My Conversion into Christianity

I needed this, even though I grew up in a Christian household.

My parents were Christian missionaries. They included me, at the age of three months, in their missionary work in Uganda (in East Africa). After seven years and a few other countries, I was back in my home country of Canada.

For some reason, my dad changed his career from Anglican clergy to math teacher. However, he remained a key part of local perishes in his role as assistant pastor. That meant the churches we attended had someone to go to if they needed an extra hand at the front.

It also meant that my siblings and I were taken to church every Sunday. I loved it because I got to see friends and sing and worship God.

However, despite my love for God, I was not converted until years later, when I was driving in Thunder Bay and debating with myself (or was it with God?) about full-immersion baptism. Back then, in the early 1990s, I didn’t believe in full-immersion in water baptism. “Full-immersion” to me was only a metaphore for being baptised with the Holy Ghost.

As I debated, driving in my Suzuki Sidekick, listening to tapes on the subject, the realization that I needed to be baptised just came to me through my bowels.

It was then that I realized how real God our Father, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost is. It wasn’t a conversion in belief, though my belief strengthened a thousand fold as a result of this experience, rather it was a conversion of understanding where knowledge comes from.

Knowledge comes from God, not our brains.

I realised at that moment that I could not trust in the god of my intellect, which was not a god, but I had to trust in the God who shows Himself to us.

This is the God we pray to. The living God.

Over the years I have slid off the path and have had to climb up to get back to it, a few times. The rod and staff that Jesus holds have hoisted me up to that narrow path each time I stray, and so those tools of the Good Shepherd comfort me. Often, getting put back on the path requires that I submit wholely to Jesus dextrous use of his tools.

That means going limp with my own thoughts about how to overcome the hill back to the path.

It is those personal thoughts that have gotten in my way more than anything else. They attempt to hide my faults and convince me that I can do anything and all I need to do is believe in myself.

Nope. I need to believe in God. He is the one who will give me the answer.

And, I guess that’s my biggest problem to overcome — relying on my own thoughts and intellect to solve my problems or understand doctrine.

Now, intellect can be guided by God, and when you describe the doctrines that God gives us, we need a huge amount of intellect to fully parse them out. Yes, even children can understand, intuitively, that Jesus is a friend, but to understand the fullness of that friendship requires more brain power than anyone could muster.

That conversion I had was over thirty years ago, and I am still reeling from it. God has shown me a lot more than only full-immersion baptism. He’s given me dreams (one recently), revelations, and opportunities (many of which I didn’t see). He has given me love, joy, peace that passes understanding, gentleness, patience, goodness, and mercy. All these, the fruit of the Spirit, were given to me — I didn’t gain them from any effort of my own.

However, I grabbed hold of the gift when it was given me.

Did you notice I said, “peace that passes understanding.” That’s directly from a Scriptures that, ironically, I didn’t understand until I understood that His peace is beyond my capacity to think about it. Before I understood that line in Scripture, I understood peace. Once I understood that line in Scripture, I didn’t understand peace.

I could only feel it.

We short change ourselves (and God’s capacity in us), when we solely rely on intellect. We don’t have a language that expresses the result of faith.

In a recent podcast I heard with Jordan Peterson and a Christian Apologist talking about Genesis and the creation story, I heard a different definition for “truth.” The truth of the creation story isn’t whether it happened as written in the Bible, but that it reveals truths about human nature that cannot be denied.

The story reveals something about our own capacity to confront sin. We are asked directly and with no apology whether we would resist the snake (or a wife, if you think that was Adam’s problem). If we are honest, our answer would be “no.”

And the next step is to understand why.

The truth about your human nature has been revealed to you in an astounding story, like it or not. It wasn’t through thought that you understood this tendency, but rather through the revelation that the story afforded.

Once it was revealed to me that I needed to be baptised, fully immersed in water, a huge intellectual journey was started. Not to question the assertion, but to understand it.

Youth likes to question everything. A young child, and those well into their teens, don’t understand the adults that surround them. If we give into those youthful thoughts, as do so many, we live a lifetime without any understanding. It’s that lack of understanding that is often intellectualized.

We don’t wait to receive the understanding, and the reason I bring this up is to point out that the revelation that I am talking about isn’t an emotion. Ther is no way that the knowledge I gained during that car ride was some good feeling. It was a sword to the gut that shredded my own thoughts in a moment.

Well, that’s all I have to say about my conversion. I was converted from an unrestrained thinker to a Christian who relies on revelation. It has cost me a lot, but I always wait for the revelation, no matter how long it takes or what the consequences are for not conforming to societal or false christianity norms.

Thanks for reading. I hope you got something out of this.