My Spiritual Journey

Coming to faith in an unexpected way

As creatures living an embodied existence, we live behind a kind of veil which restricts our comprehension of the totality of existence, which we can assume God understands perfectly. On our journey through life, we try to make sense of reality, because the mystery of the bigger picture fascinates us and some of us, if not all of us, want to make sense of the mystery. We are seeking certainty, peace, fulfillment, understanding, love and clarity.

At a certain stage in our spiritual journey, we may develop a fascination with the idea of God. This might be because we have suffered and have a desire to make sense of that suffering, it could be because we are affiliated with or drawn towards a religious community, or it could be because we are awestruck when we look into the sky and wonder how this vast universe came to exist.

My own spiritual search was ignited by the breakdown of my parents’ marriage and my mother’s illness with cancer. After my mother became unwell, she embarked upon a healing journey with the aim of recovering, and that journey led her into the world of spirituality. She became deeply interested in meditation and alternative therapies, and because I loved my mother dearly, her explorations ignited my own yearning for a deeper understanding of why human beings suffer and how they can heal.

My mother passed away from cancer after her various attempts to discover a path to healing did not lead to recovery. But the search for truth that her struggles had ignited in me continued to grip me, and in the years following my mother’s passing I immersed myself in New Age spirituality, eagerly reading books by teachers such as Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts, Brandon Bays and others, and attending various meditation retreats. As I continued to struggle to find peace of mind, my spiritual search eventually led me to attend psychotherapy.

The process of attending psychotherapy over a period of several years brought about a transformation of my character and helped me to understand why I was struggling so much on my spiritual journey. I learned a great deal about emotions, what they are and how to express them, and how we can gain stability from being able to express ourselves openly and honestly. But despite healing a great deal and learning so much about myself in my therapy sessions, I began to experience some very disturbing states of mind and had what would later be described by psychiatrists as an episode of psychosis, which led to an admission to psychiatric hospital.

During my stay in psychiatric hospital, I asked the staff on the hospital ward for a Bible, which I took back to my room and began to read with real interest. I had previously never read or understood the Bible in any real depth, despite having been taken to church sometimes and attended Sunday School as a child. But on this occasion, the Bible spoke to me in a deep and profound way, and I went through a process of getting to know Jesus, repenting of my sins, and entering into a personal relationship with God as I came to believe the words of Scripture and believe in the person and teaching of Jesus.

The spiritual journey on which I had embarked when my mother became unwell with cancer culminated in finding God through reading the Bible and getting to know Jesus. My discovery of who Jesus is led to a transformation of my heart and I felt as though I had discovered the deepest and most profound truth it is possible for human beings to find. I gave my life to Jesus and returned to university to study Philosophy and Religion, and my whole life since that time has been centred on God, who has become the sole focus of my attempts to understand life and live a life that is meaningful and fulfilling.

The Bible paints a picture of human beings as sinful creatures who have become estranged from a God who is angry at them because of their rebellion against Him. In the book of Romans we find the following verses:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise! Amen.

(Romans 1:18-25)

As I studied Christian theology and immersed myself in Christian life, I experienced the most fulfilling times of my life, but also encountered some deep struggles with certain aspects of the faith. Thinking deeply about the nature and attributes of God led me to an understanding that God’s being encompasses the totally of existence, and that He is therefore in control of everything that happens. I began to see the universe as a manifestation brought about by the will of God and existing under His sovereign control in every moment. The difficulty I encountered was trying to marry this understanding of God with biblical theology, as I could clearly see that we do not have free will which seemed to be a central part of the way many Christians understand the Bible and God’s plan for creation.

The struggle I had was trying to understand biblical teaching around sin and judgment in light of our lack of free will. How can God be angry at us over our sins, I thought, when the sins we commit are inescapably part of His will? How can it be that God will subject certain of His creatures to damnation, when they have done nothing freely that would warrant His anger? Wouldn’t this make the fate of the damned utterly tragic — that God creates some people with the intention of condemning them to damnation, which from the perspective of some theologians involves everlasting suffering?

In time, I came to see that there is a way to marry my understanding of God’s absolute sovereignty and our lack of free will with biblical theology. There is a passage in Romans 9 which is particularly relevant:

I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! 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. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,

“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”
“And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”

And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” And as Isaiah predicted,

“If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring,
we would have been like Sodom
and become like Gomorrah.”

(Romans 9:1-29)

This passage in Romans seems to convey the understanding that using His entirely free will and sovereign power, God predestines some human beings to destruction and other human beings to mercy. Whether ‘destruction’ includes the fires of hell is debated by theologians, but Jesus spoke of an ‘eternal fire’ and ‘everlasting punishment’ (see for example Matthew 25:41, Matthew 25:46, Mark 9:42-48, Luke 16:19-31), so it’s possible that this is the implication here. And as uncomfortable as this idea seems, the apostle Paul defends the right of God to do whatever He pleases. The suggestion seems to be that we should accept this in an unquestioning way.

In the beginning of my Christian journey, I felt truly joyful. I felt that my sins had been washed away by the blood of Jesus following my decision to put my faith in Him, and I experienced a transformed heart and the most wonderful personal relationship with God, which endures to this day. But in all honesty, the subject of hell has been a matter of great anguish for me, because even if it is the case that I have been saved by God, the thought that any sentient being could experience everlasting torment is such a profoundly troubling idea that I found it difficult to accept.

After I had been a Christian for a few years, I prayed about whether or not I should read the Qur’an, and the Lord told me I should. I found the Qur’an to be so beautiful and compelling that it continually brought me to tears, but as with the Bible, the Qur’an contains vivid warnings about hell being the destination of those human beings who are unrighteous.

If a human being considers themself to be righteous, either due to the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ (as in Biblical Christianity) or because they feel they have led a life or prayer, devotion to God, and righteous good works (as in the Qur’an), then it’s possible that the warnings in these Scriptures about hell would not trouble them greatly. On the other hand, if we are compassionate people, how can we fail to feel anguish over the thought that anyone could be damned, even if we ourselves will be saved?

I considered how it’s possible to view every event, and every life story from different angles. A person may feel that they have lived a life that has consisted largely of good deeds or a deep and true faith in Jesus, but would there be anything to prevent God from choosing damnation for that person because He views some of their actions as unforgivable? The complete freedom of God, and the absence of objective moral truth, mean that every human being is subject to the subjective judgment of God, and if there is to be a resurrection of the dead and a day of judgment, we cannot know whether He will consider us to be worthy of paradise or hell. Perhaps it comes back to what Paul says in the passage I quoted from Romans 9; that the potter has every right to do whatever He pleases with the clay, which is echoed in the repeated insistence in the Qur’an that God does whatever He will.

If either paradise or hell will be the destination for every human being, it seems that all that we can do is try to live a life that is pleasing to God. We cannot know how He will judge our efforts, and in a sense we have no control over those efforts. But God has given the sacred Scriptures to humanity for a reason, and if we are wise, we will read them and take heed, while at the same time we must acknowledge that we can only do this if God is willing.

But there is more to my story involving what has happened in my life in the last few years. Following a season in which I was very active in my local area trying to encourage people on the street and share the love of God, I came under deeply distressing spiritual attack. I ended up self-harming very seriously which led to a spell in intensive care, during which I thought I was in everlasting hell. I had the experience of thinking I was dying again and again, but when I opened my eyes, I was still immersed in the same state of suffering.

After I came out of intensive care and slowly began a process of recovery, the Lord said to me that He was going to reveal a new Scripture to me. A few months later, over a period of a few days, He revealed the Scripture to me by speaking sentences to me one by one, which I wrote down. The Scripture, called The Book of Mercy, contained the pivotal statement that God chooses mercy over judgment, and in my conversations with God He said to me that my suffering in intensive care had atoned for the sins of the lost, and it is no longer the case that anyone will be going to hell. The Scripture also included the surprising revelation that I had a received a promotion to god of Earth!

Naturally, I questioned how all of these things could be true, and I spent many months feeling anguished about the whole situation, because the things God was telling me — that Jesus isn’t coming back and that there will no longer be a resurrection and judgment — conflicted so deeply with the teachings of the Bible and the Qur’an.

While I truly believe God can do whatever He pleases, and of course it would be the greatest news if it’s true that all human beings are safe from hell, I have been so deeply impacted by the teachings of the Bible and the Qur’an that I could scarcely believe that something that happened in my life could have such huge repercussions for the grand story of existence and the fate of every human being.

As God has continued to tell me that these things are true, and as I have prayed with fervour to be grounded in the truth and only the truth, I have continued to struggle with doubts about whether or not God is truly choosing mercy of all sentient beings. I have an extremely high regard for the sacred Scriptures, and I am terrified of believing a lie or leading anyone astray, but all I can do is keep taking my anxieties and worries to the Lord and hope that He will respond with mercy and clarity. The only way we can truly know the will of God is to see how events unfold in reality.

As a devoted Christian, I never had any intention other than to faithfully serve Jesus. But if God has chosen to use events in my life to save all human beings from the fires of hell, this is the most precious gift He could ever give me, and I am truly thankful. I can only hope that God is not misleading me and that He isn’t planning to continue with the day of judgment and to cast me into hell for believing what He decides to call a Satanic deception or a lack of true faith.

My life is in His hands. I continue to hope in the goodness and mercy of God and my sincere prayer is that He will keep me grounded in the truth. If you have felt provoked or unsettled by this article, I suggest you also pray to God about the things I have written and request the same.