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Young Ho Yoon Seoul, South Korea

I first went to church when I was five years old. My church had a summer bible school and they were giving nice snacks. Especially big tomatoes attracted me among the snacks. So I asked my mom if I could go to church and she gave me permission without hesitance.

Since then I have almost always been in church to this day. I have really enjoyed my church life. I was really serious about God and how to live a righteous life when I was in high school. But I had never concentrated on the meaning of "who Jesus is" or "what Jesus did" in my life until I was in university. Basically I thought I was a pretty nice person, at least an OK person. After I entered a junior high school I admitted that I had been really terrible in elementary school. I was physically stronger than any other in my school and beat my friends whenever it seemed necessary (?) just to rule over all the students. When I was in junior high school I seriously grieved about my wrong doings in my elementary school days and strived very hard to become a morally nice person. That was because I couldn't find any meaning in those misbehaviors and also I thought I had to live a good life because I went to church. But I never thought about "who Jesus is" or "what Jesus did." I wanted to be a nice person and was becoming better.

I still remember an interesting experience when I was a child. I don't know exactly when it was but I was a really little kid. One day when I was playing around with my friends outside my house I came into my house just to use the bathroom. I was still catching my breath while I was in the restroom. And suddenly a funny question popped out in my mind, "Is that all?" "Is this all about life?" "Play about with friends and die?" This question was really interesting but also dreadful to a little child. I tried to ignore the question and went out back to play with my friends because I didn't have any clue how to answer it. But the question began to grow and grow. And my journey to find the meaning of my life began.

I was a pretty nice person. I tried very hard to be a morally excellent and perfect man. I heard the word "sin" very often in church and prayed with my brothers and sisters, asking God for forgiveness day by day. But actually it was hard for me to find any notable sins in my life. I didn't think I did any harm to other people. My interest or major task in my life was to find the meaning of my life. I wanted to know the purpose of my life.

I had many personal problems while I thought I was a pretty good person to others. My identity was not clear since I never knew the purpose of my life. And this gave me an inescapable burden that I could never have overcome. That was "the pressure of comparison and competition." Korean high school students, when I was one of them, were study machines for a better university and one's whole being was judged by his/her teachers, friends, and even parents according to his/her grades. And the rank of one's university decided the value of the person. My life was full of comparison and competition, acceptance with temporary achievements, and another competition, rejection with failures, and ignoring others or being ignored in comparison and competition. There was no "I" or "you" but a winner and a looser. Of course I was so self-centered and ready to take any tricky but acceptable way to win.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed my church life and wanted to have a deeper relationship with the person Jesus. So my situation was that on the one side I enjoyed my church life and got to know Jesus more and more. But on the other isolated side I still had sorrow over comparison and competition and I thought it was sad but "that's the way the cookie crumbles."

Now as I was getting to know Jesus more He began to draw those two sides together and showed me that my burden with comparison and competition was originated from SIN. What? I was a pretty good person in our society and I didn't feel any need for a big confession of a big sin. But Jesus taught me that my pride made me compare myself to somebody else and that comparison gave birth to another form of pride; a wrong evaluation of myself and other people. Pride, comparison, pride, competition, and again pride, all these things work together as a chain reaction and pride is a deadly sin. I didn't know that it was because of sin why I had to be afflicted by such a blood drying comparison and competition. I just liked Jesus while I was fighting against comparison, competition and meaninglessness.

So Jesus helped me perceive my deeply rooted sin and gave me a solution. That solution was Jesus Himself. All sorrows and troubles came from sin and no human being was exempt from sin but Jesus, the only Son of God. Jesus was also God and sinless. And God sent His sinless Son to this world to pay the penalty for my sin because I was not able to solve this problem and God loved me. The punishment for my sin was death eventually. So He died for my sin and rose again proving that He was God and overcame death. By this, He cut the very root of all my problems, problems of identity, security, pride, envy, comparison, competition, and the meaning of my life. The Bible says if I put my trust in this Jesus I will be freed from my sin and not have to die for the sin because Jesus already did that instead of me. And this means I will not be condemned but live forever. So I placed my trust in Jesus. Actually I did it a long time ago but I didn't know the significant power of Jesus' death because I didn't even know what my sin was in detail at that time. Now I am enjoying the powerful result of what Jesus did. I think this enjoyment will become bigger and bigger in all areas of my life.