IMPRESSIONS

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 Pete Lee
  Staff Writer

I thought I would write about my relationship with God. I feel like I’ve made some progress and this is the right thing for me to do. It will help me to better understand myself and come to peace with myself. After all we cannot change the past, but we can make the future and provide a direction back to our roots.

I always considered myself a real spiritual person, not religious but spiritual. I always believed that life had a higher calling and there was a lot more to life than just the physical aspect. I considered myself spiritual and not religious because I looked at all religions as different paths to the same truth, the same god. You know one god different beliefs.

I was a believer in God but not in the way organized religions portrayed him as. The view of this wrathful being in the sky who condemned his people for not following his unclear message absolutely made no sense to me.

They say that God made man in his own image, but in reality as a student of history I saw that it was man who constantly remakes God in his own image to suit some political, economic, or moral agenda to project on others.

For example, my minor is history and as a student of history,  I always wanted to learn about our world, how our cultures came to be, how our beliefs were influenced and how our attitudes were shaped.

I studied Latin American history, and I learned that before the Spaniards invaded their land, the indigenous people had their traditional rituals and customs based on faith which they had practiced for centuries. But when the settlers arrived, they saw the natives and labeled them as primitive, saw their beliefs as barbaric, robbed them of their natural resource of gold, and attempted to civilize them by converting them to Christianity. When the conquistadors were met with resistance they committed mass cultural genocide all in the name of God. With the excuse that God had sent them to fix these people.

But what right did they have to do that?

Basically it was a total extinction of a great ancient civilization that was far superior and more advanced when it came to science, math, and astronomy than the Europeans ever were.

I studied American history and I am pretty sure you all all did too. You all know that this country was built on the backs on Africans. These Africans were stolen from their homeland and families, shoved onto slave ships like animals, sold and forced to work on fields so our economy could advance.

I read slave diaries. The Africans were fierce, proud people, always resilient, and tough to handle so the slave owners used the Bible to basically tame them and calm them down. The mind is always more powerful than the body because even though we use the body to function, it’s our mind that controls and triggers how we act. So the plantation owners would break the minds of the Africans down mentally, and then they could impose their will onto them. They would use the Bible and tell stories about Moses, how he told the Pharoah, to let my people go giving them a false sense of hope that if they worked hard and obeyed, their Savior would come and free them too. They told the Africans that the meek and poor shall inherit the kingdom of God, and they told the slaves that when Jesus was slapped, he turned the other cheek to get slapped again, so love your enemies and let them whip you and simply accept that. The Africans had their own tribal gods, but look at how many African Americans there are today that practice Christianity.

If you look even at modern history, religion was used as a tool to cause evil.  Adolph Hitler would brainwash his entire nation into believing that the German Jews were responsible for killing Jesus, so he was able to commit the Holocaust.

Even look at the media’s perception of Islam today. All you see is terrorists, extremists, and suicide bombers when Islam in fact is a religion based on submission and peace.

I learned about all this and I was like whoa, religion is messed up, the most unnatural cause of death; this is terrible I could never follow it or listen to it.

So I decided to come up with my own beliefs and live life according to whatever I thought was good. The problem was my morals weren’t that great.

During my teenage years, I always looked up to my older heads who were more experienced than me. They taught me the values of  trust, loyalty, respect. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be seen as the cool guy who is liked by everyone and respected. My older heads would always tell me stories about how they were making money, beating people up, selling drugs, and I wanted to be gangsta like that too! So I thought that in order to be real, I had to prove how hard I was! That's how I felt I could be accepted in their eyes. I know it sounds madly foolish but that’s the mentality my mind was stuck in. So to establish my pride, my realness, I got into a lot of trouble and lived the life that wasn't right for me. I used to wild out and do all types of crazy stuff as a kid such as starting fights over nothing, selling stuff on the street but none of that made me real. It's a small world and everything I did wrong eventually caught up to bite me where the sun does not shine.

When I finally decided to stop messing around and start taking life seriously to work hard so that I could take care of my family, who looked out for me all these years, that’s what made me real. When I realized that I was wrong to lose my moral values by letting anger consume me when people hurt me or made me mad and learned rather to embrace the pain and see it as a test of my faith and principle, to control it so that it may not own me, that’s what made me real. When I could put my time and effort in for a good cause even if I would never get appreciated or recognized for it, cause I knew it to be the right thing in my heart, that’s what made me real.

I used to think I could do everything on my own but I was wrong! You can only do so much on your own. I have friends now, real friends, people who genuinely care about my success and without them I wouldn’t be here writing this testimony.

I used think that God created the universe and set it into motion, then sat back and watched it all unfold. But, I didn’t think He could interfere or influence my life in any way. I’ve learned now that God works through me, through you, and God is incredible! He will answer your prayers and hit you when you least expect it. You just can’t lose faith. I feel truly blessed.

Lately, I’ve been inviting Jesus into my life, and at first I felt unworthy like I’m not good enough to have him but I know that Jesus knows who I am and his Father God, knows what’s good for me better than I know what’s good for myself and God has a plan for me! God has a plan for all of you too!.

I’m not going to let the actions of corrupted individuals in the past, dictate where I want to be headed in the future. Inviting Christ into my heart was not forced upon me. I chose this path and you know what it’s been working for me. I’ve seen this Christian community develop and to be a part of it is amazing. I’ve witnessed my friends go through positive changes, and those who know me, the real me have seen me grow too! I’ve had some incredible highs and terrible lows this year but to continually learn, evolve and grow is what makes life worth living, at least in my eyes.

I still think it’s a bad decision to blindly follow any particular institution without really understanding how it came to be and it’s origins which you have to first know. You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you have been.

And if you’re going to call yourself a Christian, don’t just talk about it, be about it! live like a Christian because the Word of God is useless to those who preach it but don’t live by it. It’s not what’s inside but it is your actions that define who you are. I’m trying to let my actions speak for themselves.

Pete Lee is a member of Asian Student Alliance, Co-Vice President of Korean Cultural Association, Pitt Asian-InterVarsity, and Vice President of Operations for Pittsburgh Standard.

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