How Can an Introvert Become a Believer?

You might wonder about the title: how could “introvert” be an obstacle to becoming a “believer?” Yet that’s exactly how I felt when I first stepped into a church in North America.

I was born in China and immigrated to Canada in 2007. While living in British Columbia, my children attended an after-school program run by a Pentecostal church. They often came home with pamphlets titled Do You Want to Know Jesus Christ? The text described Jesus as an affable, personal friend, and I thought I could use a friend. So one Sunday morning, I walked to the church just three blocks away.

My goal was to check out the church and see if it suited me. As an introvert, I hoped to slip quietly into the chapel without attracting attention. But the greeters at the entrance spotted me instantly as a newcomer. They lavished attention on me; their exuberant smiles and overflowing enthusiasm felt overwhelming.

After receiving my first-timer gift—a coffee mug—and signing my name in the visitor’s register, I took a seat. On stage, a band was performing. The musicians extended their bodies—arms striking the guitar strings, fingers dancing across the keyboard, mouths puffing air into wind instruments. The singers poured their hearts out into the microphone, while the audience sang along, swaying to the rhythm with outstretched arms. Everyone was expanding, while I only wanted to shrink.

Eventually, the band stopped, and with it, the crowd’s energy settled. But before the sermon began, there was a session where people turned around to greet each other. I awkwardly exchanged hellos, longing for the relief of the sermon when I could look straight ahead rather than engage with strangers on the left or the right.

As the sermon began, I started to relax—until a new convert took the stage to share her testimony. She spoke with such raw emotion that she began to cry. The level of openness and vulnerability unsettled me. I couldn’t imagine ever standing on a stage and baring my soul like that. No, I couldn’t. A believer had to be an extrovert.

My attempt to attend church was largely driven by a desire to understand society. As an introvert, I excel at reading and prefer to process things at my own pace. I resolved to read the Bible on my own. However, my self-study didn’t make it past the story of Noah. I was overwhelmed by the names—so many generations to keep track of.

And that’s that.

***

Another thread in my life is writing as a career. I’ve been writing in my first language, Chinese, for nearly thirty years. But as my children grew up in North America, I felt the urge to write in a language they could understand.

Before I could write in English, I had to read in English. I could manage easy books on my own, but not the difficult ones. I tried to read Moby-Dick three times; once, I even made it to Chapter 38. I realized I needed the structure of a school environment—the pressure of professors, assignments, and deadlines. In 2020, I went back to college to study English literature. As I had hoped, I finally finished Moby-Dick from cover to cover in my “American Literature before 1900” class.

It just so happened that I chose to go to a Christian university, and therefore, two threads in my life began to weave.

One morning, I had a class at 11:00 am. I arrived at school five minutes before 11:00 am and couldn’t find a parking spot close to the lecture hall. While I was in a panic and driving to the residential area, a car parked along the street suddenly started and drove away. I immediately took that spot. When I settled in the classroom, the phrase, “I was blessed,” somehow emerged into my mind. At this Christian school, I heard “God bless you” all the time.

I instantly felt different. I always pride myself on being a rational person. I believe you reap what you sow. But with this belief, my happiness is always transient and fleeting. My achievement is not beyond surprise; it’s the natural result of my effort, just like I pay one dollar for goods worth one dollar. A fair trade. At the moment when I felt I was blessed, however, I experienced happiness in a way that I’d never had before—I’d gained something that I didn’t deserve.

But a question follows: What should I do the next morning? Could I rely on the blessing and confidently get up late? Common sense told me that I couldn’t make a decision relying on the assumption of the blessing. What’s the point of believing?

By that point, I’d been attending this Christian school for a while and had a good experience of learning literature in a community. So, I thought maybe I could give the church another try.

I live in San Diego’s North County, so I first visited North Coast Church, close to my home. But the same issues surfaced again: the overflowing enthusiasm made me feel uncomfortable. My introversion, it turned out, was still the obstacle.

The band performance felt like a survival test. Around me, bodies swayed, heads nodded in rhythm, and arms stretched high in surrender to the music and the spirit. I wasn’t unmoved by the music, but I struggled to match my outward expression to the emotions stirred inside. Though I doubted anyone would call me out, I felt insufficient, incompetent, even ashamed—like a lifeless utility pole trying to blend into a forest of living trees. I felt like a fraud.

The church offered many small study groups, and I was introduced to one led by Nancy and David. I soon found that the smaller setting suited me. It spared me the band performances, and I could focus instead on the discussion. Every Thursday evening, about ten of us gathered at Nancy’s home to talk about the previous Sunday’s sermon over tea and snacks. The life group quickly became a fixture in my week. I often skipped the Sunday service, choosing instead to listen to the sermon on YouTube as I drove to Nancy’s house.

Nancy’s group didn’t meet over the summer, so to fill the gap, I joined a family group led by Al and Carole, affiliated with Coastline Church. They told me they welcomed everyone, regardless of church affiliation.

One evening, I shared with the group how blessed I’d felt when I found a parking spot, and the inner struggle that came with it: how I often blame myself for not working hard enough, for lacking self-discipline, for wasting time. “Can believing in God help me with this?” I asked. I knew the question was inherently contradictory. A Christian is supposed to honor God, yet I wanted to honor myself through believing in God. The heart of my problem was that I felt powerless, but not humble enough. If I prayed, it would be for God to give me more self-discipline. But isn’t that ironic?

Al paused for a moment, then said, “Anna, God loves you. Whether you’re self-disciplined or not, whether you work hard or not—God loves you, no matter what.”

This answer nearly brought me to tears. I had never thought of God in this way. Growing up in Chinese culture, where discipline serves as the primary method of education, I never knew what unconditional love felt like; it’s an entirely foreign concept to me, mind-blowing even.

I almost wanted to say that I would become a believer right then and there. But the magic faded by the next morning. As much as I was critical of Chinese culture, part of it is ingrained in me. I’m so accustomed to the idea of a punishing power that a God who only loves, without judgment, feels like a figure without authority over me.

***

In the meantime, the storyline with Nancy and David’s group continued even though they took a break during the summer.

As with every small worship group, the last part of a meeting is reserved for praying for one another. I rarely asked for prayers, not that my life was all happiness and fulfillment, but I felt my problems were trivial compared to cancer treatments, unemployment, children struggling with addiction, and the like. However, in the spring of 2024, after receiving one rejection letter after another from the graduate writing programs I’d applied to, Nancy suggested that we pray for me to receive an acceptance.

As the prayer session began, I became immersed in the intensity of the moment and, somehow, elevated the admission decision to a matter of life and death. “Oh God, grant me this wish!” I thought, “I promised I would become a believer if only a school accepted me.”

Two weeks later, I received an admission offer.

At the beginning of the summer, I sent Nancy a phone message: “Back in March, while anxiously awaiting admission decision from the school I applied to, I made a secret promise that I would become a follower of Jesus if my prayer was answered. Now that I have received an admission offer, I feel that I should fulfill my promise. However, I’m not sure if this is the correct mindset. Do I sound self-centered? Is it genuine to become a believer just because God granted my wish? Is this true belief?”

Nancy wrote me a long message in response to my question, the gist of which was this: You come to believe in God because He grants your wishes, but you should be prepared that there will be times when your wishes aren’t granted. That’s because God is more concerned with our character than our comfort. When it comes to faith and salvation, God asks for something very simple: to recognize and declare belief in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

I had no problem if God disappoints me in the future, but I had a problem with accepting Jesus’s resurrection.

Reading the Bible, I didn’t struggle with the idea of God creating the universe and everything in it. After all, no theory about creation is beyond dispute. It is possible that an almighty force called God did it. Some scientists believe the universe began with the Big Bang, but couldn’t it have been God who set the Big Bang in motion?

I had thought that believing in God was enough to be a Christian, but it turned out that to be a Christian, I must believe in Jesus’s resurrection. I’d asked many Christians, “Is it okay if I accept the resurrection of Jesus as a spiritual truth—a metaphor or figure of speech?” They all said, “No, you’re not a real believer if you don’t accept Jesus’s resurrection as a historical event.”

Reading Nancy’s message over and over, I realized it wasn’t my introversion that had kept me from becoming a believer. I hadn’t become a believer simply because I didn’t believe.

I didn’t know how to respond to Nancy’s message, so I remained silent. In the meantime, I continued attending Al and Carole’s group every week.

As mid-July approached, David sent me a message, sternly asking if my promise to God was still valid. A promise is a promise—especially when it is a promise to God. I confirmed that my promise still stood and arranged to meet with Nancy. On the morning of July 26, 2024, I visited her at her home, where she guided me in proclaiming my belief in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to receive forgiveness for my sins. Afterwards, she announced that I had become a Christian.

But I knew I was a fake.

***

Now it was Wen’s turn to play a role in my faith. Wen and I had attended the same college in China in the 1980s, though we didn’t know each other back then. We reconnected at an alum event, where we discovered that we had both lived in the same dorm at Beijing University—Building #31—and now both lived in San Diego’s North County. By the end of the event, we agreed to stay in touch more often.

As Christmas approached, Wen invited me to a concert at Maranatha Chapel. A concert was the last thing I wanted to attend, so I texted her, “Maybe I’ll go to a Sunday service next year.” “Next year,” however, turned out to be just two weeks later—and, of course, she wanted to hold me accountable for my promise.

I went to Maranatha Chapel’s Sunday service a couple of times, bracing myself for my nemesis—the music performance. But with Wen by my side, it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. Much of the intimidation I’d felt before came from the contrast between my introverted nature and the rest of the outgoing crowd. As a Chinese person, Wen was more reserved than most, but as a longtime member of Maranatha, she was more at ease than I was. In the end, she became my cushion.

At the beginning of August, I met Wen for brunch. I wanted to ask how she could believe in Jesus’s resurrection as a professor of computer science. But as we started drinking coffee and eating omelets, I diverted our conversation to another topic. Experience has taught me that I couldn’t find an easy answer. Over the years, I noticed a pattern: Christians tend to explain the Bible using the Bible. If you have a question on page 11, they’ll answer by quoting something on page 111—a closed system. But to be fair, non-believers often operate within a different closed system as well. There’s a chasm between these two worlds. I’ve often sensed the disappointment of people who tried to persuade me and saw I wasn’t convinced. The closer I am emotionally to someone, the more I want to avoid that mutual disappointment.

But Wen had a new angle; she encouraged me to get baptized. “You would feel differently if you had been baptized,” she said.

“Am I qualified?” Back in Canada, at the Pentecostal Church, new believers were required to take a one-year course and pass an exam before being baptized.

“It isn’t necessary at Maranatha,” Wen explained. She told me that once, during a baptism at La Jolla Shores, a tourist was drawn to the crowd and asked if he could be baptized. The pastor handed him a T-shirt and baptized him on the spot. She mimed the gesture of putting a T-shirt on.

“August 15 would be the last opportunity for a baptism at La Jolla Shores this summer. If you missed it, you’d have to wait until the following year.”

“Then I’m in!” I said, feeling the urgency.

On the day of the baptism, I arrived at La Jolla Shores at 5:30 pm, but I couldn’t find Wen. I spotted a few Maranatha Chapel tents near a lifeguard tower, where volunteers were handing out food; adults and kids were either playing in the water or relaxing on the sand. It just looked like a normal summer BBQ party. I looked through each tent and finally found the one where T-shirts were handed out. It was a dark green T-shirt with the words “I Have Decided” printed in white.

After putting on the T-shirt, I began to notice others wearing the same thing. Before long, they were all walking toward the sea, gradually forming lines. I randomly chose a line and followed it. At the front, baptisms were underway. Each new believer stood in the middle, flanked by two others who held their arms. At a signal, the two helpers pressed the body in the T-shirt into the water before quickly pulling it back up. I felt a little nervous—how long could I hold my breath under the water? Did I pass the swimming test in my elementary school’s PE class?

Finally, it was my turn. Pastor Daniel and a woman began to pray. I could barely hear them over the excited shouts and cheers from the other lines. The area within my sight was filled with so much excitement that it seemed like it could boil the seawater. The sea, which had appeared calm from a distance, pushed against me with surprising force as I stood in it. I used all my strength to stay still while feeling the warm touch of the setting sun on my back.

Just before I was lowered into the water, I caught a glimpse of Wen and her husband running toward me, gesturing wildly. She seemed to be saying something urgent. But I was suddenly submerged before she could reach me. In a film, this moment would be portrayed in slow motion, allowing the magnificent, dim-lit underwater shot to overwhelm the audience. But in reality, before I could even register the engulfing sensation, I was pulled back into the open air.

I opened my eyes but could only see blurred and contorted shapes as water streamed down my glasses. Wen explained later that she’d been trying to remind me to remove my glasses so they wouldn’t get washed away.

“They stayed on my face,” I said, shaking my head, and water droplets scattered in every direction. “It happened so fast that they didn’t get to slip away.”

I asked Wen what I should do next. She suggested that I get changed, and with that remark, I realized how freezing I was. My glasses were still streaked with water, blurring my vision. I needed something dry to wipe them before I could look for my shoes and backpack.

We walked silently along the beach. I didn’t tell Wen that I felt no spiritual revelation. All I could remember were the physical details: the water streaks on my glasses, the trail of my footprints in the sand, the crowded bathroom, and the sock I had lost. On the drive home, I turned on the heated seat to stop myself from shivering.

It was the evening of August 15.

***

But the moment of revelation came, unexpectedly.

A week later, while driving to Al’s group meeting, I listened to a visiting pastor’s sermon at Coastline Church. He introduced a theory I hadn’t heard before: The path to believing in Jesus is for you to have an experience of a second life.

I thought of my own endeavor to write in my second language. It is hard, no doubt, especially now, with AI coming along. If AI can translate a text effortlessly from one language to another, why should I forgo the advantage of my native language? The truth is, I pursue this goal not just as a viable career, but as a transcendent second life. Only when I can write in English on my own do I feel that I am truly living an authentic second life. Translating my work from Chinese to English with the help of AI doesn’t count—it is a borrowed life. That’s how serious I am about writing in a second language. I regard it as a chance at rebirth.

If I could believe in myself with such conviction, why shouldn’t I believe in Jesus’s resurrection? The answer is: I should, and I can.

But this is still a belief in the metaphorical sense, isn’t it? I still couldn’t quite reach the point of believing in Jesus’s resurrection as a historical fact, but I was emotionally closer. For the first time, I began to think that belief isn’t the opposite of disbelief, like the matter of black and white; it’s more like a spectrum with many shades in between.

I told Nancy that I was baptized at Maranatha Chapel. She congratulated me but didn’t invite me to return to her life group when they resumed meeting in September. I told Al the same thing and mentioned that I would go to Maranatha Chapel. He understood and asked if I wanted to stay on their email list. I said yes, and I’m still on it now.

I still felt more comfortable attending a small worship group than a formal Sunday service. I’m an introvert, after all, but I couldn’t find a family group within Maranatha Chapel, simply because there wasn’t a group that fit my schedule.

When school started in September, I discovered that I needed to work on Sunday evenings. My school is about 30 miles south of my home, and Maranatha Chapel is located between the two. Attending the 10:30 worship on Sundays made my day flow better—after church, I could find a place for lunch and then head to school to study in the library before work. Wen always attends the 8:30 service, which is more convenient for her. As a result, I started attending Maranatha alone, without a cushion.

One day in October, I received a large envelope in the mail. Inside was my baptism certificate, beautifully and elegantly printed, almost like a graduation diploma. I stared at it, struck by a strange sense that everything was connected. On the day of my baptism, I had noticed only the physical details, which had grown fuzzy with time. What remained in my mind was the simple notion that I had done it. Now, the certificate stood as the embodiment of that notion. I couldn’t help but ask: which is more important, the real thing or its symbol? In the same way, I could also ask: which matters more—the way Jesus’ resurrection happened in history, or the way it is recorded in the Bible?

I thought carefully about my experience on August 15, moment by moment. Curiously, the most vivid memories were the images seen through my water-streaked glasses. Long ago, I had read an article suggesting that people with poor eyesight were more likely to be introverted, because looking outward was more strenuous, leading them to focus inward instead. At the time, I thought it was unfair—did my eyesight determine my introversion? Holding the baptism certificate, I felt a sense of relief: God has a plan for everyone.

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