I remember watching a television show where a white man was standing in front of a mostly white audience, and he was making fun of African Americans. The audience seemed to really enjoy his racist innuendo. At the end of the show the man who was speaking revealed that, though he appeared to be white, he was in fact black. He was using his lack of pigment to teach those watching a valuable lesson.
Imagine that this same man had been adopted, raised as a white guy, and really became a racist making fun of blacks for a living. How do you think his world would change if at the end of one of his shows his birth parents walked up and reviled his true race?
How would he feel about the values of his adoptive parents that raised him to hate. How would he feel about his white friends who love his racist jokes? How will he look at himself in the mirror knowing how he had lived his life up to this point?
This is similar to how it was for me the day that I converted to Christianity. It was as if Jesus approached me and told me that He was my heavenly father. This meant that I was not the person that I thought that I was. I had been living as if I were created by chance, and the purpose of my life was to do whatever made me happy or felt right in the moment.
My friends and family were, for the most part, just like me, and heartbreakingly I found myself disagreeing with most of what they believed. Don’t get me wrong I still loved my friends and family, but I knew that our relationship was never going to be the same.
In the end I lost contact with nearly all of my old friends. I wanted to remain friends, but it was difficult. Could you imagine President Obama waking up this morning and realizing that he disagreed with almost every democratic position, and suddenly agreed with all the conservative tea partiers? Even if he wanted to remain friends with his old pals I am sure you can see the problems he would face.
I gave up a lot in the way of friends and self seeking, and I gained more than I could imagine. Conversion is not for the faint of heart.