When Truth Found Me

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Posted by: Jenny Baker, Content Writer & Communications Coordinator | Monday, June 30th, 2025 (12:00am)

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.—Ezekiel 36:26 

Sin. It’s a word I never used to like talking about. In fact, for a large part of my life I didn’t believe sin existed in the first place...until God stepped in when I least expected it. 

While I grew up in a Christian home, church was not always an uplifting experience for me. I’m not sure if what I recall is reality or simply the selective hearing of a child, but what I took away during my youth was that God is an angry tyrant, full of wrath against humanity, holding us accountable for a mistake made by Adam and Eve at the onset of creation. To serve penance for their wrongdoing, He established a set of rules that, if followed perfectly, would allow us into Heaven where we could live “the good life." And if we didn’t…well, eternal torture in Hell was our destiny. Don’t ask questions; just obey, don’t sin, and all will be good. Easy peasy. 

God being all loving and full of grace and mercy? I don’t remember a single word being said about that.  

I suppose with that view of God, it’s not surprising that as soon as I reached adulthood, I decided Christianity was simply a method of scaring people with this thing called “sin” and “Hell” to force us to follow outdated values. I found myself immersed in the worldview that “truth is relative” and “what’s true for me may not be true for you” while advocating for people to “live your truth!” whatever that “truth” may look like. This “sin” thing? It really didn’t exist. I mean, who are you to tell me what I’m doing is wrong? Almost everyone else is doing this “sin” thing I do too. Heck, turn on the TV or flip through a magazine and it’s perfectly acceptable. Plus, this sin feels completely natural, so obviously it IS natural. How I live isn’t hurting anyone, so why should you care anyway? I’m a good person, I’m nice to people, and that’s all that matters. Christians are just trying to force their repressed way of life onto the rest of us with their antiquated moral standards.  

And then the world took a dramatic turn with the onset of the Covid lockdowns, and something really strange and completely unexpected happened to me as well. When I try to pinpoint what motivated this sweeping pivot, why this shift occurred, I can’t identify a single incident or event. I was perfectly fine with my “enlightened” self. All I know is that suddenly, a very distinct line between right and wrong became undeniable, sin’s presence became terribly obvious, and love—not wrath—became the defining characteristic of a very real God. I began to see that “Truth” was something defined outside of myself; an anchor designed to keep everything fixed in place. I was seeing in real-time how many people were detached from that anchor, including myself, and how that manifested in our behavior, beliefs, and treatment of one another.  

What I came to realize is that sin is real, it deeply hurts people, and it truly lives within each one of us no matter how “nice” we may be. This was a mind-blowing revelation, like I was walking on a modern-day Road to Damascus. Similar to Saul, who spent his life persecuting Christians and all they stood for, “scales fell from my eyes” (Acts 9:18) and I began to see clearly what I spent nearly a lifetime trying to pretend didn’t exist: Sin. Brokenness. Evil. In me. In everyone. God, Jesus, the Bible, The Church, sin, Hell; out of nowhere I began to see all these “triggers” from my youth in a whole different way. 

Those rules God put in place? I now know they are there to protect—not repress—us. When Adam and Eve sinned at the very beginning, they not only unleashed brokenness over the entire created world, they also embedded sin into human hearts, which carries on and is carried out through each one of us. It’s like a cancer that keeps passing on from generation to generation. We can’t help that we have it, and the end is always the same: death and an eternity separated from God (Hell). 

But God knows that even with these rules He provided, we’re still going to fail…over and over again. So, He did one more thing, one incredible, crazy, radical thing to save us from the death and eternal separation that sin will inevitably lead us to. He sent Jesus, who carried all our sins with him to the cross. There on that cross Jesus died along with our sins, and in doing so removed any trace of it that lives within us; setting us free from the inevitable, awful outcome that sin had in store. All we have to do? Just recognize our brokenness, ask Jesus to take it to the cross on our behalf, and believe that he put our sins to death so that we can fully live! 

I can’t imagine a more sacrificial, pure, amazing love than that. How wrong I was about God! He is all-loving, merciful, and full of grace indeed! 

Looking back, I now see how I used “sin” to justify turning away from God. As the Great Author of irony, God used sin to point me back to Him. How grateful I am for His unexpected intervention! Never give up that God is working in people’s hearts…even those who view Him with animosity. The Holy Spirit can penetrate even the hardest, most sin-scarred hearts. I know, because He did it for me. I know He can—He will—do it for you or someone you love, too. No one is beyond God’s reach. This is not “my” truth or “your” truth, it is The Truth.  

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