Josh Aronoff

I’ve thought about this for a long time, sharing my faith on my blog. It’s a large part of who I am, although it’s not something that I speak about that openly with people unless they ask.

I think that the reason is that I don’t want people to think I’m beating them over the head with my faith. I’m not. It’s just that I feel that the gift that God has given me through faith in Jesus Christ is something that I’m called to share with people. Whether or not you feel that Jesus is right for you, applicable to you, etc. is and always will be your own choice. My hope is that the words I speak, will somehow ring true with you, or you can see yourself maybe through some shared experiences, and that you may come to the same understanding that I have, that God loves you more than anything else in the world and wants you to know that.

It’s why we’re here…

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I feel that I can’t share my testimony of coming to faith without going back to a key moment in my life, that shaped and changed my life and it’s trajectory for many years to come.

I grew up in the Jewish faith, in Cleveland, OH. I enjoyed my religion, partly because we would get into ancient debates over right and wrong, ethics and last but not least, the girls in Hebrew school were very pretty. I can’t deny that that last part was a big part of me wanting to go every Saturday (Yeah, I said Saturday, you heard me correctly.)

So, I always was a troublemaker in school. Getting into debates over whether or not we should be able to leave class early, or whether or not I could stand on my desk, or whether or not we had to do homework, you get the idea. I reveled in my rebelry, and I think that to an extent, I still do.

Well, life moved along pretty well for me till I was about 12. My mom was a single parent, she did the best she could. I’d leave home and get home and she’d usually either be gone for work or on her way home. It was something I accepted and for the most part, I just wanted to do the right thing and not really get in trouble but still see what I could get away with.

When I was 10 or so, my mom started to get sick. I overheard her talking to someone on the phone about having a lump on her back. I was in the living room, she in the bedroom.

“Have you told him yet?”
“No, I will. I just don’t know how I’m going to.”
“You should tell him soon…”

Something in the tone of their voices made me realize that this wasn’t something I should be listening to. I silently flicked the little clear nub on the phone with my thumb and put the receiver gently over my hand and just sat in the dusk of the room until I heard my mom go into the bathroom and draw a shower.

I walked in as she was stepping in, and asked her what was going on. She told me to wait in the living room and she’d come out and tell me. I don’t remember her telling me, it’s like everything in my life is measured before and after I opened that bathroom door…

She got sick fast. The cancer spread from her thyroid and moved pretty quickly. A year and a half went by and my Grandma picked me up from school and in the backseat was all the things from the hospital. She told me she was gone, and I just looked out the window as we drove through the neighborhoods. It was really sunny out but I felt none of it.

I spent the next year continuing to feel nothing. Nothing mattered. I’d reserved to living my life out till I died, with no hope, no meaning, no ups or downs, because I came to the realization that because of death, life had nothing to offer.

I began to question Rabbis and teachers and they’re question-answers to my real questions further drew me closer to not caring about anything or anyone. I couldn’t get close to people. I wasn’t going to let myself get hurt again.

School became something I did in between the stuff I actually wanted to do, which was be left alone. I’d been adopted when I was 12, my new adoptive parents and I moved to West Virginia. In the small town of West Virginia, I slowly kept becoming more and more isolated, not wanted anything to do with my new parents, or anyone. The only people I could stand were young people.

My parents didn’t know what to do with a bump on a log that literally would spend hours in my basement room doing absolutely nothing. I went to a live-in treatment facility for depression for 9 months, which I spent gaming the system and helping other people in group therapy. I’ve always been one to wanna help others.

When I had successfully socially alienated myself from everyone and gotten on probation I was kicked out.

I then went to boarding school for 2 and a half years, where I was picked on, made fun of, and generally had friends but still wasn’t able to connect with people.

For 4 plus years it was like my life was just something that happened to me.

Finally I came back to Morgantown, WV angry, developing nasty habits and pretty much a miserable bastard to everyone around me. I didn’t care about anyone really… Surface wise I did, but I had had enough with everyone, and couldn’t really take rejection from anyone else so I wasn’t going to let anyone in.

Then I met Jared.

Jared and I had almost nothing in common with the exception that we were both pretty nerdy and liked to read alot and stay by ourselves. I was extroverted on the verge of punching someone in the face, while he was introverted. I hated all sports, jocks, cheerleaders, and anyone who represented any form of social class that somehow felt that they were better than me (Like I said, I hated everyone, I mean, who talks like that?), while Jared lettered in football. I was raised Jewish and couldn’t stand God, while Jared loved God and was a Christian, which the only thing I knew about Christianity was that Christians tended not to wanna do much of anything that I wanted to do like be loud, in people’s face, make people mad and smoke cigarettes.

Well, despite our differences, Jared and I became very good friends. While I would rail against God and swear up and down and blaspheme Jesus to Jared’s face, Jared would sit there quietly, while still visibly angry and tell me how what I believed wasn’t true.

I started going to Young Life, which was a Christian ministry for High School students. For some reason, no one minded if I smoked like a chimney while we talked about God.

I remember the first time that I heard someone speak a passage from the Bible. One of the leaders Ben did the talk.

I don’t remember what it was about, what the lesson was, or anything else, but I remember the feeling. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt like I was going to pass out. Always the experientalist, of course, I wanted to hear more.

Also, I wanted to debate the crap out of everything. Nothing could get past me. I started to attend Bible studies, moreso to try and blow holes into arguments and be combative.

My plan backfired everytime, because there’s almost an answer for everything under the sun in the Bible.

I stayed friends with Ben and Jared, and after 2 years of hearing the Bible, I went to Young Life camp, and on June 17, 1997 I accepted Jesus Christ as my God.

AN EMOTIONAL AND LOGICAL CONCLUSION

My acceptance of Jesus Christ, was based on the fact that I’d been running from everything in my life, I had had enough of life at a young age and was pretty much just waiting for my time to come until it was over. I traded in a life of solitude and loneliness to a life of constantly being overjoyed in knowing God and knowing that He cares for me, regardless of what I think, and what others think of me as well.

I think that we live our lives letting the world around us dictate how we define ourselves.

It starts young, where your parents tell you you shouldn’t wear this, or do this and then it continues while your into adulthood. Atleast it had for me.

But God doesn’t care about what people or even you think about yourself. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past, what you’ll do in the future, where you are in life, just know that God loves you. More than you’ll ever be able to know. My relationship with Jesus as I become closer to Him becomes more and more about not what I’m going to do, or what I’ve done… but what I’m doing right now, for Him and for the people around me that He’s put in my life.

OVERJOYED

I sometimes still try to go back to the way I was before, not giving a crap about myself, the people around me, or anything in particular. I think it’s a symptom of spending years in a very dark place. But there’s a verse that always centers me, and keeps me able to perservere when I get depressed.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,^[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

NOTHING can separate me from the love of God. And if you trust in God and let Him show you the same thing He’s shown me, I guarantee you, that you will understand and feel the same solace and peace I have in my heart.

The only reason I wrote this was not to lift myself up, but to tell you where I was at, and explain the contrast that my life is now. My prayer is that it’s helped you examine your own life, made you question what your reality is, what God is and means to you and ultimately helped you realize that God loves you.

I can honestly tell you, that without a doubt, everything in life makes sense to me because of my faith in Jesus Christ, down to the bad things too. I hope this didn’t come off as self serving, but as a genuine tribute to what God has done for me in my life.