completely occupied with the pursuit of pleasure in some form or another– self-exaltation, wealth accumulation, vitality, intellectual stimulation, parties, vanity upon vanity. 

My desire yanked me around like a dog.  

Until finally, around graduation, everything came crashing down around me. My health, my status, my wealth, my relationships, all fell apart in a matter of about two months. I had nowhere else to turn. I went and lived with my parents again. I was a nervous wreck, anxious, depressed, purposeless. 

A Bible appeared. I  had always considered myself a Christian, and yet for some reason I’d never taken the idea of reading this whole book seriously. It was too big, too archaic. No one around me seemed to consider it something you actually did. And yet something called me to take it on as a challenge. If  I were going to call myself a Christian (which I always had) I was obligated to read this thing, or at minimum honestly attempt to. 

When I found Christ in the scriptures, I was stricken at how foreign I had always been to him. How could I have ever called myself Christian? How could any of my friends? And yet we always had. It appeared to me that the standards for what counted as Christian today were so low today as to be laughable. That there existed an entire world to this religion, beyond my shallow appreciation for it. I hadn’t realized it before, but my entire society had been living on capital generated by Christianity, and it had all been taken for granted. Christianity was alive as it had ever been, but in a way far different than I had imagined. Finally, and most shockingly, I began to truly see that living the faith was totally different from inheriting it.