I became a Christian on July 7, 2015,
after a very pleasant adult life of firm atheism. I’ve found myself telling
“the story” when people ask me about it—slightly tweaked for my audience, of
course. When talking to non-theists, I do a lot of shrugging and “Crazy, right?
Nothing has changed, though!” When talking to other Christians, it’s more,
“Obviously it’s been very beautiful, and I am utterly changed by it.” But the
story has gotten a little away from me in the telling.
I know that
sounds depressing, but I found the idea of life ending after death mildly
reassuring in its finality. I had started to meet more people of faith, having
moved to Utah from Manhattan , and thought them frequently
charming in their sweet delusion. I did not wish to believe. I had no untapped,
unanswered yearnings. All was well in the state of Denmark . And then it wasn’t.
What I Already Knew
There are
two different starting points to my conversion, and sometimes I omit the first
one, because I think it gives people an answer I don’t want them to have. It is
a simple story: I was going through a hard time. I was worried about my child.
One time I said “Be with me” to an empty room. It was embarrassing. I didn’t
know why I said it, or to whom. I brushed it off, I moved on, the situation
resolved itself, I didn’t think about it again. I know how people hear that
story: Oh, of course, Nicole was struggling and needed a larger framework
for her life! That’s part of the truth, but it’s not the whole truth.
The second
starting point is usually what I lead with. I was surfing the Internet and came
across John
Ortberg’s CT obituary for philosopher Dallas Willard. John’s daughters are
dear friends, and I have always had a wonderful relationship with their
parents, who struck me as sweetly deluded in their evangelical faith, so I
clicked on the article.
Somebody
once asked Dallas
if he believed in total depravity.
“I believe
in sufficient depravity,” he responded immediately.
What’s
that?
“I believe
that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no
one will be able to say, ‘I merited this.’ ”
A few
minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears. Later that day, I burst
into tears again. And the next day. While brushing my teeth, while falling
asleep, while in the shower, while feeding my kids, I would burst into tears.
I should
say here I am a happy, even-keeled soul. If this were the Middle Ages, I would
be in a book under the heading “The Four Humors: Sanguine/Phlegmatic.”
Therefore,
it was very unsettling to suddenly feel like a boat being tossed on the waves.
I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t frightened—I just had too many feelings. I decided to
buy a Dallas Willard book to read anthropologically, of course. I read hisHearing
God. I cried. I bought Lewis Smedes’s My God and I. I cried. I
bought Sara Miles’s Take This Bread. I cried. It was getting out of
hand. You just can’t go around crying all the time.
At this
point, I reached a crossroads. I sat myself down and said: Okay,
Nicole, you have two choices. Option One: you can stop reading books about
Jesus. Option Two: you could think with greater intention about why you are
overwhelmed by your emotions. It occurred to me that if Option Two
proved fruitless, I could always return to Option One. So I emailed a friend
who is a Christian, and I asked if we could talk about Jesus.
Now we
reach the part of the story that gets a bit hand-wavy. About an hour before our
call, I knew: I believed in God. Worse, I was a Christian. It was the opposite
of being punk rock.
I instantly
regretted sending that email and if humanly possible would have clawed it back
through the Internet. Technology having failed me, my message reached its
recipient. She said she would be very happy to talk to me about Jesus. You
probably already know this, but Christians love talking about Jesus.
I spent the
few days before our call feeling like an idiot, wondering what on earth I
planned to ask her. Do you … like Jesus? What was Jesus’ deal? Why did
he ice that fig tree?
And now we
reach the part of the story that gets a bit hand-wavy. About an hour before our
call, I knew: I believed in God. Worse, I was a Christian. It was the opposite
of being punk rock.
Now, if
you’ve been following along, you know already. I was crying constantly while
thinking about Jesus because I had begun to believe that Jesus really was who
he said he was, but for some reason, that idea had honestly not occurred to me.
But then it did, as though it always had been true. So when my friend called, I
told her, awkwardly, that I wanted to have a relationship with God, and we
prayed, and giggled a bit, and cried a bit, and then she sent me a stack of
Henri Nouwen books, and here we are today.
Since then,
I have been dunked by a pastor in the Pacific Ocean
while shivering in a too-small wetsuit. I have sung “Be Thou My Vision” and
celebrated Communion on a beach, while weirded-out Californians tiptoed around
me. I go to church. I pray. My politics have not changed; the fervency with
which I try to live them out has. My husband is bemused by me, but supportive
and loving.
No More Chill
I am
occasionally asked by other Christians, “What happened during that hour?” I
answer that God did not speak to me. Rather, like the protagonist in Mementoputting
his past together with Polaroids, I figured out what I already knew. What
happened during that hour was the natural culmination of my coming to faith: I
had been cracked open to the divine, I read books that I would have laughed at
before the cracking, and the stars lined up and there was God, and then I knew,
and then I said it out loud to a third party, and then I giggled.
I am
more undone by love, or kindness, or friendship than I would have thought possible.
This is why
apologetics, in my opinion, are hugely unconvincing. (Dallas Willard, for the
record, never debated unbelievers.) No one could have in a billion years of
their gripping testimony or by showing me a radiant life of good deeds or
through song or even the most beautiful of books brought me to Christ. I had to
be tapped on the shoulder. I had to be taken to a place where books about God
were something I could experience without distance. It was alchemical.
I have been
asked if deciding to become a Christian ended my exciting new
crying-multiple-times-a-day hobby. The truth is that I continue to cry a lot
more than I did before either Be-With-Me-Gate or the Dallas Willard Incident. I
am more undone by love, or kindness, or friendship than I would have thought
possible. Last night I tried to explain who Henri Nouwen was to some visiting
cousins, and they had to bring me Kleenex, which they did sweetly and
cautiously, as though I might melt in front of them. This morning I read a
piece in Texas Monthly that literally sank me to my knees at
how broken this world is, and yet how stubbornly resilient and joyful we can be
in the face of that brokenness. I never possessed much chill, to be honest. Now
I have none whatsoever.
There are
times I feel a bit like a medieval peasant, in that I believe wholly in God
now, but don’t always do what he wants, or, like Scarlett O’Hara, put hard
conversations with him off until I’ve done the thing I wanted to do. It’s a
thrumming backdrop to the rest of my life. My Christian conversion has granted
me no simplicity. It has complicated all of my relationships, changed how I
feel about money, messed up my public persona, and made me wonder if I should
be on Twitter at all.
Obviously,
it’s been very beautiful.
Source:
Christianity Today
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