A Converting Grace?
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We don’t convert people, God does. This seems very obvious to my simple mind. Of course ‘we’ Christians can help, give information (also known as tracts), talk to, or at, people, but at the end of the day do we really think that we can persuade a devout atheist of the existence of God through argument and logic? I am not going to write another article about ‘mission’ / outreach / evangelism because my thoughts of this are a confused patchwork, rather than a systematic theology. However there are people who convert to Christianity from being apathetic, agnostic or atheist. I am one of them and I am aware that I am hugely biased by my own experience which leaves me very sceptical about the value of ‘outreach’ as it is often performed.
As someone who became a Christian at the age of twenty I am sometimes asked “so why did you become a Christian?” My answer is mumbled and incomplete and leaves me and my questioner unsatisfied. The fact remains that I am a rational, sceptical, intelligent young woman, who had previously mocked Christianity and suddenly starting believing in God. How did this happen? Why did I become a Christian?
The answer is wonderful, yet strange. I feel I can never fully explain because I don’t know exactly. The account is disjointed; I make no apologies for that. I cannot tell it ‘as it actually happened’ as the events are too distorted by hindsight and memory which deceive as much as they enlighten.
What I do know is that I went in to York Minster one grey November evening in 2001. I entered that imposing place determinedly facing away from God. I was going to Evensong, but only for the music; the purpose of the service did not interest me. I entered the chapel late, I remember the kind usher who showed me discreetly to my seat. I don’t remember much of the first part of the service. As I have been to many Evensongs since, the order of the service is now second nature. Then it was alien, the ritual of an outdated faith.
Towards the end of Evensong the Creed was said. Everybody stood and faced the altar. In York Minster that day the altar was simply adorned with a white cloth, candles and a gold cross. Staring down was an intricate and magnificent stained glass window.
To understand what happened next you must know the background. Three seemingly unrelated occurrences played their part in bringing me to that moment.
I was very ill when I entered the Minster that day. I was severely anorexic and had been for about a year. For nine months of that I had attempted to get better and had failed dismally. Now I was reaching rock bottom: a few days earlier I had taken the decision to take a year out of my degree and to go home. This was a painful failure for someone who was proud of their independence and ability to cope without help. It felt as if my world had just crumbled and was lying in pieces all around me while I looked on helplessly.
Secondly, and here again hindsight is an invaluable tool, the previous August I had been sitting on a tube. I had had a frustrating journey and was desperately trying not to break down in the midst of the sea of blank commuters. I felt an arm around my shoulders and I heard a voice telling me it would be okay and I felt at peace. There was no-one there. In many ways I have a clearer memory of this incident. The difference is I did not act on it. Somebody was knocking but I was not ready to let them in.
One final and hugely important influence was that in my first year there had been a Christian living on my corridor. Although I was, to my shame, very dismissive of her faith, I came to admire the way she lived her life by certain principles. She challenged many of my prejudices about Christianity and showed me a quiet, tolerant, side of faith I had not seen before.
Back to the skinny girl in the Minster. Facing the altar but not saying the words of the Creed as, after all, they were all nonsense, I stared at the window. I remember the sun shining through it but I’m sure this is a fanciful distortion, as Novembers in York are not known for their cloudless skies. And the words were not longer dead syllables but alive, alive and true. It is here that words, or my own ability to use them, fail me. For I cannot put across how I felt. How certain I was in that moment that the words of the Creed spoke of a greater truth, the truth in fact.
It would be too glib to say that I went into the Minster an atheist and came out a Christian, as it was many months before I could ‘admit’ this to anyone. But I did have an insatiable desire to learn anything and everything about Christianity: I devoured the Gospels and read other books; I went on beginners’ courses; I attended church. I found the strength, through God, to recover and return to university where I was baptised.
A cynic can pick holes galore in this account of “the hour I first believed”. I was unhappy and vulnerable; at a stage of anorexia where hallucinations are common; the Minster is an awe-inspiring place and Evensong a haunting service. Taken together these could provide a ‘rational’ explanation for what happened. But I believe God touched me that day in the Minster and He began to guide, and is still guiding me, towards an awareness of His all-encompassing grace.