By Orion Nayoan —
Growing up in Indonesia, Lynn began to question Islam, but when she asked her teachers, she felt rebuffed.
“It was almost wrong that I asked, like I shouldn’t be questioning the words of God (Allah),” Lynn says. This is actually a very common experience for Muslims because Qur’an 5:101 says, O you who have believed, do not ask about things which, if they are shown to you, will distress you.
In other words, believe blindly. It is a truth that can’t be questioned.
Lynn belonged to a family that was very committed to Islam but didn’t practice so rigorously as some. For example, her mom didn’t wear hijab.
Eventually her questioning led her to a Pentecostal church. She didn’t have permission to go to church. She informed her parents that she had “extracurricular activities.” If she had told her parents, she would have been kicked out. At 14, she had no one who would take her in.
“I really enjoyed it,” she says. “I liked the worship style. I like how I felt and connected with God. It felt it felt really nice, and I really feel the presence of Holy Spirit.”
Eventually, church members approached her and pressured her to get tell her parents that she was going to church. They also pressured her to get baptized, which would require her parent’s signature to approve under Indonesian law.
But Lynn was faced with specter, as most underage Muslims, of being kicked out of her home for “apostasy.” So she demurred.
The church members, seemingly insensitive to the dangers Lynn faced, kept pressuring her, so eventually she stopped going to church.
She became an atheist.
“As a kid it was really hard. I didn’t have anyone and I couldn’t do much either,” Lynn says. “And so from that day on I I just stopped believing. I stopped believing in everything. I didn’t believe in Islam. I didn’t believe in Christian. I didn’t believe in God. I was just empty from that day on.”
She attended university in Canada, which is very secular, she says. Naturally, she started partying with the other students but didn’t smoke pot with them.
Christ began to draw her back to him, but first she got sidetracked by witchcraft.
“I went down to like the witchcraft and paganism path,” she says. “It got really dark. I delved into like tarot cards, astrology. I would burn candles, incenses and do spells and stuff like that.”
The year was 2025. Her new boyfriend was Catholic but didn’t attend church.
When he got invited to a Pentecostal church, he invited her.
“I was reminded exactly why I love this so much,” she says. “I just kept thinking about the church, feeling the the presence of the Holy Spirit just being with me.”
She reached out to the young adults pastor and was encouraged, a very different response from the pressure from the pentecostals in Indonesia.
“I’m an adult. No one can stop me now,” she says. “No one can stop me from searching the truth to receive baptism because I can do it.”
