Musings: Notes From My Daybook

To take another look at the way in which our language can limit our understanding of God’s activity and God’s call to discipleship, consider the way the word conversion is used.  Normally, we think of conversion as when a person gives up one set of beliefs or ideas for a new set of beliefs or ideas.  For example, “I used to believe that salmon was the best seafood ever, but ever since I tried mahi-mahi I converted.”  And when it comes to faith, it is not uncommon to think about a person having a conversion “experience.”  Some radical event has occurred that has brought about a change in what a person thinks.

So it often happens that persons connect “getting baptized” with the idea of conversion.  And not without reason, since baptism and conversion have a lot of connections.  But it is important for a healthy perspective about baptism to have a healthy perspective about conversion.  And to do that we might well begin with the practices of the early church.

A number of years ago, Michael Green wrote a wonderful book called Evangelism in the Early Church.   He notes three important dimensions to how the early church understand conversion—and why many pagan people would have been astonished at the really radical call that coming to be Christian actually is.

First, conversion requires belief—real belief.  That is to say, that a person believes so completely and thoroughly that she makes choices about her life based on the conviction that Jesus lives and that the Christian faith is actually the right way to live.  This was, for people of the ancient world, more than a little odd.  For first and second century pagans, you could worship any number of different gods and practice any number of rituals, but not really believe, much less act on the claims that those gods made.

Second, conversion requires a change in ethics.  Here again was a surprising move.  To become a Christian in the ancient world meant that your behavior changed.  You no longer sought after self-interests, but rather sought out the interests of others.  In today’s terms, to be in the Georgia Tech Booster’s Club does not require that you seek the well-being of the poor or extend hospitality to the stranger.  Nor do they ask whether you act with integrity in your business dealings.  However, becoming a Christian meant those things—and a whole lot more.

Third, and here comes the real rub, conversion requires accepting the exclusive claim that Jesus is Lord.  As Green writes: “Christians were expected to belong, body and soul, to Jesus, who was called their master. . . and was said to have redeemed them from alien ownership into his own.  Henceforward they were to acknowledge no other ‘Lord,’ be he emperor or pagan deity.  This all seemed very strange, for ancient religion was never exclusive.”   To belong exclusively, totally to one Lord and to the community of that one Lord made for a decidedly robust understanding of conversion.

Thus, with these three dimensions of conversion in front of us—belief that realigns life, an ethic that demands a new set of behaviors, and an exclusive belonging—we need to ask how conversion should be construed.  Is conversion something that can happen in a moment?  Or, is it possible, even in the many examples in the New Testament, that conversion is a process that engages a person’s intellect, emotion, experience, and very soul?