GENERAL – THE WAY I SEE IT

RACISM

They say it is better to turn on the light rather than to curse the darkness. But amidst the current unrest and rhetoric about racism, it seems we have trouble finding the switch to turn on the lights. I have debated whether I should say anything at all, as whatever I post will without doubt disappear amidst the current noise. Racism, pure and simple, stems from the belief or assumption that one’s own race is superior to another. In the previous century, we have seen where that can lead as a racist government in Germany sought to extinguish another race. And in North America, the violent 1960’s and 70’s seem to be re-appearing before our very eyes. And for those of us old enough to remember, the racial violence of the 60’s and 70’s disappeared but racism did not. It is like a wound of humanity that recedes but flares up again and again. So in Germany today we have “neo-nazis”, in other regions we have “ethnic cleansing”, and in North America, “white supremacists” have never really disappeared, and even appear under the guise of religion, which is something that I find particularly evil.

To really understand racism, it helps to experience what it feels like to be on the receiving end of racial discrimination. My three visits to Africa in the last 5 years have been interesting in that regard. For the first time in my life I was part of a “visible minority”. As a white person, I stuck out anywhere I went. For the most part, it was no big deal. But a few experiences stick out as either humorous or to put it mildly, interesting. In Cameroon, I was walking down a village street alongside a missionary, who was also white. We passed a large group of young children, who upon seeing us, began to shout, “White man! White man! White man with a long nose!” I was dumbfounded and so I said nothing. My colleague, who wasn’t experiencing this for the first time, said to the children that they should go home and have their parents teach them some manners!

Another time, in the town of Eldoret in Kenya, I was out shopping with a fellow pastor and friend who was black, and whom I got to know in Canada. At one point we needed to pick up his wife, who was inside a mall. Since it was hard to find parking, my friend pulled up beside the curb and sent me inside to fetch his wife, since she did not know where he would be parked. I did so, and as we walked the considerable distance to the car, I was conscious of many stares being fixed upon us. When we were inside the car, my friend explained to me what they were thinking – a young woman with an older man of a different colour – why that could only mean trouble. We laughed. Sort of.

On the campus of the college where I was teaching for three months in 2017 and 2018, I was the only white person. Since it was a Christian college, at no time did I feel looked down or discriminated against in any way. Teachers, whatever their skin colour are held in high regard in Africa and are treated with deference and respect. If anything, my skin colour resulted in other assumptions being made – that I was rich, and people were very eager to be my “friends”. But when I worshipped with these students and the other staff, I felt as one of them – except for the times that they forget that I was there and would lapse into the Swahili or some other tribal language.

Ah, and then there was apartheid in South Africa – the political and social system during the era of White minority rule, under which the people of South Africa were divided by their race and the different races were forced to live separately from each other. Nelson Mandela was instrumental in leading to the end of that system and that did not occur without struggle. I’ve never been to South Africa, but I have heard that while apartheid is gone as a system, old prejudices still survive.

Indeed, old prejudices are hard to eradicate. What helps? My advice is to interact with and get to know someone of a different race as a person. Learn to see this person not as a member of a different race, but simply as a fellow-human being. If you do this in a true spirit of humility and openness, you will find that God created only one type of human being. The skin colour may be different, but essentially, we are all the same, created in the image of God and therefore entitled to dignity, respect, and worthy to be treated with kindness.

BACK TO SCHOOL!

Since August 1 (a month into summer holidays and over a month before school starts) we have been seeing and hearing that phrase. Back to School sale. How to wean children off holidays and get them back into school mode. How to help them adjust to earlier bed times. How to pack healthy lunches. The list goes on and on. Over the course of the month, the intensity of that kind of talk has been building, until it reached a frenzy. Last week you couldn’t turn on the TV without some advertiser, some newscaster, even the weather forecaster, talking about Back to School.

Of course politicians had to do their share in order to muddy the discussion even more. Fear mongering about a possible labour dispute among teachers. Mandatory math tests for teachers. Sex education curriculum (and yes, that one is more about politics than the needs of children). And finally, in the last days before school, out comes that old chestnut about the ban of cell phones in the classroom, ensuring more heated debate by students and teachers on both sides of the issue.

Normally I just ignore all that hot air. But on August 7 an article on the front page of our local newspaper The Waterloo Region RECORD really caught my ire. Under the headline Are You Entertained Enough? the article reports about a University of Waterloo study that “finds students expect lecturers to be more interesting so they don’t get distracted by tech [nology] during class“. The article makes the astounding statement “while students felt that it is their choice to use the technology, they saw it as the instructors’ responsibility to motivate them not to use it”. Now that is an interesting twist! Its another way of saying, “I have a right to do this, but it is your fault if I do”. It is blame shifting clear and simple. It is always someone else’s fault. And of course we all do that on so many different levels in life. But I will stay with this one issue for today.

As I passed through the various levels of education, beginning in grade school, technology was always in use according to the extent that it was available at the time. I remember how happy we were as kids when the teacher took us either to the auditorium or some other darkened room to watch a “film” as it was then called (not a movie). Then came the “film strip”, which was much like coloured slides – images that were projected to a screen. A recording provided audio commentary with a beep sound to alert the teacher to go to the next frame. Then came educational television, produced by the Ontario government. We viewed these programs (black and white at first) on TV monitors that sat on wheeled stands that were tall enough so that the entire class could see the program.

I remember in Jr. High (called senior public in our part of the country) when the overhead projector came out. Some teachers were skeptical, and others embraced it with a vengeance and literally stopped using the blackboard (or green board. White boards came later).

And when I went to seminary, preaching class included having to preach practice sermons in class. These sermons were recorded on video tape, which was then re-played for analysis by the teacher and by your peers. The more often the instructor hit the pause button to make comments, the worse your sermon was. And then came the general use of computers and programs like PowerPoint, which today are used extensively by university professors and teachers alike.

In the church, we moved along using all of the above, though in most cases lagging just a bit behind. I remember the days when missionary slides could be shown in the sanctuary, but movies were relegated to the church basement. I have used powerpoint for preaching for a number of years, taking into account that some people process information better visually than verbally, and most appreciate having the benefit of both. Technology itself is morally neutral – if we control it, it is our servant. But unfortunately, more often than not, the reverse is true.

This is the case with the cell phone in the classroom (or the church). These highly developed devices are usually “smart phones” meaning that in addition to making and receiving phone calls, they can also be used to receive and send text messages, emails, or access the internet. There is nothing wrong with any of these activities, except when they distract you from real time activity like conversation with a real live person in front of you, which can be a dinner date, or a classroom, and yes even in church!

Because of what these devices can do, the potential for distraction is always high. But it is a real stretch to say that that being distracted is not your own fault, but the fault of the other. Can you imagine saying to your dinner date, “sorry but you are not interesting enough, so I have to yield to the temptation to check this message”?

It annoys me to no end to be in the company of someone who is constantly reaching for their smart phone to read or answer some type of message. It makes me feel so unimportant to that person sitting across from me. To use the logic of the UW study, maybe I’m not interesting enough to motivate the person not to reach for their smart phone. There is only one word to describe the reasoning of people in that study (or outside of it) – ludicrous! Those students should re-assess why they are in that classroom, and how motivated they are to succeed.

I have spent a just a little time teaching at a post-secondary level when I taught at a college in Kenya for six months in two years. In Kenya, everyone has a cell phone or smart phone, whether they can afford it or not. Therefore in the first lecture of each course that I taught, I laid down the law: I don’t want to see (or hear) your phone at any time in my lecture hall. And no, you may not go out into the hall to use your phone. All of my students survived this measure, and some even got pretty good marks!

Of course I can’t do that in church, because people don’t have to be there. When I’m preaching, and I see someone using a smart device, I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are either accessing their online Bible, or taking notes, even though I know that most of them are not. (You would be surprised what the preacher can see – and when someone is looking in their lap and smiling, they are probably zoned out of what is happening in the service). But I will not compete with your smart phone. What you get out of the service really depends on what you put into it. Its up to you.

WHEN CHURCHES BURN DOWN

The fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris France is the news story of the week. I would think that all Christians, whether they be Catholic or Protestant, would be saddened by the destruction of an active place of worship. This one is more than 800 years old. The website of the cathedral says that the building is “above all “the House of God and the abode of men” because this building is full of human and Christian experience. It also is a place of history and culture, and an architectural monument. Personally I have not been to Notre Dame, but I have visited other European cathedrals, and I can say that all of them are places of great beauty. For those of us who are Christian, we marvel that places like that were originally built to the glory of God. Damage or destruction to such a building is without a doubt a great loss. But it is a loss that needs to be seen in perspective.

As usual, the media coverage of an event of this nature is over the top. For days we have heard words like “tragedy”, “mourning”, “sorrow” and the solidarity of Catholics all over the world with vigils and special masses. One newspaper article that I read used the headline of a “global unifier”. Say what?

Yes, I admit it is all very sad. But something that the journalists and other writers don’t mention is the fact that a fire cannot destroy what a church really is. When Jesus said, I will build MY church, and the gates of Hades (hell) will not overcome it (Matthew 16:18), He was not talking about a building of wood, stone, or stained glass”. He was talking about a spiritual entity, comprised of redeemed human beings that lasts eternally. The Bible also uses the term “church” to describe a local assembly of believers, but never in the Bible does the term refer to a building. In fact, the early Christians met for centuries without ever having a building of their own. They met in large assemblies in public places, and in smaller groups in homes, and even in burial places as the catacombs when they needed to be in hiding.

Sometimes people refer to church buildings as “the House of God”, as if to say that God lives there. But Scripture tells us“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.” (Acts 17:24) Certainly it is right and proper to construct buildings in which people meet to worship God, but when such buildings are not available, God can still be worshipped.

In fact I am reminded of another church fire in my home town of Kitchener. One day in 1963, as I was walking home from school at lunch time, the sky over Kitchener was black with smoke. When I got home, the radio was playing and mother told us that Benton Street Baptist Church was on fire. As we later found out, a 15 year old arsonist had entered the unlocked church, and lit a curtain which set the church ablaze. He returned to the scene of the fire to watch the church burn and was apprehended there. It turned out that he originally had intended to torch St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church, but painters working inside that church chased him away, so he walked a block to the Baptist church. The building burned to the ground and was a total loss, except for an addition that had been built in the 1950’s that still exists today. The fire was so intense that the fire department had to soak nearby buildings with water to protect them from the shower of sparks as the burning steeple came crashing down.

Did that stop the Benton Street congregation? In those days, the weekly Sunday evening service was broadcast live from the church over a radio station in Kitchener. After the fire (which happened on a Tuesday if I am correct), many people tuned their radios to the station on the following Sunday evening to see if Benton “is still there”. They were not disappointed: the Sunday evening service was on as usual, but the signal was coming from the auditorium of a local High School where the congregation worshipped until the new church was built on the same site as the old. A fire can destroy a building, but not a true church.

Which brings me back to the Notre Dame fire. While the rubble is still cooling off, the President of France declared that the cathedral will be re-built. And lo and behold, all kinds of money is turning up. Led by three of France’s wealthiest families, donations have started to pour in, so far more than 700 million dollars. Well and good some would say, but the question must also be asked, why these donations, which will not impoverish any of the benefactors, come as late as they do. Fine to re-build an historic monument or even a “sacred space” but what about supporting what a church really stands for – the spread of the Gospel, the support of the poor to mention only a few things. While France is predominately Roman Catholic country, only 11% of the people actually attend mass. (Here in Canada, our record is not much better with only 29% of the population attending worship in any church, Protestant or Catholic).

We seem to be more enamoured with beautiful buildings and cultural monuments, than we are devoted to the cause of Christianity that these buildings represent. In both North America and Europe, church buildings are emptying, and when the small congregations that inhabit them can no longer afford their upkeep, the buildings are either demolished or sold and re-purposed.

An example is a Lutheran church in the city of Hamburg in Horn, a working class district of the city. In 2002 the church was “deconsecrated” because only 20 people were in attendance in a space that had room for 500. The building stood vacant for almost 10 years, before a Muslim congregation purchased it. The church is in the process of being converted to a mosque. The outside will remain much the same, but the golden cross atop the steeple has been removed and replaced with Arabic lettering that spells “Allah”.

Suddenly there was an outcry by the public living near the structure. The former pastor of the congregation expressed the grief of people who live there, whose children had been baptized, confirmed, and married in the church. The local branch of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party called for the conversion to be halted. Another local pastor suggested that it would have been better simply to demolish the building. However the man heading up the church to mosque conversion said that the legacy of decline contributed to his ambivalence about moving into the church. “We wish that churches would become more full,” he said. “We don’t want to Islamize or take over churches.”

May those who have ears, hear.

Lynching in Kenya

Spending time in Kenya for the third time has been as much a learning experience for me as it has been a time of teaching. Of course being here for only a few months does not in any way make me an expert, but mine is much more the view of an outsider looking in.

Some things that I have seen have impressed me, either positively or negatively. One of the latter things is the high rate of crime, the corruption even among law enforcement, and finally, just recently, the phenomenon of lynching – unlawfully taking someone’s life amidst some misguided form of “mob justice”. It happened last weekend at a nearby university, but apparently it isn’t newsworthy; at least I saw no mention of it except on social media.

Dr Robert Guy McKee has written an interesting report based on his study of what he calls a “human rights scandal”. In his paper he makes the following seven assertions about modern day lynchings in Kenya, that lynchings (1) are common, (2) are cruel, (3) are committed for numerous alleged reasons—mostly for alleged crimes—but very rarely for reasons related either to race or to sexual orientation or gender identity, (4) are rarely prosecuted, (5) appear to have inequitable access to basic resources as one contributing cause, (6) are a major human rights scandal, and (7) will, until they become the exception rather than the rule, hinder Kenya’s development in the twenty-first century.Now lynching is not unfamiliar to North Americans. The sad so called “frontier justice” of the 18th and 19th century are a dark chapter in our history.

While North American lynchings were usually carried out by hanging or shooting, in Africa the methods are even more cruel: stoning, beating to death, or dousing a victim with gasoline (“petrol” here) and setting them ablaze. By whatever method, lynching is just wrong because it denies the victim all of the fundamental rights of justice: the right to due process, the right to face one’s accusers and challenge the evidence that the accusers bring, the right to offer one’s own evidence of one’s innocence etc. In a lynching, the mob that carries it out are the de facto prosecutors, judge, and executioner. Because that is not justice, I will refrain from the term “mob justice” and just say lynching.

What particularly disturbs me also, are the outrageous number of lynchings that take place. Between August 1996 to August 2013 a total of 1,500 persons were reported lynched in Kenya, as many as 543 in one year !

More disturbing: the reported “reasons” for lynching. The victims are people who are accused (not proven!) to have committed some type of crime: in the case of the lynching last weekend, the victim was accused of theft. Lynching is all about anger and revenge. In cases where a family suffered the murder of someone, and it is felt that the criminal justice system did not apprehend or did not seem to deal with the perpetrator appropriately, the family and or friends take matters into their own hands.

In my mind, there are questions that I cannot answer. One is, how this human rights scandal is possible in a country like Kenya, that likes to number itself among the civilized nations of the world. Kenyans like to claim that 80% of the people are Christians. That is a number that is most certainly grossly inflated, unless you define “Christian” in the loosest of terms. But if you define the term Christian the way Jesus does, “my sheep hear my voice, I know them and they follow me” (John 10:27) then this number is not accurate notwithstanding the number of churches on almost every corner.

My second question is why the criminal justice system in Kenya is not able to stamp out these blatant crimes, for indeed lynching, the unlawful taking of a human life, is a crime. Politicians have denounced this practice, but still it prevails. I have some possible answers to this second question, and one of them is the wide-spread corruption that runs through virtually all levels of society, including the politicians, and the criminal justice system. There is a saying, that I have heard often repeated here: “Kenya is 80% Christian, but 90% corrupt”. There is something wrong with that picture, and I suspect that there is more than a grain of truth to the saying. The President of Kenya has made it a priority to stamp out corruption, but I wonder how much of that tough talk is like what our own politicians in Canada do: to appear that they are doing something, while in fact doing very little.

Those who take the teachings of Christ seriously, will want to heed what He said about anger, that is at the root of lynching: “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell” (Matt. 5:22 NIV). And certainly for the follower of Christ, revenge will not play a part in his life. In Romans 12:19 Paul says, Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

“Dear Diary”

On my bookshelf at home 12,176 km away in Canada (that’s 7,573 miles for you non-metrics) is a thick volume that I read a few years ago. It is the published diary of Ronald Reagan, apparently written while he lived in the White House as President of the United States. One page even is a facsimile of his handwriting. I remember at the time that it seemed exciting to read about the day to day musings of a man who was the most powerful man in the world. But I am a skeptic of sorts. I wonder how much of it was edited. Are these really the thoughts that someone shared with nobody else? Or how much of it, if any, was expressly written for posterity, or shall we say consciously written to an unseen audience?

There are other diaries of famous people who are long gone, in fact some of them became famous posthumously because of their diary. One of the most famous of these is the Diary Of Anne Frank. It was written by a young girl while she was hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Both she and her parents perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, but her diary survived and has been published in more than 60 languages.

Or in Canada we also have the published diaries of our longest serving Prime Minister, William Lyon MacKenzie King, covering several years. Now his is a mixture of pedantic and outright boring stuff mixed with weird accounts of King’s conversations with his deceased mother and other occult séances that he was in the habit of attending.

I have kept a diary off and on throughout my life. More off than on. I started it in childhood, when we were taught that it was a good thing to do for self-discipline and other reasons that I don’t remember. Those diaries are nowhere to be found. In my adult life, I would start journaling, which is a little different from a diary. Diaries are usually a daily affair, and can contain many details including what the weather was that day. Journals tend to be a more expansive record of one’s thoughts. In fact “journaling” is recommended for charting one’s spiritual progress, or one’s thought processes about a particular subject or decision that we are pondering.

Some people write a diary or journal as a deliberate legacy to leave behind for their children, or grandchildren. While that might seem like a good idea, you will then probably be very selective about what you write there, and document only those things that you want your intended readers to know. You will probably refrain from writing things that trouble you deeply, but would rather not share with your intended readers.

But diaries and journals present some problems. The first is, that they could be read by others whom you didn’t intend, and most likely they will be, if the diary or journal is left behind when you die. Your diary will be part of the belongings that your executor needs to sort through, and dispose of. It may well fall into the hands of someone whom you would not want to read what you have written. If you are worried about that, then you will want to dispose of it while you are alive… either give it to someone whom you would like to have it, or destroy it.

The second problem is that a diary can be used against you while you are alive, if you are ever charged with a criminal offense. Although diaries and journals are private, they generally are admissible in court. I have heard of more than one person who was convicted of a crime because of what they wrote in their diary. You say, “that’s not a problem because I didn’t do anything wrong?” Well apparently even if you do not document a crime, the diary can still be used to trace your whereabouts by the events that you mention. So even if you feel like you want to kill someone – you might want to keep that sentiment to yourself. And worse, what you have written is subject to interpretation by others – the interpretation of those who wish to use the diary against you, and the interpretation of the court or jury.

I haven’t yet decided what I will do with the sporadic diary/journal that I have kept; whether I will continue to write in it, or whether I will destroy it. Since mine is a locked electronic file, I guess I can still edit it. For those who don’t keep a diary, you’ve got nothing to worry about. For those that do – it is something you might want to think about.

LOVING CITIES AND PLACES

Usually when we say or hear the word “love” our thoughts go to a person or group of people. Although we also “love” our cornflakes or a host of other things, its not the same thing. But what about an emotional attachment, for lack of a better word, to a place, like a country, or a town or city.

A few years ago while I was living in Calgary, Alberta, a fellow pastor moved from Kelowna to one of my neighbouring church in Calgary. He was a friend whom I knew previously, and I looked forward to having him in the same city. And indeed the time that we were together, involved not only some duties that we shared between our two churches, but also a lot of fun lunches and good fellowship. My friend told me how hard it was for him to leave Kelowna. He described a special ritual that he developed for himself: on the day before leaving town, he made a special effort to visit all of his favourite places in the city, including of course the lakeshore from which he would launch his boat for fishing. He said that he stood at each of these various places, and silently said “good-bye”. There was an attachment because special memories were associated with each of those places. His experience intrigued me. He really did love Kelowna a lot, and it turned out that he went back there …. To retire and to die.

In the Bible we read that Jesus “approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes”. (Luke 19:41) Of course one can argue that it was the people living in that city that tugged at his heart, but sometimes we can regard a city and its inhabitants as one and the same, even as we refer to ourselves as “Torontonians” or whatever city we live in. And Jesus expressed some thoughts and feelings for some other cities as well: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes“. (Matt. 11:21)

So I thought about the places where I have lived and worked, especially the places where I was engaged in ministry. I won’t mention them all, but my first pastorate was in Toronto, which is about an hour east of where I grew up. Toronto was the “big” city … the one we went to in order to get or experience anything we couldn’t get in Kitchener. Now I was the pastor of a church there, and I arrived in the year that the CN Tower was completed. But I didn’t really enjoy living in that city. It was no fun trying to visit my parishioners who were scattered all over that vast city. I didn’t enjoy the smog and the rush-hour traffic that usually began at 3:00 pm.

My next place of ministry was in Kitchener, my home town, and I soon found out what Jesus meant when He said that a prophet is without honour in his home town. Then later on, I spent a few years in a small town that I didn’t like. It was an “old money” kind of town where new-comers were viewed with suspicion, and they clearly let you know that “you are not from here.” The church is well over 100 years old and change of any kind was anathema there. I didn’t last long in that town. My final 13 years of ministry were in Hamilton, Ont which is known for a lot of things, mainly steel. Also a famous university, whose medical school is renowned. Our church was located in walking distance from that church, and over the years some really neat contacts were made with students, and eventually we even had some doctoral candidates, and even a faculty number in the congregation. Now Hamilton was a city that I never liked, prior to coming there. Growing up, it was just a short drive from Kitchener, and so occasionally as a family we would go there, mainly for church events. The one way streets used to drive us crazy. But nevertheless I was eventually called to serve there, and I experienced something that I hadn’t in any of the previous cities – the church and the city grew on me. Living there was actually quite enjoyable. And I intentionally cultivated that, because by then I had learned that you can’t really be effective in a place that you don’t like, whether that is in a particular job, or a locale. And it prepared me for what was to follow.

I am now in Africa, in Kenya to be exact, for the third time. The first time was a 10 day visit before moving on to Cameroon and then last year and this year a 3 month season of teaching, and some preaching too. Now if someone would have told me that say five years ago, I would never have believed it. For one thing, Africa was never a drawing card for me. The things that we learned about Africa in Social Studies, and in Geography classes at school were things that I hated: snakes, bugs and other strange animals, hot climate, and more. But God has his way of dealing with His servants, and asking them where they would “like” to go is not one of them. More than once in my ministry have I served in places where I didn’t want to be, or at least would not have chosen. When I confessed this in my first sermon on African soil in 2015, I received applause. And from that moment on, I began to love the Kenyan people who have been and are so gracious and friendly. And the more I get to know them and learn about them, the more I love them. Now there are many things to adjust to while living here, but I choose to remind myself that this trip is not about me and my preferences, likes, and desires. I want to be effective in the things I am called to do, so I put my feelings aside. Faith is more important than feelings, and if we are faithful, sometimes God lets the feelings follow.

CONVERSIONS AND CONVERTING

Recently I became friends with someone who calls themselves an atheist. The person knows who I am and what my convictions are. The new friend asked me, “are you going to try and covert me”? I answered that I had never converted anybody.

I was thinking of an incident, whether actual or apocryphal, from the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the 19th century preacher. It is said that he was out for a walk one day when he came across a drunken man lying in the gutter. He stopped and spoke to the man, and as he bent down over him, was startled that the man addressed him by name. Asking the man from where he knew his name, he answered, “you converted me some three years ago.” To which Spurgeon is said to have replied, “And that is the tragedy, that I converted you. Had you been spiritually converted you would not be where you are now.”

Now conversions happen all the time. People convert from one faith to another. Some do it out of convenience, such as to make it easier to marry someone from a different faith. Others might do it because of some emotional influence in their life, or at worst being brow-beaten by some persistent argument.

Conversion can be a dangerous proposition. People who live in countries dominated by Islam, are often sentenced to death for “converting” from the Islamic to the Christian or some other faith. This inconvenient truth is often denied, but the fact is well documented.

Conversion to Christianity has always been a dangerous affair at some time and place or another. From the earliest days, Christians were persecuted and martyred. The first persecution came from those who professed the Jewish faith and the first victim was Stephen. Since the day of Stephen, a crimson trail of blood has flown through all time, even to the present day. No matter how hard and cruel the persecution, neither the Roman government (who first persecuted and then made Christianity the state religion), nor communism, nor Islam will eradicate the Christian faith.

Sadly, Christians are not innocent from persecuting those who disagree with them. The bloody crusades are a dark blemish in the history of the church. At various other times, Catholics have persecuted Protestants, and vice versa.
When the Pilgrim Fathers, who left British shores to flee religious persecution in their homeland settled on North American shores, what did they do? They made the same mistake by persecuting others who did not share their views.

But back to conversion. A true conversion to Christianity, or to be more accurate, a conversion to CHRIST, is a life changing event. The most famous example in the Bible is the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who later became the Apostle Paul. Saul was a leader of the Jewish faith, a man learned in the Hebrew Scriptures, a leading person in the party of the Pharisees. As the influence of the Christian witness and faith spread, he sought permission to arrest people and bring them to Jerusalem to face justice. It was during such a mission, that God intervened on the Road to Damascus, and we read the story of Saul’s “conversion”. Saul’s life was never the same. He became a passionate defender of those whom he had persecuted. He planted churches in areas where pagan (non-Jewish) religions had dominated. Many of his writings are part of the New Testament portion of our Bible.

There have been some notable conversions in modern times, and I will mention two of the most well known. One is C.S.LEWIS, who is known for his literary works such as THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and books like The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity. Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15. During his early adult life he participated in the occult. He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and Christian friend. J.R.R. Tolkien. Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion and late-night walk with Tolkien and and another close friends He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Anglican Church (The Church of England) – somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped that he would join the Catholic Church. Following his conversion he became a writer of numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction. Many of them are a defence of Christianity.

Another more recent convert from atheism is Lee Strobel, a former law journalist with the Chicago Tribune. He says that he began calling himself an atheist as a teenager and that he “loathed Christianity”. His wife’s conversion to Christianity was actually the catalyst that brought the couple to the brink of divorce. However after two years of intense research using his investigative skills as a former journalist for The Chicago Trubune, and consulting more than 12 leading biblical theologians, scholars and experts, Strobel learned that the Christian creed was solid and he converted to Christianity decades ago. Since then he has been a writer and teacher of the Christian faith. One of his best books is The Case For Christ, and a later sequel The Case for Miracles. Both books are best-sellers.

Mind you, conversion works both ways. One of the most well-known conversions from Christianity to atheism in the 20th century was Charles Templeton. He once was a close friend of Billy Graham, in fact the two worked together in the Youth For Christ movement, in Graham’s early days. Templeton was also a prolific author, and his works reflected his faith or lack thereof throughout his life.

How do conversions happen? Not as a result of slick marketing or human persuasion. A true conversion is a change of conviction, where someone changes their opinion about something they formerly held true and now take a different position. Atheists (who deny the existence of God) and Agnostics (who question the existence of God) generally fall into one of two categories. There are those who have intellectual reasons that they have carefully reasoned and thought through, and there are those who have what I call emotional reasons. Perhaps they are angry with some religious leader, or disappointed in how they were treated by those who belong to the particular religion. Or perhaps they had a shallow emotional experience and embraced a position that they do not fully understand. When somebody tells me that they don’t believe in God or Christianity because “there are so many contradictions in the Bible”, I generally ask them which contradiction troubles them most. Usually they cannot name a single one, but simply are repeating a mantra that they have heard from others. Or they bring up issues that the Bible does address, but they lack any kind of understanding as to how the Scriptures are to be understood.

But I have also encountered people who are true spiritual seekers. They really want to know what is true and what is not, and they genuinely search for answers. We must never brush such people aside. Like Jesus did, we ought to sit down with them, regardless of what social class they belong to and listen to their questions, engage them in their thought processes, and and give reasoned explanations instead of platitudes. But conversion? That is up them, and only them. Deep in their heart they must decide. It still happens today.

Another View …

What we see in life depends where we are looking from. This blog is a new blog because I have again changed my position, which will no doubt change what I see and how I respond to it.

In the early 1990’s I wrote a newspaper columned entitled VIEWPOINT, which ran once a week in the local newspaper where I then lived … a small town in which I was the pastor of one of the churches. Then came the internet and the opportunity to write blogs, and I was again living in a larger city and pastor of a church there. So I had a blog entitled PASTOR DIETER’S VIEWPOINT.

Now I am retired, living in yet another city (my hometown Kitchener, Ontario actually) and travel from time to time. So what is different this time about the blog? While the opinions that I have expressed in the past have always been my own, they needed to some extent to be rather guarded. For example I had to be careful about politics. I was employed by churches that were registered charities, and in Canada registered charities can not engage in politics. So I treated my blog as if I were in the pulpit … I bit my tongue about my political opinions. I no longer have that restraint…

I am adjusting to being on “the other side” of the pulpit, namely in the pew. The view is very different on either side. The view from the pew is more critical. I wonder if everyone is as critical – or is it just those who once were behind the pulpit and now in the pew are unnecessarily hard on the one who is at the front? I don’t know. I’m still figuring that out. What also complicates matters is that I still preach from time to time, and so I commute as it were, between the pulpit and the pew.

In any case, something that I have always done, is tell it like… well I was about to say tell it like it is, but a more humble way would be to tell it like I see it.