My Younger Years

I was in third grade when my parents bought me my first encyclopedia set. It came with a free copy of Bible stories for kids. It was a thick yellow book with a golden edge gilding.

It had pages of vibrant illustrations that I was fond of looking at. But that was it. There wasn’t anything in the book that sparked my curiosity.

I was disappointed that the Bible stories for kids didn’t explain why stars twinkle in the sky.

But the encyclopedia did.

I told my little sister, while we were stargazing, that stars don’t twinkle. They only appear to because the earth’s atmosphere bends and distorts their light. She was so bemused. As if I held her hand and led her to a fairyland.

My Roman Catholic upbringing taught me that Jesus is God the Son. He was born on Christmas Day, crucified on the cross on Good Friday, and rose from the dead on Easter Sunday.

I heard the same religious stories over and over again at mass and in religion class. They were tiresome, bland, and uninteresting to my curious mind.

But one day, when I was in fifth grade, I prayed to Jesus using my own words. I didn’t recite the prayers my grandmother had taught me.

I was taught to memorize prayers, but I was curious if I would feel that God was indeed real if I speak my heart and mind.

My grandmother had a poster of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in her room where I also slept. I sat in front of the poster.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to say. I thought it was polite to start saying thank you for this…thank you for that.

After saying thank yous, I thought it was time to say I’m sorrys. I confessed to Him all the things my conscience told me that were probably wrong.

Then, there was this heavy feeling that settled within me. I paused, trying to figure out what was this uneasiness about.

I felt this wave of shame washing over me.

I sighed and cried, “You are holy, and I am a sinner.” I couldn’t do the right things I was supposed to do. (My mom couldn’t believe that I, her seemingly harmless young girl, had caused so much trouble when I bullied our house helper.)

I reasoned to myself, “I don’t think I can ever be holy. I will always do wrong things in your eyes. Jesus, you can’t expect me to be holy.”

That’s how I ended my prayer. I thought I solved the problem. I felt better as if I was freer.

Why should I bother living a holy life when it seemed unattainable?

I realized that if I behaved well, the adults in my life wouldn’t care if I were holy before God. Anyway, they taught me that praying is mostly about asking for blessings.

Holiness is not a priority…blessings are.

I assumed this is religion—just better go through the motions of outward devotion. I wasn’t the type who could please God by doing the right things. But I sort of thought He could give me some perks for not being His hater.

But as I got older, I realized this religion didn’t work for me. 

In my junior year in high school, I lost the spot on the honor roll. In my senior year, I strived even harder to regain it.

I was so scared there was nothing for my parents to be proud of me. And I would lack a title to define myself.

I pleaded. I begged.

But I was unheard, unanswered.  It seemed one had to be God’s favorite for requests to be granted. Clearly, I was not. That one simple appeal that good favor may be on my side He didn’t grant.

It even crossed my mind that the devil might have done me more good.

An Irreverent Faith

Aside from Grace, Leo was the other person who shared things about God with me.

But he never sat down for a conversation with me. He rarely dropped by the student publication office. But when he did, he would waste no time and lend me materials about God.

The first one was a video copy of a pastor’s sermon. The second one was a book titled “The Heavenly Man.”

“It’s a good read,” he told me.

I read the subtitle “The Remarkable Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun.”

One night, I started reading the first few chapters. The events in Brother Yun’s life were, honestly, too much for me to take in. His autobiography painted a harsher reality of life.

Brother Yun shared his faith, and the Chinese government saw it as a serious crime. He was arrested and imprisoned.

Police officers tortured him by beating and electrocuting him. He was degraded and dehumanized. Still, he shared his faith with his cell mates, even though they treated him mercilessly.

Brother Yun and I both believe there is someone up there in the heavens named Jesus.  But I wasn’t so sure if I would risk my life for believing that.

His commitment and passion to Jesus was so radical to me, almost irreverent.

But his life looked so attractive. It didn’t look rational, but it appealed to me as something far more ideal—living a life for something bigger than the self.

His identity didn’t seem to rest on his intellectual ability or physical appearance. It seemed to be anchored in Jesus. That was quite intriguing to me.

My acne had prevented me from living my life. My acne pushed me towards self-imposed isolation and avoidance. Yet, his torture wounds made him fearless and more open about his faith.

My pain wouldn’t even compare to his, but Brother Yun was not scared to live.

His life challenged my belief, forcing me to reconsider my simplistic view of what it means to be favored by God.

Could the reason he endured such horrendous torture was that he looked at his suffering and considered it nothing compared to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross?

Could the reason he didn’t give up on his faith despite the government’s pressure was that he believed the Bible to be true?

I grew up skeptical of Bible’s reliability. 

How can it remain relevant and serve as a basis of truth for a human civilization that has gone through changes and reckoning?

Must I not consider the Bible only as a collection of ancient wisdom and tales?

If the Bible claimed to contain the truth, how could it be free of errors when it was written thousands of years ago?

Even though I questioned the Bible, I had always believed God exists. But I was unsure what kind of God He was…and if He even liked me.

If the Bible could tell me who God is, could I trust it like I trust a science book?

I set aside my skepticism. Driven by a newfound curiosity, I headed to a bookstore and purchased a Bible.

A Big Disappointment

I would doze off to sleep despite trying to stay awake while reading the Bible. Even worse, Genesis and Exodus narratives sounded so weird, so absurd.

The chapters after Exodus 20 were a literal pain to read. I struggled to make sense of the hundreds of laws that God passed down to Moses. They gave off these archaic, judgy vibes.

I still persisted and kept on reading.  But I decided to quit when I reached the chapters of detailed descriptions of the tabernacle, the veil, the bronze altar, etc. I was just too nauseated reading it.

Maybe, I should have begun with the New Testament because it records Jesus’ teachings. But then, I thought perhaps the best way was to start with Genesis.

Clueless, I decided to read randomly from the Bible. I flipped the pages. If something interested me, I read it, whether from the Old or the New Testament.

Though part of my pre-service teaching as a future English teacher was studying literature, I couldn’t appreciate the Bible.

As if there was something in me that prevented me from understanding it. If only I knew someone who could teach me, but I didn’t know of anyone. 

I sort of expected it would be a life-changing experience. At least, I was spared from being crazy (as some warned me that reading the Bible could turn me into one).

I was still interested, but I didn’t have a clue how to know what I wanted to know. And it didn’t feel as intense and urgent as it did before.

And I eventually lost interest when I managed to clear my skin in my third year of college. I was so excited to be part of the social scene again.

My Bible became a closed book.

Finding God in My Acne Struggle

In 2011, after enjoying nearly a year of having clear skin, my whole face turned red. It turned out that the products I used to manage my acne were to blame¹.

I didn’t attend classes for 2 weeks for fear of ridicule. I didn’t want to hear anyone tell me, “It’s because you’re using too many products on your skin that’s why it happened to you.”

My own family already made this off-hand comment to me. So, I never needed anyone to rub salt in my wound.

Although the redness subsided, my skin just became even more challenging to take care of—it was dry and flaky, but at the same time still oily and acne-prone.

However, this entire thing led me to Jesus once again.

When I was struggling to concentrate on writing a college paper because of my dry, itchy skin, I distracted myself from the pain by mindlessly browsing websites.

I stumbled upon y-origins.com. This one got my attention, not knowing I would enter a holy rabbit hole.

Although I had to focus on writing my paper, my curiosity got so excited that I spent days reading from the website.

The website might have framed the articles in a way that favored Christianity.

But, I couldn’t easily dismiss or laugh at the facts they presented, especially the incredible odds of the universe getting every condition right for life to exist—10¹²⁴.

In whole number form, it would be a 1 followed by 124 zeros, an astronomically large number.

It only meant one thing: The universe is not a cosmic accident, and life is not a mere result of unguided natural processes. It was virtually impossible for me to exist in the first place.

But I exist.

What is even more fascinating is the DNA as a finely tuned universe on its own. Its intricate helical architecture contains complex language: billions of detailed instructions.

Genetic codes that made me me.

While I was exploring y-origins.com, I noticed at the bottom left sidebar a familiar image with an intriguing question, “Who was the Real Jesus?”

I clicked it and was directed to y-jesus.com.

I read its articles and learned Jesus’ historicity is supported not only by gospel accounts but also by sources written by non-Christian historians like Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus.

Aside from that, the New Testament has the strongest evidence of authenticity: the abundance of manuscripts, and the short time interval between the original writing and the earliest surviving copies.

Frank Morison, the pseudonym for Albert Henry Ross, was a journalist who wanted to write a book disproving the resurrection.

But his examination of documents and sources led him to write otherwise: The resurrection of Jesus is a historical event.

The disciples did not steal His body.

Jesus was not half-dead.

And the five hundred people who saw the risen Jesus couldn’t be hallucinating at the same time.

Now, if Jesus is historical and the Bible is not fictional, then the resurrected Christ is not a tall tale.

After all these years that my religious creed sometimes felt just a make-believe, I was just so happy to discover there are scientific evidence and rational reasons to believe in God.

It is logical for me to  believe in Jesus and live for Him.

My life may not look as sacrificial as Brother Yun’s.

But I wanted to live my life differently.

I wanted a life where my acne wouldn’t hold such sway over my emotions, choices, and actions. A life where my identity is not based on what I can do and how I look. A life where the meaning of my existence is found in God and not in my appearance and accomplishments.

It just felt so right, so compelling.

I was so happy God made a way to put me back on my track in my acne and faith journey.

[1] The products that inflamed my skin were products from a multi-level marketing (MLM). The uplines instructed me to wash my face with their soap but not rinse it, just let it stay overnight. They also told me to mix their toothpaste with water and use it as my moisturizer. I did exactly everything they said, so I thought their products and advice must be working. However, I realized now that I’m older and wiser that it’s not their products that cleared my acne. My hormones might have been stable that time, because when I was 21, I had a year of clear skin without even changing my skincare routine. But the saddest thing was not that I had inflamed skin, it’s when I turned to the uplines asking for help and they dismissed me with these words: “It’s just a healing process. You must be very vain to let this bother you!” After a few years of leaving that MLM company, they visited and encouraged me to return because I have acne, and their products would help me. Oh, the irony!