How we got here; or, Why

This is a post I've been pondering for a long time, and referred to in passing a couple times: the idea of writing my testimony. I must admit it makes me a little nervous because in telling this story, I will be laying it all out there: the things I've struggled with, the way I've hurt people either purposefully or accidentally, my natural heart of selfishness and self-serving. I pray that this comes to point not to myself, but to God and to what He's done for me, because my story is only about Him. People who knew me in years past might take it as seriously as they can having known me before, I suppose, and all I can do is extend an apology to those I wronged and pray God grants them a spirit of forgiveness. So, let's get to it.

Unlike a lot of the people around me at the Village, I grew up in a Christian family. They weren't the legalistic, moralistic Flanders-ish people you might expect; my parents loved (well, love) Jesus and raised me to love Him as well, as best they could. They gave me my first few years of education in a Christian school to ground me in the Word alongside church and my parents' own efforts to teach me and show me God's love through their words and actions. Overall I would say that my parents set me up to succeed in every way possible--life was certainly not perfect, but looking back I certainly can't complain. I didn't walk around with some foreboding sense of guilt, but at the same time as a kid I don't think I fully understood the weight of the Gospel and what it meant to me.

I was a very bookish kid, spending as much time in the library as doing anything else during the summer and my times off from school. I'd read anything, and very quickly. All of this served to build in me a natural curiosity and subsequent desire to satisfy that curiosity. So when the Internet appeared, it was natural to jump into exploring it with both feet, and eventually we had our own computer at home, where I could spend time reading just about anything--comics, newspaper columns, primitive blogs, free from the prying eyes of librarians and the restraint of class time.

I don't remember the first time I saw something pornographic online or what led me to it, but I remember my justification for exploring it further: "Well, I just want to know more about this." An easy one for me to make given my natural disposition. My mind was very much compartmentalized at this point; I was able to look at porn and justify the behaviors it led me to--lying, treating other people like dirt when they wouldn't leave me alone, let alone actually downloading it--and then go to church for youth group and services without realizing the huge disconnect I had created.

Before long I had developed a full-blown addiction to pornography. I got busted a couple times and my parents expressed their grief over it in as much love as two frustrated parents could muster. I tried to deal with it but ultimately all I did was find better ways of hiding it. I knew the computer better than anyone else in the house, and I was able to find ways to cover up what I was doing. My addiction followed me to college, where four years in a dorm with my own computer allowed me to sink even lower.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.--Romans 1:18-25

There was a secondary branch to my life that must also be told. As I said, I was a kid who was very much into reading, and knowing things. Likewise, I was brought up to love Christ and while my heart wandered, my head stayed with what I'd been taught--indeed, it was in my knowledge that I was able to hold on at all, and it was with this that God was gracious enough to keep me from jumping off into full-blown sinful hedonism (and not the kind meant in this blog's name). I had plenty of it, but God held back the full might of His righteous judgment on me and instead allowed me in just far enough to realize where I was when He would call me back. But, we're not there yet.

So: I knew a lot of stuff. I knew what the Bible said at least enough to understand its implications about behavior, I was a kid who would go into battle over things like creation, the state of man's heart (though not my own), the truth of the Bible as far as it can be proven in a historical sense, and so on. So here's a humanity equation for you: what do you get when you add Christian morality together with sinful desires and multiply that by pride and a Gospel that hasn't truly fallen into one's heart? You get a young man who is becoming the kind of "Christian" who would just as soon use the cross as a club as welcome unbelievers to worship. You get someone who's not growing in love for Christ. You get someone who, if life continues this direction, ends up standing with the goats when Matthew 25 is played out.

My pride grew as my success in life grew over time. My skill as a musician had grown since high school and my pride along with it; I was being recognized, and when I entered the drum corps world success followed me there. Drum and bugle corps was very formative to a growing "I can do it by my own strength" attitude, an attitude that only served to depress my ability to be sympathetic. I received my bachelor's in music from Wichita State and ended up coming to the University of North Texas to do grad degree work. It was at this point that God began the painful process of kicking away all the supports that kept me on the path I was on.

The first one to go was drum corps. I got involved with a corps in the area for a couple seasons, and also put time in teaching both my old corps and another junior corps, but my finances began to contract as my expenses increased and soon I couldn't justify spending all this time on an activity that at the very least asked for my time for free, if not insisting that I pay to play. School was next, and fell victim to the same problem in its own way--my personal debt had grown but I wasn't making enough to pay my bills and do life, so I took on a second job. That plus grad school began to wear on me, and my grades suffered. By 2007 I found myself academically suspended from school.

All that was left was my perceived future as a professional performer. My at least temporary removal from school dealt a blow to that, but as I was a part of a group I loved performing with and saw making it at least as a regular working musician, I was confident. But in a few months that was put in jeopardy too, as the same sort of stresses that hurt any other group began to work on us and by the end of the year we were in danger of dissolving. All of this together with my sense of "I can fix all this, I'm good and smart enough" was building me into a man that, continued on this path of desire for self, would become bitter and angry. I still held on to God in my mind, but I refused to submit my heart to Him the way I had as a young kid.

I do believe that I was saved when I was young, but God allowed me to drift away that He might call me further into Him. Not that He said "You go commit sins because I want you to," but that He let me live my life in a way that I thought was right because on the other side of that, hope in Him meant so much more. I'm still thinking and praying on that, but regardless I am here now and I know that God will reveal the deeper theological truths in due time, when they will bring the most glory to Him and do the most good in me.

Near the end of 2007, a guy who was playing in my band at the time invited me to go to church with him. The Village had just opened its Denton campus, and I was understandably skeptical. "A video campus? How does that work? Do they go into reruns in the summer?" But, I ended up going in November, and hearing this sermon. I don't recall now what it was about that particular sermon that hit me so hard, but at the time it was like Matt was speaking directly to me, to what I was going through. I felt called at levels I'd never experienced before to start going regularly, and over the next few months I began attending recovery and I joined a homegroup, becoming a member of the church. In all the years since I had been a kid immersed in a Christian home and church, since I'd drifted out of church in college but still clung to belief in my mind, I'd never felt my heart ministered to so clearly. I had known stuff about God, but the years had shown that knowing and being able to debate meant little or nothing. There was a brokenness in me that I'd been trying to fill up--with ambition, with sex, with music--and yet it remained.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.--C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

God used all of this to call to me gently, lovingly, and to heal me. At once, He took what I had in my head for all these years--all the books read, all the scripture memorized but never really sunk in--and simultaneously, He showed that it was inadequate while He also brought those things into fruition in their proper place. He showed that humility was something in which there was joy, but that humility meant service, which means work, and working for God meant that I had a loving, understanding Boss who would never give me menial tasks and was the Provider of everything I needed to do it, a Boss that grants me my position not based on my worthiness but because He loves me.

I'm still learning what that work is, and over the last few months He's opened new things to me. But the immense joy in my life has come as God has moved to set me free from my addiction to lust and pornography, and renewed my heart for my sisters through His Son. I am deeply ashamed of where I was, and there may be women reading this that are personally aware of exactly where. If that is the case, I humbly ask for forgiveness for looking at you not as a fellow human and someone to love, but as an object to use for my own wicked desires. But my conviction has brought freedom. I still struggle, every day, and every day I offer this up to God: Give me the strength to resist temptation, the heart to serve, and the grace to cover when I fall. God has been gracious in all things and my joy grows because I know there is not condemnation waiting for me, but final and eternal freedom from my sin.

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.--Philippians 1:18-21

As I said, this is a post I've had on my mind for a very long time, and lately I've felt driven to finally write it and post it. The battle in my heart between my sinful, selfish desires and the new desire to love God and know Him rages on, but I'm learning not to despair. God's given me joy in Him, joy that can't be quenched by rough times in life and which only grows with each new day--not some "Slap a big phony smile on because you love Jesus!" joy, but something more real than anything I've known before. I hope that out of this writing comes joy for more, a spreading of the Gospel, renewed hearts, and forgiveness.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.--1 Timothy 1:15