--Augustine of Hippo
A soul that turns away from you therefore lapses into fornication when it seeks apart from you what it can never find in pure and limpid form except by returning to you.
--Augustine of Hippo
Rather than reviewing each year of high school, which have literally melted into one big pile of colorful memories like a box of crayons left out in the Arizona sunlight, I'm going to focus on some particular themes that played important roles in each year of my high school education. There are only a few things that stand out to me about my three years in high school. The rest is just white noise in my memory.
The one thing that seems to define everybody else's high school experience didn't seem to have any effect on my experience whatsoever. Cliques obviously existed in my high school like they do in every high school. There were the jocks, the popular guys and girls that didn't play sports, the band geeks, the bookworms, the gothic and punk crowds, the socially inept group, the dungeons and dragons group, and many more. I recognized them when I saw them, but I never really paid much attention to them. I remember having some lunches with my friends in band, the next lunch I would sit with some of the girls on the cheerleader squad, and the next lunch period I would sit with the popular kids. I knew when I was out of place and when I was in my element, but I never felt like I was limited with the kinds of friends I could make. I was a clique anomaly. I mixed into each group but I belonged to none of them. I had something in common with all of them but I didn't have everything in common with any of them.
Some of my friends were in band, some of them were the class clowns, some of them were flirtatious cheerleaders, some of them were the dramatic girls who lived for the next scandal, some of them were bookworms who loved playing RPGs, and some of them were popular because they were funny, good-looking, and somewhat nice. When I looked at them, though, I didn't see the cliques they belonged to. I just saw someone who would talk with me, who would laugh at my jokes, who didn't treat me like an outcast. I just saw a friend.
If my friends didn't call me "Matt" they called me "sweetie." Yeah, that tells you that most of my best friends were girls. It seemed like the girls were more down-to-earth than the guys. At least the girls that I befriended did. I was drawn to the intellectuals and the thinkers. I was drawn to the group of friends that were thinking about the future and life after high school rather than the groups that were completely inebriated on the present, living the good life, living each day like it was their last, and seemingly wasting away into moral oblivion before ever reaching their 18th birthday.
We talked about a curse that existed at our high school because every year at least one student would not make it to the end of the year. I remember visiting the funerals of a few students in high school and I couldn't help but think it was such a waste. As the rest of my peers were drunk on the spirits of feeling invincible and untouchable, I felt like life was very fragile. My fellow peers were not dying because of drug overdoses, gang violence, and making poor choices but because of car accidents, physical conditions, and freak accidents.
Over Spring Break in 2004, my brother got a call from one of his friends that graduated in 2002. His brother, the star athlete on our football team that year, was out on the lake with friends when a bad storm rolled in. The boat he was in capsized. Everyone in the boat swam to the shore, but there was no sign of him. Several days later, they found his body. His brother called my brother the day he got the news that he was missing because he knew my brother was a Christian, and he asked us to pray.
Coming to school after that Spring Break was harder than ever. Keith's death shook the school to its core. We returned feeling like one of the immortals had fallen. I don't think there was a soul in the auditorium that morning that didn't feel touchable, fragile, and mortal. I was not friends with Keith, I only had a PE class with him, but I was surrounded by people that knew and loved Keith very much. The school seemed immersed in grief for a couple of weeks, but time passed by, people moved on, and everyone settled back into their untouchable fantasies. However, something about Keith's death stuck with me. I never felt untouchable again and death and judgment filled my nightmares often.
Of everyone in the school, my classmates would think that I was the last one to worry about death and judgment. My senior year, I was the runner-up for being voted most innocent in the yearbook. Ironically, the guy that won the vote was known for not being innocent, and people thought it would be funny if he won. I, however, was known for being innocent but I was not at all. I was quiet, I was gentle, I was sympathetic, I was the loner that everyone kept trying to draw out, and there was something about my personality that led people to believe that I was innocent. They called me "sweetie" just like my grandma did. I was the sweet guy.
More than anything else in my high school years, I wrestled with the idea that I was innocent. I didn't feel innocent. Unlike Augustine, I didn't listen to my friends bragging about their immoralities, ashamed that I was less depraved than they were. I always felt more depraved than everyone that surrounded me and for that I was ashamed. Many times I would be sitting at the lunch table and someone would use foul language, somebody would bump them with their elbow, nod their head in my direction, and the person who cussed would apologize to me as if they just cussed in front of their grandmother. I was seen as a saint to many of my classmates, and I didn't know how to rectify their misconception of me.
They thought I was so pure, so righteous, so holy, but in all reality all I ever seemed to think about was sex. I wanted love. I wanted fellowship. I wanted romance. I wanted companionship. I wanted to feel wanted. I wanted to feel needed. I was fully immersed in an addiction to pornography, hoping to find what I was seeking. Having turned my back on God, no longer even contemplating how to please and obey Him, I turned to my new god: sex. It seemed to fulfill me for a time, but hours of pornography always left me feeling void and null.
Pornography morphed my worldview and turned my eyes further and further away from God. I didn't view women as creatures created in the image of God. I saw them as objects and as trophies. I misconstrued love and romance into a competition. Although I was repulsed by the notion, love and romance was only the means to an end: sex. The only reason I could think of for loving someone is in order to have sex with them. You comfort them, you make them feel wanted, you are gentle to them, and you seemingly care for them so that they will reward you with their body.
For the longest time, I believed that God had set aside one woman for me to be my one and only beloved wife. However, as I immersed myself more and more in pornography that belief became less and less appealing. The people I watched seemed fulfilled. They seemed happy. They seemed loved. They seemed satisfied. They were not married. They were not sworn to one person. They were taking full advantage of love, by having as many partners and as many experiences as they could. The thought of saving myself for my wife became less appealing, and I started to look for a trophy of my own.
Although surrounded by friends, I felt all alone. I felt like nobody loved me. I felt like nobody even knew who I was. I did not even know who I was. Everyone believed that I was an upright, moral guy filled with integrity, fidelity, and love for God. I felt like a science experiment gone horribly wrong. In public, I appear as a saint while in private, I was fully enveloped by sexual immorality. I was seen as pure, but I knew I was severely defiled by my sinful filthiness. I lived a lie. I put on a show.
However, I no longer wanted to be "most innocent." My hands were dirty, and I wanted people to know it. I didn't want people to think that I was less courageous for being more innocent. I didn't want to be counted cheaper for being more chaste. I felt outcasted in a way because I was too good. I felt as if many people alienated me because I made them feel uncomfortably immoral. I wanted to reveal to everyone that my morality was merely a façade and that I was the worst of hypocrites. I wanted to blow my own whistle, to reveal my true nature to them, but I didn't. Why?
My best friends were Christians that believed that I was a Christian too. My family believed that I was a Christian. My church family believed that I was a Christian. I felt no loyalty towards God, but I felt a loyalty towards my family and friends. I knew that if tried to leave the church, if I tried to live the life I was drawn to in pornography, and if I tried to run away from it all, I would not get very far before they all came running after me. I knew that if I revealed to my parents that I was addicted to pornography, that they would be disappointed for a time, but that they would forgive me. I knew that if I told my friends that I wanted to have sex before I got married, they would only start praying for me. I knew that if I tried to run away, God would somehow find me. I knew that if I tried my hardest to enjoy love as pornography represented it that God would show me what love truly is.
I was a boy who called himself a Christian, but the greatest fear in his heart was the idea that God just might make one out of him. Pornography made it very hard to want to be a Christian. I wanted to worship my new god, but I knew that my new god was not compatible with God. As I sat under the preaching of the Word in a Reformed church, I couldn't help but hear the scope of the Law. In my high school years, I knew that my salvation was forfeit. I knew that my self-righteousness counted as nothing. It was revealed to me that my good deeds are nothing but menstrual cloths to God. I couldn't go before the King of kings with menstrual cloths and expect pardon for being an outlaw, a rebel, and an anarchist in His Kingdom. I was doomed!
If I was doomed, then I might as well make the most of it while I can. I knew that my works counted for nothing and that I must cling to Christ for salvation by faith. However, that could wait until later. I was only going to be young once. The immoralities that my friends bragged about sounded fun, and I felt like I was missing out by putting on this innocence show. I seemed to be fooling them, but why live a pious life only to fool man but still receive the wrath of God in the coming judgment? You live a life of celibacy, miss out on the joys of sexual immorality, and you still suffer eternal damnation. No thank you. I would have my peace of debauchery, give God something to forgive me for, test the scope and depth of his love and forgiveness, see just how large a multitude of sins love could really cover, and see if Jesus's sacrifice was efficient, even for me. That was the attitude of my heart. That was my true desire. I was sick of being called "sweetie" and "most innocent." I wanted to show the world and especially God just how bad I could be.
However hard I tried to run away from God, I was cornered. I had nowhere to go. I had nowhere to run. Most people, when thinking of Christian conversion, think of something along the lines of an alter call after a moving sermon about hell and salvation. They think about something clean and crisp. As if a person, contemplating Christianity, finally hears that one thing that clears up all of his doubts, and allows him to hesitate no longer, and put all of his faith in Christ. However, that was not my experience at all. It was dirty and messy. I climbed into a pit to escape God, and He started climbing in after me. I jumped further and further down into the pits depths, and yet God descended farther into the pit after me.
People imagine a God that gives you one shot, take it or leave it, and if you reject him then he will reject you. God, however, loves whom He loves and hates whom He hates. This biblical principle has been detested by many in the church over the centuries, and it is scorned as the lie of Calvinism. If it is not true, though, then how can I account for my salvation? If God only loves those that love Him and only hates those who hate Him, then why do I now share my testimony of faith with you? I hated God and I loved pornography, sex, and debauchery. I ran away from Him into the deepest depths, and yet He persistently pursued me. God's love for those whom He loves is infinite. It knows no bounds. Should I jump into a bottomless pit, God's love would still reach me and draw me out. God's love is gracious, not meritorious. God's love is unconditional, and is not conditioned on our acceptance or rejection of His love. No one can escape the love of God, although many more than me have tried our hardest to run in the other direction.
Christian conversion is transformational. Christians don't make themselves into Christians. For many Christians, the last thing they ever wanted to be was a disciple of Christ and a lover of God. They tried to run for a time, but to no avail. We did not choose Christianity, but rather it was forced upon us. Like medicine forced upon a dying, stubborn man, the love of God must be forced upon the hearts of the wicked. We flee from our cure, we would rather remain sick than be loved by God. God's grace, although we might resist to our uttermost, is irresistible.
For
he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have
compassion on whom I have compassion." So then it depends not on human
will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
(Romans
9:15-16)
I was still entangled by the earth and refused to enlist in your service, for the prospect of being freed from all these encumbrances frightened me as much as the encumbrances themselves ought to have done.
I was thus weighed down by the pleasant burden of the world in the way one commonly is by sleep, and the thoughts with which I attempted to meditate upon you were like the efforts of people who are trying to wake up, but are overpowered and immersed once more in slumberous deeps. No one wants to be asleep all the time, and it is generally agreed among sensible people that being awake is a better state, yet it often happens that a person puts off the moment when he must shake himself out of sleep because his limbs are heavy with a lassitude that pulls him toward the more attractive alternative, even though he is already trying to resist it and the hour for rising has come; in a similar way I was quite sure that surrendering myself to your love would be better than succumbing to my lust, but while the former course commended itself and was beginning to conquer, the latter charmed and chained me. I had no answer to give as you said to me, Arise, sleeper, rise from the dead: Christ will enlighten you, and plied me with evidence that you spoke truly; no, I was convinced by the truth and had no answer whatever except the sluggish, drowsy words, "Just a minute," "One more minute," "Let me have a little longer." But these "minutes" never diminished, and my "little longer" lasted inordinately long.
--Augustine of Hippo
Conversion put me in a complicated and comprehensive chaos. I sometimes wonder, when I hear other Christians pray for the salvation of the "lost," if they realize that this comprehensive chaos is the desired end of such prayers. Often, people asked me to describe the "lessons" that I learned from this experience. I can't. It was too traumatic. Sometimes in crisis, we don't really learn lessons. Sometimes the result is simpler and more profound: sometimes our character is simply transformed.
--Rosaria Butterfield
The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape? The words “compelle intrare,” compel them to come in, have been so abused by wicked men that we shudder at them; but, properly understood, they plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.
--C.S. Lewis
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