Recently I became friends with someone who calls themselves an atheist. The person knows who I am and what my convictions are. The new friend asked me, “are you going to try and covert me”? I answered that I had never converted anybody.
I was thinking of an incident, whether actual or apocryphal, from the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the 19th century preacher. It is said that he was out for a walk one day when he came across a drunken man lying in the gutter. He stopped and spoke to the man, and as he bent down over him, was startled that the man addressed him by name. Asking the man from where he knew his name, he answered, “you converted me some three years ago.” To which Spurgeon is said to have replied, “And that is the tragedy, that I converted you. Had you been spiritually converted you would not be where you are now.”
Now conversions happen all the time. People convert from one faith to another. Some do it out of convenience, such as to make it easier to marry someone from a different faith. Others might do it because of some emotional influence in their life, or at worst being brow-beaten by some persistent argument.
Conversion can be a dangerous proposition. People who live in countries dominated by Islam, are often sentenced to death for “converting” from the Islamic to the Christian or some other faith. This inconvenient truth is often denied, but the fact is well documented.
Conversion to Christianity has always been a dangerous affair at some time and place or another. From the earliest days, Christians were persecuted and martyred. The first persecution came from those who professed the Jewish faith and the first victim was Stephen. Since the day of Stephen, a crimson trail of blood has flown through all time, even to the present day. No matter how hard and cruel the persecution, neither the Roman government (who first persecuted and then made Christianity the state religion), nor communism, nor Islam will eradicate the Christian faith.
Sadly, Christians are not innocent from persecuting those who disagree with them. The bloody crusades are a dark blemish in the history of the church. At various other times, Catholics have persecuted Protestants, and vice versa.
When the Pilgrim Fathers, who left British shores to flee religious persecution in their homeland settled on North American shores, what did they do? They made the same mistake by persecuting others who did not share their views.
But back to conversion. A true conversion to Christianity, or to be more accurate, a conversion to CHRIST, is a life changing event. The most famous example in the Bible is the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who later became the Apostle Paul. Saul was a leader of the Jewish faith, a man learned in the Hebrew Scriptures, a leading person in the party of the Pharisees. As the influence of the Christian witness and faith spread, he sought permission to arrest people and bring them to Jerusalem to face justice. It was during such a mission, that God intervened on the Road to Damascus, and we read the story of Saul’s “conversion”. Saul’s life was never the same. He became a passionate defender of those whom he had persecuted. He planted churches in areas where pagan (non-Jewish) religions had dominated. Many of his writings are part of the New Testament portion of our Bible.
There have been some notable conversions in modern times, and I will mention two of the most well known. One is C.S.LEWIS, who is known for his literary works such as THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and books like The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15. During his early adult life he participated in the occult. He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and Christian friend. J.R.R. Tolkien. Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion and late-night walk with Tolkien and and another close friends He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Anglican Church (The Church of England) – somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped that he would join the Catholic Church. Following his conversion he became a writer of numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction. Many of them are a defence of Christianity.
Another more recent convert from atheism is Lee Strobel, a former law journalist with the Chicago Tribune. He says that he began calling himself an atheist as a teenager and that he “loathed Christianity”. His wife’s conversion to Christianity was actually the catalyst that brought the couple to the brink of divorce. However after two years of intense research using his investigative skills as a former journalist for The Chicago Trubune, and consulting more than 12 leading biblical theologians, scholars and experts, Strobel learned that the Christian creed was solid and he converted to Christianity decades ago. Since then he has been a writer and teacher of the Christian faith. One of his best books is The Case For Christ, and a later sequel The Case for Miracles. Both books are best-sellers.
Mind you, conversion works both ways. One of the most well-known conversions from Christianity to atheism in the 20th century was Charles Templeton. He once was a close friend of Billy Graham, in fact the two worked together in the Youth For Christ movement, in Graham’s early days. Templeton was also a prolific author, and his works reflected his faith or lack thereof throughout his life.
How do conversions happen? Not as a result of slick marketing or human persuasion. A true conversion is a change of conviction, where someone changes their opinion about something they formerly held true and now take a different position. Atheists (who deny the existence of God) and Agnostics (who question the existence of God) generally fall into one of two categories. There are those who have intellectual reasons that they have carefully reasoned and thought through, and there are those who have what I call emotional reasons. Perhaps they are angry with some religious leader, or disappointed in how they were treated by those who belong to the particular religion. Or perhaps they had a shallow emotional experience and embraced a position that they do not fully understand. When somebody tells me that they don’t believe in God or Christianity because “there are so many contradictions in the Bible”, I generally ask them which contradiction troubles them most. Usually they cannot name a single one, but simply are repeating a mantra that they have heard from others. Or they bring up issues that the Bible does address, but they lack any kind of understanding as to how the Scriptures are to be understood.
But I have also encountered people who are true spiritual seekers. They really want to know what is true and what is not, and they genuinely search for answers. We must never brush such people aside. Like Jesus did, we ought to sit down with them, regardless of what social class they belong to and listen to their questions, engage them in their thought processes, and and give reasoned explanations instead of platitudes. But conversion? That is up them, and only them. Deep in their heart they must decide. It still happens today.