Conversion of St. Paul, Michelangelo
Just in case you’re wondering, I believe in conversion.
Conversion has always been one of the main emphases of the evangelicalism that grew out of the revivalism of the past two hundred years. “Conversionism” is yet another of the four distinctives Daniel Bebbington identified as characteristic of the movement. He described it as “the belief that lives need to be transformed through a ‘born-again’ experience and a life long process of following Jesus.”
When evangelicals talk about “getting saved,” the first part of that statement is what they mean. Billy Graham, the most visible evangelical preacher of the twentieth century, called his program “Hour of Decision.” “Making a decision for Jesus,” “accepting Christ,” “asking Jesus into your heart,” “trusting Christ as your personal savior,” being “born again” or “converted” or “saved” all refer to a particular crisis experience by which a person crosses the line from death to life, darkness to light, from lost to found, from being a child of the devil to a child of God. “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,” wrote Paul in Colossians 1:13.
Many evangelicals see this as an essential, once and for all transaction. “Once saved, always saved.” Others see the possibility that one may truly believe in Christ yet later apostatize, so that one needs to be born again again. Some groups link conversion with baptism, such as the Christian churches in the Campbellite traditions. Others find that anathema and insist that if one must be baptized that is adding a “work” to faith, and we are saved by faith alone. But some of them might have emphasized other kinds of “works.” As long as there have been evangelists and revivals, preachers have encouraged people to make their “decisions” known publicly in various ways. Charles Finney’s “anxious bench” was available for those concerned about their souls. Responding to altar calls by going forward, raising hands (“with every head bowed, every eye closed, no one looking around”), signing response cards, praying certain prayers, talking to designated “counselors” who could lead respondents through “the plan of salvation” — all these and many more methods have been used to help people indicate that they were coming to Jesus for salvation. “Just as I am without one plea . . . O Lamb of God, I come.” “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.”
The First Testament (especially the Prophets) is filled with calls for Israel to “turn” or “return” to God. This word is an action verb that indicates the basic movements of repentance/conversion. It means you are going in one direction — the wrong direction, away from God, but then you turn around and go in the other direction — the right direction, back toward God. One of the most tender and poignant texts on the subject is found in Hosea 14:
Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.
Take words with you
and return to the Lord;
say to him,
“Take away all guilt;
accept that which is good,
and we will offer
the fruit of our lips.
Assyria shall not save us;
we will not ride upon horses;
we will say no more, ‘Our God,’
to the work of our hands.
In you the orphan finds mercy.”
I will heal their disloyalty;
I will love them freely,
for my anger has turned from them.
I will be like the dew to Israel;
he shall blossom like the lily,
he shall strike root like the forests of Lebanon.
His shoots shall spread out;
his beauty shall be like the olive tree,
and his fragrance like that of Lebanon.
They shall again live beneath my shadow,
they shall flourish as a garden;
they shall blossom like the vine,
their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.
In the New Testament, the classic example is the conversion of Saul on the Damascus Road (Acts 9:1-18). I think those who see this as an example of “getting saved” by “making a decision for Christ” don’t read it very carefully. Paul didn’t make a decision, the risen Lord confronted and overwhelmed him. There is no evidence of Paul “praying a sinner’s prayer” or responding to a gospel message by “putting his faith in Christ.” Furthermore, the process wasn’t complete until he went into the city, submitted to ministry from another member of the church and was baptized. That’s when the “scales fell from his eyes” and he was filled with the Spirit. Paul’s experience reads more like an OT prophet’s call narrative than a story of “personal salvation.” As God said to Ananias, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15-16). Nevertheless, it was a “conversion.” God turned Paul around on that road and he began walking in the way of Jesus.
One of the beneficial things evangelicalism taught me was that God does actively confront us and change our paths at times in our lives. He “converts” us, he “turns” us, he causes us to “return” to him and his ways. I’ve never had a problem believing that. It’s happened to me. The only thing I have a problem with is our tendency to interpret such experiences simplistically so that we turn them into formulae that create expectations for everyone else.
I’ll tell my own story about one such experience to illustrate.
Back when I was a teenager, I was confused about the purpose and direction of my life. This became clearer to me, when, at the start of my senior year in high school, my family moved across the country from the Midwest to the east coast. Suddenly, in an instant, all of the activities and relationships that I had looked to for meaning and significance were gone. I had to start all over again. I began to wonder, “If the meaningful things of life can be taken away so easily, what is the use of putting so much effort into pursuing them?”
I did not know the answer to that question and I had no idea where to find it. In the meantime, I wanted something to numb the pain and fill the void in my heart. For a short time, I basically dropped out of life’s race and sought satisfaction in substitutes like alcohol and drugs. I wasted a precious season of my life with so-called “friends” who did not really care about me, doing “fun” things that led mostly to regret, causing the people who truly loved me much anxiety, and finding that the pain did not go away and the emptiness only became deeper.
However, during those days I also became acquainted with schoolmates who said they were believers in Jesus Christ. They were not a whole lot different than me. They had problems too, and they certainly were not perfect. But it soon became clear that they had something different in their lives. Actually, what they told me was that they had someONE different, who was helping them with life’s challenges. This Person gave them joy, optimism, a capacity for caring, and a sense that life matters.
Through the influence of these friends, I came to embrace Jesus by faith, turning away from those substitute paths that were leading me to dead ends. He opened a way of purpose and meaning for me that I have tried, by his strength, to walk ever since.
In Christ, I have come to understand that God made me and put me in this world to know him and to serve him along with the other members of his family. This has given shape and significance to a life that once was aimless and without direction.
Now, what was that experience about?
If you had asked me earlier in my life, I would have given a standard evangelical answer: it describes when the Lord saved me, when I was “born again,” converted, brought into the family of God, was transferred from death to life and darkness to light.
If you ask me now, I don’t use any of those terms. I see it now as one of many turnings — a key one for sure — but only one. These days I tend to call what happened to me as a teenager an “awakening” rather than “getting saved.” I see it as a “turning back” to the God who had met me in my childhood in baptism and early family and church influence, even though I did not then always grasp his presence. The more I have contemplated, the more I believe and see evidence that God was with me in some sense from the beginning. As the Bible says about David and John the Baptist, I believe God knew me from my mother’s womb. The whole story is about grace and the behind-the-scenes activity of God and the wind blowing where it wants to blow and me getting caught up in matters too great for me to understand. My decision? Ha!
Most of my evangelical friends understand this, and over the course of my life in the Church and ministry I have seen a lot of changes in the way evangelicals talk about these things. I’m grateful for that. So this is not a huge “post-evangelical” issue for me, except, like I said, when people start passing out the little booklets that tell you the way it’s supposed to go.
Luther said that the Christian’s life is a continual repentance, that is, a continual turning back to God, an ongoing process of conversion. It sometimes shows itself in big, transformative moments. Most of the time, not.
I’m happy to not try and define such matters too specifically. I’ll just encourage us, as the old song says, to keep “turning, turning” till we “turn ’round right.”