The Sean McDowell Show - From Buddha to Jesus

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

How does a former Buddhist convert to Christianity and use history to help bolster the Christian faith? Susan Lim unpacks how the history of the Bible impacts our faith and anchors us through the changing tides of time. The story of Scripture, while messy and complicated at times, is also the story of how God shepherded his people throughout the centuries in and through these writings. Christians came to accept certain documents as inspired and not others, and how the books we now call the Bible came to be assembled and canonized as authoritative. The same Spirit of God who oversaw the writing of Scripture continues to be at work actively in us in our receiving and reading of it, to grow us in faith and maturity. Light of the Word: How Knowing the History of the Bible Illuminates Our Faith by Susan Lim (https://a.co/d/5WB49J0) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

why would a former buddhist become a christian our guest today dr susan lin and the author of a new book we're going to discuss called light of the word of course we would go to the temple every sunday it was cultural when i came to faith i remember thinking how am i going to share this with the monk when i came to faith was when i was now susan if i'm not mistaken we started the same semester at Biola didn't we we sure did that was a lot of fun it seems like eons ago but it also seems not that long ago just how time works and that was fun to start together i i agree with that i i can't tell how thrilled i was when this book came out i'm like wow you're weighing in as a historian into issues that intersect with apologetics we've got to have a conversation about this but before we get to your book i'm really interested in hearing your story

coming out of a buddhist background and becoming a christian so maybe take us back and just tell us about your family growing up sure um to be honest my dad was more of a nominal Buddhist he did whatever my mom wanted and she was hardcore and so like anyone they set the tone I think for the family and we would go to a lot of temples and my mom would really lean into her Buddhist faith whenever there was something that was hard for her. So of course, we would go to the temple every Sunday, and we would have different kinds of liturgical rituals during the week. But I remember one day when I was maybe really small, and she got a call

and she found out that her dad had passed. And she immediately started doing these chants. And she then got some water and she threw them out in different, like, northwest, southeast. But it was in a different kind of pattern. And I don't know if that was specific to her understanding of, the spiritual realm, but that and then we would also have something called Chesa, which is not necessarily Buddhist, but it goes along the lines of maybe Asian culture with Buddhism. And that's when you would have different kinds of ceremonies for your deceased ancestors. So it was a very spiritually rich upbringing, and she would spend about a full week preparing for these feasts. And she had to do it often

because we had a lot of deceased ancestors. And my dad's the oldest on his side, and my mom's the oldest on her side. So a lot of that fell on them because it's the law of promogenitor in a way in their Asian way. And so then we would set up the table, set up incense, pictures of the deceased, and then you would bow down to them. And you would literally lay prostrate and you would bow down to these pictures and the food. And then we would get chopsticks and put them on top of each of the dishes. And then every so often we would have to move the chopsticks to symbolize they're eating now something else on the table. And it was a very interesting cadence along with the weekly and then those kinds of things

that happen. So yeah, always aware that there must be something beyond just what we see. So that was most of my learning. So you obviously live in Southern California near Biola, but you described going to a Buddhist temple regularly. Where did you grow up? Well, I was born in South Korea, and then I moved to Guam when I was three because my dad's work visa came through Guam. And while we were there, although my parents were Buddhist, they wanted to send us to a good school.

So we went to Catholic school. And that's when I first found out about this guy named Jesus. And to be honest, I didn't like my teachers. They were very strict. And this is probably way before, of course, where everything is more vigilantly guarded. But the nuns would hit us with the ruler if we made mistakes. And so we would have to put out our wrists just like that. And she would just like slam it hard if we did something that was not to her liking. And, but by God's grace, I remember thinking as I'm learning about,

because they would bring in scripture and they would talk about, you know, God is love and God is this and somewhere in my heart, it must have been the Holy Spirit. I was thinking, you might be wearing the nun garb, but I don't think you're representing the God that I'm learning about. Well, so I remember thinking like, I think you and there was this one moment where it was the last day of first grade. And we all wanted to go in and give our teacher a hug because no matter what, you love your teacher when you're young.

And so you wanted to give her a hug. But there was this kid who was sick. And as he was trying to hug her, I still remember her name. I don't know if I should say it. We'll just call her Sister Anne. And he went to go hug Sister Anne. And she literally pushed him to the point where he almost kind of like fell backwards. And he was like, don't touch me. And I was like, dang, that's not very loving.

So that's the first time though, I started to understand, oh, there's this God, I think he came as a man. So that was in the back of my mind as we're living out this Buddhist faith in at home and in the daily. Then we moved to California when I was in second grade. And we lived in Fullerton. And there was great community of Buddhist believers in Garden Grove. And so that's where we went for Temple. Oh, very interesting. Yeah, it was out of a home that was completely converted into a temple. And so when you drive in, it looks like a normal driveway, but they had the big garage reconfigured to a study area,

and then the house was a temple. Now, that's amazing. You have memories thinking about God all the way back in first grade before you even moved to Southern California. Uh, there's like, God was working in your heart back then. Let's take a couple of steps back before we get to your kind of conversion, becoming a Christian. You'd describe your dad as kind of a nominal Buddhist. Your mom was very committed. Do you come from a line of Buddhists that go way back? Were they first generation Buddhists? How much was this in your family on one side or the

other? Yeah, I think it was probably, and that's a great question. I think it was probably generational because it was cultural. And so for them, I don't really know, let's say like my mom's siblings or my mom's parents, because they all passed early. I've never had a chance to really sit down and talk with them. But my mom came from a really tough background. She was around 15 oldest out of five siblings when her mom passed. And she was in charge of all of them and then her dad remarried and it's the classic stepmom and so she dispersed all of the siblings and made them go live with different relatives and that's when she I think my mom really started to just double down on her Buddhist faith because she needed something bigger than herself. So I'm not really sure about all the other kinds of people around in her relatives,

you know, how they would feel towards Buddhism. But I know for sure when her mom passed, she had this need for something greater. Now, something crazy, Sean, is that when, man, I didn't plan on sharing this, but I'll share it. My mom came from a really wealthy family and her dad, she said, had these like kimchi jars. So they're as tall as I am, about five feet. And they're huge. And they would put it in the earth. So it would be like a natural refrigeration. And so, but instead of that,

they would just fill it with cash. And so that's where they would put the money. And one day she remembers men coming and taking all of that in an investment that my grandfather was making. But it turned out to be a bad investment and they lost everything. Wow. So overnight they became almost homeless. And she had such a life of privilege.

They didn't know how to pivot. And her mom, so my maternal grandmother, worked tirelessly for years to pay off that debt. And the moment that she was able to accomplish that, she got cancer. And she was so sick that she wasn't able to move at all. Now, as the oldest, my mom had to wake up. She said she lived in a city called Daegu, which is in like a countryside in Korea. She would wake up at early hours to go get medicine somewhere. And she said dogs would chase her. It was just so scary before the sun would come out. And one morning when she was in that really dire strait situation these nuns came up to her and said can we help you and she told them about her mom who was

so sick and they came and they prayed over her and my grandmother who wasn't able to move at all after these nuns came and prayed for her, she was able to set up for the first time in like eight months. Wow. And that's when my mom started to first, and you just see God's pursuit of us, right, in all of this. And so my mom was just amazed. But as these nuns continue to come, there was a woman who lived in the village, who is considered to be in Korean is called mudang, which I don't know the exact translation. I don't want to say witch doctor because that sounds a little bit too harsh, but maybe like a spiritist. And this lady, she kicked out the nuns and she ripped up the Bible and she was just saying these are evil spirits and she kicked them out and she prayed this kind of

chant like in her way over my grandmother to expel these nun spirits and so because of all of that, my grandmother was, oh, I think confused. And then she actually passed away soon after that. And so that experience has always stayed with my mom. And there's so much more to my mom's story. But I think because of that, she relied so heavily on the unseen. And that's why she was committed to Buddhism, because that was the faith that she had known, and the tradition that she had been taught. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. That's powerful. It sounds like both for you and for your mom, the idea of atheism and secularism was never a pull. There's a reality of a supernatural worldview. It's just what is that supernatural worldview and how do I best access it? Is that fair? Right. Absolutely.

Okay. Wow. That's an amazing story. i lost track of the chronology was that before you were born when this happened or you were younger that goes way back way back yeah way back so my grandmother passed when my mom was about 15. oh okay way back yeah okay got it so a lot of your mom's commitment to this being avid, the way you described it, is just the hurt and the past and experiences that she's had. Buddhism, at least for a season in her life, probably really helped her cope with that and gave her hope and had some positive experiences in her life. Is that fair? That's right. That's right. That's right. And the community that we had at the

Temple and Garden Grove, they were just the kindest people. I still remember the monk who would lead our sessions. He was so sweet. And I was into like dance and cheerleading in high school. And he would critique our arms. Like he'd be like, yeah, your arms are a little bit too bent. And he would teach us how to do like, you know, the right kind of like batting when we wanted to do sports or he was just very personable. Now, I know that I might be jumping it a little bit, but when I came to faith, I remember thinking, how am I going to share this with the monk?

He's going to be so heartbroken because he was so important to us. And when I got to faith, I left for college and we still wrote to each other. He was kind of a big part of our lives still. And I wrote him this long letter sharing the gospel with him and I still remember the letter he wrote back where he said this in writing and he said it again when I saw him which was I don't mind if you believe in God because Buddhists believe in a creator God too right they believe in different kinds of levels of God and and when you reach nirvana and all of that. But he said, just don't believe that Jesus is God. He said, yeah, he's like, there's one caution. It's that you can believe Jesus was a good man, like Buddha was a good man.

And he was someone that was a great teacher. But just draw line there like he can't be god as long as you can promise that and i was like didn't you read my letter that was the heart of what i said that he was god he is god and so um i still remember thinking wow that's the heart of it yeah okay so let's let's go back to your story you have you grew up in this buddhist family it was meaningful to your mom you moved to southern california you have a community that supported you and loved you including this monk go to a catholic school and you have memories of just thinking this catholic's not really living out what this God of love is supposed to be like. Walk me through maybe some of the other steps.

Or actually, let me ask you this. How old were you when you first would say you were a Christian? When I made my first confession is what I call it. When I came to faith was when I was 17. You were 17. Okay. So you hit first grade. Walk us through some of the meaningful steps leading up to 17

where you're in a position to say, I'm a Christian, I believe in Jesus. Yeah, I feel so lucky, and I'm sure that a lot of people have a similar story, but God has always revealed himself to me in a variety of ways but one is nature and so when we moved to California my parents worked hard they worked very long hours out of dry cleaners that they bought and they would wake up leave before I think they would leave at like 530 in the morning and didn't come home until maybe like eight at night. And so we were basically on our own a lot. And for some reason, like rainy days were especially hard. You would, you know, like all the other kids would get picked up or something. But like on days that I was irresponsible,

didn't bring my umbrella, I would have to walk home in the rain or something and come home and just be like, oh man, like it's a cold, empty house, right? But I would do that. But even as I was walking home in the rain, I started to feel sad. And then it's the Holy Spirit would just remind me, you know, like I'm with you. And there was something about even the rain that seemed something different than just rain it was something um i don't know it was something that was i don't know if fun is the right word but something that was just okay or on days that were sunny we had i don't know if they're actually called four o'clock flowers maybe they are but my mom called them four o'clock flowers so that's what we call them but they're these vibrant flowers that open up fully right around i think that time of the day and one day i was kind of sad and i was just sitting there and i don't i don't think i was praying necessarily to god but i would just you know i would say like

all right is someone there you, is there someone out there? And one day I just saw these flowers. They all just kind of opened up all at once. And it was like God saying like, yep, like I'm here. And, oh, I don't know if you remember this, but there was this one season where California was gripped with, I think it was called, I think his name was Richard Ramirez. And he was called the Midnight Stalker or something like that.

And it was just so scary. And that's when I started to really pray. And I've kept a journal since I was in grade school. And I went back and looked at some of it. And it starts when I was younger, it was like Dear Diary. But when we're in the Richard Ramirez phase, I start praying to God. And I say, you know,

I know you're the one who can keep us safe. And when I would journal like that, I would feel his heart and his presence with me. And I went through a really tough phase. It was just something that was really a dark phase in my life. And it was this feeling of, so one night I was just kind of like undone, just kind of crying in bed, just really sad. And I literally felt this love enveloping me. It was just this almost like a

warm presence. And I just knew at that moment that God existed. And I always held on to that. I just didn't know his name. I knew it wasn't Buddha. It was just too small compared to what I had experienced in those moments of nature when I felt God's just love enveloping me. And then when I was in high school, a friend of mine who was a very devoted Christian started inviting me to her church. Got it. Can I jump in here for just a second? So you described these experiences of nature, kind of this fear. And I remember the stories about Richard Ramirez. I don't remember what happened, but I remember as a kid, like that was kind of a scary thing. And then this experience of love. When you say Buddhism was too small, what do you mean by that being too small?

That's such a great question, Sean. I never had that kind of deep peace at the temple. So in Buddhism, there's something called Kwanseum Bosa in Korean. It's like a chant. It's almost like Hail Mary full of grace, I think for Catholics. And then we would have rosaries like they were made out of jade

for different kinds of chants that we would do. And none of the teachings, none of the rituals, none of the songs, none of the prayers ever did anything more than make me feel like i want to do this well because i want to belong here versus you know when god talks about peace that surpasses comprehension because only the prince of peace can give it himself and uh that, so this is jumping way forward, but Brian, my husband, he had a brain

tumor a few years ago. And when he did, people asked me like, how are you not undone? And I said, it's because God's holding me together. It's just his divine presence. And so for Buddhism, it was, it cannot be life because that's not where God exists. It's not where he obviously is going to use to like bring, he loves the whole world. And so he lets the sunshine on the righteous and the unrighteous. And he gives people who don't all sorts of gifts that he's searching for can only be from jesus's name yeah okay that that makes sense now let's fast forward to high school so you have this spiritual yearning you've had certain spiritual experiences that suggest there's a God beyond what you saw within Buddhism. And then this friend starts inviting you, telling you about Jesus. Connect those dots for us.

Yeah. So in the back of my mind, because of Catholic school, I had always thought, okay, I know that there's a division between Catholicism and Protestantism. And of course, I had no idea about the extra books in the Bible that the Catholics believe in and all of that at that point. I'm just talking about the main books, right? The 66 that we look at. I always thought in the back of my mind, out of all of the years that I've lived, 17 at that point, that seemed the truest to me. And so that deserves the most rigorous analysis. And so when my friend started inviting me to her church, I hit her with some hard

questions, and she wasn't able to answer them. So I said, well, I read somewhere that Jesus said to hate your mother and father. So like, what's up up with that and she wasn't able to answer and i was like yeah i'm not going to go to church with you this sunday or um i'm going to talk about you know like what does it mean to die to yourself like why would you die like that just makes no sense and so god is like for you like why would you die and she wasn't she was such a wonderful person she was like 14 or however old she was. So I was like, I'm not going to go to church with you either that weekend. But she blessed her heart, continued to pray for me and continue to pursue me and would share the love of God whenever she

could. She shared the love of God with me often through food. She would just bring like all these like, and we were just, we were just really good friends. But one day I asked my mom, can I go to church? And she said, no, absolutely not. And she said, if you go, then there will be warring spirits in our house. And you're inviting this, like this chaos. And so if you go to church, you will bring back that spirit. And if anything bad happens to our family, then it'll be your fault. I was like, wow, mom, that's dramatic. Wow. So I was like, okay, I guess I'm not going to church. But this is such a bad, bad part of my life, Sean.

But I was supposed to go to a party. And we went and it was shut down by the police. It was just horrible. And it was pretty early in the night. And I was like, I have nowhere to go. It's Friday night, and you're all dressed up, ready to go. And then my friend called me and she said, hey, I'm going to go to church. You want to come with me? And really it was, I had nowhere else to go. And so I went with her and I went to this church. They were very charismatic and it's not the church I would choose for myself, but they were praying in tongues and they were just praying over people in tongues without interpretation from what i remember

but i just remember thinking whoa this is really nutty this is kind of crazy but i sat through it just kind of like it was like a show almost but later we broke up into small groups and when i went into my small group our leader was just so well versed in the Bible and laid out the gospel in a way that was very clear. And so I'm super quiet at this point, just kind of taking everything in. And then he says, does anyone want to accept Jesus as Lord and savior? And it's at that moment that God reminds me of that experience I had when I was little, where he entered into the room. It was like this warm presence of love and light. And he said, that was me.

And my name was Jesus. Wow. And so I accepted. There was just so much clarity that night that he was the one, the one that had been pursuing me and the one that I wanted to be with, the one that knew my sins thoroughly, the one that was with me in all the sad times and all the good times, and the one that's enough to wash away those sins. And that was, yeah, when I was a senior in high school when I was 17.

You were a senior in high school. Okay, so did you go tell your mom, hey, I went to church? Did you not tell this? How did that play out with her? That's a great question. So that night I didn't. I was too afraid. But it's so funny, Sean. I'm an avid journaler. So that night I come home and I start journaling. And that night that I got saved, I start Bible study in Matthew 1, because that's what the Bible study teacher had told me you have to start and I

start praying right away for my mom's salvation because she had been sick a lot she's not she's not physically just the strongest person and we had always thought because you know my grandmother died when she was young and I think that was always in the back of my mom's mind that she would pass when she was young. And in fact, my mom, she sleeps super quietly. And when she was sick, she would lay there and I would think, oh my gosh, is she dead? And so I had this little mirror that I would go and I would put it right up against her nose to make sure that it would frost over from her breath. And I was always just worried that my mom would die early. And so the night I got saved, my prayer was, Father, you have to save her because if she steps into eternity without you, I won't be able to see her. And so I don't tell her I went

to church, but I start praying for her. And I'm just so broken for her but the great God that he is he was pursuing her in his own way and so she was still working at the dry cleaners and this sweet lady who was working there was witnessing to her continually and she's just this faithful lady who lived out her her her faith just on a daily basis so when people would call in sick when people would try to steal money when people were dishonest with their hours she was one of those people that was always honest always on time showed up early left late um just out of her way to be kind. And my mom said, I thought there was something different about this person. And so when she shared the gospel with her, she was like, okay, you live your life in a way that gives you credibility about things.

But she still felt like there's no way I can go to church. Like, I'm a Buddhist. But my mom, maybe a few months after that, got really, really sick. And so I shared the gospel with her. And I said, hey, you know what? I went to church. And that's where I've been kind of going when I tell you I'm going somewhere. And she was, I think because she was so sick, she didn't have the feistiness and the fight in her. Sure.

And I said, we need to pray that God heals you and that you come to faith. And she was very quiet. She wasn't angry. She just kind of took it in. But during that sickness period, one day she was so desperate. She called this lady and this lady prayed for her over the phone. And she said she felt so much better. And she went to church that Sunday and she continued to go back. And within a period after that, my mom came to

faith. Wow. Now was she healed as well? Cause you had two prayers for her or was she not healed from that? She was healed. She was healed. That's two pretty dramatic miracles in your mom's story going back to when she was younger and then to this recent one. Okay. So when she was healed and came to faith, you were 17 when you came to faith, how much time passed there? So I went to college in the fall. I had turned 18 by that point. And so within my freshman year, so by the time I came home for that summer, somewhere around that time period, she had gotten saved. Oh, so it was within a couple of years.

All things considered, it was a pretty short, a short window. That's right. Did you, so let's go back to your life. It became saved. You described it as things fell into place and things fit. When my dad became saved from a pretty dramatic background, he really feared that he had made an intellectual mistake. And it wasn't for six months, a year, a year and a half later that he really saw the life change. In other words, being able to forgive his father who was a drunk and who was abusive to his mom.

But he didn't see dramatic life change. What was that like for you at 17? Was it pretty quick? Did it take a while? What was that change when you at 17? Was it pretty quick? Did it take a while? What was that change when you became a believer? Yeah, I had made such poor choices throughout high school, and I had made such poor choices even going into college. I thought that relationships would save me. I thought that, because my parents had a very

dysfunctional relationship. My dad was an alcoholic too and he was very scary to be around and Sean his conversion story is pretty wild too so maybe we'll be able to chat about that. Let's come back to that. I want to hear that next. But I always thought if I married someone not like my dad, or if I had a safe place, that that would be a salvation, you know, of sorts. And so it was a series of bad mistakes. And I come to salvation. And I have this Holy Spirit in me. and I know that God is with me, but it's really hard to pivot in the day to day. Now, I'm so grateful that when I went to

Berkeley for undergrad, that by God's grace, I got plugged into a church right away. And it was a Presbyterian church, and they were very good about teaching us doctrine from the ground up. And so for me, college was always interspersed with church, and all of my friends from college were from that church. And so I got a lot of good teaching in the first I would say you know three years that I was Christian because of church still making really bad decisions but still going to church at the same time but I ended up getting on academic probation and it was devastating because you know for my parents they had sacrificed everything for us to go to school as immigrants, us doing well academically was kind of their holy grail. It was the goal and for me to tell them, I'm on academic probation was just heart-wrenching for them. And there were a

lot of different reasons. It took me eight years to graduate undergrad, which is shameful. It's really just, you feel so lost. And it was during that time when I felt like I had lost everything that God started to show me how he is able to pick up the pieces and mend a life you know like if you see glass that's not just broken but it's like in shards and then it's like in like granules because it's like just so broken like he started showing me what that looks like when he puts it together like one decision at a time and somewhere along the way i thought okay i hear you're the god of the bible so i need to know this bible well and so i started to write out the Bible. And so I thought like each book represented a different color. So Genesis is like regal. It's like this like grand entry into God. And so it's

purple. Exodus has the plague, so it's black. And it took me about four years, three years, three and a half, but I wrote out the whole Bible. Wow. That's amazing. I feel in a lot of ways that he stitched my heart back like one verse at a time as I was writing it out. And I prayed. I said, okay, God, if you let me finish this because i know

that kind of undertaking can only be done by god too i said you know i'll give this to my husband as our wedding gift and so um i had it uh and that's another god story where i was in church and i was thinking like who puts together um loose lead paper to make it into a Bible and of course the lady I'm sitting next to we ended up talking and she's like oh I'll give you my business card and she's like this person who does stuff like that that's interesting yeah and uh so I gave it to Brian as our wedding gift and um it was really the Lord using his word. Now, even up to this point, I wasn't 100% sure of how the scriptures relate to me. I just knew that the scriptures were beautiful, that it's something powerful and majestic. And so, yeah, that's kind of the entry into salvation for me. Susan, you hinted earlier pretty strongly about your dad's story

to faith. I'm dying to hear. Tell us about that. Sure. Well, my dad sort of freaked out when my mom came to faith. And although he had been only a nominal Buddhist, he was used to it and it was familiar. But when she became a Christian, it just totally upended his world and so he was very against her going to church now she went to church anyway and he would drive her to church and he would sit in the parking lot and just refuse to go in even though she would plead with him and he would sit in the parking lot and and then my mom would send the pastor sometimes she would actually send elders too so people were leaders of the church to try to pull my dad into church. And they would like knock on the window. And my dad wouldn't even look at them.

He was just so good to them. And so he just continued to do that. And I would think it was kind of his way of protesting against her going to church. It didn't faze her at all. And she was just sharing with him repeatedly week in week out of the gospel and he would take it in but he also um just didn't say much and um one day he was watching soccer and he is this crazy avid soccer fan he loves the korean soccer team and it was a big game and um korea was down by three goals there was just i think like 20

minutes left of the game and so he just prayed he said you know what if there's a god and if he lets the korean team win then i'll go to church this sunday and he turns off the tv and after the game ended like maybe 30 40 minutes, he turns it back on. He was too nervous to watch it. I think he thought he was going to maybe have a heart attack or something. So he turns it back on and he realizes the Korean team won. So he's true to his word. He goes to church that Sunday.

He doesn't stay in the car. He actually goes to church, inside church. And he comes to salvation that Sunday. That Sunday. Yeah. the car he actually goes to church inside church and he comes to salvation that sunday that sunday yeah okay now that's pretty fast and somewhat surprising what what was it what clicked for him was it a message that the pastor gave tell us what connected those dots yeah that's a really good question um the pastor is a very good preacher. And he, I've sat through his sermons too. And he in particular was talking about how we cannot possibly have any kind of works or anything that we do that would be able to absolve the sin in us. And my dad had had a pretty rough life. He was the oldest out of

five, and he was responsible for a lot of things for his family. And along the way, he ended up drinking a lot. He was an alcoholic. And sometimes he was very angry when he was an alcoholic and when he was drinking and he was inebriated. And he, yeah, he kind of terrorized us at times. It was very scary. And I think because of that, although he never, and maybe it's the Korean culture, it might be generational. He never said sorry, but I know that he carried so much guilt. And when he heard that there was someone that could pay the price for that, that there was someone that could make that right, it clicked for him. And he was all in after that. Now he just he had been drinking, he gambled a lot too and so his habits were hard to break but oh you know what there was this one pivotal moment for him where even after he became a Christian he would not give up the tesa, which is the food, the ceremony that we had for

the deceased ancestors, because he felt like by doing that, he was saying that he was no longer part of that family. Oh, wow. And for, I realized for both of my parents, when they came to faith, it was the realization that if their parents had not accepted Christ, which they don't think that they did that they're not going to be with them forever that they're in hell right because if you don't come to salvation that's where you go which is so harsh but that's the reality and so for my dad he was so just he took that responsibility of being the oldest son so seriously that when my mom said, we're not doing the Chesa anymore, there was almost like World War III that happened.

Wow. And my mom said, we are not bowing down to these pictures. We are not bowing down to anything except for God. And even after he came to faith, he struggled with that so deeply. But one day, it was this moment of reckoning that the whole family, it was four against one. And it was really, it was like a spiritual war, we felt it. But he kind of had this angry moment, but you saw God working on his heart. And that was the night he decided that we weren't going to do that ever again. And instead, what we do is we just have a memorial where we, you know, talk about the

good memories of, you know, the grandparents that they have had, we didn't really know them. And we honor them, but nothing that has anything to do with like, you know, making food for the dead kind of thing. And so it's been a journey for him. But I know that he's truly when you say when you see someone dead coming to life, I just would not recognize him anymore, Sean, if someone hadn't seen him pre salvation to now, he's just a different like just the countenance and the peace that he has. And the love for God's word that God's given him is pretty amazing. He loves it. Like he loves Scripture. He'll meditate on it. He can memorize it. He loves to talk about it. Yeah, just the transformation is only what God can do.

Now we probably don't even have time to go into this, but you have siblings, other friends. You shared the story of the monk and his response. But maybe just kind of give us a glimpse of how others in your life have responded to you coming to faith and then your mom and then your dad. People couldn't not notice this. What were some of the other responses? Yeah. God continued to pursue people in my family. My sister came to faith, I think, three years after I came to faith.

Oh, wow. And I write this in the book, which is really funny. But at that point, she was so sick of me sharing the gospel with her. One day she said to me, if you ever talk about Jesus again, I'm never going to talk to you again. And I knew she was serious. Like she was dead serious about it. So this is what I said, Sean. I said, okay, I won't bring it up. But if one day you wake up and many people are missing, they can't find us, including me. I'm thinking of the rapture. And someone comes and says, you need to take a mark to buy food, especially if it's on your

forehead, like don't do it. Okay. And she goes, I told you, you've become weird after you became a Christian. And so she was like, okay, fine. I was like, no, just promise me you won't take the mark. I didn't say of the beast. Cause it was just been too crazy, but she was like, okay. But you know what? God pursued pursued her and within a couple months after that conversation her own story she came to faith and my brother too he came to faith maybe a couple years after that wow and um our relatives many of our relatives my cousins aunts uncles they've come to faith that's that's incredible you know what's cool is looking back you might now say something different to your sister i would guess but god

uses our efforts and meets us where we're at and you did your case and it it worked out now you you talk about in the book this first confession of faith you're 17 years old and then the second confession which i find really really interesting tell us about that from believing jesus god to the point of really accepting the bible as god's word yeah that's such a great question i always knew that the bible was holy in the way that people talked about it. It's ancient text. It seems something that I want to believe, but I didn't read it thoroughly enough to say I knew for a fact that I knew it was true. And secondly, even if I read it thoroughly, I don't understand it. When you get into Jeremiah, for example, or some of the minor prophets, it seems out of context.

And I just don't even know, do I have to read 20 books in advance to even know how to contextualize this book? So I believed in the Gospels. I believe that what the four Gospels told me that they were true. I believe probably a lot of the Psalms. But I thought parts of the Bible were true and the other parts were maybe questionable. But I never voiced that because I started to become a Sunday school teacher and I was doing a lot at church and I knew that was a fast ticket to getting fired. And I wanted to be a Sunday school teacher. I couldn't go up to my pastor and say, you know,

I'm not really sure about the Bible. I believe it in parts, you know, and it just became my dark secret. It was a very guarded secret. And one day I was just reading the Bible. And as God has always done, he initiates and he just puts on my heart, hey, what you're reading, you don't believe it. And when he says it, Sean, it's so safe because the voice of God is always never condemning. He's so pointed. He knows how to get to the heart of it. And I said, you're right, I don't believe it. And I just kind of sat there and just started thinking,

where do we go from here? But there was this comfort because when God starts percolating thoughts in your heart, he's not going to just leave it there. And so I started reading the Canon of Scripture by Metzger. And I started just having this, it was this insatiable desire to know more about the canon. And so how did it come together? And after I started digging and reading the Bible alongside, there was this moment where I, almost like my salvation moment where God made it so clear that Jesus is the Messiah. He's the

one that I was looking for, that it was this, I believe that your word is true, all of it. And I talk about this also in the book, but when Billy Graham had his tree stump confession, and he just comes to this place where he's like, I believe, help my unbelief, and I'll accept it in faith. It was this watershed moment for me, and God just gave me so much peace. And I mean, by that point, I had read many books, and I had obviously written out the Bible. I'd read the Bible. All of those things helped, but it was the Spirit that confirmed it. And that's why I called it my second confession, because I don't think people can come to that place of fully believing and loving and trusting and living out the Bible without the

Spirit. And it's the working of the Spirit, it's the initiation and wooing and execution of the spirit. And that's why I'm so hopeful that people who read this book or people who can pass by and just read the Bible, right? That just stay in the word. And as you stay in the word, if you have questions, go to commentaries and go to books that can elucidate maybe some of the questions and bring clarity, but that the spirit of God always works through his word when there's a revival, when there is repentance, it's based on his word. And Sean, we need a revival. We need Christians that are going to be able to say, God, by your spirit, may your word be what it's supposed to be. May I meditate on it when I rise up and sit down,

when I go to bed, when I rise up. And I think, gosh, we think, how could we possibly do that except for we do that in our culture with our phones, constantly checking our phones and meditating on what's on the phone. And we think we can never do that. That's obsessive, but we are doing it, but it's just not with the bible and so if we did that with the word it would transform societies and the world and i pray that it would start a revolution where people would just where god would put his word in our hearts it would be it would be the sword it would be the light it would be everything that we would need. And I pray that many people come to make their second confession. And much like the first confession, you come to faith, but it's a lifetime of falling in love with Jesus.

It's like that with the second confession. You accept the Bible as the word by loving him with all your mind and your heart and soul and strength. And then it's a lifetime of loving the scriptures deeper and again. So how old were you? If you were 17 at the first confession, how old were you at what you described as the second confession? I was in my mid-30s. Okay, wow. Yeah.

Yeah, so it took a long time. I'm a skeptic. I think it's because I've had so much trauma growing up. And also, I don't know a lot of things in this world that delivers on the promises. There's always something. There's always a catch. This is a big promise that this is the word of God. But so when it came to be true, because also I was at an impasse because I was like, if it's not true, then I guess it's like I have to walk away from this faith because I can't fake it any longer.

And so, you know, like when you're engaged for a long time or when you're dating and you're like, this is it, we're committed or we have to break up. It was one of those moments with me and God. So you read the book, Canon of Scripture, I think it was by Metzger. So you're studying apologetics confirmed by the Spirit. How much did your training as a historian weigh into these questions? Is that what you would say the Holy Spirit used? Talk about that dynamic a little bit. Yeah, that's also a very good question. It's one of those things that God definitely used because knowing just the chronology of the ancient Near East and the times of the Patriarch, for example, Middle Bronze II, you know, like all these things, it helped frame the time period for me. And reading about other ancient Near East literature, so like the Gilgamesh story, for example, about the flood, to know that there are other writings

outside of the Bible that corroborate what's in the Bible is just fascinating or you have different kinds of inscriptions or you have Stella's or you know all these things that prove that the Bible is not this made-up story that it's rooted in history and God uses history now the thing that always bugged me about the Bible was that it just seemed so, you know, like, like Mormons, they have like this, this golden tablet that they're given. And it's this, you know, oh, you hear like the angelic angels. And that's what I want my Bible to look like. But it's not God used, for example, like Jeremiah, he writes, and I hope I don't butcher the name, but you know, he has a scribe Baruch, or I think that's how you pronounce it. He's like, these are the words of

Jeremiah, you know, written by Baruch. And we have, you know, Ammonusis, I think that's how you pronounce it with, you know, Paul having people who write it. And it's, it's collaborative. And there are editorial comments. And we're not sure if Moses wrote all of the Pentateuch, you know, he is certainly the main author, but there are other additions to it. And it just seems so messy where I'm like, where is my celestial tablets? And it bothers me so much. But the more I learned about history and how God uses that is just actually comforting that he uses common human things to do divine work and but the

greatest analogy for me came with Jesus because he uses a baby born in a manger who's this commoner you wouldn't be able to single him out in a crowd people miss him even after he starts his ministry. And so that's what I talk about in the book, that the son of God and the word of God, that God, if he can use an impregnated teenager who delivers the Messiah, then God can use the pens of people, of men, to deliver his word. And that's just how he works all the time. He's a God who's humble and a God who is just, he loves to call fishermen and tax collectors and regular people to do divine work. And the more I knew God's character and heart, I'm so thankful that he

wrote the Bible this way because it's consistent with his character and there's nothing in it that's untrue or makes it untrue. And so, yeah, I think that knowing more about history definitely bolsters my faith. I want to write a series of Bible studies that look at each book of the Bible, but it might not be like just Genesis, but it might be like Pentateuch, and then it might be the prophets and genres. But what I want to do is look at how history, it could be relatable to people who aren't historians or nerds you know who would actually find that helpful and then what's the hermeneutics behind it and then how do we live it out i love it thanks so much for coming on really enjoyed your book light of the word i love

especially when somebody in a different discipline whether it's psychology or science or history weighs into apologetics and you've done that here so I hope folks will pick up a copy of your book light of the word and I look forward to those studies coming out but I want to personally thank you for coming on just being so honest about your story and your background and being vulnerable I'd encourage me and I know it does our viewers as well before folks click away make sure you hit subscribe we've got some other stories coming on viewers as well. Before folks click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other stories coming on here as well that we're going to share,

some other topics related to apologetics. And if you thought about studying apologetics and worldview, we'd love to have you at Biola. We have the top rated distance apologetics program. There's information below. Would love to have you in class. And if you're like, I want to study study but not quite ready for masters we have a certificate program and we'll kind of walk you through the right lectures and just kind

of assignments to get some formal training information is there below Susan this is a lot of fun thanks again for coming back on the show thanks so much Sean you're wonderful