Cody's Story
I grew up in Texas in a Christian home to really great parents.
The church we were attending was not a spirit-filled church and was pretty dead and lifeless, so my idea of church growing up was stale and boring. Despite the fact I never enjoyed it, I was often labeled “the church kid,” because we did literally everything at the church. VBS, Bible Drill, Wednesday night services, youth group, choir, etc. The whole shebang. It would not be an exaggeration to say that we spent more time at the church than we did at home.
So since that was the case, my relationship with the idea of Christianity was a tainted one. I remember saying the “salvation prayer” and making a “profession of faith” when I was probably 6 or 7 in VBS, having absolutely no clue what I was doing. I remember having a concept of what Hell was and knowing that I didn’t want to go there and that if saying that magic sentence would keep me from going, I was all about it. I got baptized right after and basically began living a double life. It was similar to what happens when you tell a lie to someone. You start to get further and further away from that lie as time elapses and it becomes more and more difficult to come clean. And then eventually you never come clean and you just live with that lie. That was what I was doing with my understanding of Christianity. Everyone around me thought I knew what I was doing and assumed I understood Christianity because I was always in church, but in reality, I was very lost and very broken, feeling more alone every day.
That situation, coupled with the fact that I was kind of a loner/artist kid to start with, made it very difficult for me to make friends and as I grew older, I became progressively more isolated. I became overwhelmed with feelings of loneliness and sadness and it made no sense to me because I was supposedly a Christian right? I was supposed to be “living the good life” right? God loved me right? He wouldn’t let me feel terrible all the time would He? I buried those emotions and let them fester in my heart and over time, they became a deeply rooted anger and sense of hate for really no reason at all.
Metal became my messiah
I started to explore art and music that had dark themes and began to really develop an interest in Metal music. Metal in itself isn’t inherently bad, but if you wander down the wrong path in that world, it can get really dark really quickly. And that’s exactly what I did. I felt like I could relate to the songs because the bands seemed angry and lonely and sad just like me, and since I didn’t really have a lot of friends, music became my safe place. I began to blame Christianity for how I was feeling. Seeds that Satan would later use to try to destroy me were being planted in my heart. I was sad, vulnerable, and angry.
Then I went off to college…
I very quickly met a group of people that shared similar interests in the music world as I did, and I took a dive off the deep end into the darkest corners of the metal scene. I learned how to play guitar and started playing in some metal bands. We played the heaviest, darkest, fastest, loudest, angriest music we could come up with. The lyrical content was full of hatred, anger, and pagan/satanic themes and I began to develop an interest in the occult and Paganism. On top of that, many of the guys in my circle of friends were neopagans and white supremacists, so I began to agree with their thoughts on other races and developed a hatred for anyone that was not white.
I began to be brainwashed and fed lies that gave explanations for why I was so angry all the time. I was told that Christianity was the reason I was so messed up. I was told that Christianity was designed to manipulate the weak masses and to steal their money. That the Church was to blame for all the things in my life I didn’t like. I bought into all of it and I began to actively work against Christianity in any way I could. We would assault Christians when we found out who they were. I ripped out pages of the Bible and used them for rolling papers for my weed. I lit someone’s house on fire because we heard they were a Christian. I was actively working toward ending Christianity and was violently opposed to it in every way shape and form.
In addition to all that, I got involved in everything you can think of that would happen with a touring rock band. Different girls every night, theft, vandalism, all the drugs you can think of. I was constantly in a state of chaos. I smoked weed and drank all day every day. In my mind that was just the normal way of functioning. I never did anything that you had to inject, but I snorted, smoked, and popped anything I could get my hands on. I began selling drugs to fund our bands tours. In order to get gas money or food between shows, we would steal major amounts of merchandise from local stores, and sell the stuff on craigslist in Walmart parking lots.
Violence became the everyday norm. In the world of hardcore/metal music there are groups called “crews” that function essentially like a gang. I wouldn’t have called it a gang, but it was a gang. We would go to concerts or out in the streets with the sole intention of fighting anyone and everyone that got in our way, with bonus points given if we sent someone to the hospital. My goal in life was create havoc, chaos, and destruction, because it felt good. I loved it.
I was a nightmare of a person. A racist. A pagan. A thief. A drug dealer. A gang member. A monster.
Then, as all things do that are not rooted in Christ, it all began to fall apart. The girl I was living with kicked me out. All the “friends” I had made started to disappear, and through a crazy series of events, I ended up alone again, living out of my car, addicted to drugs, with absolutely zero plan and zero direction. I was out of money and had no place to go, so I put my “manipulation hat” on and got to work. I knew I had to start making money if I didn’t want to live out of my car anymore, so I lied on some job applications and landed a job so I could afford an apartment.
All of the feelings of loneliness had come flooding back, so I used the job to try to suppress them. I figured if I worked 80 hours a week, I wouldn’t have time to be sad. So I got an apartment that had nothing it, and my life became a sad cycle of work and drugs. I would go to work and then come straight back to my apartment and get wasted. I never slept. I would just get hammered drunk, get high, pass out, and get up and do it all over again the next day. I had zero social interaction outside of work and never left my apartment other than to go get more drugs or booze.
I entered into an extremely deep, incredibly dark period of depression that I would not wish on my worst enemy. I wanted to die. I tried to hang myself and failed and tried to eat an entire bottle of pain killers washed down with whiskey and failed at that too. My life had become a sad pit of despair. It was a living hell.
but then one day…
One day a guy came into my job and started talking to me about metal music and he gave me a band to listen to. He kept coming in over and over asking “did you listen to that band I told you about?” I didn’t take it very seriously, but kept it in the back of my mind. In that season of my life there were bad days and then there were REALLY bad days. On one of the particularly bad ones, something in me remembered that band that he had told me about and I for some reason I decided to give them a shot and listen to some of their songs. I ended up liking it and told him about it the next time I saw him. He told me they were playing a show in town in a few weeks and encouraged me to go see them play live. Initially I said no, but something stirred in me and even though I had not really left my apartment for anything social for several years, I decided to go.
The bands that played that night were not only Christian metal bands, but they were bands that literally preach from stage, and for the first time in my life I heard the message of the gospel in a way that made sense to me. It was coming from someone that looked like me, sounded like me, thought like me….it suddenly all made sense and it freaked me out, so I went outside the venue to smoke a cigarette and try to relax. While I was out there, the guitarists from one of the bands that played saw me, made a beeline over to me, grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Hey, I don’t know who you are or what’s going on, but I saw you from stage and I felt like I’m supposed to pray for you.”
Needless to say I lost it. I unloaded my life story on this dude and he listened to the whole thing. I dropped every pent up emotion on him at all once, and at the end, he walked me through the gospel in a way I had never heard before.
We prayed together for me to receive Christ and make a fresh start with God right there in the middle of metal concert.
I went home and started doing my best to live like Christ. Got a Bible, started reading it, and God slowly began reclaiming my life bit by bit. Over the course of several years, God worked to renew my mind and my body, healing me of addictions and rewiring a brain that had been poisoned and manipulated for years to believe the most heinous of lies.
That was 7 years ago, and each year has progressively gotten better. I remember early on in my new journey saying a prayer where I told God that from that point forward I was not going to make a single decision in my life that didn’t have Him written all over it. That if something in my life came along that didn’t have to do with Jesus, I didn’t want any part of it.
And now here I am 7 years later with a clear, fully renewed mind, living healthier and happier than I’ve ever have, on staff at a church, pastoring and leading people into the presence of God. He literally hunted me down, pulled me from the pit of hell, and brought me back to sit at His table, with all the honor and blessing that I do not deserve. All glory to Him!
Connect with Cody on Instagram @codybrown777
If you sense the love of Jesus drawing you near and would like to make your own commitment to surrender your life of sin in exchange for a new life of undeserved grace, now is the time!
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