Confused to committed
Click here to read Bo's full testimony.
When I was in China, I had never imagined myself becoming religious. The Communist ideal was my ‘religion’, and I simply dismissed Christianity as a fanciful interpretation of what science had yet to explain, a self-reassuring way of seeking mental and emotional support. Life was smooth sailing both at home and school. A scholarship to study in Singapore, loving parents and friends – I thought I would never need Christ.
Then I moved to Singapore for high school. Like everyone else, I was looking for an identity. Since I had a hard time fitting in as a foreign student, I chose to be a thinker -- quiet, aloof, and looking smart. I asked myself those big questions in life and tried to answer them through philosophy readings. It was a torture I brought upon myself, just to appear sophisticated before others. Confused about the conflicting theories I read, I was trapped in the “thinker” identity. I had to find the answers, and if logic and reasoning weren’t working, then maybe, there was a higher transcendence, a God. It was around then when some of my Christian friends invited me to attend their worship services. I had to admit that there was something different about my Christian friends. And if their God could make them so unusually humble, earnest and forgiving, then I had to find out more about this God. So I finally accepted their invitation.
Then I came to Berkeley and got to know about acts2fellowship. Pastor Ed’s messages brought face to face with the consequences of my sin. I saw myself trying to put on different “faces” in front of others, and in the process lost my integrity as a person. I saw that sin really meant serving myself and as long as I was my own master, I could not serve God fully. All the while people had been telling me that I was a good student, a good friend and a good son, but deep inside, I knew I was not. I was another person, full of self-preserving pride and fear of commitment. It hurt to see my iniquities, a part of me that I could not discard.
Through Course 101 and the book Case for Faith, I was able to address many of my doubts and questions regarding Christianity. Gradually I came to a point where nothing held me back intellectually; it was up to my willingness to respond and restore this relationship with God, which I had kept breaking. It all made sense in theory: my sinful nature was keeping me from responding to God; I must lay down my cynicism and defense mechanism, expose my wretched self, and trust in Him for forgiveness. But I just could not overcome the doubt in myself. My heart was unstable as water. Then I watched the Passion movie. I could see myself standing in the crowd, who watched Jesus being tortured and crucified; they were not unmoved, yet they were so afraid of going against the social pressure to acknowledge Christ and commit to him. I could live my life like them, hiding in the crowd, going with the flow, liking his healing miracles but not wanting him to govern over my life, and always taking the easy way out so that I didn’t have to confront anything. I was filled with shame for my brokenness, but at the same time I was overwhelmed by the love of Christ, who at his last breath prayed for the exact man that pinned him on the cross.
It was another invitation to a relationship with God. There is no relationship that comes at a greater price than this, for Jesus willingly died for me on the cross. And there is no relationship more personal than this, for He knows my every sin, better than I know myself. After all my failures, He still calls me His son and beckons me home. If I didn’t accept the invitation, I would go on living a life unable to commit to anyone but myself. That’s not the way I wanted to live my life; that’s not a way God wanted me to live. I had to accept Him, and I did, on the Easter Sunday of 2004.