I'm Forgetting Who I Was, And I Don't Like It.

This year, I celebrate my 10th anniversary as a Christian. As happy as I am about that, I have noticed a certain unfortunate side-effect: The circle of people in my life now no longer know who I once was. For the record, I am happy they didn't know the old me, but then again, the drama of the sanctifying power of Christ is lost. They can't see the before and after, only the after.The people in my life now simply assume I have always been basically a moral, very religious person. When I tell people otherwise, they think it is a bad joke. I used to be unrecognizably different.

I am one of those people who had a very dramatic conversion, not only in the sense of joy and zeal, but from the mess I was delivered from. 

• I regularly explored mind-scapes derived from the highs of psychedelic drugs. I considered myself a "psychonaut", an astronaut of the mind.
• I actively hated and persecuted Christians.
• I studied the occult traditions from diverse religions and mystical practices from across the world.
• I would invoke demons and angels in blood rituals.
• I deceived the simple-minded into believing in false gods for my own gain.
• I developed a philosophy which espoused no universal moral law, and I would do evil things simply to demonstrate I was not bound by the same moral constraints as others, and then boasted about it.

So to me, I guess the sad thing is not only that other people are forgetting, but I am forgetting too.
I heard this would happen.
You begin to forget what you are saved from, and I determine never to do that. However, the credibility of my past is certainly fading. Where once my occult knowledge was equal in depth to my now Christian knowledge, I have now forgotten so much from lack of study and care, I only remember broad principles and facts. I'm left with bumpersticker phrases like "as above, so below" and "an' harm none, do what thou wilt." Mind you, I do not long for my occult knowledge, but I am finding myself in the place where I say I used to be an occultist, yet I can barely speak the jargon anymore. Without something to jog my memory, I probably know less than a Wikipedia page.

The last vestiges of my past, my occult library, I intentionally kept boxed up in the closet for a keepsake, or at least, documentary evidence of what I once knew. Alas, a few years into marriage, my wife made the rightful point that those probably shouldn't be kept around our house anymore, and I discarded them.

Truly, my old self is dead, lost behind me in the cloud of forgetting. However, where I am today was not attained through much hard work, but by the sanctifying power of Christ. I just hope I can still remind myself where I've come from, so that grace may wash me, and so that others will know the unyielding, undeniable power of God to save, even those who were his sworn enemy.