Why I Became a Christian

As a result of a learning disability I attended a Catholic elementary school which specialized in helping children with special needs – up to about grade five. It was a common occurrence to pass nuns and priests in the hallways and I attended a mass like service with the other students every Friday. I remember looking forward to the day when I would have my “first communion” like the older kids in grades six through eight, but I was transferred to a “regular” school from grade 5 – evidently I no longer needed such special needs; and my first communion (as such) never came.

Even though my family was essentially non-religious, these years instilled in me a fundamental belief in God and a sure awareness of Jesus (hanging on a giant cross). For me, belief in God was something like belief in oxygen. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there and to suggest it wasn’t was absurd!

From this it was only a small step to commit my life to God and to Jesus Christ. This happened when I was eleven. I was watching the Jesus film by Billy Graham and Campus Crusades (based on Luke’s Gospel) and for the first time I came to know the purpose for Jesus’ hanging on the cross: he died for my sins so that I could go to heaven, all I had to do was ask him to come into my life (thus becoming a Christian) and I would go to heaven when I died.

Sometime over the next two years I was baptized by immersion at a large Pentecostal church (despite the fact that I had been Christened as a baby) and about a year after that I had a supernatural experience that can only be summarized as a Spirit Baptism in a smaller Pentecostal church (though for the next decade I would be confused as to what this experience was because the Pentecostal’ teach that Spirit Baptism is accompanied by an evidence of supernatural “tongues” speaking, I had no such “shun-di”). I have never been the same since that experience.

Why did I become a Christian? Because belief in God (faith) was not a matter of closing my eyes tightly and wishing upon a star that God existed. It was not a matter of “I believe; help my unbelief”. Belief in God was as natural as believing in my own existence. But why did I become a Christian? Two words: “Jesus” and “Cross”. If belief in God and Jesus came so natural, all that I needed was to understand why he was hanging on a large cross behind the priest, why he died so painfully if he could have escaped at will… he died on the cross so that I could live!

I became a Christian because of Jesus and the Cross!

Derek