I’m from China. I was born in the late 1990s in an atheist family in a country that had adopted atheism as part of its official ideology for almost five decades. Before 22, I had never thought about theism.

The simplicity of atheism is attractive to me. Even today, I am astonished by its elegant nature. It’s shining like a diamond, telling human being’s glory and hope. What distracted me at first was astrology. I never consider that the occult or mystic conflicts with our free will, but I do find some rules that govern the universe and us. I always find that the methodology of astrology is scientific — structural and data-based. Somehow, as there’s too much imprecision and pessimism among mystics — although their methods are scientific, I started to be skeptical about them. It seems like we can find an “SOP”, follow it, and make our life great again.

At that time I fell into some sort of flow of life, gave up interpretation, and just enjoyed my life with no judgment. I felt that maybe my life is worth living. However, there is a Chinese proverb that goes: “Extreme joy begets sorrow.” I was apprehensive about my optimism. I feared being punished by fate. Soon, the light came to me.

The writer’s name is Xiaoxiao. She posted an article about Christianity on China’s twitter-like platform Weibo, saying that God loves everyone, no matter who you are and how awful you are. God cherishes a rich kid at Stanford, a lame from some outlying village, a baby girl born in the patriarchal society, as well as an unwanted child, or a child with Down syndrome. Our lives are in God’s hands. God values us so much that He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. We are, unreasonably, beloved.

It was my first time getting the core “love” of Christianity. I used to consider Christianity as a tradition, a relief, a method of mind control, a sort of anti-intellectualism, a collective unconscious for early humans, or something indescribable which brings us fancy arts but within it, there’s nothing logical… Xiaoxiao quoted the Bible: God loves us because “God is love… and we are able to love because he first loved us.” It seemed that I was refreshed at that time. I thought these sentences were gorgeous but also, quite insane.

I had not decided to run into Christ’s arms then. Among science, mystics, and Christianity, there must have been the fourth road. I read Einstein’s biography by Walter Isaacson and found that Einstein was a pantheist. He stated that he believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza. He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. His view really touched me. However, I swung between pantheism and agnosticism. I did feel something personal in the universe, something compassionate. Some kind of communication floats in the universe, connecting us to the highest creator. I like agnosticism, but I think it’s cynical. This paradox appears everywhere in my life — I like something, but when I take it seriously, I find it not a way of truth.

Since then I’ve decided to learn about Christianity. My early mentor Xiaoxiao became a Christian in 2006 when she graduated from a Protestant Christian university. She grew up in our atheistic China and started to learn about Christianity after 18. At Easter in 2019, Xiaoxiao converted to the Catholic Church. It was another story. Anyway, while I read her essay, she had become a Catholic for six months and was enthusiastic about evangelization. I used to think Christians as lunatics, but Xiaoxiao is not like that. I found serenity in her words. She likes dogs, books, musicals, variety shows, photography, and New York. She is a procrastinator. What shocked me the most was that she cared about LGBTQIA. I found a lot of similarities between us despite her religious peculiarity. So I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe Christianity is worth learning. I kept reading Xiaoxiao’s blog, when I was ready, I sent a message to her, told her about my conversion, and my gratitude to God and her.

One day that autumn, I went to a Catholic church and took some RCIA leaflets. I was excited about the journey. Packages of books came to me to help me explore Christians’ spiritual world. I read, prayed, and tried to tiptoe to God. RCIA would launch the next spring, and I would be a member of it.

Four months later, the COVID-19 pandemic came.

The Spring Festival Holiday began in later January. We heard some whispers about coronavirus’ spread in Wuhan, and several days later, the government declared the pandemic, it was named “COVID-19” in English. I didn’t go back to my hometown, which is a small town near Shanghai in east China. Millions of people — may be billions, were just like me, locked in their dwellings. Anxiety was everywhere. I started a diary and wrote down my prayers and griefs.

I am a citizen of this country. I care about our fellow Chinese, and people all over the world. At that time I began to think about my identity again. I am a feminist. I am bisexual or more likely to be pansexual. I am a child of God. These identities used to mean a lot to me, but when I touched on the rift between Christian and LGBT, I was confused. Some linguistic literature describes that the Bible only opposes sodomy and rape in sanctuaries, which persuaded me for a short while, then I couldn’t stop asking: Are anti-LGBT Christians all cold? Does the Vatican hear people sing? How about Christians who had abandoned their orientations, had they been brainwashed? If it’s alright to be LGBT in a church, why do so many of them suffer from the excruciating pain in the shadows?

Conservative Christians have been always telling us that being homosexual is abnormal. Some of them enjoy saying this with a compassionate smile, “You are lost. You want to be loved but you choose the wrong path and lead yourself to a wounded condition. You misunderstand the opposite sex. You confuse friendship with romance. You should pray for being healed. I’ll pray for you. You know I care about you, right?” I appreciate it but to be honest, there are too many stereotypes. I have been attracted to girls since I was a teenager. It’s easy for me to imagine a relationship or even a married life between women. I used to fall in love with them and I know that homosexual love is as real as heterosexual love. Love, sex, marriage, and the family of homosexual people are all real. They are not imitating anyone, nor escaping from mainstream society. They are who they are.

One of my best friends is gay. He went to the US and found a job there. He knew about my faith, so one day he requested me to pray for his application for an H-1B visa. I promised to do so, but I told him that God had already given us what we need, I could not guarantee the result. Finally, he got the visa, rent a nice apartment, and even adopted a cat. His aunt, a professor at a university in the US, is a Protestant, who brought him to her church on Christmas before. He watches Christian videos on YouTube sometimes, but he hasn’t realized the discord between Christianity and homosexuality. I found it hard to touch on this topic — how do you convince people that you totally disagree with their lifestyle while you still want to get along well with them every day? My friend is one of the best men that I have ever met, he is full of energy and compassion, always ready to help others, and he is as funny as a top comedian. Should I knock on his door and tell him that he is obligated to destroy his entire life otherwise we will not be friends not any longer? Or should I preach to him softly and sadly like his great-grandmother? Is it right to interfere in others’ choices like divorce before their acceptance of the gospel?

My friend is just like me. I used to hate God’s order about sex, I know how confusing it was. One day, I was praying, and I asked our Christ, could I keep my sexual orientation? Could I love a woman, romantically and devotedly? He didn’t answer my question. What He said was, “Love me.”

I didn’t know the way that voice came to me — no, it was not a voice. It was like some pure idea, heart to heart, mind to mind, simultaneously. The torrent of strength and softness crashed on me. I was astonished. Yes, Eros is not like Divine Love. In the realm of perfect, there is nothing but Divine Love. Loving God is the highest happiness for us human beings. The moment I start to long for Him, I feel happy. The journey I walk to Him, I’m full of joy. The time He responds to my prayer, I fall into ecstasy. He is love. An influencer who I follow used to talk about love — she is a Buddhist, although not very conventional, and she said that there is too much love floating over the world, derelict and boundless, everyone can feel it and claim it. I agree with that, but I’m thinking immense love comes from our God.

After that prayer I started to think it was alright to live without more lesbian behaviors. But it was not an end. I wanted to find the balance between a secular lifestyle and Catholicism. As a matter of fact, Catholicism is radical. The most radical in the world. The Church prohibits her people from premarital sex, homosexuality, divorce, abortion, and contraception. She disapproves of sex with condoms in a faithful marriage! You cling to your spouse and give birth to ten kids or you practice abstinence so that you can take a breath from your two kids. We all know that natural contraception is not so much reliable. What a ridiculous religion. But let’s go back to contraception later.

The point is, where are we to make the principle, the bottom line? Here’s one thing I’d like to share. Two years later after the outbreak of COVID-19, China become crazy. China used to do well on pandemic prevention, but today with a new variant Omicron whose R0 (the basic reproduction number of an infection is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection) is 10, this country does not have more effective strategies, they just spend every minute and every penny on quarantine and PCR tests. That makes people suffer. In Shanghai, the most prosperous city in China, people are locked in their apartments. Roads and shops are closed. It is hard to get food or medicine, let alone emergency treatment or special care for elderly and disabled people. Under these circumstances, some residents I know get into a dilemma. I’ve heard such a story — there’s a famous journalist working in Shanghai’s official TV station DRAGON TV, whose main job is complimenting the government. Her neighbors are suffering from the shitty administration while she’s keeping singing praises, so one day, her neighbors kicked her out of their apartment complex’s group chat of group shopping in a rage. Then it was her turn to suffer, from a food shortage and despairing isolation.

Where’s the bottom line? I think it’s cruel to kick her out of group shopping which is almost the only way to get food and daily necessities. Pope Francis used to say that you can’t throw your LGBTQ children out of your homes, for violence is never going to be the reasonable way to handle anything. Love with positive support is the only way. It doesn’t mean that you have to agree with others’ lifestyles. You can miss your gay friends’ wedding — but you’re not supposed to destroy it. You can disagree with someone’s political views, but you should not leave her to starve alone. This journalist’s job is doing some evil, but lynch is not resistance. We all know that there’re more problems than this typical dilemma, but our every single choice must depend on conscience. For me, being Catholic means positive love and support. We must be cautious about violence. In World War Ⅱ, a famous Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer — he was close to Catholicism — died of fighting against Nazi Germany, may disapprove of my positive opinions, but I would say, at least, for me, the two seemingly different ways converge in a higher level. Sometimes we do resist, while sometimes we just compromise and keep life moving on.

Therefore, a Catholic is, indeed, a kind of identity, but it’s also certainly beyond identity. We’re supposed to see things in the big picture, from beginning to end. How precious a person is? Even her hair has been numbered (Matthew 10:30). A person is worth more than anything, and a soul is worth more than a body. As the Scottish writer George MacDonald says, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” And as the Bible says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23)

I’ve shared my feelings about the existence of God, but let’s put it frankly — in we human’s narratives of this whole world, this universe, must there be a Creator? I should say, no. We can’t prove God’s existence. It’s on philosophy of science.

But guess what? It’s also impossible to prove God’s nonexistence.

Since a few years ago I’ve been interested in complex systems science. Complexity, emergence, evolution theory, and such theories can explain almost everything. I love these theories. Nevertheless, they cannot deny God’s existence. They just reveal that God is dispensable. But being dispensable is not the same as being nonexistent. Occam’s razor is a good hypothesis, but we all know that reality is riddled with redundancy. What if God lets evolution happen? What if God sets up the natural order? And what if the world’s redundancy contributes to the greater good? On this point, Einstein has a belief, his pantheistic God of Spinoza is a belief. Christianity is a belief. Atheism is a belief, too. None of them are facts in the human’s world. We don’t need God, so He must not exist, that is a belief, a faith, a religion.

Now we’re here, and you may ask me if I agree with evolution theory, then how to explain the Bible, Genesis? The answer is, that we use allegorical interpretation to read the Bible. We don’t stick to words themselves. Adam and Eve’s story is an allegory, and so is Genesis. Some sects, like fundamentalists, use literal interpretation. That’s one of the differences between different sects. Lutheranism is somewhere between Catholicism and fundamentalism. Yes, what the paradoxical is, Lutheranism is one of the closet sects to Catholicism, as well as Episcopal. Allegorical interpretation is the early church and fathers’ spiritual legacy. Under the allegorical interpretation, the story of the Garden of Eden is a signal, showing human beings’ original sin. Under the allegorical interpretation, the world was not created during our literal 6 days times 24 hours. “A day” may not be an Earth day. Based on Biblical Archaeology, we find that some massacres had never happened. Early fathers explain those massacres as spiritual wars. Admittedly, there were many massacres in human history, and God had permitted these occurrences, but still, there are some differences between the Bible and objective history. Christians use allegorical interpretation at the very beginning. There, that’s clearer: only a leap of faith can take us to God, or you won’t find a reasonable argument for God’s existence on a human scale.

Another thing that impacts me a lot is the research on Near-Death Experiences. Serious scientific research on NDE traces back to when someone was unconscious, so NDE are different from illusion. When people were near death, they may see the scene around themselves, such as doctors were saving them by trying various methods, nurses were talking with each other, their parents were quarreling, or an aunt driving a new red car here which none of the family had ever seen it before. All these are far from illusions. I have read all the NDE I could ever find, thousands of cases. More than half of them are not religious, but what they talked about are all very similar. They mentioned love, peace, happiness, forgiveness, wisdom, beauty, light, glory, and the source of everything. They said that there’re no evils, nor judgment. The Light who greets people will just ask and listen to them, understand and forgive them. Some people said that was Jesus, and He did show them as Jesus, others said that was just the Light. There’s another light, or, more accurately, not “another”, because that is the Source. People said the Source is the Creator, or God.

Some people did travel to hell, but they said that hell is not permanent. However, it’s hard to leave hell because souls here are ignorant. The most difficult part for them is to know there is another place full of love. These cases made me interested in Universal Salvation.

These people also said that religions are limited. Some became Christians after NDE because Christianity is the closest to the Truth they had been enlightened. But some who had researched theology said that the truth is, that religions are limited. Language is limited too. So the Bible written by human languages is also limited. What the Source and the Light care most about are what we learned, and how much love we gave others.

I’m not entirely sure about their narratives. I just think they are valuable. I’m still learning to be a Catholic because even if these cases are all real, that Catholicism is the closet to Truth.

Meanwhile, I remember St. Isaac the Syrian’s words:“As the grain of sand cannot be compared with a great amount of gold — the same way God’s need for justice cannot be compared with His mercy.”

So, all these ask me to be more of a Christian. We do good because we’re beloved. Love comes from love, and returns to love.

We talked about my prayer of sexual orientation earlier. Now I want to share another experience with you. On February 24th, Russia invaded Ukraine officially, I was worried about Ukrainians, so I decided to pray for them. I hoped great Ukrainian people drive aggressors out of their land. However, when I knelt down, I said:“Are You hurt by us?” And I started to cry.

Wars, are our crimes, our offense to God. When we hurt others, we are hurting Jesus. We put them on the cross, we put God on the cross again. We start a war to end a war… sometimes it’s only in our imagination. Russia was hooked on a delusion of persecution. As a matter of fact, we are all brothers and sisters, especially in these two Christian countries. Russia, who threw her glory away, attacked a city she called “mother”. Ukrainians had no choice but to fight for peace and freedom. Indeed, in reality, I stand with the Ukrainian people, I’m glad to see that the world sent Ukraine weapons to help them fight back, but in spirit, I pray for human beings’ recovery. I pray for Lord to help and heal the Ukrainian people. I pray for Lord to look after the Russian soldiers’ souls. I pray for everyone to stop, wait a minute, and think about our offense to others. Have we never hurt anyone? Every time we hurt others, the first to experience heartbreak, is God. He died of people’s misunderstanding and greed. He died innocently. How could we repeat crimes again and again, to our siblings?

Now I practice meditation regularly. My meditation is a little bit different from normal meditation, for it’s always starting with imagining death. I put myself in a reunion with God, the Great Intelligence, the Great Love. Almost all the fears derive from the fear of death. And we can train ourselves to face death. Maybe death is God’s mirror, when you crash into it, you’re hurt and try to go back, but one minute, you run through it. Behind the mirror is the whole truth. Home is waiting for you.

So… when you receive plenty of love, you will be careful about passive aggression. After all, you’re affluent now. You received without payment; give without payment. (Matthew 10:8)

When I was an atheist, I saw Christianity as nothing. I would not waste my time on it unless there are no more controversies on contraception, abortion, and gay marriage. Free contraception, free abortion, and gay marriage legalization are civil liberties. After my baptism, I still struggled with these problems. One day I had an epiphany — Christianity, especially Catholicism, is not a doctrine. It is a story about a perfect life. You grow up, saturated in love and innocence, you got married to the one destined for you, and you two open to each other thoroughly, body and soul. You were open to children. Each sex waved physically and mentally. You didn’t have to take drugs to escape from pain or have casual sex to find comfort and intimacy. So Catholicism is built on a perfect vision. Yes, God calls us where we are: broken and in sin. However, He shows us a perfect picture of life and invites us to try it. Catholicism, to draw a magnificent narrative with rationale, is speaking of the highest vision of life.

I love the book No Future Without Forgiveness by the Episcopal Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It’s about how South Africans achieved reconciliation after apartheid. Tutu said, “God loves me as I am to help me become all that I have it in me to become, and when I realize the deep love God has for me, I will strive for love’s sake to do what pleases my Lover. Those who think this opens the door for moral laxity have obviously never been in love, for love is much more demanding than law.” So when I felt how much God cherishes me, I changed my mind. The Church insists on her teaching about abortion because she cherishes every single person. I’m still not sure about the legislation on abortion, and maybe I’m a little bit closer to people who stand with legalized abortion, but I want to invite people to think about life itself. Your life is worth living. We spend so much time protecting the vulnerable and powerless, that’s our humanity — then why don’t we do that to babies? When we think about problems spiritually and holistically, we won’t say that some people are supposed to be abandoned while others are more valuable. We may make choices, but we must know they are compromises, not our honors.

I might disapprove of any punishment for the doctors and women who had abortions, but still, I’m calling for a rethinking of life. When you feel God’s unconditional love, you will love others, or at least long for loving others unconditionally. And when we touch these problems, we have to put Jesus in the center. He is the way, the truth, and the life. We walk on the way, to tell what life is.

As I said before, I was accustomed to agnosticism, till I saw Jesus. This man is the most ridiculous event in the whole universe. C.S. Lewis said, Jesus is either a lunatic or God. You choose one. He has nothing to do with a moral teacher. When our early Church Father Tertullian talks about his faith, he said: “I believe because it is absurd.” God loves us so much that He sent his only son to save us. God forsook Jesus on the cross. Through death, the most despairing thing, He brought eternal life.

How much does He love us? He died for us. He went to the darkest, to illuminate every single corner. It’s weird, I think. Let’s imagine this. Imagine there’s a noble man who wants to give us everything, not for buying us, but for he is wealthy and loving. He would treat us earnestly throughout this life, he would give us homage, gentleness, and forgiveness. And we would be ecstatic at first, we would enjoy his supply for us, but soon we would be flurried and scared — we would rather he’s a liar. He is buying us! It must be a bargain. We have to pay him back. He must not be a saint! We don’t want to owe him anything. However, the truth is, we could not pay off our debts — in our mind, these are debts — so horrific. We run and run and run, exhausted, wept, and messy. We want freedom. At last, we find there is only one kind of real freedom — loving someone. Loving back. It’s a desire for giving.

I love You now, because I want to give You everything I have. Because that is the way how You treat me all the time.

In ancient China, people raised their children to care for themselves when they got old. Children were kidnapped by filial piety, they must look after their parents their entire life. Looking after parents was people’s first duty. Modern Chinese suffer from this heavy duty and criticize it. Nowadays this family supporting strategy is still there, but not so patriarchal. People start to prioritize love. They find that when you love your children unconditionally, they love you unconditionally too. When you discipline them with duties, they are under repression and keep away from you, although they will fulfill the duty. When you are afraid of being abandoned, you become a control freak and finish the self-fulfilling prophecy. The only way is to give unconditionally and courageously. Be an other to become a real self. “The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

Be an object to be a subject. That is what He did for us. And I will do it for Him.