Originally from the mighty Manawatū, Max Masters lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. He works as a religious studies teacher and college chaplain. We talked with him about his journey so far with God, from his earliest years, through some turbulent times as a teen, into an ever-deepening relationship with Christ. This is a beautiful, candid reflection on God’s mercy, patience, and profound action in our lives to give us life in abundance—Ed.
My parents split when I was 1. They both remarried when I was about 5. I grew up mainly with my mum and stepdad. They lived on a farm near Sanson, which was nice—a very outdoorsy childhood. I was the youngest of two: me and my older brother Quade. Then, when mum and dad both remarried I found myself as the youngest of eight, because my stepdad already had five kids, and my stepmum already had two daughters as well. And so that was interesting for me. I loved having more people around, but it changed things a bit.
I was very, very curious as a child. Mum and my nan would tell you that my favourite question was Why? Why are those trees different to these trees…? My mum tells the story that once I was in the car and was asking questions; and she said, Shut up, Max! And I said, Is my name Shut-up-Max? Apparently that’s an answer I was given a lot—I just relentlessly asked all these questions, I was always curious.
In terms of family values and stuff, they were similar across the houses: a lot of freedom. Neither of my parents were like helicopter parents in terms of, you know, safety. We were pretty free to roam the forest and play in the fields and play outside and do all this kind of stuff. Free range kids, I think they call us now. I’m really grateful for that. I think it sparked a lot of imagination in me as a child and a love for the outdoors. You know, we’d build huts outside and sleep in them and all that kind of stuff, which was pretty fun. Also we were free to, like, play video games and all that—there wasn’t a lot of policing.
Our families were quite poor, both of them. I remember money always being a stressor. And I remember thinking often: I hate being poor. There were some times when dad would eat very little because there wasn’t much in the house. I remember me and my brother eating baked beans heaps—and then sometimes we’d get baked beans with sausages, and I’d be like: Yes. Looking back now, I realise we were poorer than I thought we were.
In terms of values, from both sides of the family there were a lot of unspoken ones like respect and hard work. From a young age, I’d work on the farm if I wanted pocket money; I’d mow the lawns or, you know, go and grub thistles for granddad for $8 an hour. I learned that value from a very young age: if you want money, you have to work for it. I’m so grateful for that now. In terms of respect, I think it was just language: the way you speak to your parents. They were pretty big on that. Also, care for others: mum would always stop whenever we drove past someone with a broken down car. At the time, I would be cringing about it—we just wanted to get to sport practice or whatever it was, and I was so embarrassed. But yeah, she always would do it. That was just really, really precious, I think.
My granddad was Christian, but he lived his Christianity more than he ever spoke it—didn’t try and get us grandkids involved in church. Now, looking back at his life, I can see it: the patience and the grace and the generosity. But I didn’t see it then.
I guess my first exposure to faith was halfway through my dad’s marriage. We had someone redoing the kitchen, and he started evangelising my stepmum. She came to faith—and then dad came to faith. I must have been eight or nine. But it was confusing for me, because I saw dad every other weekend, and then all of a sudden one of those weekend days, Sunday, was taken up with going to church. I was like: what is this? I think it just confused me. I was frustrated that I had to go to children’s church, you know, rather than hanging out with my dad.
When I was 11, I went to this Christian camp. I had a group leader who had a positive influence on me. He wrote me a letter at the end of it and talked about how to give your life to God if you want to. I remember praying that prayer, psyching myself up for this kind of moment. When I prayed it and then nothing happened, I was like, Oh, that was uneventful. I didn’t really think about it too much after that. But I remember praying a bit after that, talking to God. It wasn’t asking for stuff. It was just telling him about my day. I remember asking God, How was your day? You probably have a lot of people to listen to….
After school I didn’t go to Uni—there was nothing that I was that passionate about. I was working two jobs, seven days a week, and kind of getting burnt out. I was working as a lifeguard and a contractor, two random jobs that were just around in my world. I didn’t really have any ambition or anyone encouraging me to do anything else, and I became pretty discontent with my life. I remember sitting in Year 13 prize-giving, seeing everyone walk the stage and get prizes for this and that and thinking back to Year 8 when I was getting all these prizes for academia and sports and music and stuff. I thought: Oh, I haven’t really done much with my life the last five years. It was frustration with a kind of nihilism. Like, you know, finishing school, seeing my parents just live and work, and being like: Surely there’s more to life than this? I think drugs become a big way of escaping that. Nothing significant—mainly just weed. I picked that up when I was a teenager and it became an everyday thing after high school.
There was a lot of tension. Both my parents got divorced in the same year, when I was 13. So, no matter what household I was in (I was doing week about between the households at that time), I was expecting tension wherever I went. Part of why the drugs appealed, I think, was dissociation. Also, I was out of the house like any other teenager wanting to be around their friends and stuff. I was just trying to figure out who I was—I remember one year, when I was maybe Year 12, I made an intentional decision: I’m going to hang out every day where the cool kids hang out; I’ll be one of the cool kids. It was just the desire, I guess, to be known, to be seen—approved of. But I wasn’t sure which area to do that in. It wasn’t in sports because I wasn’t really playing any sports through high school. It wasn’t in academics because I didn’t really try in high school. So I think I just managed living in a floating zone.
I was definitely seeking after high school. I was reading books and listening to YouTube videos and stuff, trying to understand more about the world. I remember finding this life coach online when I was 19. And she got me into these books, new age kind of stuff. I think my understanding of God was kind of a metaphor for the universe. We went through a course for 3 months. I was starting to think about the world—but that understanding didn’t really fit together.
Around the same time, I met a girl called Grace who was who was a Christian, and we started dating. It was really through her and her family’s witness that I started getting interested in faith. Not that I was interested in faith to start with! I was just interested in her, and the faith kind of came with it. I spent a lot of time in their house; there was always a sense of warmth and comfort and hospitality there. Her parents were so nice all the time, and it got to the point where it frustrated me, because I thought that they were being false. I remember having a conversation with her dad and being like: Oh, John, how come like you never yell at me when I bring Grace home after curfew? I never see you getting angry in the house. I’ve been around the house like four months, five months now; if you want to, you know, have a go while I’m around, I don’t mind! And he’s like: No, we just don’t see the need to resolve things that way; we believe in grace and forgiveness. I thought it was rubbish at the time. I was like: As soon as I leave, they’re going to start arguing. Because that’s what happened in my house, and that’s what happened in my friends’ houses. It was just constant, you know? But then after seeing it again and again and again, I was like: Oh, there’s something genuine about this. It was foreign to me; it was just really foreign. That’s why I didn’t believe it. I didn’t think it was authentic at first.
But it was through that that I started going to church. I remember the first time going to church as an adult, and Grace’s granddad was preaching. And all he did was put up photos of space and ask: How can you not believe in God? My friend was with me because he was dating Grace’s sister, and driving home we were both like: What was that, bro? We’re never going again! But I had to go again because Grace’s dad was the pastor, and I hadn’t heard him preach—and he’s the one who had had influence in my life. So I went back. He was preaching on Jonah. I remember sitting there and hearing the Scripture being read and I was like: there is truth here; I don’t know if the story’s, like, legit history or not, but there’s something about this dude who’s compelled towards something, but goes his own way instead—and then is drawn back to it. There was something in it.
I was like, I want to read these stories for myself. I got my hands on a Bible and ate it; yeah, I just ate it up, when I first got it. I’d be like reading it all the time, in the lunch breaks at work, sitting by the truck tyre, you know, smoking a cigarette, reading the Bible, my workmates walking past: What are you reading that **** for? But I just couldn’t get enough of it. It felt like food to me.
Oh yeah, yeah, he did. There was just something about a man who feels drawn to something but then, you know, goes his own way: he digs his heels in, and all this bad stuff starts happening. And then his will is overturned. I think in many ways that’s what led me to belief, because I’ve always been a strong-willed person. I’ve always done what I’ve whatever I wanted to, whatever the consequences are. At my 21st, my mum told a story from when I was eight years old. She walked into the garage and I’d started painting the freezer red with some paint that I’d found. My stepdad, like, ripped me to bits. And then the next day I snuck in there again painted the whole thing. Mum walked in just as I was finishing it. She was like, Oh, I know that Max is going to do whatever he sets to his mind to regardless of the consequences. I’d always lived that way. When I was 20, 21, I started wrestling with a will that was greater than my own, and that’s what compelled me, I think: I was drawn to something against my will. You know, like: I’m thinking about giving up things that I don’t want to give up, yet I feel compelled to!
I think that’s why I was quite dissatisfied in my early years of being a Christian. I was trying to live in both worlds, cling to my life and to the life of Christ—you know, crucify the old man but then resurrect him on the weekends. Living in that tension was horrible: I didn’t have the pleasure of the world because it was tainted by a guilty conscience, and I didn’t have the pleasure of sanctity because it was tainted by sin. And so for a couple of years I just lived in that tension where I wasn’t free to do either. You know, Bonhoeffer says: The yoke of Christ is heavy to those who resist it. And I think that was me: I was pulling back on the yoke rather than yielding to it, and letting him at my heart to uproot those things.
It took me a couple of years to realise that if I wanted freedom, to live obediently, that I had to give things up for that, my life did have to change in significant ways—and that was quite a painful process. I thought for a long time that I could have my will alongside of God’s. C.S. Lewis uses the analogy of the garden: you think that God’s going to come in and plant a couple of nice flowers and transform the garden; but actually he’s got to dig up the whole thing and resow it [Laughs]. I was like: Dang, this sucks! But I remember recognising in my early 20s that that had to happen, that I couldn’t live a life built on false foundations. I remember praying, Lord break my life down and build it up on yourself. I recognised that whatever false things I’d built my life on—false assumptions or stories or lies—just wasn’t going to be enough. It’s like Augustine says: He who seeks to build a foundation has to go down really deep. I don’t think I realised at the time how much work and pain that would entail. The other story of Lewis’s [that comes to mind] is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Eustace becomes a dragon. And the Lion has to come along and scrape right down and tear off the dragon skin from him. That’s what it was like. It wasn’t fun.
No, it was a slow thing. I felt called to ministry as soon as I became a Christian, and then I was in Bible school about a year later. But I only did one term of it, because in the holidays I went back to all my old vices, and I was like: Oh, there’s no way I can be a pastor because I’m still drinking and smoking and partying and stuff. So I dropped out of ministry and started doing counselling instead. But then I was reading 2 Corinthians where Paul talks about how God’s power is made perfect in weakness. I had this moment where I was like: Is there actual power available to me, that will help me say no to these things? Maybe there is. I’ll try to stop smoking cigarettes, and then when I feel weak, I’ll pray. It was like an experiment—I was like, we’ll see how it goes! And then I realised that that was the case: that whenever I was weak and tempted to smoke, I would say, No, there’s power available for me. I’d ask God for power—and I was able to overcome that addiction.
And then after that it was, you know, drinking; and then those other things that had my heart, whether it was vaping or porn. One by one, those things started kind of dropping off. That’s when I realised that there was power actually, and that the Christian faith wasn’t just committing to a set of ideals or intellectual precepts about the world, but actually there is power available to live a different life. I was reading John’s gospel around the same time. In John 8, Jesus says: If you hold to my teaching then you really are my disciples, and you’ll know the truth, and the truth will set you free. I realised, Oh, actually, obedience is a precursor to freedom. If I want the freedom of the Christian life, then I have to start being obedient to God. That was quite challenging for me. But I think it was also necessary in order for me to draw some lines in the sand about the habits of my life.
So, I felt called to study pretty early on after coming to faith. Whenever I read the Scriptures, the first thing I’d do is imagine: How would I communicate this to people? I’d often lie in bed and just think about it. I started studying at Laidlaw College when I was 20, 21. I did one term of theology and then I decided I can’t be a pastor because I’m still living this unholy life. And I pursued counselling instead.
I was getting a little bit disillusioned with the church, because of—what do you call it?—the dissonance between what I was reading in the Scriptures and what I was seeing in the Church. The Venn Summer Conference was pivotal for me: I went to Conference being like: I’ll see if this ignites my faith and if not, well, maybe I’ll just leave it. Seeing the Church so alive, and seeing people think really deeply about who God is, and reflect really critically, evaluating the different pressures in the world, and seeing young people alive for God, and the place of lament and prayer: that was really significant. I remember coming away from that, driving back to Auckland, and being like: OK, the Church is healthy and alive (it’s just in certain pockets…).
That reignited the fire for that in my life. I think a lot of it was that slow maturity of yielding to the calling as well, feeling called to pursue study, being drawn to questions. You know, Who is God? Who am I? What is wisdom? What are the challenges the Church is facing? How do I help people overcome them? I gave up a lot of time and money, like, 8 years of my life and 85 grand in theological education trying to answer those questions. It was costly. But those questions really drew me. I finished my degree in counselling, and then I did the Venn Fellowship. That was significant for me. During that time I figured out, praying with the fellows, the teaching staff, that I was called to ministry and yeah, that I wanted to pursue more education. And so going on to Regent College [in Vancouver] at the recommendation of my pastor Craig Heilman, and Nathan McLellan.
That was another formative period of my life. I learned a lot about discipline and what hard work looks like. The North Americans love their thinking and they do it well, and they push you a lot. That was really, really helpful for me. Throughout that time, Christian friendships really shaped me in significant ways—that was huge for me at Regent. It’s one thing I miss about being over there, the good friends that I had.
I think the big thing I’d say is that the freedom you think you have is actually very shallow; if you interrogate it enough, it’s actually slavery. You think you’re free because you can go out and drink and party and smoke and sleep around and do all these things whenever you want with whoever you want. But are you doing that because you’re free or because you’re compelled to? You know, you’re out every Thursday, Friday, Saturday night getting blind drunk, and you say you do it because you want to, not because you need to. But you’re spending money you don’t have to get into a state you say you don’t need. Like, what’s really going on there?
One of the first quotes I memorised when I became a Christian was by C.S. Lewis:
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
I think as a 19 year old I was far too easily pleased with the things in the world. I thought I was free, but I wasn’t. I was enslaved to many things. I remember thinking as a young Christian, Oh God wants to take my freedom away from me, he wants me to live this kind of confined rule-based little life. The more I ventured into that “little life” with rules and stuff, the more doors actually opened up. It felt like I was like Lucy [from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe] stepping into a wardrobe. When I had the whole house to play in, I was like, Why am I getting in this wardrobe? But the more I went into it, the more I’m like: Oh, there’s a whole other world here for me to live in. Chesterton captures that best when he says: “The more I considered Christianity, the more I realised while it had established a rule and an order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild”.
I think people have misunderstandings about the faith. You know, [the idea that] Christianity is a rule-based religion, and all that. Sure there are certain parameters around things, but they’re parameters for good things. You know, there’s prohibitions around sex because unhinged sexual licence actually leads to a destructive life; but in the context of marriage, in the safety and the parameters of marriage, it’s a beautiful thing that gives life. Those parameters are there so that our freedom has a context—and it’s a greater freedom than what’s possible without it. In our world, you know, autonomy and freedom are kind of synonymous. People think: I’m free to the extent that I can live my own way. But it’s very negative—it’s only freedom from, you know, parents or school, or whatever. It’s not freedom for anything. Whereas freedom of the Christian tradition is always freedom for stuff. You know, Exodus 5: God tells Moses, Say to Pharaoh: Let my people go—so that they can worship me. It’s freedom from slavery; but it’s freedom for God.
The first thing that grabs me about that story is that the father lets the son leave in the first place. God for a long time let me have my own way—and actually that was my judgement [by God]. I think in Psalm 81 it talks about how God hands Israel over to their own devices; and again in Romans 1: God judges people by letting them have their own way. Freedom and love is: being brought back and wanting to stay in the father’s house.
I think for a long time I thought in the same way that the younger son does [in the parable]: If I come to the father, he might not welcome me as nicely as I’d like him to, because of the things I’ve done; there’s probably going to be a lot of things to do to make up for stuff. God was kind of a taskmaster, I think, for a long time. Reading a book called Abba’s Child [by Brennan Manning] changed that for me. I was recommended it by a professor who was a spiritual director over at Regent College. It was such a short conversation. I just sat with her and she shared the Scripture and we both started weeping. And then she told me to read Abba’s Child. It was a very, very short conversation, but so profound. And she told me to book a retreat at this place and read this book. And so I did. And yeah, God did a lot of stuff in my heart that weekend. I realised that the critical and often condemning voice of my dad is not the voice of my heavenly father—that was kind of uprooted. I walked away from that knowing that there was nothing I could do that would deter God from loving me. You know, J.I. Packer talks about how when we enter a relationship with people, we do so with our eyes closed because we only know people to the extent they reveal themselves to us; when God enters into relationship with us, he does it with his eyes open, so that nothing can then deter him from loving us. That freed me to accept that love and also to offer that love to others, because I knew that there was nothing that I could do that would that would deter him in his desire to bless me—which is just wild!
Knowing Jesus expanded my capacity to love: to receive it and to live in it, but also to offer it to others. My work now is trying to do that well. It’s challenging sometimes—it can seems like such a fruitless ministry, preaching to rebellious, angsty teenagers who can’t concentrate and don’t want to hear it. But then there are these little pockets of beauty: like, last night one of the boys says, Oh, Sir, can you pray for us for our exams tomorrow? And then sitting there in the dark hallway, with ten 15 year-old boys sitting in bed telling me they want prayer for wisdom, they want prayer for memory… I have a blocked nose—can you pray for my blocked nose? And just being able to offer that and bless them. I’m hoping to draw people to that love.
I was preaching this week on the parable of the unforgiving servant [from Matthew 18]. I was thinking about the question, How do forgiveness and freedom hang together? And they do really hang together. The whole Christian faith is underpinned by forgiveness: being forgiven and entering relationship with God. Our relationship with God hinges on it. But I think in my own life unforgiveness has robbed me of joy. I’ve realised that forgiveness isn’t only about the other person, but it’s also about me and the freedom that it enables for me.
I’ve lived with unforgiveness. I’ve seen it eat away at my family in significant ways. It just erodes the soul like battery acid. It festers: it’s not just one wound that stays there; it’s like it grows. One time, I was dating a girl from church, and she broke up with me. A few weeks later she started dating my best mate. And I was just so angry. I was so angry. You know Psalm 73, where [the Psalmist] says “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.” I was just like that, you know. But it just ate away my peace, and I knew I had to forgive them. I sat them down at Church one evening, laying my hands on them, blessing them in their relationship…. And the peace that came from that, and the freedom that came from that…. They got married a couple of years ago and have a great relationship. And you know, now I have the freedom to enjoy that and enjoy seeing them—but also the freedom of not carrying unforgiveness anymore.
You know how Jesus teaches [in Luke 7] the one who has been forgiven much loves much—that’s huge for me. I know the man that I was and what I’ve been saved from. I don’t think we can fully forgive others until we’ve reckoned with our own forgiveness; but we also never fully understand our own forgiveness until we fully reckon with our own sinfulness. Recognising my deep sinfulness and the forgiveness that I’ve been offered frees me to forgive others and live a light-hearted life.
