What Happened To My First Love? Part 2

The year was 1984. I had already spent three years in college drifting around for direction. I am a trumpet player and at the time I was spending most of my time playing in every ensemble I could in the music department even though I wasn't a music major. I had told myself I would never be a band director because there was no money in it, so I looked at various majors and tried them out to see what I was most interested in, even though I was a music major in all but name.

I really didn't like myself much at this point because of all the partying and irresponsible behavior I was exhibiting. I needed a savior. I needed Christ, but at that time in my life I had already experienced that and had a bad taste for it all (see my last post for why). So began my spiritual journey. Around this time, 1984-85 the movie Ghandi came out and I was moved by it and so I became interested in Mahattma Ghandi. Which in turn led me to his religion, Hinduism. I decided to give Hinduism a try.

The first thing I did was buy what is considered by Hindu's their holy book among many called the Bhavigad Gita. The main god of the Hindu's was Krishna. I say main god because Hinduism is polytheistic. I began worshiping Krishna by burning incense and praying to a painting that depicted Krishna. I also began believing in reincarnation because Hindus do. All of this began to just feel downright wrong. I could not feel any sense of fulfillment. I still felt empty. The more I studied about Eastern religion the more I couldn't believe what they were teaching. None of it made sense. So after about a year of this I decided to abandon Hinduism because it was dead and empty. In retrospect I can remember the Holy Spirit saying "what are you doing, Jesus is the way!" the whole time I was "practcing" the Hindu religion. Of course at the time I had no idea it was the Holy Spirit telling me that. I just assumed it was my guilty conscience warning me to stop.

My next stop on my spiritual journey led to Islam, that's right Islam. I bought a Koran at a yard sale and began reading. One of the first things that troubled me about the Koran was that none of it made sense. The reason was that the book was not in any specific order and was very chaotic. I spent less time in Islam as I did in Hinduism because Allah seemed to be schizophrenic. This was not for me. And again it all felt wrong anyway. So I put my spiritual journey on hold and went back to partying and wasting time.

After four years of college I had nothing to show for my progress. I had become a business major, a political science major, and an engineering tech major. I had passed several classes toward any degree but dropped or withdrew from the rest. All the while playing in every instrumental ensemble I could. So I finally wised up and said screw the money music is where my heart is so I became a music education major training to become what I at first said I never would, a band director. The partying never stopped however.

Then in 1987 (I was in college from 1981 to 1990) sitting alone in my apartment on a Sunday morning I began flipping through the channels on the TV and came across this program that appeared at first to be a news program so I stopped and began watching. I soon found out that it was not a news program but a Christian program talking about prophecy and the end of the world as it related to current events. I was hooked. I watched the entire program.

Stay tuned for more....