Found & Lost

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

I grew up believing in miracles. Not just the kind where God slips you an extra nugget at McDonald’s, but the kind where He smote the sickness out of a girl in my youth group. It’s a Pentecostal thing.

At church, people often prayed in tongues, a supernatural language that always sounded made up to me. I never blinked at how strange it all was. Or maybe I blinked too long—prayer was when Satan cast his evil sleep spell. Amen was my alarm clock.

Church was family—made up of my closest friends, my hyungs and nunas, and of course, my actual family: my mom, my sister, and the Holy Father. You know, the one who art in heaven, hallowed be His name. The one who art on earth stayed home on Sundays.

My dad rejected everything about church. To him, it was Korean School with way too many strings attached. But he was the father who took me fishing, rubbed my tummy when it hurt, and fed it fish when it grumbled. Those things have always felt more real to me than the invisible blessings of forgiveness and salvation.

Whenever I worked up the courage, I’d quietly tell him that he was going to Hell after he died. He’d just laugh and say death is when you get the best sleep.

He also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night…

Revelation 14:10-11

When I was in elementary school, I went to a promenade theatre with my church. A promenade theatre doesn’t have seats. The audience follows the actors from scene to scene—basically, you’re a fly on the fourth wall, not just watching from behind it. It’s way too intimate a setting to fart in, which is cruel for a show determined to make you crap your pants.

The first act takes place in a house. We shuffle into a scary guy’s living room—his eyes wild, like Jack Torrance staring through the bathroom door. He’s barking everything and nothing, with all the composure of a rabid dog. His target is a girl, voiceless before her accuser, a prayer lodged in her throat. Does anyone else wanna leave?

Before I can fake a stomach ache, he pulls out a gun. Um, should someone call the police? My body floods with cortisol like it’s ready for flight. It freezes instead. He presses the metal against her head, his finger heavy on the trigger.

BANG!

Her body crumples at my feet, limbs pointing in the wrong directions. It doesn’t feel like acting.

My cowardly bones abandon me, but somehow I jellyfish my way into the next room. It’s hot as hell in here—oh wait. It is Hell.

A single red light glows in the dark, casting long, demonic shadows. Hell music—whatever that is—plays in the background, underscored by agonized screams. I can’t tell if I want to scream or cry.

We are not alone.

I’m standing in front of the Devil and the killer who might still have his gun.

Every bad thing I’ve ever done floods my brain: listening to secular music, playing Starcraft, hiding my mom’s clothes when I got mad at her. I try to take inventory of my good deeds… there isn’t much. I’m stuck here forever.

It was actually only about ten minutes—thank the Lord, who greets us at the final stop. His booming Mufasa voice comforts me from hidden speakers. The girl is here too—looks like her fatal head injury healed up nicely. A cool breeze of air conditioning lets me know it’s safe to unclench my butt.

I feel small and out of place, as one should in front of God. But the strumming harps remind me to come as I am, that all are welcome. Except, you know, the ones that aren’t.

I promenade out of heaven with the Word of God in my heart: bad people go to Hell. From that point on, I try to be a good person—powered by my lizard brain’s fear of hot rooms. But that’s about as far as I get. I believe in Christianity enough to believe in Hell—but not enough to believe in God. Until I saw Him for real.

And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues… they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.

Mark 16:17-18

Let’s fast forward to middle school. I’m piled into a rickety church van, covered in puberty and failing hard at a Kangta haircut. We’re road tripping down to a church in Florida called Brownsville Assembly of God—it’s famous (or infamous) for revivals that showcase God’s power in all its glory.

Service starts predictably with worship, just like every other church I’ve been to. But that’s where the similarities end. Back home, the setup is modest: misfit instruments, an overhead projector, and an obnoxious tambourine. Here, they’ve got fog machines, PowerPoint, and a praise team that practices for more than thirty minutes before service. I follow along—off-key and mumbly as usual—but my claps are on point today.

The sermon is… actually really good. The guest speaker bounces around like Kevin Hart on his fifth Red Bull, screaming about the strippers who go to his church—and how that’s the point of church. That sounds Christ-like to me. I love my church, but I’m pretty sure if a stripper ever showed up, so would a dress code. Makes me wonder if I’m missing the point too.

Next up is the altar call. Back in the Old Testament, the altar was where animals were sacrificed before God. Altars these days don’t have any of the fun stuff—no blood, no entrails, no fire. Just a sacrifice of self that’s purely symbolic.

I’ve done altar calls before—one benefit of symbolic sacrifice is that you can keep doing it. One time, I forgot to wake up when the altar call ended, and the pastor just left me there for everyone to laugh at. 

But that was nothing like this. God made this one impossible to sleep through.

An eager crowd lines up like dominoes in front of the stage to receive prayer. The pastor walks down the rows, filled with the Spirit, touching people’s foreheads. Some are so overwhelmed by God’s presence they collapse to the ground. Well, almost. Two guys follow the pastor around, catching them mid-fall and easing them down.

Some pop right back up. Others just lay there. A few convulse—maybe the pastor should stay close just in case someone’s head starts spinning. There’s no way this many people could fake it. This has to be a God thing… right?

Meanwhile, the sanctuary is exploding with miracles. The pastor points at people in the crowd, shouting in tongues and in English. “You are free from addiction!” “You are healed of disease!” The congregation surges with his holy energy. People come forward, surrendering cigarettes, pocketknives, and condoms.

I hear God pounding on the door of my heart.

Back at the hotel, a nuna from my church—possibly named Grace—shares her testimony. She used to feel a sharp pain whenever her bladder was full—something to do with her ovaries. My brain jumps to over-easy eggs before she explains that during prayer in Brownsville, while holding her pee, she felt God take the pain away. I don’t get all the medical stuff, but her story hits me like a cartoon anvil: God is mighty, and He is here.

I can’t believe it. Actually, for the first time, I can. This isn’t a theatre where actors bow at the end. Grace is a real person I see every week. God healed her. Who needs a leap of faith?

I take a deep breath. I kneel before an almighty God—a God as tangible as my dad’s prickly beard. Everything is about to change.

Forget the Christian walk—this boy’s fired up to sprint. Sure, a lot of the excitement is a better afterlife. But there’s also something new—a real togetherness with God. I clutch my W.W.J.D. bracelet and whisper, Yes, Jesus. I would do that too. I feel like I could hug anyone, and I do.

Now that God and I are best friends, I toss my doubts in the trash for good.

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

James 1:6

After a week or so, the doubts start creeping back—the honeymoon phase is short and sweet. Did a doctor ever confirm Grace’s healing? My family switched churches, so I never found out.

Even so, I’m a Christian now, albeit a skeptical one. Despite the ongoing tug-of-war between my budding faith and old doubts, life is much better. I finally have a purpose beyond turning oxygen into carbon dioxide.

Church becomes the center of my world. Bible studies, prayer meetings, fellowship outings—I want all the Jesus. These are my happiest years. There’s nothing like living life with an almighty God in your corner. Every problem has an answer, every struggle has a purpose—placebo or not, there is strength in that mindset.

My dad’s salvation tops my prayer list—I have to get to him before the cigarettes do. The thought of him in Hell makes me sick, especially since, you know, I won’t be joining him anymore. I evangelize harder than ever, with all the subtlety of a used car salesman. He never takes me seriously—he never takes anything seriously. He just replies, a little too smugly, that one day I’ll realize it’s all made up.

Every now and then, Satan whispers, “Psst… evolution sounds pretty legit.” But I power through with prayer and mental censorship. Through high school and college, I build my faith like a Jenga tower, doubts poking at every block.

Over the years, I read the Bible cover to cover… ten times. Once, I even slogged through the ESV Study Bible, footnotes and all. I figure if I can cram a giant God into my tiny brain, I can finally silence my doubts and become a true believer. Isn’t that what God wants? But the more I gorge on Bible facts, the more confused I get.

Church is no place for answers. I’m too scared to ask my questions—they burn with blasphemous anger. I forgave my dad—so why can’t you, God? You sentence him to eternal fire… for what, exactly? Why not just give him community service for a few centuries?

Maybe Satan didn’t rebel. Maybe he just asked the same questions out loud.

When I’m twenty-something, I decide to seek the truth. Not the Christian truth—the truth truth, using whatever first principles thinking I can manage. I know the cost of eating from the tree of knowledge—Hell is back in play. But I lean into my doubts, or maybe Satan shoved me. The tension between faith and doubt erupts into war, shredding my reality to pieces.

And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.

Luke 8:13

Five minutes. What could possibly go wrong in five minutes? That’s how long I give myself to be an atheist—just a quick peek at the world, unfiltered by faith. I got the idea from a YouTube video on a day I was feeling recklessly curious.

When the timer starts, every doubt I’ve ever had about Christianity melts away. I don’t have to calculate how all the animals fit on Noah’s ark. I don’t have to make sense of a God who sends people to Hell. I finally understand why I never found God in the tea leaves of my life.

God’s holy word is just ink on paper. His sovereign will, patterns imagined from chaos. His mighty followers, evolved monkeys.

This is horrible.

I realize, for the first time, that I am a blip on a rock spinning through infinite space. Its creator doesn’t love me, or even think about me. In fact, it doesn’t think at all. It’s just a big bang, bound to the same laws of physics as I am.

I frantically grasp for my purpose. I used to be a child of God. Now what am I, just the end result of a long chain of cause and effect? What is the meaning of that? What is the meaning of anything?

My heart pounds in a hollow chest, pumping meaningless life through my body. This is when I would normally pray, but there’s no one on the other line. There never was.

As old questions move out, new ones move in. If God doesn’t exist, why do we? Is atheism the default, or is there another truth? How can I be sure of any of this?

Will this little thought experiment break my mom’s heart?

The timer beeps.

I can’t turn the five minutes back off.

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-5

Where did I land in all this? I don’t know—I’m still in free fall. If I’m any kind of Christian still, it’s the Christmas and Easter kind, with the occasional bonus Sunday to pacify my mom. These days, I call myself a nihilist, though what I really want is for something to matter again. 

On a personal level, of course things matter—my family, recycling, the Hawks. But on a cosmic scale, the Sun will one day swallow the Earth, breaking everything down into atoms. The Jeons, plastic bottles, and Trae Young—all bound to the same fate. The path we take to get there feels arbitrary. This is why no one asks me to speak at graduations.

I chose Ecclesiastes 1 as the passage for my wedding. It’s my favorite chapter in the Bible, and probably the least romantic. The author reflects on the cyclical nature of life: always moving, but never forward. And what’s the point of moving forward when every path leads to the same end?

The more I try to fill the emptiness, the more it fills me. Most days, I shove these thoughts into the same mental closet where I keep repressed horrors—like the fact that my kids will one day become teenagers. I still turn it over now and then, maybe out of habit. But I’m burnt out from all the asking, seeking, and knocking. I just want the questions to leave me alone.

My son will start asking them soon. My mom tells him Bible stories, the same ones she told me growing up. I’ll plead the Fifth. He’ll probably get mad that I didn’t plead the Tenth, his favorite number. Hopefully, the courtroom drama that follows distracts him from inheriting my confusion.

In retrospect, I never had a relationship with God—I had one with church. God was more like a friend of a friend I met once in Brownsville. I don’t think we ever connected spiritually—my faith was mostly in my head. It’s hard to make friends with someone when you constantly question their existence.

Prayers have always felt like messages in a bottle—tossed into the heavens, hoping an angel flying around will see it. I’m told he answers all of them. I just need proof of delivery—signed by God, or at least Moses. I could never tell the difference between providence and coincidence. God spoke in a language that sounded a lot like my own imagination.

I know the Bible is available in plain English. But it was copied, translated, and interpreted from ancient languages by people—people who’ve gotten it wrong, again and again. I can nod along with a lot, but this is the block I can’t get over: trusting in God means trusting the middlemen—or trusting that they acted on God’s behalf while their biases, agendas, and flaws were supernaturally set aside. Maybe God’s Word is true. I just don’t know if we still have access to that truth. I can’t build faith on a foundation that shaky.

I don’t read the Bible anymore, but I still pray sometimes. I miss the late night talks. Dear God, if you’re out there… Maybe I’m still hoping for a sign in the clouds: Yes, this is God. And you’re thinking of the number 63,942.

I pray about the atheist things I struggle with. What even is morality if it comes from imperfect humans? With the right spin, couldn’t it be whatever I want? And if so, how do I not become a sociopath? I’ve got a long list of these if I ever meet Big Bang.

We simply don’t have the tools to solve life’s mysteries. The questions don’t stop—they just loop, like the sun, hastening to the place where it rises. That sucks. I know, I know—that’s why it’s called a leap of faith. But I don’t want to leap. I want the answers spoonfed to me in a Morgan Freeman voice.

Maybe that’s what faith is—not just believing what you can’t see, but being okay with not seeing everything. It’ll take a miracle for me to get there. Maybe one day I’ll believe in them again.