Conversion

Although I was raised within the Catholic Church, it wasn't until the summer of 1996 that God actually became real. I don't know why He chose that summer. I mean, it wasn't as if I never heard of Him. I went to summer camp, attended most of my religion classes, knew the priest, was a part of our church's youth group for a while, so why the summer of '96 and not sooner? Actually, there are three major events that lead up to the moment of my filial abandonment into His life. I will separate them into three different posts - just because a long, drawn-out story gets kinda boring to read after a while.

The first story happened when I was around four years old. I saw Him. Jesus entered into my life in a very profound way. My brother had just died of cancer a few months before, and we were visiting some friends of ours when Jesus decided to go for a walk.

There I was, playing with my toys, my mom was praying the rosary upstairs, when I looked at the end of the driveway and saw Jesus with my brother. They were just walking and smiling. I quickly told my mom - who informed me of the importance of going outside with my shoes on - and I ran out to meet them. By the time I ran to the end of the driveway, they were gone.

This moment has resonated throughout my life. Everytime I wanted to do something that was sinful, there was that image: Jesus on a Sunda stroll (a face to my ever-nagging concience). I would tell people the story; it inspired me to read the bible to my fellow elementary school students and to some of my friends.

High school hit and when I got involved in the "party scene" this image/vision, or whatever you want to call it, became my ticket past St. Peter's gate - just in case I happend to die or something. I saw it as my ticket because, for some reason, I thought that if I were to ever walk into the great judgment hall of God, I would be okay because He did that for me. My reasoning was that I could keep doing whatever I wanted since I was "right" with God.

That was how I lived my developing life. Presumming that God was going to let me into His kingdom simply because He went on a Sunday stroll, where I happened to be playing. As if heaven was a place for everybody - the people who hate God, the people who don't care about Him, and the people who continuously ignore His presence. In my mind, just as in the minds of the forementioned persons, there was no hell only heaven.

The thing is, and here's what was so foolish about my assumtion, why would God force me - or anyone for that matter - to do something that I didn't even want to do in the first place? Did He create robots - things, without any free will, that blindly (and without any choice of thier own) responded to electrical impulses to guide them? Or are we merely puppets? Is there nothing within our human nature that is good, or loving, or free? If we were just puppets then "love" or "goodness" would bear just as much weight as our primal instincts - in other words, tugs from the puppet cord.

Back to the question at hand: "free will" vs. "automatic entrance into heaven." A huge issue. If we truly do possess this strange gift of free will, then God cannot force us to do anything that we wouldn't normally want Him to do - like being close to Him. Why would He force me to be with Him if it is contrary to what I would have chosen in any given moment? What is heaven other then being close with our Creator and His love? Maybe a more relvent question is, what is hell other than a total separation from God and His love? So much for my presumption.