Chapter 1|Mark 8

“I still wonder to this day why this passage. This is the one passage that should have made me run far away; but no, it opened my eyes to the reality of Jesus: He is for real! Jesus is God!“

I grew up in church the same way one grows up being part of the Scouts Association. As such, I jumped through all the hoops required to be a member of my chosen society. Say the Scout’s motto with the right hand in salute, recite the profession of faith with head reverently bowed. As one works to get the First Aid badge, I went through all the Sunday School classes to get baptised. My friends, family and classmates were all in the same place, all united by one common unknown cause.

I was about 10 years old when I realised that I didn’t believe in heaven or hell. All that is only real when I’m in church or among ‘believers’; but outside, in my real life, that’s all obviously fairy tales. When we die, it’s a never ending darkness or an eternal unconscious sleep. Nevertheless, I played along with the game of Christianity.

I cannot place a definite age on this but it was a process of coming of age, intellectual reasoning and drifting between belief and unbelief through my teenage years –  cumulating at the age of 17 –  that ended up in the realisation that I didn’t believe in Jesus Christ. I have always believed in a God, the Creator. God is and that is a certain fact. However, I wasn’t sure this Jesus character even existed; and if he did, his claim that he is the Son of God and that God is a trinity means that Christianity is no better than Greek mythology where gods frolicked with humans and produced offspring or Hindu superstitions where Trimūrti (trinity) is made up of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. I came to the conclusion that since God exists I have to serve the Creator somehow and all I know is Jesus, so I will just keep playing along with that.

My reluctance to let go of church stemmed from an identity crisis. All my life, wherever I went, I had always been ‘the Christian one’. If I let go of the faith that I now deem to be false and a waste of time, what am I? What is my place, my title in the world?

In my first term at University College London, I joined the Christian Union (CU) to make friends. I have always found interacting with people to be a painfully difficult process mostly because I have no idea what would interest people in a conversation; but being with Christians makes things easier because we could just talk about Christian things. As an indifferent CU member, I managed to force myself to go for meetings because I wouldn’t interact with anyone in a whole week if I did not attend. Conversation was guaranteed at least twice a week with CU and another on-campus fellowship I joined.

I added an additional Christian meeting to that routine when someone I met at a CU meeting invited me to her church Bible study on Wednesdays. I almost didn’t go at all. I felt I had enough Christian interaction and needed to focus on my studies because someone back home had said to me, “If you want to get a First Class it starts from Day 1”.  I went anyway to St Helen’s Bishopsgate because I didn’t want to disappoint my new friend. After the first night, I decided that it was a nice enough group. I would go periodically so that my academics wouldn’t be interrupted.

I also went along to Hillsong London for Sunday service once in a while because it was a good dance. Churches are safe places to dance without having to deal with the drunk perverts one meets at night clubs. One Sunday, a guest preacher delivered a message on repentance. He said something like, “You’ve been going to church all this time but now you want to return to God”. I was touched and went through the emotional routine I had gone through hundreds of times before: raise hands up, cry and all the works. Then that was that. Nothing. I didn’t know where to go on from there. Besides, I still had major doubts about Jesus and the existence and nature of the spiritual realm. So I went on with life as usual.

Not long after that, on a Wednesday in late November/early December 2012, I finally became a Christian. Sitting round a table with my Bible study group, I gave my life to Christ, and no one knew a thing – if they did notice, they certainly didn’t say anything. That year, our group had been reading through the book of Mark. On the day I gave my life to Christ, we were studying Chapter 8:

“³⁴ Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. ³⁶ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:34-36 NIVUK)

Over the years, I had read this many times but that night it felt like someone had just given my eyes an impromptu laser surgery and finally made them see clearly for the first time. As I waited on Wormwood Street in the damp coldness of the winter night, I couldn’t get it out of my head. As I rode on Bus 205 to Euston Square, I pondered. Making my way to Maple Street, I contemplated. Buzzing myself into Ramsay Hall and going up the stairs to the first floor, I deliberated it all. As I lay in my bed, it continued to invade my mind and thoughts.

There wasn’t a formal declaration or prayer the way you see on televangelism. I just felt as if someone had performed an operation on my eyes and given me a heart transplant, and I became new person. At last, I can see! I can feel!

I found it mindboggling that I had been in church all my life and heard all about salvation and forgiveness and how Jesus’ death saves us from hell and eternal damnation, brings us to heaven and gives us immeasurable spiritual and material blessings here on Earth; but nothing changed in me and I didn’t really believe. That night I read this one passage essentially asking me to become a slave and die, then I believed in Christ as a person and as God. I finally saw that it was all real.

I still wonder to this day why this passage. This is the one passage that should have made me run far away; but no, it opened my eyes to the reality of Jesus: He is for real! Jesus is God!  I like to think that Hillsong planted the seed of repentance in my heart while St Helen’s harvested it.

I finally knew what it meant to be a Christian: To be Christ-like, self-sacrificial in complete surrender to God. He rules over every aspect of my life and He calls the shots. If I am not living this selfless existence in the service of God and His Gospel, no matter how often I go to church meetings, or raise up my hands during praise and worship session, or if I become a pastor, I am not a Christian. By the above definition given to us by God in Mark 8, I also realised that most people who go to church are not Christians.

That night, Jesus Christ handed me a pair of trainers. I put them on and started running His race. The more I grow in my understanding of Christ, the harder I run. My feet get sore now and again but that’s what the Holy Spirit is for – to soothe and renew me. Sometimes I do get carried away and sit down but He comes and pulls me out of comfort zone, stands me back on my feet and encourages me to run.

Yet as I run, I can’t help but notice the sights around me. I can’t help but see the state of the church in relation to what I am learning from the Bible. The more and more I see, the more anguished my spirit becomes. Mind you, I am certainly not perfect either, but through His Spirit that lives in me, Christ is building me up.

I feel myself fast becoming a militant Christian. Not militant in today’s terms of terrorism but in the ‘Stand up! Stand up for Jesus ye soldier of the cross’ sense. I mean absolutely no physical, mental, emotional or spiritual harm to anyone, whether Christian or not. On the contrary, I mean to show you all love. The same love I have been undeservedly blessed with. As I observe the church, I want to shake people awake and rouse them out of the blindness that has crept in. There is an urgency in my spirit I cannot ignore, operative word here being urgency.