Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Compassionate conversion

The story had a bit of play on some news outlets:

Two months after he threatened to sue a Texas county for allowing a Nativity scene on public property, longtime atheist Patrick Greene has announced that he is not only converting to Christianity, but also plans to become a pastor, the Christian Post reports.

Greene, an Air Force veteran from San Antonio who has a history of activism, threatened in February to file a lawsuit against Henderson County, Texas, if they did not remove a Nativity scene in front of the courthouse. But he was forced to drop the lawsuit after doctors told him that he had developed eye cataracts and was in danger of losing his vision.

His failing vision forced him to quit his job as a taxi driver.

That's when Jessica Crye,  a Christian woman who read about Greene's troubles in the paper, went to members of her church and asked if they would be willing to donate money to help Greene. They raised $400 in donations for Greene, which left him "flabbergasted that Christians would help atheists," the Athens Review reported at the time. Christians and atheists alike ended up donating to Greene through a fundraising account he set up. It's that compassion that Greene says compelled him to start rethinking his religious beliefs.

This seems to be a startling quick conversion, but it's not uncommon. I've always been flabbergasted about that moment when the light switch is flipped and those who did not believe suddenly believe.

Saul's knock-down, drag-out with Jesus on the road to Damascus comes to mind, but there are many, many others.

In C.S. Lewis' autobiography Surprised by Joy, Lewis writes of his "moment." Lewis was a noted aethiest broken down by the pursuit of God.

Although in 1929 Jack was already on his knees and had prayed to God desperately and reluctantly, it was J.R.R. Tolkien's (author of the Lord of the Rings series) friendship that brought him to the encounter with Christ. On 19 September 1931, Jack and "Toilers" (as Tolkien was called by his closest friends), together with their common friend Hugo Dyson, were taking their usual after-dinner stroll in the grounds of Magdalen College and began discussing ancient myths and the Truth "hidden" in these legends.

Lewis wrote, "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ, in Christianity.... My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a great deal to do with it", and that he would explain it at some other time.

In Surprised by Joy, he wrote "Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side."

Isn't that true for so many of us? We are going along, minding our own business, when suddenly a God moment pops up, we see the compassion of God in a million different acts of those who say they are Christian and we're overwhelmed by joy, battered by love, stomped by grace. And we fold, suddenly or slowly, but we fold to the same passion that caused a rumpled Father to run headlong down the road to a prodigal son.

The list is a long one of those who were least likely to be converted becoming a conversion statistic. Many of the leading atheists in the world surrendered to the loving touch of the Master. No one is safe, it would seem.

One of my favorites is of this man who was wondering home one day. He found a small chapel and wanted to know how to be saved. The minister was missing that day and a shoemaker or a tailor got up to speak. He was not not well spoken or well prepared. He stumbled over the text and spoke for just a few moments. And in those broken moments God moved. As this unknown soul read from the scripture he recounted a verse about looking to Christ. He called people to look. Just look. Nothing more.

Anyone can look. The poor can look. The weak can look. The blind can look with imagination. There is no waiting for the Spirit to move. Just look. In the midst of this, the man looked out at young C.H. Spurgeon and called him to look. Obey and look came from the pulpit. If you don't look you shall live in misery. LOOK AND LIVE. And, as if by magic, salvation become real to Spurgeon where it had not been before. He passed from darkness to light in one moment.

And the results? Spurgeon become known as the prince of preachers. He spoke to crowds of thousands. He become one of the best loved pastors that London ever had.

John Wesley had his heart-warming experience. St. Augustine had his own bout with Christ.  From deathbeds to prison tables to movie houses, God moves as God so desires and hearts that would seem to have or want nothing to do with Him, suddenly are changed (in the winking of an eye, or some such).

That makes it all the more imperative that we, those readers of mine who claim The Way as the way, walk their talk. No one is beyond him. But the No. 1 reason, I believe, that atheists still exist is Christians ... Christians who claim the name but do not walk with the flame.

Compassionate, truthful, loving persons exist who do not know Christ. But those who know Christ, who are filled with His Spirit, are changed daily and charged daily and can not be defeated in the world of spiritual warfare.

Study the life of one John Newton, who was lost, but then found, who was blind but then could see and you will find conversion is real.

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