A Prodigal Returns to God

This is just one testimony of one of the lives in training at Pinecrest for God’s end-time purposes. Chris Tringali’s search for truth led him through eastern mysticism, drugs, Scientology, and finally, to the cross of Jesus.

Chris has a burning heart for evangelism and is enrolled as a Second Year student in Pinecrest’s Biblical Studies program. He is also Pinecrest’s Food Services Manager and lives in Salisbury Center with his wife, Nancy, and their five dogs.

I have always been searching for God. I always felt a connection to the spiritual and at the same time a separation from it. In high school, I ran away from home twice, I got involved in drugs, eastern mysticism, yoga, and meditation, and I found myself constantly thinking about suicide. There was so much going on inside me, but underneath was a desire to find God—the real God, who is a person and who I could experience.

After high school, I attended the Culinary Institute of America and started my first cooking job, but the empty feeling inside me was growing. The feelings of depression and suicide still loomed. I embraced drugs as an escape from the spiritual and emotional pain I was feeling.

I first asked Jesus into my heart when I was 25. However, I continued in my sin and eventually stopped going to church. I knew I had not given all of me to the Lord. I vividly recall crying to God, “Lord, I know my failure is not your fault. I did not give all of me to you. I promise that if I ever come back, it will only be if I can give myself whole-heartedly to you.”

Eventually, I was introduced to Scientology and joined the Scientology church staff. I felt accepted, wanted, powerful, and successful. Scientology is a selfish, self-centered cult, and God or Christ are nowhere to be found in it, until the upper levels of “processing,” where you learn about what they called the “degraded being” named Jesus.

I became a staff member of the Sea Organization, a Scientology management body styled after the Navy. In joining the Sea Organization, you sign a billion year contract (they believe in reincarnation) and renounce Christ and Christianity as myth. It was in the Sea Organization that I met my wife, Nancy. We have been together now for 14 years and I love her dearly. We both left Scientology, and in hindsight, I can say that God took a bad situation to bring me and Nancy together to bring us out of this false religion.

Nancy and I settled on Long Island and were soon making loads of money, me as a private investigator and she as an office manager. We had it all, by all outside indicators, but we were not happy. One day, I called Nancy on the phone and asked her, “Is this all there is? Because if this is it—a nice home, big mortgage, 60-hour work weeks—I’m done.” We sold the house and moved to upstate New York, but we were still were holding on to our New Age ideals.

Then one day, Nancy and I rented The Passion of the Christ. Watching the movie at home, I could not stop crying when I saw Jesus being whipped. For the first time, I saw Jesus for who He was and what he did—for me. I had never realized the pain, the agony of the atonement. The Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, “Chris, do you remember your promise? Come back now.” I was heartbroken. I was undone, and I was feeling the tug of Christ for the prodigal to return home. I prayed, “Lord, I am yours. I give myself wholly to you. I don’t want anything less than all of you, so I give you all of me. Please, do with me what you will.” The Lord showed me my sin against Him, how it was personal. When I stole, lied, and lusted, I sinned first against God, second against man. I then truly understood the gravity of my sin. Through this understanding, I was for the first time able to appreciate Jesus’ sacrifice for me and apprehend my salvation with a zeal that stays with me daily and cannot be shaken. Shortly after, Nancy also accepted Christ as her Savior.

Nancy and I are now in our second year of Bible school at Pinecrest, and I recently joined the staff as Food Services Manager. Before I arrived at Pinecrest, prayer was most lacking in my life, and I functioned primarily out of my own strength and “what I believed” God desired of me and for me. My walk with the Lord today is so much more than I ever thought possible. It is now about relationship first, and I can say in all honesty that I know Him. God is alive, and you and I can commune with Him, face to face. My love for Jesus defies words. Being able to clearly hear His voice and knowing He is here with me is something that no amount of Bible study could ever have given me.

As I look back on my life, I am struck by God’s love and faithfulness. Even when I walked away from Him, He stood by me. He carried me when I couldn’t walk. He directed my life so that I would find myself at the foot of His cross. Even when I was working for an institution that is anti-Christ, God was faithful.

I sit here typing, tears streaming down as I recall the prodigal son. How his Father loved Him! Even though he did what he did, the Father welcomed him back as an heir. What grace. I owe God everything. I am His.