Chicken Soup for the Soul Presents Teens Talkin' Faith by Jack Canfield

Author:Jack Canfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
ISBN: 9780757397936
Publisher: HCI, The Life Issues Publisher
Published: 2010-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

. . . I ACTUALLY BECAME A PRETT Y HARDCORE ATHEIST . . .

My life has been rather different from that of the ordinary American teenager. I was born in South Korea and lived in Pakistan and Russia before settling down in the United States. My father was the CEO of a large company for much of Europe and Asia, and as such, I had no material desires and not much strife. It wasn’t the stereotypical boyhood, filled with Americana, dogs, and bike rides, but it was by no means unhappy. All in all, as a young boy I felt very secure. However, it is precisely when you think that all is going well that things seem to come crashing down around you.

I didn’t have too much of a relationship with God. I went to church every Sunday because my parents wanted me to, I liked the music, and I thought the wine tasted kind of funny. But I was still too young to have a deep emotional connection. Therefore, when my dad declared a family meeting one day and spoke the fateful word “divorce,” instead of turning to God for strength and support, I turned away. I cursed Him. I hated Him. For a boy of ten, life had suddenly lost all meaning. With my dad no longer in the family, our main economic resource was lost, so my mother, my sister, and I were forced to leave Moscow and move to the United States. From the life of economic ease that I had come to expect, I suddenly moved into a smaller house, attended a public school, and experienced problems I hadn’t had before. Throughout all of this, the only role God played for me was that of a scapegoat, someone I could blame for my new hardships. I seemed to hunt for reasons why He couldn’t exist, and I actually became a pretty hardcore atheist. After a few years, my mother remarried, and we moved again. I entered a local middle school there, and I quickly turned depressive and suicidal. Finally, I told my mom of all the problems I was having, and we decided to make a rather ironic decision—for an atheist, that is. We decided that I should leave my secular public school for a private Christian school. Understandably, this rather forced me to reconsider God for the first time in years. It also gave me the chance to look at the person I was and how much I had changed from the happy child I had been before the divorce. It took me most of middle school to make this realization, so I entered high school with the resolution to change and begin with a clean slate. I wanted to live by Scripture and be a good person. The final nail on my atheistic coffin occurred when I went on a school retreat. The love and support I felt there convinced me that God existed and actually had my best interest in mind. After

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