I have always been a Christian, but I have never figured out which part of Christianity I belong to. My parents and their parents have been Indian Orthodox, all the way up to when St Thomas came to India—my mum’s family was one of the four founding families that he preached to in India—but I have never felt a liking for Orthodox. They always spoke in an Indian language, and I was never able to understand it, alongside the symbolism for everything. The church was also an hour away! Sometimes Mum, Dad, my twin sister and I went to a Baptist church that was only 30 minutes away, and I loved everything! Alongside giving sermons, they also gave a Sunday school at the same time for us to understand the Bible and its stories more. When I was six, I was thinking, why all this symbolism and standing and speaking in a different language as everyone there knew English, and only adults and some children knew Malayalam (the language spoken in the church I came from).
From that moment on, I wanted to go to the Baptist church rather than our normal church. This church was fun to go to. But my mum had an afternoon shift every Sunday, so I was always supposed to go to the Indian Orthodox. But when I was eight, I started to feel disbelief and thought that as I was younger, I was more gullible. I was also scared, as I thought if there was another god, they would punish me. I still tried to force myself to believe, because there was something in me that was telling me, what if you were right about God and Jesus from the start? I did not know it was the Holy Spirit telling me that, bringing me to God as much as I could. I was thinking of stuff logically. It is okay to be smart, but it is better to have faith.
Faith is what I was missing. But in Year 5, my teacher told the class that archaeologists had shown that there was proof that Jesus was real. I did not know that, but my teacher knew more than me. I had trust that my teacher knew more than me. I had trust in someone who understood everything more than I did. In year 6, I figured out that God also knows everything. Everything. So, I decided that I would place my faith in Him. Not a lot of people have much faith in anything. Faith is just like a roller coaster. Some people have believed their entire lives, some have come from pagan families and turned into Christians, some are people who turned into non-Christians, and some are not Christian at all. Some people are there for the thrill. For others, they are forced into it and are scared. But their reaction shows how much trust they have in it.
Some people’s journeys of faith are more difficult than others. You may feel like you are going backwards on the roller coaster, screaming the noise out of your lungs. But we must try not to give in to fear and distrust. As I am one of those who would scream on a rollercoaster, I decided to use strategies for my faith rollercoaster. Instead of screaming, I would close my eyes and go through with what I was doing with undoubting faith and trust in Someone who knows more.
Christopher is a Wahroonga Adventist School student.
