It’s a lot of fun being the token heathen…
my own conversion story to Christian fundamentalism was similarly dramatic, complete with a bad acid trip
At a recent gathering of Christian folk, I was the token heathen, and as dinner concluded I was regaled with a long and interesting example of what I have come to call, ‘conversion stories.’ In this case, the subject was an African lad who dramatically abandoned the sorcerous, animistic faith of his fathers and converted to one of Christianity’s many variants, eventually rising to become a famous pastor. The tale was enlivened by divine interventions, angelic assistance, and eventually the good father himself became a source of miraculous healings.
My reaction to such stories is complicated. On the one hand, I believe them to be true, believe every astonishing detail. After all, miracles are not uncommon among people of strong faith and also, my own conversion story to Christian fundamentalism was similarly dramatic, complete with a bad acid trip, stupefying synchronicities, and a direct, non-verbal communication from the Christian god. And conversion stories were a staple of after dinner entertainment among my brethren as well; we, too, would sit around and tell tales of brave souls rejecting false religion. And on a more mythic scale, the lives of famous saints and even the story of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness are little more than superbly edited examples of this intriguing genre.
But on the other hand, when conversion stories are told, the implicit subtext always suggests that the amazing events constitute an endorsement of the religion that receives the new convert. Of course, they are no such thing. For consider: not only do these elite converts gravitate to different, mutually antagonistic variants of the Jesus way, they also convert, rather inconveniently, to other religions entirely. That is, for every tale of conversion from heathen idolatry to the blessed way of our Lord, there are equivalent tales of lost souls escaping the decadent iniquity of Christendom and finding salvation in Buddhism, Islam, or even—gasp—secular humanism.
Conversion doesn’t strike me as a religious experience at all; rather, conversion is a human experience that involves religion. And like other experiences that abruptly rearrange our world view, like schizophrenia or falling in love, conversion appears to release some form of energy that reorganizes the world around us as well. Miracles seem drawn to conversion just as flies are drawn to rotting meat. In a way, conversions are like food for religion.
So should you resist conversion? Or, for that matter, love or a psychotic break? Oh, I don’t know. True, the experiences are traumatic, and in retrospect they rarely seem to work out for the best, but they do make life interesting, and not just for you: live through a good conversion story and you’ll be providing after dinner entertainment for years to come. More seriously, transformation, like opportunity, only knocks once and regrets due to inaction are typically more bitter than the wounds we inflict on ourselves when we leap into the void.
Really, a man on the brink of conversion is, at that very moment, in a holy state, holier, probably, than whatever religion he ends up joining.
Did you like this essay? You’ll love my books!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
You seem to be implying that the experience of falling in love is traumatic and rarely seems to work out for the best. ???
Not at all; I’m merely suggesting that the sensation has dimensions beyond our control, which is as it should be.