This week is packed full of special days and occasions for me. Monday is the two year anniversary of the day I started seeing demons, and the one year anniversary of the my first SCAE blog post. (How fitting is it then that it’s also the day I was asked to consider re-joining the team.) Today is the birthday of the most influential friend I’ve ever had and Friday is the day I met the man who later became my Christian mentor and lead me down the road to becoming a Christian theist. Being that this is a special week I’d like to present a little personal reflection in this post, and I’ll also be giving an over view of blog posts I want to do this year in a supplementary post.
It was a conversation on December 18, 2007 with a dear friend of mine that started it all. Over Windows Messenger we were talking about nothing of particular interest. Then she mentioned the up coming Christmas holiday and how she wasn’t a Christian yet still loved the season. As a natural spin off of that comment we discussed our own personal beliefs on the nature of reality. She held to some form of eastern animism and I at that point though I believed Jesus Christ was a revelation of God, was not exactly a Christian.
After this deep conversation I felt a renewed interest philosophy. I had studied the works of the classical Greeks as a side interest in my world civ class. I had a few of my own theories on the nature of the soul and such which came from this study of Plato and the others but I had yet to really stop and ask how much sense this made given what I know about the world and analyze other forms of thought. But this interest in philosophy quickly became an obsession to find the truth.
I’ll skip a few dozen things and move to the first encounter. It was a little neighborhood side street where no body was around. I slowly made my way up the street not really doing anything interesting. Just then for what seemed like no reason at… I’m not even sure how to describe it but I realized I could see outside of myself. Perhaps my own experience was analogous to that of an out of body or near death experience I really couldn’t say. I do know that it was as though I was standing behind myself and looking through 3D theater glasses. But I wasn’t alone, standing directly over my shoulder I could see a yellow — thing. It looked just like the demons you see in manga he had wings and the whole deal. Then in a flash it was gone, I was back in my own head and could see in front of me. Not knowing what had happened I just kept walking.
Over the next seven days I continued to see the thing who I nicknamed Yellow Eyes after the Supernatural character. I thought I had lost my mind. I — I really wasn’t sure what to do. That same dear friend who’s birthday it is and who started began the conversation gave me the advice. “Keep asking questions.” It spoke to me several times, never saying anything I could understand. It gave me a queasy feeling in my gut that to this day I don’t think has gone away. I was afraid to sleep at night what if it killed me in my sleep.
Skipping the next six months… I eventually was able to get the problem under control. Now here I stand, broken and changed. I had seen more pain than I can ever describe that to this very day I have yet to recover from. I had realized that for 16 years of my life I was dedicated to a lie and I wanted to make up for it. I now stood with that truth I had been seeking for so long I know that the truth is Jesus Christ is Lord.
Really not sure what to do I turned to a few internet searches and discussion boards for guidance. I began posting on the TeenSpot.com religion board but was quickly as most are met with responses from the skeptical new atheists movement. After several painful conversations with teenage skeptics I wanted desperately to prove my worldview to them. Not only to them I wanted to keep a promise I had made and share the gospel with that dear friend of mine. But I knew she wouldn’t be willing to listen and they wouldn’t listen without something to back up my claims. I then discovered the the field of Apologetics and the rest is all history I suppose.
