What is Conversion?
Suppose you are attending a basketball game and are unequivocally disinterested in every aspect of the game. You sit courteously next to the friend who invited you while pretending to enjoy yourself. Suppose, now, that the game is nearing its end and the team your friend is cheering for is losing by two points, but is in possession of the ball. The crowd around you stands and, just so you don’t feel even more out of place, you stand as well. After a series of passes, one of the team members in possession of the ball fakes a shot, takes a step, and then shoots what would be equivalent to a three point shot. Time seems to almost stand still as everyone around you throws up his or her hands. You find yourself unexplainably caught up in the moment, and before you know it your hands are also in the air. Everyone around you holds their breath as the ball bounces upward off the rim as the final buzzer rings. Anticipation grows as the ball begins its dissent, and then begins to roll around the edge of the rim. You watch as the ball drops through the inside diameter of the basket scoring your friend’s team the winning three points. The crowd around you goes wild, and you slow down enough to realize that you were just as caught up in the moment as everyone around you. Your heart was beating just as quickly and you anticipated victory. In all of this, you discover that basketball is not so bad of a game. In fact, you tell your friend that you would like to attend the next game, whenever it might be.
Conversion, in the aspect of religion, seems to be a much similar idea. It can be described as highly subjective and “most commonly understood to be a dramatic religious experience.”1 Conversion, as it is more commonly understood, involves not only a dramatic religious experience, but also a dramatic, instantaneous change in one’s religious affiliation and life philosophy. Because these popular expectations exist, we also expect those we ‘witness to’ to have a dramatic encounter with God and to immediately decide that the Christian life is the life for them. One more result might be that we expect to have a deeply ‘spiritual’ experience each time we encounter God. The fact that conversion is subjective insists that religion, specifically Christianity, is centered on the idea of personal experience.
As Robert Ferm explores Schleiermacher’s rebuttal to Kant’s anti-experiential musings, he states,
“A theology and a religious experience based upon content are far more vulnerable to attack than a religion that takes refuge in feeling. The universality of religious feeling provides a remarkable defense, and one can talk freely of experience. Talk of content, however, immediately begets criticism, and for fear of having religion destroyed because of its content, it is convenient to take refuge in a superrational type of mystical experience.”2
In other words, the concept that religious conversion relies on the subjective nature of one’s feelings is appealing because no one can truly argue against one’s personal experiences. While philosophers like Kant would disagree, those like Schleiermacher would promote the value of personal experience.3
The experiential aspect of conversion is what has become popular in twenty-first century American religious circles. Experience is what we yearn for because experience takes place on a subjective, individual level. The American ideal is itself subjective and individual, and therefore largely experience based. Why is it that we need the ostentatious religious services that tend to draw people in to see any numerical growth in God’s kingdom? Why is it that touching stories seem to impact people, at least apparently, more than the living and breathing Word of God? We thrive for religious experience, if we are willing to attend at all to the idea of religion.
I was recently driving with two friends from Shawnee, Oklahoma to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma so that we could have them fitted for tuxes. As we were talking, conversation, as it often does, turned its attention toward what Jesus Christ was doing in our lives. One of the friends, named Andrew, commented, “This may sound bad, but I have to admit that I have never really been moved to tears.” We began to discuss whether or not it was actually necessary for someone to be moved to or overwhelmed with a feeling in order to turn to Jesus Christ. Do our religious experiential expectations really have any validity whatsoever when it comes to having a relationship with Christ?
William James, in response to a story about one man’s emotional religious conversion, writes:
“Things hot and vital to us to-day are cold to-morrow. It is as if seen from the hot parts of the field that the other parts appear to us, and from these hot parts personal desire and volition make their sallies. They are in short the centres of our dynamic energy, whereas the cold parts leave us indifferent and passive in proportion to their coldness.”4
There is no doubt that people’s emotions change constantly. If we are to base religious conversion on those subjective experiences and emotions, then we also must say that, while alive, we Christians are constantly de-converting and then converting back again to Christianity because of the way we feel.
Referring now to the living, encouraging and convicting Word of God, there are very few references to conversion, as it is commonly understood.
“Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed” (Isaiah 6:10 KJV).
“Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (James 5:19-20 KJV).
“And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren” (Acts 15:3 KJV).
Despite the difficulty of the above passages, specifically Isaiah 6:10, and the more popular view of the word “convert” within this world, we can see that conversion does refer to a turning.
In fact, some translations actually use the word “turn”. The difference between the Biblical use of the word conversion and what conversion has become, is the absence of the idea that conversion relies on experience and the fact that it applies to believers just as much as it does to unbelievers.
How does the Biblical idea of conversion apply to unbelievers?
But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”
- Acts 15:1-5 ESV
As Paul, Barnabas, and the others with them were telling both the Phoenicians and the Samarians of the gentile “conversions” that had been taking place as they passed through those perspective countries on their way to Jerusalem to meet with the council, those who had already turned to Christ rejoiced. Conversion, in this sense, did not even equate to the turning from one religion to another. This was drawn out, to a much greater degree, as Paul met with the Jerusalem council, specifically in verse nineteen, “Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God…” (Peter). Peter then elaborated on the fact that, even though Gentiles should not be burdened with circumcision, they should be expected to act according to the moral character that God has always required.
Biblically speaking, conversion is not as subjective and experience based as we have made it. Conversion is not even religious, as we have come to view it. Instead, conversion for those who do not already believe is simply a decision made by one to believe. Conversion seems not to lie in the immediate transition in one’s religion or denomination. It seems not to depend on the subjective nature of experience or feeling. Conversion is a cognitive, rational choice made by one individual to believe in God and to turn to God in what is deemed by God as moral action. It must be understood that moral action is not equivalent to religious ritual. Whereas circumcision was the outward religious ritual of the Jews, right moral action is the inward law written on every heart.
What of Jesus Christ? Is it not necessary to believe in Jesus Christ in order that one might experience conversion? Keep this in mind. It is impossible for any one person to believe in God without believing God’s action. Christ’s sacrifice on a Roman cross was, and is, the pinnacle of God’s redemptive action toward humanity. Without the cross, there is no salvation because we cannot satisfy God’s wrath in our imperfection. Without salvation, we could not believe in God. If we could not believe in God, then conversion would not be possible. Believing in God is believing in Jesus Christ, and believing in Jesus Christ is believing in God. They are one (John 10:30). However, simply believing that God exists does not equate to believing in His redemptive work through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only name by which men can be saved.5
Consider this. A man you meet, who has never given time to think about his eternity, begins a conversation about the hypocrite ridden Christian church. Not knowing that you belong to such an organization, he goes on about how the people within that community tend to think that they are better than everyone else because they are perfect. He accuses them of being irrational and out of touch with reality.
After he finishes his rant, you begin to explain that church is made up of imperfect people who know that they need to put their trust in something greater than themselves. You point out the fact that people do not go to church because they are perfect, or somehow more holy than everyone else. People go to church because they see problems with their own lives that need to be fixed. After explaining this aspect of God’s church, you then proceed to ask whether or not your new acquaintance has any imperfections.
“Of course,” he or she replies, “no one is perfect.” You then begin to explain why, according to God’s Word, which you hold to be true and infallible, humanity is in a state of imperfection. We once lived in perfect companionship with God. That is, until humanity chose to deny God and live according to self. That is why we can’t be perfect: because we do not rely on a perfect God. The church is full of people who realize this imperfection and choose to once again rely on God. Even though we cannot cure that imperfection completely here on Earth, we hope to one day be cured of that imperfection when these earthly bodies die.
“Oh, I see,” proclaims the man or women whose cynicism is withering into mere skepticism, “Perhaps this is something I need to explore.”
Suppose now that he or she attends church with you and hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ as it is presented. Coming to at least a small understanding of why we need Jesus, and being convicted by God’s Holy Spirit, your new friend decides that he or she need to recognize Jesus as the Lord of his or her life. Your friend decides to stop relying on self and start relying on a holy God. This is the moment of conversion, or the cognitive change of ideologies. Instead of being the center of one’s own life, he or she chooses to proclaim God the center of his or her life.
What is conversion for the believer?
My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
- James 5:19-20 ESV
Though this portion of scripture does not directly refer to “conversion”, at least in this particular translation, it does speak to the notion of a Biblical conversion. Conversion, for the believer, requires a turning back to God. If any one person is able to sin, even after trusting in Jesus Christ, he or she can still begin to trust or rely on self. To then return to God after such an action is conversion. We normally do not think of conversion as being for people who already believe in, and have trusted in God.
I do not believe that people who have truly trusted in God can lose the salvation that God has given them. Even so, included in James’ words is the idea that by bringing ones brother back to God, we can save his soul from death.
During a three-year denial of God’s work in my life, after I had given my heart and my mind to Jesus Christ, I felt horrible about who I was. Everything seemed to go wrong, and I generally felt as if I was being punished constantly. Though I never seriously considered suicide, I would describe my life at that point as Hell on Earth. If someone were to pull me back to God, as many people did try, they would have saved my soul from that Hell on Earth and kept me from committing the multitude of sins that I did while I lived life apart from God. I was living according to death, and in doing so experience death because I separated myself from the God of life. I had a need, not to receive salvation again, but to convert my mind, or return the foundation of my thought to God, once again. I needed to repent.
So, conversion, to put it simply, is change. It is a conscious, thoughtful change that alters one’s outlook on life because it changes the base of one’s thinking. Conversion takes place at one point in time, and is not subject to feelings or experience, though some wish to subject it to such.
I want to be very careful not to sound, or look, as if I place no value on experience or feeling. I do believe that both experience and feeling have their place in the Christian life. However, I do not believe that they should be the focus or the dependence of our lives. Why would God grant us the ability to feel and to have subjective experience if He did not intend for us to use that ability in some way? I am convinced that He would not. I am also convinced that relying on that ability would be detrimental to our lives in Christ. Sadly, many Christians do rely on the subjective nature of feelings and experience rather than relying on the consistent nature of our God.
What then do we say? Conversion is a critical point in the life of every believer, whether he or she is turning to God for the first time or returning to God after falling away. We do not convert to Christianity or to the Baptist, Methodist or any other denomination. We convert from self to God. Conversion in itself is not an end, and we must be very careful not to see it as an end. Conversion is the means to an end, or rather, a beginning.