Post 1: From Birth, Before Christ
Image: AI generated image of a man walking a dark, eerie forest with an evil spirit hovering over him.
Post Summary: In this first post, I discuss a bit about my life prior to receiving salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ; a life lived in darkness and deception, of growing up with the overriding desire to go my own way.
I must start off this initial blog post by first giving praise and honor to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (Romans 10:9-10)! Without Christ's voluntary (Matthew 20:28; Philippians 2:8) and substitutionary (1 Peter 2:24; Isaiah 53: 5-6) sacrifice on the Cross to pay humanity's sin debt to our heavenly Father and creator, I would not be saved nor reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:18-21). There is no other name by which man can be saved (Acts 4:12) and I thank God daily for the salvation and eternal life (John 3:16) that He offers through His only begotten Son Jesus Christ! Amen!
Now, a bit about my life before Christ. I was born into a lower-middle class family, the youngest of 3 boys. I grew up in the fairly traditional conservative south, in the city of Columbia, South Carolina. From what I recall from my earlier years, we were a close-knit family that focused on building love and respect and supportive unity among each other.
My dad was involved in several small business ventures through the years, from yard work to pool cleaning to furniture rentals/sales, which often took him out of town and/or staying away overnight. He was also in the Army Reserve for a number of years, which took him away for service one weekend a month. He was a bit of a work-o-holic, and often sacrificed family time with us to focus on work. In my early years growing up, my dad was around a fair amount of the time, but as I got older, he came around a lot less.
My mom also worked for several different companies over the years, including the SC State newspaper, SC Highway Dept., SC Dept. of Mental Health and most recently Blue Cross Blue Shield of SC, retiring in 2019 after 35 1/2 years of service. My mom worked hard to support our family, becoming a single parent when she separated from my dad mid 1997-ish (I was around 12 years old). She was our example of hard work and sacrifice for our family while prioritizing raising 3 kids.
Growing up, I considered myself to be a semi-likable nerd. I did have a few close friends and was not completely rejected by the cool kids. I was also aware that I was not very popular, nor did I really care about or chase popularity in school. I had a small circle of friends and a few acquaintances, often finding connection with others who enjoyed video games, music, and pop culture stuff. I did not have much affinity or interest for sports or physical activity in school so I could not relate too much to the physically active kids in school.
I grew up in a southern baptist church, hearing sermons about God and christian living. My mom was saved at around 17 years old, so she made it a point to have us in church regularly and also prioritized reading the bible at home together in the earlier years. I've definitely had a few struggles/hardships which has only built my character over the years. Such incidents include getting caught skipping school, stealing candy from a grocery store, and being detained briefly by the police because a neighbor in a new neighborhood called the cops on us as we were doing a walk through of our new house. At one point, my mom, my middle brother, and I (my oldest brother was away in the military during this time) were “homeless” for a few months because of an unforeseen financial situation, living in a motel in the area until we could find alternate housing.
Despite those and other hardships, we grew up with all our needs met and sometimes even had money to afford non-necessity things we may have wanted. Sometimes though, mom would say “no, I cant afford to buy you that right now” or “when you start working, maybe you can buy that extra thing”. I grew up understanding the value of working for things and was taught that we won't always get what we want but we ought to be grateful for what we do have.
In early middle school, I experienced some bullying because I was initially a bit smaller than some folks in my class, and I wore fairly thick glasses which did not help the bullying situation. I was somewhat rebellious in school sometimes, often finding myself in detention more often than I should have. At age 15, I experienced pornography and alcohol for the first time, though neither of those things would take foothold in my life at that point. Around age 16, the interest in porn resurfaced and along with that came a new interest in masturbation. Throughout Highschool and early college years, I had a few relationships with women and/or attempts at dating women of different shapes and sizes, but despite my best efforts, could not hold on to a meaningful relationship. This realization eventually led me into finding some consolation in drinking, pornography and an increase in masturbation.
It's important to note that throughout these middle school, high school, and early college years up until around Summer 2009, I was still attending and actively participating in sunday church services, mid-week bible studies and other religious activities. I was regularly around messages of salvation, and even recall at least 2 times that I “responded” to the pastors calls to “accept” Christ as my personal savior. Although I had “accepted” Christ in those times, there was no conviction of my sinfulness and no change of mind towards sin and I continued living in the lusts of the sinful flesh.
Upon leaving home to pursue additional college study at the Art Institute of Seattle in Summer 2009, I would come to realize just how much fun dormitory life could be. I found no shortage of like-minded people who just wanted to party and have fun. In this newfound freedom, I experimented with psychedelic mushrooms, which was a very mind-bending experience. I also had regular access to weed and liquor via a close neighbor in the dorms. Over the next several years, pornography, weed, liquor use and masturbation would steadily grow. Thankfully though, there never arose any desire to do any harder drugs (i.e. Crack, cocaine, heroin, etc) as the image of family members who lives were destroyed by those substances would pop into my recollection whenever I would ever even think about seeking those items. During this time, I would also have a few more failed relationships, the longest of which was about one year. I also spent the majority of my time working multiple jobs, at one point working 3 jobs over a 2 year period.
With the onset of Covid Pandemic in 2020 came rising stress and anxiety, increased loneliness and isolation due to social distancing, and the adoption of widespread remote work for those whose jobs could support it. During this time, weed, liquor, and porn use would become my primary coping mechanisms for dealing with the stress of those uncertain and unprecedented times, reaching near-addiction levels between 2020-mid 2023. It got to a point where almost every day I was very high and drinking more than “recommended”, and would spend way too much time watching porn and masturbating, further sinking deeper into sinfulness and a reprobate mind consumed with fleshly lusts (Romans 1:28).
In late October 2023, I suddenly got this compulsion to give up weed and liquor out of no where. To that end, made a plan to quit by the start of 2024. I had resigned in myself that I would use up the rest of my stash before quitting because I didn't want to waste the several hundred dollars that I had just spent a few days prior to beef up the stash. However, after the thought of quitting weed and liquor settled into my head over the next couple of days, there suddenly came this burning desire to quit sooner than January 2024. In late Nov 2023, I was almost compelled from within to immediately quit both weed and liquor, and so complied. Surprisingly (and by God’s grace), I did not experience any sort of withdrawal symptoms. Upon researching this phenomena, I came to learn was very unusual given my almost 15 years of regular usage of of liquor and weed. While quitting the liquor and weed seemed almost immediate, the porn continued a bit longer but at drastically reduced frequency and pleasure. It was like the previous thrill of all of my vices was fading.
In late December 2023, I came across a couple of documentary videos on YouTube that discussed a number of related topics, including how pornography is actually produced, the affects of porn on the brain and the victimization created by the porn industry. These documentaries indicated that the majority of porn comes from sex trafficking victims being exploited for the perverted pleasure of those recording and consuming the content. In addition, these documentaries called out the industry for its dangerous and destructive traps and practices including luring underage youth into participation. After watching these documentaries, I became so disgusted with myself because I had been enjoying watching porn and realized in that moment that I was supporting sex trafficking and the other negative impacts associated consuming the porn content. This revelation made me want to quit even more! By the start of 2024, my interest in porn completely died and I could no longer see the porn as enjoyable given what I had just recently learned about it.
In retrospect, I had been a fake “Christian” all these years, claiming Christianity because of my background in the church but spiritually dead in my sins (Colossians 2:13-14) and therefore being a hypocrite like the Pharisees and religious leaders mentioned in Luke 12:1. Up to this point, I had never truly been convicted by the Holy Spirit of my sinfulness (John 16: 8-11) and thus was never led by the Spirit to repent of my sinful nature, so therefore I could not possibly have been truly living for Christ. Up until age 38, I was definitely categorized as a “luke-warm” Christian, which God says He will spew those folks out of His mouth (Revelation 3:16).
As 2023 came to a close, my life was beginning to turn around for reasons unknown to me at the time. In the next post, I'll discuss how God's Conviction came over me in February 2024 , leading me out of darkness into the marvelous light of the gospel of Jesus Christ!
All Glory to Christ my Savior and Lord!