"Christianity is not Islam. Islam is a religion of hatred."

Whenever someone asks about my religious preferences, I point to this quote from my pastor as to why I stopped going to church in junior high. That statement is not acceptable in our modern-day context. It perpetuates our epidemic of Islamophobia in a country that already marginalizes and discriminates against Muslims enough. It conflicted with my fundamental values of open-mindedness and tolerance, and I wanted to separate myself from that negative and poisonous bigotry.

At least, that's what I told myself then, and that's how I portray a false image hiding the deeper reasons behind the situation. While I still am very much appalled by that comment, it was five seconds out of a 90-minute sermon, and the way I represent it very much takes it out of context. Claiming that I left to "stand up for my morals" is as oversimplifying of the situation as concluding that this intolerant comment somehow reflected the tone of the entire church.

What I leave out of this conversation is that members of this church were some of the nicest people I've ever met. Upon moving in, they walked to our house and welcomed us into the community the next day. Constantly, they would visit and catch up with our family throughout the week. They would invite me to youth group events even though, at my most awkward stage, I barely said a word to any person there.

One day, my youth group leader, Hank asked us all to close our eyes, and raise our hands if any of us doubted we'd go to heaven. In less than a second, my hand shot up. Even to this day, I think, "Don't we all sin tremendously? Doesn't everybody doubt?"

When the Bible study ended, Hank asked me to step into the hall and asked me why I doubted. I don't remember how I responded, but I remember that his eyes looked in anguish. He would later organize a baptism for me. It was strange to me — why did he care so much for the spiritual well-being of a quiet and awkward kid who'd only been to his church for two months?

"Do you accept Jesus Christ as your savior?" he asked a week later in the presence of the whole church population as an audience. I nodded, and I was immersed in the shallow water. I was supposed to be saved through baptism, yet I didn't feel any different. "That's it?" I thought at the time.

Gradually, I began going to church less and less frequently, but it wasn't because I was disillusioned with it. Frankly, I was staying up too late playing video games or watching a movie late on Saturday nights. In eighth grade, nights like that were all too common. After going to sleep at 5 a.m., my mom would knock on my door three hours later and ask, "Do you want to go to church?" I responded with a terse, "No," and my mom would go and lie that I had a stomach problem.

Eventually, I had skipped service and mid-week youth group activities four weeks in a row. Hank and another senior church member visited twice, asking about my health. Instead of going downstairs into the living room and admitting I was too lazy to go the past few weeks, I hid upstairs in my room and halfheartedly asked my mom to still pretend I was sick.

They'd visit often over the next couple of months, asking about me when I still didn't go to service. Over the summer, I had "cross country practice" (I could run any time I wanted during the day). I had "Chinese school" (I stopped going in sixth grade). I even once had to "study for the SAT" (I was going into my freshman year of high school).

They weren't dumb, and got the message that I lost my interest in going to church. It also meant that I couldn't possibly go back: the way I avoided them was quite possibly the most disrespectful way of saying, "I don't want to go to church anymore."

I left my church because I was a coward. Even, today, I take after Hank and some members of my youth group as role models in how I interact with others — even if I didn't completely agree with their beliefs. In retrospect, I feel the obligation to stop lying about why I left my church. I feel the obligation when I go home to visit Hank, look him in the eye, shake his hand and say, "Thank you."

I wrote the first half of this article three years ago. I still, to this day, haven't gone back to visit Hank, but my life changed in the past three years more than I could possibly imagine. I got over my cowardice and started going back to church and ministry groups. I'm halfway through a crusade to finish the Bible in a year, and constantly turn to Scripture as a constant during hard and trying times.

The norm for me now has to be a part of my church family and attend church every Sunday, and even attend 6 a.m. Bible studies every Tuesday morning. I pray every day. I read Scripture every day.

But I started going back to church mainly thanks to great people I met through the ministry, that were with me when I suffered, that loved me even when I didn't deserve to be loved. I wrote frequently about my friend, Luis Torres, who taught me that everything I knew about Christianity was wrong:

I'll say this too — you were the first person that taught me that suffering wasn't a bad thing. A minister at SuCo said these words: "every time you suffer, and come out of it, you come out looking a little more like Jesus Christ." And those words resonate with me, because you were the first person I knew who put such profound past suffering in your and your family's life so openly and plain. You showed that you are the human being you are today not despite that suffering, but because of how you've grown from that suffering.

I have my faith and ministry community as a rock. I traverse each day, each trying moment of my life, telling myself to trust God and His plan for me and the people around me. The challenges I've gone through the past year in my last year at college and my first year as an inner-city teacher has reinforced that without God, I would have gone insane.

God clung to me even when I ran away, as I describe earlier in this article. I encounter many people in my daily life that viewed Christianity like I did way back in the day, as an Inquisition-like imposing of rules and religion that is more Pharisee than Christian.

Now, that view has complicated significantly. The line between being a Jesus-follower versus a Pharisee is one that I do my best to stay on the right side of. I keep the Scriptures of Matthew 7 close to my heart, always, in the constant, necessary reminders of how far I am from the Christ standard, and how I am no one to judge.

As Matthew 7:4 states: "How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is a log in your own eye?"

There are huge logs in my own eyes, whether that's my impatience, dark humor, or various addictions. I realize that life's a lot more complicated than 13-year-old me recently.

The most valuable lesson I learned throughout college is that it's not wrong to suffer. I learned that through my Christian friends. I learned it through a theologian. I learned it through the Bible. In a couple months, God validated the tough experiences that always made me so ashamed and like a failure.

"We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us," Romans 5:3-5 tells us.

I know that people are sinful and imperfect, and it's a life-long struggle to improve and be more in the image of Christ. There has always been something that was missing since I renounced God, and then when I turned to God after my sojourn away, everything felt like it was going to be alright. And that didn't mean I just turned towards God on Sunday mornings and afternoons -- no.

For me, everything is grace now. Everything is about God.

"God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us," Romans 5:8 says. My story is nothing and boring without God's story. And I know there are a lot of people that will read this and shake their heads in frustration. That's fine, because everyone has their own individual story.

But this remains true: while I ran away from God, God still used his followers, Christians, to help save me. I didn't understand why. A part of me was content with going into the abyss, but God delivered me from that hole.

Yes, almost 10 years ago I left my church. And then I came back, and don't see myself leaving any time soon, for reasons that I just can't explain articulately right now. God is using a broken, flawed person like me to do great things as an inner-city teacher. I have no idea why God chose me and showed mercy for me even when I was running away from Him.

Maybe it's because God's love is so strong, but some things, like a lot of things right now, are just unexplainable.