I BELIEVE!
Before & After
Vijai Kuruppacherry
LIFE BEFORE CHRIST
They still call it “God’s Own Country”- the southwestern state
of Kerala, India, known for its then-pristine lakes, lush, green
hills and waterfront lowlands. A ponderous weight of history and
romance lingers around its freshwater bays that shield the coast
from the sea, called “backwaters,” recalling commerce with
Ancient Israel, the Roman Empire, the Arabs, royal emissaries
of the King of Portugal, led by Count Vasco da Gama, and
then the Dutch, French and British traders who thronged its
port city, Cochin (now Kochi). This is where I was born and
spent the first seventeen years of my life. Legend has it that St.
Thomas the Apostle landed in this region about ten years after
Jesus’ resurrection and won many converts. Subsequent Jewish
migration after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in
AD 70 added numbers to both Jewish and Christian groups.
Doctrinal differences, the Orthodox-Catholic split, and later
waves of European traders changed the landscape considerably
in the two millennia that followed. Every family, Christian or
not, bears markers of this eventful past, sometimes remarkably
well preserved and remembered to this day.
I was raised in a nominal Catholic family with stories of heroic
conversions to Christ from an insular, Hindu-background
centuries ago, but for all that, there seemed to be no anchoring
conviction. We went to church every Sunday, went through
the Sacraments and led lives that were not very different from
those of non-Christians, but rooted in conforming to a set of
acceptable behaviors in our close-knit community. Relationships
were built around this code of conduct.
I was not well-informed about Catholic theology even though I
scored well in my Catechism tests. Guilt and emptiness pervaded
my life throughout this period. In hindsight, this may have been
the result of traditions that privileged merit and earning good
graces from authority figures – parents, teachers and church
leaders – over forgiveness or grace.
I didn't think in terms of purpose, identity or security. I moved
along life blind and directionless. Many others my age talked
in very definite terms of what they wanted from life, from the
colleges they wanted to attend to years far beyond. For some
reason, I simply didn't think that far ahead.
THE LETDOWN
Changes in life circumstances always made me uneasy. We all
experience change throughout life, and I now see how it affects
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my own kids. Moving to the city of Madras (now Chennai)
for college was the first significant change I experienced.
Nothing was predictable. People around me were different in
temperament, and I felt truly alone for the first time.
Madras Christian College (MCC) was created in 1837 by
Presbyterian missionaries for the purpose of evangelization
among Hindu people groups in Southern India. Its high
academic standing in liberal arts and reputation as a center for
Christian education attract both secular Indians and highly
committed Christians—a heady mixture, as though Wheaton
College and Berkeley were merged together! It would have
been commonplace to find kids smoking pot in a corner of
the wooded, 365-acre campus, and not too far, another group
strumming on guitars and singing praises to God. Not the kind
of place most Christians would want to send kids, although from
my experience, the danger of de-conversion was squarely on
the secular side. Every year scores of unbelievers would come
to faith. To date, I have not heard of a single case that went the
other direction.
Every evening, our hall of residence, called Bishop Heber Hall
(after Reginald Heber, the hymn writer who was the Anglican
bishop of Calcutta) would have Compline services. They were
very comforting, but I had no understanding of the forgiveness
of God when I attended these. I joined the chapel choir to
escape the mild hazing that went on among resident students
on campus. I wasn’t familiar with the hymns, but the more
I considered verses written by Isaac Watts, Reginald Heber,
Augustus Toplady and others, the more I was intrigued by the
strange mixture of chastisement and triumph in them, which I
hadn’t encountered in the ones I’d heard at home.
I was searching, in my own fumbling way. I didn't know where
to look or what I wanted, but I realized that I couldn't come
to terms with my own blasé attitude and the rapidly changing
circumstances in my life. My parents were anxious about me,
and I didn't have an anchoring relationship that could guide me
to find purpose.
A DIVINE AND PERSONAL TRANSACTION
The first time I heard someone speak about a personal
relationship with Christ was my freshman year of college. There
were older students who would come up to me and talk about
this relationship they had with Jesus and ask me questions
which, at the time, did not make much sense to me. The idea
that Jesus died for my sins wasn’t new, but it did not occur to me
that in this very relational, personal way Jesus had accomplished
this for me. (I later learned that the students who had first told
me about Jesus had been constantly praying for me.)
The cognition that the divine transaction was so personal didn't
come until my senior year, when Raphael, a freshman, gathered
up the courage to talk to me about this salvation. We began
talking at 8:30 p.m.
The light dawned on me in the wee hours of October 7, 1995.
After several questions from me, which he tried to answer the
best he could, he asked me if I was ready now to invite Jesus into
my life. We prayed together, and that was it. But it took another
month of Bible reading for me to begin to understand the nature
of Jesus' sacrifice borne out of love for my sake that led him to
the cross. During this month, inexplicably, many other students
began to come to faith every day, as in a revival of sorts, and a
campus-wide fellowship was hobbled together spontaneously.
THE BACKSTORY AND MORE
A month before my conversion, a close friend came to faith and
invited me to go with him to a church service. While there, I
talked to several church members who pressed me to make a
commitment to Jesus. One was so persistent he let me know
that if I didn't, after I died, I would find myself facing an entity
with a pitchfork saying, “barbecue time.” After this unsettling
conversation, I made up my mind to never commit to this
strange faith that relied on fear to drive conviction.
But my friend's conversion still affected me strongly. I kept
wondering what could have appealed to him – by all accounts
a clear thinker and kindhearted person – to make such a
commitment. After my own commitment, we had several
conversations which solidified it. The campus fellowship that
sprung up during this time became a proving ground for our
nascent understanding of the Scriptures to be tested and refined,
often in open conflict with unbelieving students around us who
routinely ridiculed and sharply questioned our faith, to which
we found ourselves frequently unable to respond adequately.
I was an avid journal-keeper, and still have some of my
meditations from the period which I wrote down whenever
I could. When I read through them, a picture of how my
perspective of Jesus began to evolve emerges. The notes are
very personal and intimate. One of the first questions a friend
asked me about the day I became a Christian was whether I
could sense any change in me. My answer was that I did sense
a change, but I couldn't tell exactly what it was. I added that I
hadn't uttered a single swear word because I didn't feel like it.
This must have impressed him because he repeated it to others,
and a day later committed his own life to Christ!
Looking back, I think my real struggle in giving my life to Christ
was pride. As a kid in college with friends who routinely mocked
the born-again Christians on campus, I felt afraid to lose the
reputation I had built for myself as a carefree and confident
young man, not given to superstition and parochial fables.
During that all-night conversation with Raphael, however, that
fear was mysteriously overcome with a strong longing to cast
aside my meaningless bravado and face this insistent call to ask
Christ into my life.
LIFE AFTER CHRIST
A lot of people talk about their conversion and the gradual
changes in their lives, in their perspectives and attitudes. In
my case, those first winds of change came fast and decisive. In
my environment that marked one out by his choices in daily
life, such as movies, books, music, words we used, eating and
drinking habits, not to mention how we responded to the
vulnerable and the poor, whether we responded with grace
to people who sorely tested the limits of our patience, and
other signs of allegiance, I was driven by zeal to identify with
this new community of faith. But I came to understand that
spiritual maturity, the kind that Psalm 1 talks about, comes from
building a foundation of trust and loving dependence on Christ.
This took much longer, and the process was much harder. I
frequently joke with my kids that if I came to faith to be forgiven
so I could just go to heaven, then the pastor who baptized me
by immersion should have just held me down and I would have
gone straight to heaven and skipped every trial that awaited me.
Over time, I came to understand that God's desire, expressed
throughout the Bible, is in building his kingdom, restoring
humanity and all creation, and we have the privilege of working
with him to accomplish this.
In retelling my conversion, it has helped me understand the
purposeful and unrelenting actions of God to fulfill his plan of
redemption, and this strengthens me when situations don't look
so good. In my workplace at a management consulting firm or
in ministry, I have found that every defeat or disappointment
has a place in this redemptive initiative. In the book Mountains
beyond Mountains about Dr. Paul Farmer, who works with
vulnerable populations in Haiti and Rwanda, author Tracy
Kidder quotes Dr. Farmer reflecting on the fact that his work
is about "fighting the long defeat." He goes on to say that we
all want to be on the winning side, but he will not stop simply
because he keeps getting defeated.
This captures our paradox well, of looking forward to assured
victory and chasing defeat, but in Christ, we are more than
conquerors and overcomers to whom the crown of life is given
by the King himself.
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