I've been familiar with the church since when I was in my mother's womb because my mother was a Christian. My grandmother was also a Christian. When I was a little girl, at the church my grandmother attended, a missionary who was very tall picked me up upside down and walked me on the ceiling of the church entrance. The missionary was the kind of person who made me feel that he had no other feelings than 'love' for all people.
I have never known the world without God. From the time I was a small child, I heard Bible stories in church and was made to recite words from the Bible. I never doubted such a world. However, I only went to church because my mother would take me, and I never made the decision to believe on my own. I never even thought about what kind of God the Christian God was.
In Christianity, baptism is given to those who believe. The meaning of baptism is to be cleansed of sin, to die to the old self and to live a new self, which has its origins in the Bible. The New Testament is the book of the origins of Christianity and describes events that took place two thousand years ago. It records that Christ himself was baptized by John the Baptist. The method of baptism varies from church to church, but the person undergoes a ceremony in which water is poured on the forehead or the whole body is immersed in water. In the case of the Protestant churches I belong to, many of them read 'testimonies' at the time of baptism. They tell the story of their relationship with God leading up to their faith.
When I was in primary school, my friend in church was baptized. She was a daughter of the pastor. There is one word I remember from her testimony.
'My father told me that you didn't choose Jesus, he chose you.'
I didn't understand the meaning of the words at that time, but it was from the New Testament, John 15:16: 'You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you'.
As I looked at it, I felt frustrated, because although I believed in God, I did not know how to express it in words. Christianity was as natural to me as the air. I didn't know how long I had believed in Jesus Christ or why. I didn't even know what it meant to "believe". But I was sure that I had never doubted its existence. However, I had no idea how to express it and felt I wasn't able to write my testimony for baptism, so for a long time I did not want to be baptized. After that, my mother hesitated going to church because she was concerned my father, who was not a Christian, and I left the church along with her.
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Truth and Eternity
SpiritualThe protagonist is a Christian and is fascinated by the world of the Bible. She eventually enters a seminary, but struggles between the problems and constraints of religion and her own faith. A modern-day 'Beneath the Wheel' that questions the funda...
