Bjcorbin's Blog

Bryan and his wife Anita reside in Chillicothe, Ohio with their four children.  He is a twelve year veteran of the U.S. Navy, whose primary motivation for writing is to find expression for the things he receives during times of prayer.  What follows are his thoughts about his journey of faith.  To learn more about Bryan, also see the articles posted in the “Personal” catagory of this blog.

I’m the kind of person who has a hard time taking someone else’s word for things.  To some that makes me rebellious, to others it makes me a skeptic and to some others it might even make me seem wise.  To be honest, I’m sure that I’ve been all of those things and probably many more.  At times this trait has caused me needless pain (e.g. do you really need to touch the stove to believe that it’s hot) and at other times it has helped me to avoid traps that I’ve seen many of my contemporaries fall into.  Regardless of how one might view this particular aspect of my personality, it has everything to do with the way my faith was formed.

Though I was raised in a devoutly Catholic family, my belief system was somewhat stunted by the fact that I struggled to find my own identity.  Because I didn’t see how or where I fit in this world, I struggled to find a “present tense” for God as well.  I believed that there was a God, that He created me and that when I died, I’d come face to face with Him (which wasn’t something that I necessarily looked forward to).  I believed the Jesus story and had a sincere reverence for the things connected to Him; but in my young mind, God was a world away (i.e. in heaven), Jesus had died 2000 years ago and as best as I could tell, I was on my own.  Though I had the vague impulse to “be a good person”, that wasn’t enough to keep me from sampling the things the world had to offer.

At that time in my life, what the world seemed to be offering was sex, drugs and rock-n-roll, and to be honest I pretty much dove in with both feet.  While I wouldn’t claim to have tasted every dish on the buffet, I did partake of enough of them to learn some valuable lessons.  I learned that sex with people you don’t really know or care about can be exhilarating in the heat of the moment, but that it ultimately leaves you feeling empty emotionally and spiritually.  From that I concluded that forbidden fruit is enticing only as long as it stays forbidden; and that once you’ve gone there, it almost instantly grows stale.  My experience with controlled substances taught me that everything that goes up, must come down; and that the descent always seems more profound and sustained than the visit to the summit.  And though I’d still claim some fondness for rock-n-roll, I found that no matter how loud I turned up the music, it couldn’t drown out the voices in my own head.  While the rock-n-roll lifestyle can create the illusion of a party, I found that it is only those things that have the ability to penetrate our hearts that cause us to truly celebrate.  I emerged from this season of wandering disappointed and convinced that there had to be more to life than what I’d experienced.

Despite my disillusionment with what the world had to offer, I wasn’t necessarily ready to embrace, what to me was still, an abstract God.  Though I found myself more willing to explore the possibilities, I approached Him with the same skepticism that had become a hallmark of my life’s journey.  I couldn’t just accept the Bible’s claim to be God’s word, because after all, if it was a counterfeit, it would undoubtedly make that same claim.  To my way of thinking, if the Bible was really “God breathed”, then the truth that I found there ought to be transcendent and life changing.  Unlike my experience with the world, I dipped my toe gingerly into the pool of divinity, with little expectation of being truly fulfilled.

Though I made the mistake of reading the entire Old Testament first, it was ultimately in the gospels and the epistles of the New Testament that I began to see the story of my own life unfold.  Though much of it seemed counterintuitive, I recognized that I’d always felt more blessed when I gave than when I received; that I’d always reaped what I’d sown; that my attempts to gain my life had ultimately caused me to lose it; and that no matter how extravagant my house (i.e. life) may have looked on the exterior, without a firm foundation, it was destined to crumble at the first real storm.  I also discovered that when Jesus departed 2000 years ago, He did not leave us as orphans, worshipping a historical God; but instead that He’d given us the gift of His Holy Spirit, so that He could always be in the “present tense” for those who believe.  As I began to look at the world through new eyes, I began to see that God’s invisible qualities are plain to see within the things that He’s created and I began to recognize His character in some of the people that I knew.  The more I focused on spiritual things (i.e. the unseen realm), the more the world (i.e. the seen realm) began to make sense to me.  Though it took some time, I was eventually able to suspend my skepticism long enough to take Him literally when He said, “My sheep know my voice; they hear me and they follow”.  Once I began to recognize His voice, I realized that He’d been speaking to me all along.  I loved what I heard Him saying and I loved the way He said it.

What I’d found wasn’t a philosophy, or a ritual, or a mantra, or an alternative lifestyle, or a new vehicle to obtain my desires, or something to fill up my Sunday mornings.  It was a real live person, who knew me better than I knew myself and who could make sense of a world, and a life, that I often found confusing.  I found in Him a place where I could be myself and not be ashamed or feel out of place.  In Him, I found a peace and a hope that I’d never experienced; and something within me knew that this was my destiny.  In the years since then, I’ve learned to trust His voice, in a way that I could’ve trusted anything before.  I don’t have to touch the stove anymore to figure out whether it’s really hot.  I found that what sex, drugs and rock-n-roll had promised, could only be delivered by faith, hope and love.  There are some who might suppose that I’ve lost my mind to believe in such things, but at this point in my experience, it would take more faith than I could muster to believe in anything else.  I believe that there is something inside of us that already knows how to be one with our Creator; because before we were in our mother’s womb, He knew us and I feel sure that on some level we also knew Him.  The greatest breakthrough’s I’ve ever had in my relationship with God have always felt more like remembering something that I’d forgotten, than learning something that I’ve never known.  I don’t think that our journey is really to a place we’ve never been before; I sense that it is ultimately a walk back to where we came from.  When we get there, we’ll realize that it was Him all along.  While I don’t pretend to have figured out all the mysteries of life and while I don’t have an answer for every skeptic’s question, I have come to know “Him” and because of who He is, I believe!