1 , What Must I Do?

Faith Born in a Question,

"Faith Born in a Question, and the Calling of the Wilderness"

Encountering Jesus for the First Time

When I first began to believe in Jesus,
I regarded Him merely as a great teacher—
a man of extraordinary wisdom who revealed the truth of the world.

In those youthful days when I thirsted for truth,
I opened the Scriptures and traced the footsteps
of the young Jesus as though searching for a lost memory.
The twelve-year-old Jesus, debating with the teachers of the Law in the temple,
filled me with both wonder and a strange reassurance.

Fig. 1-1: The young Jesus discussing with rabbis at the temple gate

“Of course—extraordinary people are different from childhood.”
That was what I thought at the time.

But as the years passed and faith deepened,
that assumption shattered completely.

Jesus was no genius, no sage,
no mere spiritual teacher.
He was God Himself, who came from heaven
and dwelt among us in human flesh.

He was not a temporary “great human,”
but the eternal, living God.

Until I grasped that truth,
I tried to fit God into the small frame of human understanding.
But the moment that misconception broke open,
my faith moved from the realm of the mind
into the deeper chambers of the soul.

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Bunyan’s Pilgrim — and Myself

John Bunyan was no different.
He began The Pilgrim’s Progress
with a vision of a trembling pilgrim standing under the weight of God’s judgment.

Fig. 1-2: “What must I do?”

There stood a man—
clothed in rags,
a heavy burden strapped to his back,
a book held tightly in his hands.

The more he read,
the more his face twisted in anguish.
At last he cried out:

“What… what must I do?”

That cry was the sound of a human conscience awakening.
Faith truly begins only when the burdens of life
grow too heavy for us to carry.

The book in his hands was the Bible.
The Word struck him like lightning:

“The day of the Lord will come like a thief.
The heavens will disappear with a roar,
the elements will be destroyed by fire,
and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.”
—2 Peter 3:10

That Word pierced his heart.
He could no longer look away.

His sins, his falsehood, his hypocrisy,
his condemning words—
all of them formed the crushing pack upon his back.

His family could not understand him.

“What is wrong with you these days?”
His wife and children watched him with anxious eyes.
To those he loved most,
he appeared to have lost his mind.

Finally, he set out alone.
The burden remained heavy—
yet it was that burden that drove him onto the pilgrim’s path.

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My Wandering, My Alley

I too had my season of wandering.

In high school, in the shadows of despair and emptiness,
I often asked myself,
“Why was I born?”
“Where do we go when we die?”

A poor household,
seven siblings,
a cramped room,
a steep, narrow alley—
the memory of that place still lingers in my heart.

Fig. 1-3: The alley with steps—where I once saw my sister meeting a man in secret

One day I saw my sister secretly meeting a man.
I told my mother.
My sister was punished and forbidden to go out.

Not long afterward,
she died during surgery for an optic nerve tumor.

For the first time,
I felt the cold reality of death.

Standing beside her coffin,
my body trembled with guilt and fear
over what I had done.

From that moment on,
the question
“What must I do?”
was engraved deep within my soul.

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The Beginning of Faith

After my sister’s death,
a friend introduced me to a small Baptist church.
It was old and simple,
pastored by an American missionary,
yet filled with genuine love.

There, for the first time,
I heard the words:
“You are a sinner.”

And I was baptized.

When I rose from the water,
the world was still dark—
yet the eyes within me
had changed just a little.

Faith was not completed in a moment.
It grew slowly,
through questions and doubts.

“Could Mary truly have conceived without knowing a man?”

This was not mere skepticism—
it was the spiritual trial
I had to face as a young scientist.

In time,
the question transformed
from a problem to be solved
into a mystery to be embraced.

For faith blooms at the very edge of human reason.

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The Temptation in the Wilderness

After Jesus was baptized,
He was led into the wilderness.
There, after fasting for forty days,
He faced the temptations of the devil.

Fig. 1-4: Jesus being tempted by the devil

“Turn these stones into bread.”
“Throw Yourself down from the pinnacle of the Temple.”
“Bow to me, and I will give You all the glory of the world.”

Three temptations.
Three answers from Scripture.

“Man shall not live by bread alone…”
“You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
“Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.”

His victory was accomplished upon the foundation of the Word.

I recall that scene again and again.
The wilderness belonged to Him—
but now it belongs to me as well.

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My Youth: Standing in the Middle of My Own Wilderness

My teenage years were a wilderness.
My dreams were large,
but my reality was painfully narrow.

I ran toward one of Seoul’s most prestigious universities,
yet the result was disappointment.
I clung to the promise,
“Ask, and you shall receive,”
but no answer came.

When I failed the exam,
I felt wounded by God.

My father kept watch over bicycles
at a small stand next to a bank
to support our family.
My mother stayed up late at her sewing machine,
embroidering name tags to make ends meet.

One night, the needle pierced her finger.
The red stain of Mercurochrome
remains vivid in my memory even now.

My father gradually turned to alcohol.
In the poverty, the humiliation,
and the weight of failure,
drink became his refuge—
and his poison.

Fig. 1-5: My father’s drunken rage brought terror upon our family

When he was drunk,
he shook the house in the middle of the night,
and I, trembling in fear,
called upon God.

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Under the Shadow of Despair

Scripture says:
“Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery,
but be filled with the Spirit.” (Eph. 5:18)

This is not merely a moral injunction.
It is a spiritual warning—
God’s cry that we must not surrender our minds
to the whisper of the evil one.

My father quit drinking only after a stroke struck him down.
From his sickbed, he sought God,
and soon after, he passed quietly from this world.

But the spirit of alcohol did not end there.
It moved on—
to my brother,
and then to another member of my family.

Eventually my younger brother
took his own life.

On that day, I was imprisoned in despair.
A shattered family,
love that had vanished,
the unbearable sorrow of the one who survives.

Once again, I cried out:

“What… what must I do?”

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The Beginning of a Pilgrimage

That cry turned me back toward the Lord.
I came to understand something:

The wilderness is not a forsaken land.
It is the place where God speaks.

From that moment,
my own Pilgrim’s Progress began—
a journey to shed the burden of sin,
a journey toward God,
a journey to seek and paint the truth.

“Do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”
(Romans 12:2)

This word remains inscribed
on the opening page of my faith.