My parents are from Shanghai and moved to the US in the early 1980s, where I was born and raised. They grew up during the Cultural Revolution and were taught not to believe in spirits. They are both medical scientists, naturally skeptical, and were unable to find satisfactory answers when they briefly explored Christianity. However, my mom still encouraged me to attend activities at a Baptist church right next to our apartments because she thought the kids there would be a good influence on me.
A scarcity of love and loss of identity
My parents sacrificed to give me the best life, but I almost never received physical or verbal affection. Conversations were a rare occurrence at home, and I was ostracized at school for being different. Once, when I asked my dad about the purpose of life, he said there was none—we just need to work hard. If we “eat bitterness” now, we can suffer less later and maybe be comfortable in old age. I asked what happens after we die. “Nothing. There’s nothing.”
I started having my first suicidal thoughts when I was six years old. During the darkest times, I would hold on to the idea of becoming a father one day, so I could show my future children how much I love them.
I wished I had been born white, so I could be loved for who I was and treated as a person. At home, my parents didn’t care how I felt, what I thought, or what I wanted out of life. I was just expected to focus on studying math because “there are a lot of Chinese kids in California” and I needed to compete with them one day.
People couldn’t see past my race.
When I won first place in a citywide elementary school math competition, I wanted someone to be proud of me. At home, I got a cold, “So what?” At school, people couldn’t see past my race. My classmates told me, “It doesn’t count because you’re Asian.”
Nurtured by church, lost to philosophy
To get away from home, I went to the local church whenever it was unlocked: for choir, youth group, Sunday worship, and just to walk around in the dark alone. I felt nurtured by the adults there. In seventh grade, I asked to be baptized. Eventually, we moved into a house, and I couldn’t find a church to walk to. I tried to convert my dad, but started doubting my own faith when I couldn’t answer his questions.
In my high school senior year English literature class, we were introduced to philosophies claiming that life had no intrinsic purpose; namely, absurdism, existentialism, and nihilism. By this time, I had no prayer life and was borderline agnostic. In “The Myth of Sisyphus”, Camus writes, “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” I found this to echo what my dad told me.
Nietzsche’s concept of the “Übermensch” (the superior human, from the book "Thus Spake Zarathustra") made me question whether religion prevented us from reaching our full potential (a man who achieves greatness by rising above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values).
The book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer hit me hardest, "I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one… But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn’t believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex."
It became my mission to protect people from religion and counter-evangelize Christians.
After reading this, I formally renounced my faith in God too. Religion is a crutch for people who are mentally weak, I thought. From that day, I hated Christianity in particular. It became my mission to protect people from religion and counter-evangelize Christians.
Chasing belonging: freedom, fraternity, and emptiness
I moved away from my parents to study nuclear engineering at Georgia Tech. I was studious at first, but as time went on, I started exercising my freedom, thinking that I would be happy when I fitted in. I started drinking and partying, and devoted most of my time to meeting new people and spending time with friends.
In my third year, I joined a fraternity. Moving in was a dream come true. I had always wanted a brother and now I had 80 of them. I felt cool for the first time, as though I was finally a real American. When the novelty wore off, I was still depressed. My new friends were incredibly supportive, but I had a deep desire to be loved that only God could satisfy.
As an Asian American male, I had been conditioned by society to believe that I was unattractive and undesirable—definitely not worth loving. I felt like I had love to give, but nobody was interested. Being in a relationship could heal me, I thought, but no girls were interested in a broken guy. The future looked bleak. I grew tired of living and hoped that an accident would put me out of my misery.
Escaped death, into a deeper hole
A few months later, I lost control of my car on the interstate and flipped a few times before landing upside-down in a ditch. My seat belt suspended me in midair with my face a few inches away from being impaled on the windshield glass. While climbing out, I realized I didn’t want to die after all. One passerby couldn’t believe that I survived. “Somebody was watching over you,” he told me. I responded that God isn’t real.
In my final semester of school, I got back in touch with my freshman-year roommate who invited me to take MDMA (the drug, ecstasy) at a rave. I just wanted to feel happiness whether it was fake or not, and took it in hopes of self-medicating my depression. It seemed to work, and the experience was magical. Strangers were warm and accepting of me for just being me. I felt intimately connected to and loved by them. I doubted that this love could be fully explained entirely by neurochemistry. For the first time, I began to believe that spiritual realities existed.
What were the implications of my free will?
I spent the next few months looking into New Age and New Thought philosophy and tried other psychedelic drugs in the pursuit of truth. One day, I noticed a rock on the ground that was of no interest to me. I picked it up, just because I could, and it dawned on me that I had free will. I reflected on this discovery. What were the implications of my free will? There were trillions of molecules in that rock, yet I was able to move them through space.
“What am I?” I wondered. “Am I some kind of god?”
Reflecting on Nietzsche’s philosophies reminded me of the first Harry Potter book, where Professor Quirrell (the bad guy) tells Harry, “There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.” If I wanted to get ahead in life, I couldn’t allow myself to be constrained by laws or conscience. For the sake of power, I had to become what some might call “evil.” I thought about Hitler and Stalin. They seemed like great models of the potential that man could achieve. For the sake of self-preservation in the face of evil, I realized I had to become the greatest evil in the world myself.
After graduating from Georgia Tech, I moved into a house with my freshman-year roommate and his acquaintance. The new roommate was a biochemical engineering student who made drugs. One night, when they were both out of town, I heard a loud banging on our front door; it was a drug raid on our house. I was surrounded in the living room by about 14 law enforcement officers, answering their questions about my new roommate.
They asked if I did drugs. Too scared to lie, I said “yes, but I don’t sell them.” The officer in charge thanked me for my honesty and told me it was my lucky day—he was only interested in the roommate. After his arrest, he stopped by the house one day and told me that when he was in jail, he started believing in God.
Facing God in the dark: struggles and surrender
The movie Inception was showing in theaters and is still one of my favorite movies. It was about people using dream-sharing technology to extract information from their subjects’ subconscious. I wondered if life on earth was a shared dream. In the movie, the background characters were just projections of the dreamer’s subconscious, but they could attack and actually hurt the dreamer.
My roommate’s arrest made no sense in this framework—surely nobody dreams of being arrested. I rationalized that perhaps the roommate didn’t believe himself to be above the law, and fell victim to his subconscious. Therefore, I needed to take full control over my mind if I ever wanted to dream a better life for myself.
I confidently proclaimed: “I am God.”
If God did not exist, there was no absolute frame of reference, so I was free to shape reality however I wanted. I combined the ideas that resonated with me most: the Übermensch from Existentialism, discovering my inner divinity from New Age, and manifestation of mental states into reality from New Thought. I knew what I wanted now. Believing with all my heart, I confidently proclaimed: “I am God.”
God made his presence felt instantly. I was home alone but recognized the sound of police officers walking around outside my bedroom. They somehow knew I had committed a thoughtcrime; I was not allowed to have this kind of power, and they were here to arrest me. My mind started racing when I realized I was sober and wide awake. Were the police just my subconscious mind’s projection of God? But I don’t believe in God. I can’t let them get into my room. “Stop, stop…relax,” I said to myself out loud. “That sounds crazy. The house is locked, and nobody is here.”
Someone was looking at me through the closed bedroom door though—I could feel it. I stood up to lock the door and felt a cold shock when I suddenly heard the music start playing in my room. It was the Overture/Work Song from Les Miserables (the musical). Was it a coincidence that my laptop glitched at that specific moment and randomly selected a prison-themed song to play? Wanting to turn the song off as soon as possible, I grabbed my laptop. To my horror, I saw it was turned off, but the music was clearly audible from inside my room.
I felt trapped. Though I was seeing my bedroom with my eyes, I felt as though I was already in jail and that whoever was outside my room could hear my thoughts. “What is this place? What’s going on?” I asked. The song was still playing, and God answered me through the lyrics. It was the hell I was destined for, "The sun is strong, it’s hot as hell below… there’s twenty years to go… you’ll always be a slave… look down, look down, you’re standing in your grave..."
At one point, a prisoner in the song asks, “How long, O Lord, before you let me die?” I felt myself ask that same question along with the song, and God answered that I would not; I was eternally here, and time did not exist in this state. I felt my stomach drop again in fear. The claustrophobia was agonizing. I still believed that I was God, and wrongfully imprisoned.
I worked up my courage to try and reason my way out. I recognized that both I and this other being were claiming to be God, but I knew there could ultimately only be one. I thought if only I had more faith in myself, I could bend reality to my own liking and take control. I turned toward the door and said, “I don’t care who you think you are, but I’m the one true God and you’re not. You better watch out because I’m coming for you.”
A booming voice filled the room. It was so powerful I thought I might be crushed. “How dare you Satan! I will cast you into hell!” I froze in terror and felt like I was experiencing the fall of Satan in first person. A few moments later, I was once again aware of being back in my bedroom. God told me he was going to end my life; he had heard enough. Tomorrow, people would find my lifeless physical body, and my soul would languish in this prison for eternity.
"I don’t want to be an evil person and I don’t want power."
Shaking, I instinctively knelt down on the floor. I begged, “I’m sorry God, I don’t want to be an evil person and I don’t want power. It’s all rightfully yours. Please don’t end my life right now. I’ll do anything. If you can please just give me another chance, I’ll be good—I’ll do anything.” The name “Jesus” popped into my head, so I thought about him.
God said, “Ok, I forgive you. I love you. I know you’ve been searching for truth with drugs, but you don’t need to do that anymore, it’s time to quit.” I agreed to quit everything immediately. God also told me he was always there if I wanted to talk. He showed how the events in my life fit together, and how they all led me to the present moment. This was my chance to start a new life. It took me a few moments to process and then I felt an explosion of emotion: I was at peace, relieved (to be alive), grateful, happy, excited, and finally whole.
It was around 11 pm but I needed to tell anyone who would listen. I called a good high school friend, Phil, who I hadn’t spoken to in years because I hated getting invited to church. “God spoke to me! I believe in God now!” After listening to my story, Phil told me he’d prayed for me last night. “What did you pray for?” I asked. Phil said he asked that God would do something big in my life. After we ended the call, I couldn’t contain myself so I called another friend, Rob, to tell him about how Phil had prayed for my conversion and it happened. Rob also told me he’d prayed the night before that God would do something.
Coming home: reconcile, reconnect and relive
The next morning, I called my parents to say “I love you” for the first time. I forgave them for everything, and told them how much I appreciated them for being good parents. They were mostly confused by the conversation since we never called each other unless we needed something. I told them that God was real and that he had talked to me last night. They cautioned me “don’t believe in anything too much (a little is OK),” and not to waste my time with religion when I should be thinking about my career.
Quitting drugs meant I had to abandon my entire social circle. It was homecoming week at Georgia Tech, so after talking with my parents, I went back to campus to visit my fraternity. Typically, pledges don’t go anywhere near the alumni during homecoming to avoid being hazed, so I was shocked when one of the freshmen pledges, Kelsey, walked straight up to me. “Do you want to go to church with me on Sunday?” he asked.
“Did God send him?” I wondered. It was well known that I detested Christianity. “Who told you to ask me?” I started to ask, but I was too dazed to get most of the words out. “Don’t you know who I am?” I finally managed to say. Kelsey told me he knew I was an atheist and didn’t know why he approached me. I told Kelsey about what happened last night and asked where he went to church. “I haven’t been to church in years,” he told me. “Well then why did you ask me of all people?”, I pressed. “I dunno, but as soon as I saw you today, I just thought I should come up to you and ask” he said.
We found a few other guys and went to a non-denominational church as a group that Sunday. I learned more about Jesus and started reading the Bible. My parents and I are closer than we’ve ever been, and they are much more accepting of my faith. God has also blessed me with a wonderful wife and the gift of fatherhood. Loving my children has helped heal a lot of my childhood wounds. Holding them before bed every night has helped me reflect on the magnitude of God’s love for us; it’s wild to think that I am loved by God more than I love them. God has shown me that his love is always faithful and he pursues us even when we actively choose against him.
Originally published by ChinaSource. Republished with permission.
Gregory Wu (a pseudonym) is an Assistant Professor of Statistics and has been involved with student ministry at his university.
ChinaSource is a trusted partner and platform for educating the global church on critical issues facing the church and ministries in China, and for connecting Christians inside and outside China to advance the kingdom of God globally. ChinaSource's vision is to see the church in China and the global church learning and growing together, engaging in ministry that powerfully advances the kingdom of God.
