How I Became a Christian

The tears I shed nourished the seeds of my baptism, which shot upward into a lush blossom.

I hope you all had a wonderful Holy Week. I know I did — I had the honor of being Confirmed into the Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil. Now that I am finally at “home in Rome,” I figured it the perfect time to share how I got here — how I came to God by His grace.

I have always loved these types of stories. Reading them feels like shooting Hope straight into the veins. Perhaps my story can provide you with some Hope, too. I plan to give this journey (call it my “Confessions”) a fuller treatment in the far future, when I am a more learned and holy writer. For now, however, here is something befitting my spiritual infancy. 

To begin, I will clarify that I was, thankfully, baptized as a baby. It is for this reason that I hesitate to call myself a “convert.” In retrospect, the God I persistently ignored and defied was crying out to me from the mark of my baptism, begging me to come home to Him. Yet, calling myself a “revert” also feels inaccurate, as this state of dissolution persisted for my whole life until the age of fifteen. The seeds of my baptism were given no nourishment, and as such, did not grow. My secular education left me utterly bereft of any Christian knowledge; I was taught that truth is relative and that condoms are healthy.

During this time period, I (to borrow an image from Saint Gregory of Nyssa) was fully submerged in the river of sin, and that river carried me where it willed. That is, towards all of the impurities, inactions, iniquities, dishonesties, heresies, and hatreds that you can imagine. I committed countless mortal sins per day. I will spare you the details in this piece, but it was bad. I was bad. It was only by the Grace of God that I was not worse.

As for how I managed to maintain this utter rebellion with the God protesting from within me, I believe Saint Augustine articulates the answer in his Confessions. He says that while God was within him, he was “in the world outside himself,” leaving the Lord’s call without an audience. I relate to this experience deeply — I have basically zero memory of that period that was so rife with sin. I take this amnesia to mean that for all intents and purposes, I was dead.

We hear all the time that sin kills your soul, and having experienced it myself, I can only describe life without God as a void. My life was in service to nothing, so it meant nothing. All I can remember — barring some dim glimmers of memory — is constant misery, a muted emptiness. The sins were the punishment themselves, curving my soul inward and leaving me in a state of crushing despair, all of the time. I was a drowned corpse floating down the river. 

It was when I was at my most miserable that God reached His hand into that river, recalling me from death. Around Christmas of 2019, a YouTube video found its way into my recommended tab: Why You Need to Read Dostoyevsky - Prof. Jordan Peterson. Even though Dr. Peterson is not (yet) a Catholic, God spoke to me through him that day. A combination of Dr. Peterson’s persuasiveness, and having nothing planned for the Christmas break, brought me to ordering Crime and Punishment, a book that would completely change my life.

Crime and Punishment brings you on a spiritual journey. The main character, Raskolnikov, is sold on Friedrich Nietzsche’s conception of the “Übermensch,” and takes it upon himself to murder his wretched landlady, deciding it to be better for the world that she not be alive. In spite of the fact that I was utterly uneducated and, as a rational matter, completely taken by Raskolnivok’s slick justifications, I had an innate sense that he was wrong.

This sense grew into conviction upon beholding his crippling guilt. I saw the pains of my sin in him, pains which made it apparent that he, and I, had broken rules bigger than ourselves. This reality, of course, presents an inevitable question: Who made the rule? The answer is God. 

This laid clear to me, for the first time, that I was a sinner. I felt myself pulsing with guilt and shame, my conscience reawakening. This raw pain brought me to another question: What do I do now? How do I go about healing these wounds? Raskolnikov’s story showed the way: the Lord Jesus Christ. The novel taught me that Christ’s love has a true power that the “Übermensch” seeks and utterly fails to emulate — Christ conquers death, and all Übermensch can do is flail about in sin, bringing pain to himself and others.

The book’s final paragraph describes the hope that Raskolnikov’s newfound faith had brought him: 

But here begins a new account, the account of a man’s gradual renewal, the account of his gradual regeneration, his gradual transition from one world to another, his acquaintance with a new, hitherto unknown reality. It might make the subject of a new story — but our present story is ended.

Upon reaching the word “eternity,” I closed the little burgundy book, and stared into the distance for what felt like an eternity. It was all dawning upon me at once: I was the subject of that “new story.” I was transitioning “from one world to another.” The sensation was indescribable; I could feel my perspective shifting in real time. What came next makes me emotional to write about. I remember looking around my room with an awestruck expression, as a baby does when entering the world.

It was at that moment that I noticed something: my eyes locked onto the crucifix that quietly hangs on my bedroom wall (pictured in this article’s graphic). That simple green crucifix had been there my whole life, and yet it was only that day that I truly gave it notice. In that silence, Christ spoke to me from that crucifix. He told me that he had been there my entire life, watching me, loving me. My unfailing Guardian, my Sweetness and my Life, hung on the cross with me in mind. I wept that December morning. The tears I shed nourished the seeds of my baptism, which shot upward into a lush blossom. My faith was finally awakened.

Earlier in this piece, I described sin as a river which carries us where it wills. However, Saint Gregory of Nyssa explains that when an object begins to bob above the waters — to float above the depths — the river tends to wash it onto the banks. Likewise, when we glimpse at the new reality that rests outside of sin, when we begin to come to ourselves, we see sin as the misery that it truly is, and so vie to exit its trappings and find rest on the banks of virtue. 

After my awakening, I did not become a saint overnight, nor am I a saint now. Far from it, in fact! The journey from habitual evil to a love of goodness; and from a confused Mere Christianity to true Catholicism has taken years, and continues every day. Hours of prayer, guidance, and study have brought me far enough to be confirmed, at least! But, needless to say, I still have a long way to go on the road to holiness, that I may be worthy to climb the mountain and reach the source of trumpet’s cry — to see God in the face.

Lord, how grateful I am to have been saved in youth, so that I may, by Your Grace, live so many years in full service of You! Yet, my God, I would trade all those years, and ten thousand more, not to leave Your side for a moment. Amen.

The AdamoZone is a column by Luca Adamo, Vice President of Marketing at The American Postliberal. Published every Friday at 5:00pm EST.

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