Journey of Leung Gam Tou Andy’s faith
1. Pre 2020 Pandemic
- When I was in early elementary school, my parents started attending BLC and brought me along. I don’t have many memories of the next few years as I felt like I was just there to pass the time, completely uninterested in all that God stuff.
- In early middle school, I started getting into philosophy and finding a greater purpose in life, which I connected back to things I had heard in church. This led me to start being afraid of being punished for disobeying God, which in turn caused me to start using the Bible as a weapon to condemn other people.
- However, as I approached high school, I began to question the logic of the Bible. This drove me to ask people at church about why Bible seemed to contradict itself, but I was met with hostile responses and basically told not to question what is being taught in Sunday School.
2. During Pandemic – Not attending Church from March 2020 to Sept 2022.
- When pandemic lockdowns went into effect in 2020, I obviously couldn’t attend church in-person anymore, and, due to the attitudes that I was faced with in the last few months, I was quite happy about that. Things were starting to make less and less sense as I felt like nobody was listening to me.
- With my disillusionment with the church, I would start wandering around online to find other communities to accept me and fill the void. During this period, I would meet many people online that were very toxic and angry, and I would try to fit in with these communities. Doing so ended up with me adopting these behaviors to be accepted. Even though I ended up realizing how unhealthy these behaviors were after a year or so, I would also find a unique perspective on why they acted like that.
- For some of them, I was able to listen to how they had an unstable home life. Their experience with an unloving and broken family seemed to be the cause for the worsening of their emotional health and toxic behavior. At the time, I wasn’t prepared to address their problems, as it was the first time I was confronted with the concept of emotional health.
- But I would have to address it at one point or another, and this time would come in 2022. Some people would confide in me about their mental health issues, but due to a combination of me dealing with self-esteem issues and my lack of skill in dealing with emotional issues, I wasn’t able to offer much help. They eventually lost faith in me as a friend and ever since, I’ve felt like I need to work on my understanding of my emotional health if I want to develop healthy inter-personal relationships.
3. 2022 Volunteering in BLC because needing volunteering hours for school
- In late 2022, I realized that I needed 40 community service hours to graduate and that I had barely done any. When my parents brought up BLC as an option, I decided to take it as I was somewhat familiar with the people there, but I was still not very enthusiastic about going back to a place where I didn’t feel valued a few years ago.
- In late 2022, I realized that I needed 40 community service hours to graduate and that I had barely done any. When my parents brought up BLC as an option, I decided to take it as I was somewhat familiar with the people there, but I was still not very enthusiastic about going back to a place where I didn’t feel valued a few years ago.
- Christianity at this point was still more of a vague ceremonial thing that wasn’t very connected to anything meaningful to me personally because
- of the falling out I had with the church a few years ago.
- After a few months of Uncle Fred driving me home, our conversations in the car went from awkward small talk to discussions about my emotional
- health.
- During this time, I was attempting to find ways to improve my mindset about my life through self-help content online. I knew there were unhealthy beliefs that I held about myself, and I wanted to let go of them, but didn’t know how.
- I started reflecting on my childhood and how I might have had unmet emotional needs that influence my unhealthy behavior today, just like the people that I met online during the pandemic.
- Some of these people ended up becoming ‘ghosts’ to me; the role that they played in my life and the ideas that they represented lingered in my mind. For example, one of my former friends often shared about his cat, and now, every time I see or interact with a cat in my neighborhood, I’m reminded of them and I think about what I would have shared with them once I got home.
- Another former friend was somebody that I started off hating and being jealous of because they weren’t normal and they were getting more attention for their art than I was. But when they reached out to me, I slowly began realizing that my negative feelings towards them were completely based on me not understanding them. Yoda once said that “Fear leads to anger and anger leads to hate” and fear is caused by not understanding something. Earlier this year, they attempted to take their own life, and when I heard about it, I immediately felt guilty about my previous negative feelings towards them. I wonder if others had felt the way I did towards them and hurt them because of that.
- At that moment, I knew that I never wanted to feel that way towards anybody else again in my life. I knew that I needed to understand how to strive for agape (unconditional) love, like God, towards others to prevent this mindset from forming again.
- At this point, God started to manifest as a ghost in my heart, a representation of unconditional love.
4. Embracing the newfound faith
- Perhaps living my life in a way to uphold God’s virtue of unconditional love, I can learn to address my own issues with myself and my past, especially my issues with loving myself due to self-esteem issues.
- When it comes to other people, this mindset works with the proverb that “a child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth”. Many bad people exist in the world, but more often than not, they’re just trying to make up for the love that they didn’t get from the world. So hopefully, by embracing God’s unconditional love, I can try and be the change I want to see in the world.
- Way back in late 2021, Andrew once stopped me to ask me whether I wanted to join the youth group online. I thought about whether God was real or not for the first time in a long time. Back then I thought it wasn’t my problem whether God was real or not because it didn’t affect me. Now, at least in my heart, God is real to me.
- I think of it like the idea of confidence. Some may call being confident in the face of complete strangers as being delusional. However, it’s undeniable that being confident can inspire change in others; just because you can’t prove it objectively exists doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter.
梁錦濤的信仰之旅
1. 2020 年大流行疫情前
還在上小學的時候，我的父母已帶著我返恩福教會。隨後的幾年已經記不清楚了，因我認為去教會只是打發時間，對於神的一切事情並不感興趣。剛踏入初中時我接觸到哲學，而
將教會聽到的事與哲學聯繫時，我開始思考去尋找更大的人生目標。這卻導致我開始害怕如果不順服神便會受到懲罰，這也反過來使我開始利用聖經作為譴責他人的武器。然而，快上高中時，我開始質疑聖經的邏輯。這驅使我在教會問人為何聖經好似互相矛盾，但往往得到的回覆卻不太友善，基本上就是我不可質疑主日學所教導的。
2. 大流行疫情期間 – 2020年3月至2022年9月沒有返教會
當2020年大流行疫情封鎖生效時，我再不能夠返教會。因過去幾個月所面對的情況我就感到高興。但封鎖時間越長漸漸地便變得越來越沒有意義了，只覺得孤苦伶仃無人聽我傾訴。隨著對教會的失望，我開始在網上四處尋索，尋找其它接納我的群體以填補那空虛。
在這段時間，我在網上遇到很多非常惡毒和憤怒的人們，我努力融入這些群體，最終為了被接納，我學會了那些行為。儘管在大約一年之後我意識到這些行為是多麼不健康，但我卻找到獨特的觀點來解釋為何他們會這樣做。
對於其中的一些人，我聽到他們是如何過著不穩定的生活。他們那又無愛又破碎家庭的經歷似乎就是他們情緒健康和惡毒行為的原因。當時，我並未準備好解決其問題，因為這是我第一次面對情緒健康問題的概念。但始於還須在某個時候去解決這個問題，終於就在2022年那年。有些人向我傾訴他們的心理健康問題，但由於面對自尊和缺乏處理情緒問題的技能，我無法提供太多幫助。他們最終對我這個朋友失去了信心，從此以後，我覺得如果想發展健康的人際關係，我必須先瞭解自己的情緒健康。
3. 因需要滿足學校的志願服務要求時間， 於2022年在恩福做義工
2022年底，我發現需要40小時社區服務才能夠畢業，而我卻從未做過義工。當父母提議在恩福作義工時，我立時接受，起碼熟悉那裡的人，但我仍然不太熱衷於回到幾年前我感到不受重視的地方。此時，基督教仍然是一個模糊的儀式，對我個人並沒有聯繫什麼意義，因為幾年前我與教會鬧翻了。
經過幾個月梁小瑛叔叔開車送我回家途中，在車上的談話從尷尬的閒聊變成了討論我的情緒健康。在此期間，我試圖在網上自助找出改善我對生活的看法。我知道自己持有不健康的信念，我想抺掉它們，卻不知如何是好。我開始反思我的童年，以及如何有未滿足的情感需求，這些需求影響了我今天的不健康行為，就像我在疫情期間在網上遇到的人一樣。其中一些人最終變成陰魂不散似的，常在我的生活中出現不同的角色，腦海中揮之不去。例如，曾有個朋友經常分享有關他的貓，現在，每次在鄰里區看到貓或與貓互動時，我都會想起他的貓，我會考慮回家後如何談及它們。
另一個舊友是我開始時討厭和嫉妒的人，因為他們並不尋常，他們的藝術作品比我更受關注。但當他們向我伸出援手時，慢慢意識到我對他們的負面情緒完全是基於我不理解他們。Yoda曾經說過：「恐懼導致憤怒，憤怒導致仇恨」，恐懼是由於不理解某事而引起的。今年年初，他們試圖自殺，當我聽到時，立即覺得以前對他們的負面情緒而感到內疚。我懷疑其他人是否有我的同感，並因而傷害了他們。那一刻，我知道我再也不想對別人有這種感覺了。我知道需要瞭解如何像神一樣努力爭取對他人的無條件的愛，以防止這種心態再次形成。此時，神開始在我心中動工，一個無條件愛的代表。
4. 擁抱新發現的信仰
也許我的生活是為了維護上帝無條件愛的美德，我可以學會解決自己和過去的問題，特別是由於自尊問題而愛自己的問題。當涉及到其他人時，這種心態與諺語“一個不被村莊擁抱的孩子會把它燒掉以感受它的溫暖”的諺語相得益彰。世界上存在許多壞人，但更多的時候，他們只是想彌補他們沒有從世界上得到的愛。因此，希望通過擁抱上帝無條件的愛，我可以嘗試成為我想在世界上看到的改變。早在2021年底，Andrew曾經問我想不想在網上參加青年小組。思想了很長時間，我第一次想到上帝是不是真實的。那時我認為上帝是否真實不是我的問題，因為不會影響我。現在，至少在我心裡，上帝對我來說是真實的。
我認為這就像信心的想法。有些人可能會說在完全陌生的人面前自信是妄想。然而，不可否認的是，自信可以激發他人的改變；僅僅因為你無法客觀地證明它存在並不意味著它無關緊要。有些人向我傾訴他們的心理健康問題，但由於面對自尊和缺乏處理情緒問題的技能，我無法提供太多幫助。他們最終對我這個朋友失去了信心，從此以後，我覺得如果想發展健康的人際關係，我必須先瞭解自己的情緒健康。