My name is Grant. I'm from Southern California. I've lived in Japan since December 2009, but I still don't speak Japanese that well. I am interested in speaking Japanese though, so I'll try my best to try and speak as much as I can.
First off, this is not an ordinary chirashi. I don't have anything to sell you, I don't want any money from you, and no one is paying me to hand this out. The reason I've given this to you is because something incredible happened to me, and I want to share about it with as many people as I possibly can.
This is the account of how my life completely changed.
I was born and raised in America, living a very normal American life. I went to school (though I didn't enjoy it very much), spent time with my friends, got involved with a few different sports that are popular in America (skateboarding and BMX biking), and went to church every Sunday.
In America there are lots of people who attend church every week. Christianity is the main religion in the United States, and so a lot of people there have been to a church at least a few times in their life. Many people think of Christianity in a similar way to how people see Buddhism in Japan. It's all they've known their entire life, they've never known anything different, and they believe that it should be their religion because they were “born into it”. They've never actually considered what it teaches, and whether or not it's true.
In America we see that Christianity is popular, our parents believe it, we've been taught it since we were young, and so we might believe it to an extent ourselves, but really aren't sure about what being a Christian means. We just accept it as “the way things are”, and don't think all that much about it beyond that.
So this is mostly how I thought. I believed that I was a Christian, because that's all I knew. People would read me the Bible, tell me stories about Jesus, and I believed them. I would rely completely on everyone else to tell me about Christianity. I would never read the Bible for myself, because I really didn't understand it that well, and it wasn't very interesting to me.
As I got older though, I became more interested in other things than religion. When I was a teenager, I began to feel very empty inside, and couldn't seem to get any satisfaction out of life. All the normal things I used to like, such as video games, sports, and friends, didn't make me feel any better. I would feel OK when I had those things around, but I'd go back to feeling empty when I was by myself.
There must be some reason, I thought, that I felt empty. Well, there were things in life that other people had and enjoyed, that I had never had or tried myself. I figured that if I were somehow able to get them, then that would be what would make me truly happy. Here is the list I made myself: Having a job I liked, having money, having a car, having lots of friends, and having a girlfriend. Once I got all of these things, I believed I would feel complete and fulfilled.
Around this time in life though, I discovered one other thing, a genre of music called “Black Metal”. Very few people have heard of this genre of music, and even fewer people listen to it, but I began little by little to become a big fan of Black Metal and it's message. Black Metal is essentially a very noisy, chaotic, extreme form of heavy metal music. It's roots are in North America, South America, and Europe, but it really became popular when bands from Scandinavia began to play it. The members of these metal bands became infamous for committing crimes, such as burning churches and even murder. Black Metal Lyrics are all about darkness, hatred, anti-religion (specifically anti-Christianity), war, racism, and every other negative thing that can be imagined. The songs talk about being your own god, living only for yourself, taking whatever you want, being strong, oppressing the weak, and not letting anyone stop you from living this way.
Of course, at first I didn't approve of the message being delivered by these bands. I just enjoyed the music, and felt that it had some sort of “drive” to it that I could relate to. Then it began to have an effect on me. I felt that it empowered me to get the things in life that I wanted. Here was the great deception! Black Metal taught a totally different and opposite message to anything I had been taught before. I thought I could enjoy the music while rejecting the lyrics. In my mind, I thought that it was possible to participate in two opposing worlds.
So I began to live life as I thought best for me. I really began to live as if I were my own god. I began to think that I really shouldn't deny myself anything that I wanted. I believed that is how happiness could be obtained. So at around 18 I began to drink alcohol a lot and get drunk with my friends (which in America is actually illegal until you're 21). And this was fun for a while, but the old feeling I had of emptiness never completely went away. So I kept pursuing the other things I wanted. I got a job, I got a car, but I only felt good for a while.
So I began spend a lot of time hanging with my friends and making new ones. I had lots of stuff to do, and that also made me feel good...for a while. Eventually a friend began telling me how good he felt when he'd take drugs, and that I'd feel good too if I tried them out. And he was right. I felt good, until the drugs wore off, and then I felt just as empty as before.
The last thing on my list was a girlfriend. If I just had a girl in my life, I thought, that would fill the last piece that was missing. So I got a girlfriend, and she made me feel great.... for about a week. But I felt that my girlfriend just didn't suit me. So I went out to find other girls who would suit me better.
I had reached the point that I had always thought should make me feel complete. I had a job, money, friends, girlfriends, and a hobby that I really enjoyed. All my time, effort, and money went into these things. Whatever money didn't go into food, or friends, or girlfriends, went into increasing my rather large Black Metal album collection, buying band merchandise, and going to live shows.
I convinced myself that I was now complete and that life was pretty much as fulfilling as it could be. But there was one big mistake that I was making this whole time: I believed that somehow God was pleased with the life I was living.
I believed very sincerely that the way that I was living was somehow acceptable to Him. After all, I prayed and I acknowledged that there was a God. I knew a lot about God and I still went to church a few times a month. In my conscience though, I knew that most of what I was doing was in opposition to what He said was good.I knew, for example, that it was sinful to get drunk and listen to music that praised pride, darkness and violence. But I thought that because I knew so much about God (or so I thought), and that I wasn't as bad as other people, that I had an exception to the rules. So, at this point I finally felt a sort of complete-ness. I was finally mostly comfortable.
But then something happened. I had a close friend who also enjoyed Black Metal. She called me up late one night and asked if she could come over and talk about something important. When I answered the door she seemed very upset. She came into my living room and began to cry.
She told me she knew that the way she was living, the music she was listening to, and the things she was doing were completely wrong. She had deceived herself into believing that her lifestyle was OK. She knew that she needed to change her life. But then she began to tell me that my life wasn't right either, and that I was living in rebellion against God. At first I was surprised, and thought that she didn't know what she was talking about. But the more she explained God's standards and the purity of Jesus, the more I could see she was telling the truth. My eyes opened up and I saw the real me. I saw myself as God sees me. I thought I was fulfilled, but in reality I was completely empty. What I really needed in my life was God. And the way God comes into your life is when you receive His word, the bible.
Let me explain. In the Bible God says that His Word is like grain, and that all other messages are like straw. What does that mean? What do we know about straw and grain? The main difference is this: Grain actually feeds you. Straw only makes you feel full. People can eat grain and live. They can eat straw too, but the human body cannot digest it. We cannot get any nutrients to live from just eating straw. God's word, is the truth which feeds us and makes us alive.
Now, no matter if you eat straw, or eat grain, after you've eaten you're still going to feel full. And that's the way that some people judge if what they're eating is good or not. They don't judge it by what they're actually eating, they just judge it by how they feel after eating it.
I'll give an example. When I first came to Japan people said I should try konnyaku. I didn't know what it was, so I was very curious to try it. Finally, someone gave it to me one day, and when I took a bite, I said, “Hmm, this doesn't really taste like anything.” So I thought to myself, “It must be very nutritious, or full of vitamins.” However when I asked what was so special about it, the person who gave it to me told me that there are no calories, and almost nothing of nutritional value in it. It's just a food that will fill you up very quickly, yet you won't gain any weight (or get anything else out of it), when you eat it. It basically just makes you full.
A few months later, I was very hungry one day and went out to a restaurant. I still couldn't read any Japanese, and so I looked at pictures from the menu, and picked a dish at random that looked pretty good. It looked like some very large form of omurice. When the dish arrived I found out that it was basically nothing more that a VERY thin layer of fried egg, on top of a mountain of konnyaku! I was disappointed, but I ate the dish, and even though it tasted OK, I was very unhappy with my choice. Although it didn't taste bad, it was expensive, and I knew that because 95% of the dish was just konnyaku, there wasn't any nutrition in what I was eating. And although I felt full after eating it, I hadn't eaten anything that was going to give me the energy I needed for the rest of the day.
If a person were to eat something like this for every meal of every day, even though they felt satisfied, eventually they would become extremely unhealthy. Now I don't have a problem with konnyaku, I actually enjoy it now, but I would never think that I could be kept alive if I ate nothing but konnyaku.
Here's how that relates to my story. I had spent all my time trying to get many different things out of life that made me happy just for a moment, but could never fix the real problem I had. It was like I was eating straw over and over again thinking that if I only got to my next meal that it would keep me alive. But I was ignoring the problem, not really feeding myself, and starving to death.
And this was the problem that I kept ignoring: I had never really eaten what the Bible calls grain. That is, truth; revealed by God through his Word. I knew nothing about God's Word, or God Himself. I had made myself out to be god instead. I thought that if I just lived my life, and got the things I wanted, and the good things outweighed the bad, and if I called myself a Christian, that these things were enough to keep me going. But these things aren't enough.
When I talk to people in Japan and ask them about their relationship with God, they usually tell me things like, “I'm Buddhist, and I go to the temple a few times a year”. “Because I was born in Japan I was born a Buddhist, and because you were born in America you were born a Christian.” Many Americans think like that too. They think that because they were born in a “Christian family” that they are also a Christian. But in the Bible, Jesus said that no one is born a Christian, that you have to be “born again” to have a right relationship with God. That means, repenting of all the things you've done in life that are against God's Word. We all know what they are. We all know in our hearts when we do what is wrong. We are born again when we decide to stop living simply for our own ambitions and dreams, and turn back to the God who made us. The Spirit of God comes inside us. He turns the Word of God into life, to help us live for Him as we should.
Jesus said about Himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father (To heaven) but through me.” Jesus didn't say that He knew the truth, or knew the way, He said that He IS the truth, and that He IS the way. He wasn't just giving good moral advice like a religious teacher, He IS the very life Himself. And no one has a right relationship with God outside of Him. But most people think that there are other ways to live life.
Many people that I talk to in here in Japan say that if they go to the right high school, and then go to the right university, and then get into the right company, and then get married, and have two children, that THEN they'll truly be satisfied in life. That's their goal. But when I talk to people who have gotten all of those things, they are just as empty as the ones who don't have them. And they remind me of how I used to live. They're just people who are eating straw to survive. The whole Education thing is straw. It may go well as a side dish, but without God's Word and the life He gives us, it will never satisfy us in this life, and certainly never give us eternal life.
Now, there's nothing wrong with studying hard, and going to a good university, and getting a good job, and having a family, those are all great things. But they're not going to fix the underlying problem, that without having a real relationship with the God of the Bible, no one is going to ever truly be filled.
And that's what I realized the night my friend came over and told me this. I didn't understand everything at that time, but I knew that my life needed to change. So I went and I threw away my whole music collection (hundreds of albums), and got rid of all my t-shirts from the Black Metal bands. I told God I was sorry for everything I had done against His Word, and from that night on I was going to live for Him instead of living for my own ambitions.
And right away something was different. I finally felt satisfied with life. Because I had eaten something real for the first time. And then I began to read the Bible, and it made sense for the first time, and I loved reading it. Now the Holy Spirit was inside me, teaching me. I began to study the bible, and I realized that everything in it was life-giving, and true. And since then, that old empty feeling has been gone.
From that night, my life completely changed. I realized that I couldn't keep this information to myself, and that I had to share it with other people, especially people who'd never even heard of how a change of heart, and mind, and life is possible. So I moved to Japan with that purpose. To tell the people I meet about the truth of God's Word, and that having a right relationship with Him is the only hope that anyone has in this life, and the next.
In Japan, I no longer have a car, or a lot of money, or lots of friends, or an impressive job, or a girlfriend, but what I do have is a peace and completeness in life that all of those things together were never able to give me.。
The truth which I want to tell you is this: every person is born in sin. This is clear from the way we all live. We know in our hearts what is right to do, but we don't do it. We try to excuse ourselves by keeping traditions, visiting temples, “being a good person”, maintaining the WA. But these things things cannot make up for our sins against God. God has commanded that everyone has to repent, because a time is coming when He will judge everyone who has been ignoring the words of Jesus.W e don't have the peace with God we ought to have. If you've never turned away from your sins, and if you're living just for yourself, and don't make Jesus the Lord of your life, you'll never have true peace or satisfaction in your life. But worse than that, if you don't return to God, after death there will be no way to go to heaven, and you'll have to pay for your own sins in hell. Trying to replace God in your life with 'things' is just what the Bible calls 'eating straw'. Don't eat straw. Eat the grain! It is much better. The good news is that Jesus wants to have a relationship with every person. He wants to forgive them of all their sins when they turn back to Him. If you will turn away from being the god of your own life and follow the true creator God instead, you will be saved.
This has probably been a lot to read, but I hope you've gotten this far. As you're reading this, you might have had questions like, “What is he talking about when he says born again?” or, “What is sin and repentance?” or, “Who exactly is Jesus?” or “ What is the Bible, and why should I believe it?” or “What are God's laws?” There are honestly a lot of misconceptions that most people (even many Christians) have about the Bible, and that I didn't really know were wrong until I began reading the Bible myself. But if you want to know more, I can answer any of those questions.
If you want to know more about anything I've said, I'd really encourage you to write me. Even if you can't speak any English, if you write in Japanese, I'll be able to understand it, and I'll be able to send a response in Japanese as well. I will read and will respond to every email that I get. And if you want to ever meet up and talk about anything, I have a lot of free time, so feel free to write.
Grant
col4koshien@gmail.com