What is having a conversion experience like? According to these examples from church history, probably emotionally exhausting…
There is an amazing choral arrangement entitled, “The Conversion of Saul” by Z. Randall Stroope. The piece opens with frenzied chanting in Latin, “Caedite, vexate, ligate vinculis!” (Murder, harass, bind in chains!) Saul of Tarsus is on a mission. He has obtained official paperwork from the high priest authorizing his journey to Damascus. He aims to find followers of Jesus Christ, capture them, and bring them to Jerusalem. Saul has dedicated his life to the persecution of early Christians. In Acts 8, we are told that Saul is “ravaging the church by entering house after house, dragging off both men and women” and “committing them to prison.”
Saul is overcome with his task: breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. (Murder, harass, bind in chains!) Then, all of sudden, the furious chanting of Z. Randall Stroope’s arrangement gives way to a single, sustained note and a condemning question, in one voice. It is the voice of Christ, and this is the question that would change the course of Saul’s life forever: “Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Saul falls to his knees out of fear, out of dismay. He now knows the truth. This Jesus, this Christ, is truly God, and the one whom he has been persecuting all along. Saul lives in blindness for three days until a man named Ananias, at the Lord’s command, comes to lay hands upon Saul. Ananias pronounces him “brother,” and Saul gets up. The scales fall off his eyes. He will be baptized, stay with the disciples, and receive instruction in the way of the Gospel. His life will never be the same.
The Damascus Road story is emblematic of Christian conversion narratives. Saul, a vessel of hatred, scorn, and oppression, was transformed in a life-altering encounter with Christ. God uses Saul (Saint Paul) as an instrument of God’s peace, as a vessel of love, mercy, and justice, in the name of Jesus for the rest of his days. Stroope’s choral piece, which opens with loud, impassioned chanting for violence, ultimately ends with soft, angelic tones, beautifully capturing the countenance of a changed man.
Nearly fifteen hundred years later, there is another road.
Martin Luther is traveling on horseback in the countryside. Tradition has it that a thunderstorm rumbled around him, and suddenly, a lightning bolt struck down near him. Some speculate that Luther toppled from his horse and may even have injured his leg.[1] Overcome with fear of death, Luther cried out, “Help me, Saint Anne! I will become a monk!” Of course, Luther survived the storm and made it to his destination safely. And he did, indeed, become a monk.
This is the well-known tale of how Luther became devoted to the monastic life, but Luther’s conversion story is far from over. For even within the peaceful walls of the monastery, Luther describes living in inner turmoil. Looking back on this experience, Luther writes, “Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience.” So, Luther begins poring incessantly over the words of none other than Saint Paul himself. Until, finally, in the Book of Romans, Luther experiences a breakthrough: “There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith.” He says, “Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”
In this second part of Luther’s narrative is a very different kind of conversion theme. There is no lightning bolt from heaven. There is no dramatic encounter with a transcendent being on a Damascus-like road. Luther’s conversion is an inner one, a reflective one. After wrestling day and night with his own conscience, Luther encounters the one true God in the pages of scripture.
This is not unlike Genevan Reformer, John Calvin’s experience. Calvin writes, “God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame […] Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress therein, that although I did not altogether leave off other studies, I yet pursued them with less ardour.”[2]
Calvin’s life-altering encounter with God was an altering of Calvin’s mind. This spiritual experience caused Calvin to walk away from a promising career in law. Calvin vows to God, “I, duty bound, made it my first business to betake myself to your way, condemning my past life, not without groans and tears.”[3]
Methodist theologian, John Wesley too has a conversion narrative fraught with inner conflict. After many years of great distress and growing uncertainty about his faith, Wesley has an unexpectedly spiritual and profoundly emotional conversion experience, known as his “Aldersgate experience.” In his journal, Wesley writes “In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans.” (Seeing a Pauline theme yet?) Wesley then goes on to describe the strange and emotional event of his heart feeling “strangely warmed.” He writes, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
These conversion stories describe deeply spiritual and psychological experiences, all pointing to this singular truth: dedicating one’s life to Christ is hard. Even after Saul’s supernatural encounter on the road to Damascus, he sits in darkness for three days, utterly and completely blind. Saul does not eat or drink. He is likely overcome with doubt and fear. In the darkness, he has plenty of time to contemplate the trespasses of his past life, as well as the complexities of his future one. He will have to abandon his old community, his former friends and colleagues. The persecutor will now become the persecuted. Like the followers of Jesus he had once hunted, Saul will now live in constant danger.
History teaches us that following Jesus means, in many ways, turning our back on an old, familiar life in favor of new, uncharted territory. It means surrendering to personal accountability. The choice to follow Jesus means coming to terms with the fullness of our sins and shortcomings, our past mistakes and failures.
Here’s the thing about following Christ: it’s truly an exhausting choice.
But even so, for these brave servants of church history, they realized that not following Christ was simply no option at all.
One last story: the year is 386 A.D. We are now in a garden.
Saint Augustine is sobbing under a fig tree. Caught in a vicious cycle of self-examination and self-judgment for past sins, Augustine prays fervently to God from the Psalms, “How long, O Lord? How long, Lord, will you be angry to the utmost? Do not be mindful of our old iniquities…” In his reflection on this experience, Augustine writes, “As I was saying this and weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house […], saying and repeating over and over, ‘Pick up and read, pick up and read.’ ”[4]
At the behest of this strange, mysterious voice, Augustine finds himself (surprise, surprise) with Paul’s Book of Romans in hand. “I seized it, opened it, and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit.” This passage was Romans 13:13–14. Augustine writes, “I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once […] it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.”[5]
This is the story of Saint Augustine’s incredible conversion to the Christian faith, which he himself recounts in his Confessions. It is a profoundly vulnerable account of a man coming face-to-face with his own demons, only to see that God’s grace and forgiveness are so much stronger. This choice to follow God would alter the course of Augustine’s life and most intimate relationships. But in the end, Augustine knew that to not make this choice was no choice at all.
As Saul realized on that fateful Damascus Road, this choice to follow God was not actually his choice to make. God’s plan for his life had already been laid out before him, just as it has already been laid out for each of us. Though the choice to follow God is a difficult, emotionally exhausting choice, it is a choice that has already been made for us, a choice we simply need to claim, just as God has already claimed each and every one of us.
For as Saint Augustine so tenderly concludes, “You have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is restless, until it rests in you.”
[1] Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther: His road to Reformation, 1483–1521.
[2]Calvin’s Commentary on the Psalms, 31:13–35.
[3]Calvin’s Reply to Sadoleto’s Letter to the Genvans.
[4] Augustine’s Confessions, VIII. xi (28).
[5] Augustine’s Confessions, VIII. xi (29).
