Ep. 2: Changing my Worldview

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But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11 NIV)

I was a troubled teen. No need to go into details — all I’ll say is that I used to wear sunglasses and a black trench coat in class, rain or shine, every day.

This was in the 80’s, a decade before Laurence Fishburne rocked the look in The Matrix.

A one-time honors student, my academic performance took such a nosedive that I nearly flunked out of 11th grade.

My guidance counselor suggested that I enroll in independent study and take the California High School Proficiency Exam, a local version of the G.E.D. that would fulfill the state requirements for completing high school.

I took her advice, passed the test, and decided to go overseas for a fresh start rather than enroll in community college.

With dreams of working in the film industry, I moved to Indonesia to apprentice with a friend of the family, who owned a production company in Jakarta.

A land of extreme contrasts

Indonesia was intense.

The gorgeous scenery — sweeping vistas, terraced rice fields, mountain springs weaving their way through lush terrain — would often be juxtaposed with the ugliness of poverty: shacks cobbled together from corrugated tin, malnourished children frolicking in the same turbid river where one person would be brushing his teeth, another would be washing laundry, and yet another would be defecating.

These slums weren’t limited to remote villages, either — many of them were right in the heart of the capital city, nestled between gleaming office towers or located directly across the street from mansions/family compounds.

The contrast was so jarring, I cried on my first day there, wishing I could go back to the comfy suburbs of Southern California.

“Spiritual humidity”

Even though the people were required to identify with one of the state’s officially-recognized religions — Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Protestantism, and Catholicism — many were superstitious and dabbled in traditional spiritual practices. In almost every neighborhood, you could hire a dukun, or shaman, to curse business rivals, heal ailments, or deal with troublesome spirits.

Everyone in Indonesia believed in something. This might be why I sensed a weight in the air that I can best describe as “spiritual humidity”–  an invisible but palpable thickness that clings to you, permeating every pore.

Sometimes, it was good and I’d sense tremendous peace, but other times, it was suffocating, eerie, and sinister.

The spiritual realm was not some abstract concept; it was felt everywhere, and I couldn’t escape it, even if I wanted to.

This, combined with the challenge of simply making it through each day in a new land, where poverty and crime went hand-in-hand, got me to start praying more. I would ask God to keep me safe from dangerous criminals and traffic accidents each day, and every night, when I got home, I’d pray and give thanks that nothing bad had happened to me.

It might not have been the best way to pray, but it was a start.

I worked at a company owned by Protestants and staffed mostly by Muslims, along with one or two Buddhists and a handful of Catholics. We worked together, laughed together, cried together.

Our shared hopes, desires, and interests seemed to outnumber our differences, spurring me to question whether there was indeed only one truth and one way towards God.

I was veering towards Universalism — the belief that all paths lead to God — and in addition to learning more about Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, I also began to investigate other beliefs such as animism, pantheism, reincarnation, and the magic practiced by shamans and faith healers.

This exploration seemed innocent to me at the time, but little did I know I was opening some spiritually dangerous doors that would come back to haunt me years later.

One of my colleagues was a fellow American whom I would sometimes carpool with. During one morning drive, he began to share his faith with me, and though I listened politely, I wasn’t really interested in what he had to say until one statement he made resonated with me.

He said, “Moses was a murderer, but God still used him and made him one of the greatest leaders of all time.”

This was the first time I’d heard that someone like Moses wasn’t just a sinner, but a murderer, and despite this, God spoke to him face to face, as one would speak to a friend (Exod. 33:11).

This did not conform with the image of the furious, vengeful deity I had built up in my mind, based on the hodgepodge of religious teachings I had gleaned over the years.

This word that my friend shared with me during an otherwise humdrum morning commute would occupy my mind for years, encouraging me to keep pressing forward.

If God could work through anyone, including a murderer who spent forty years as a fugitive (Exod. 2:12-15), would He work through a doubter like me?

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