I was scrolling through Tiktok today on my break at work. I came across a video where the person said “I didn’t grow up Christian. How do I know Christianity is the right path?” The analytical side of my brain wanted to go into some of the things I have learned and the the discoveries that have confirmed some of the stories in the Bible, but even science and evidence can be debated, in fact a lot of people do and skeptics consider them confirmation bias. That isn’t exactly what I wanted to hear back when I was asking the same thing either. So I immediately got to answering as best as I could in a short form answer due to character limits. Here, I will go into more depth.

First, there is nothing that we can say or do to convince someone that isn’t Christian, that it is the one true path. We can show them the life of someone who embodies Christ and can hopefully inspire them, but that isn’t proof. While I did grow up with religion as a child, it was occasional appearances at churches with friends and a brief stint at Sunday school. The rest of the time was spent in a Kingdom Hall with Jehovah Witnesses – and if you know anything about them, that is not your average breed of Christianity (in fact most don’t even consider them Christians). Otherwise, I didn’t grow up as Christian either. In fact, in my young adult years until very recently, I was pagan and slightly practiced witchcraft. So I felt qualified to answer this , now that I have become not a Christian, but a follower of Christ (I make this distinction on purpose but that is a whole different topic but I will use them interchangeably throughout the blog).

The answer is as someone coming from a non-christian background, you don’t know. Let me clarify by saying that it isn’t that you can’t be sure and you’re going on blind faith. It’s that you don’t know it with your logical analytical side of the brain, but rather you FEEL it. Some may debate that but a lot of us coming to walk with Jesus later in life know what I am talking about when I say this. While some are brought up to believe a certain way so it is all they know, people like me, we don’t have that rooted belief and it can be scary once you first start believing. You will doubt yourself. You will be unsure that you are right about what you’re feeling. People who grew up with troubled childhoods and burdened pasts, we don’t have the luxury of trusting very easy – so blind faith is hard.

So how do people like me get to where we are? I can say for me and many others, it wasn’t something planned. Here was my response to the video:

I didn’t grow up in Christianity either. In fact, I was pagan and slightly into witchcraft. When it hit me, it hit me fast and it was like a light switch. I cried for days. I cannot express to you what I felt in that moment. A lot of us don’t choose to be Christian, we were called to it. We were lifted up from a place of darkness and we finally feel safe, whole and worth something. No other belief has been able to make me feel like I have since God walked into my life.

That’s the version that I could give with the forum I was on. My whole world turned upside down overnight. Not everybody’s life changes as quickly as mine did, but for many it does. All it takes is one thing, one prayer, one sign, or one life changing event. I told a lot of people that my life was seemingly leveled out. Even not believing in God, we had good things happening in our life. The truth is, my husband believed in God though. He prayed about everything. In fact, me finding God, that was in his prayers too.

Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have said that was the reason, but I cannot sit here today and say that things aren’t happening since I’ve started praying, so now I very much do believe that it is the reason. There has been so much good in my life since I made that declaration and asked my husband to buy me my first bible. My feeling, is how I know that this is the right path. Now, my goal – my biggest goal – is to learn everything that I can.

If you have read my about me section, you know that I am a full time student and I work full time as well. So beyond that, every waking spare moment I have not actively doing school work, working, or writing blogs like this, is spent in the Bible. The first thing I do in the morning, post a daily scripture. The last thing I do before bed, a theme based scripture study and a Bible in a year reading entry. I fill in other areas of spare time with commentaries, dictionaries and different bible versions sprawled across my table deep diving into different books of the Bible. I have never felt so driven and so called to do anything in my life as much as I have been to study God’s word. I even toyed around with getting a certificate in Theology once I finished my bachelor’s degree – but decided I would learn what I can on my own instead for now.

The things that used to draw me to witchcraft, I found in Christianity. Let me explain because I know that some people will find a problem with that statement. I liked paganism as a broad term because of the reverence for nature … I can do that as a Christian. My mind kept justifying spells and intentions as forms of prayer, that’s just the way I helped myself understand it – but that’s not witchcraft, that Christianity. Even not having been a Christian, I was justifying everything based on things I could understand. I didn’t come to the realization until after I got my first Bible that I was doing that. I also realized very recently that maybe I didn’t practice as a witch that often, because my heart wasn’t in it. My beliefs weren’t as in tune with it as I thought.

I was introduced to Wicca by my sister in high school, but again as a young adult when I first got into being a pagan. What drew me in was the talk of love and light. I was taught that they only did spells for good. That’s well and fine, but many leave Wicca and proceed to a less love and light based form of witchcraft. Grey witch was termed and you could see statements going out such as “cause no harm but take no s***”. But it was a slippery slope. It was easy to get caught up in what we deemed harmless and justify actions because of the kind of person someone was. I saw witches all over social media cursing politicians (namely our current president) when I hated to wish harm on anyone, whether I liked them or not. I couldn’t justify it anymore. So I just became lost all over again.

I recognized, even then that I had a lot of the morals that Christians, true Christians, had. In fact, I barely cussed, I didn’t dress provocatively, I had cut way down on my drinking and never got drunk anymore, I treated others as best as I could and so much more. I can do all that as a follower of Christ. All that was missing for me was the faith.

You see, because of my youth, I felt hurt, lost, alone and even with a great life later on, battled the depression, anxiety and dysfunctional brain that it left me. From that first tear that I shed when I woke up, I have been able to slowly let all of that go.

I want to share my story and inspire others. I want to prove that people, even as they are broken and lost, are enough.

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“The lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed spirit” ~ Psalm 34:18 (ESV)