Central to American Christian Fundamentalism is the concept of conversion: persuading others to embrace your personal conclusions about God. religion, and life as Absolute Truths.
In the Church of Christ, we possessed an enormous passion for conversion. Given our obsession with browbeating others into accepting our peculiar approach to faith, you might imagine we would devote an enormous percentage of our church treasury to mission work. We didn’t. Instead of targeting the Godless, unwashed masses of the Third World, we focused most of our energy on friends and neighbors.
Most of these people already believed in God. In fact, most of them were already attending the church of their choice. They went to Sunday Schools. They filled pews on a weekly basis. They prayed often. They tithed.
But, from our perspective, because their faith, their worship, or their conclusions differed from our own … they were, without question, totally and utterly lost.
I vividly recall a sermon delivered by one of our more somber, hawk-nosed ministers. “Imagine driving down your street, and discovering that every single house was on fire. Your friends, your neighbors, your loved ones are burning, burning, burning. And what do you do? You continue on your way, too busy to help, to stop, to lift a single finger to save them.”
He paused for dramatic effect, and then looked (I thought) straight at me. “A burning house is a tragedy, but a burning soul is an eternal loss. Every day you fail to mention Jesus to your unsaved friends and neighbors, you abandon those helpless souls to the flames.”
I accepted this assertion without question, and I took the business of conversion very seriously. I memorized key scriptures. When the church held occasional “door knockings” — strolls through local neighborhoods delivering what I now would call “drive-by Bible studies” — I was one of the five to seven members who would show up.
I became adept at steering conversations toward talk of religion. I was delighted when the Mormons came to the door (I’ve been the reason more than a few young Mormon men questioned or abandoned their faith.)
All this — before I was even twelve years old.
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon when I was twenty-two, I met with a Mormon missionary. I listened patiently to his spiel as though I’d never heard it before, even though I could have delivered it myself. (“Joe Smith. Angel. Don’t join any existing church. Here, have some gold plates. Testimony of the witnesses. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit whether these things are true.”)
I was waiting for a specific phrase — my cue to attack. Finally, thirty-five minutes into his presentation, my young Mormon friend uttered the magic words. “And, Mark,” he said, “I know these things are true.”
“You know these things are true?” My eyes glittered, bright as a cobra’s.
“I know these things are true,” he repeated.
“Were you born a Mormon?” I asked.
He looked surprised. “Yes.”
“So … you’ve never attended any other church?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“I know you haven’t … because your church doesn’t allow you to. Have you ever read any books about the Book of Mormon not written by church officials or other Mormons?”
He blinked. “Noooo….”
“Of course you haven’t … because the chuch suppresses anti-Mormon literature. The fact is, fella, you can’t know these things are true, because you’ve really just accepted what you’ve always been taught. You’ve never questioned your faith — you inherited it. You’ve never stepped outside it. You’ve never examined all the evidence. You’ve got a hand-me-down faith. It might as well be a birth defect. That’s really not a faith at all.”
The young man, taken aback, gave a splendid answer: “So … have you always been a member of the Church of Christ?”
I balked.
Over the years, I’d led countless Bible studies, participated in mission efforts, and pressured hundreds of classmates and friends to become members of the Church of Christ. I was an armchair expert in the beliefs of the major denominations, and I knew exactly which Scriptures to cite to throw them off their game and challenge their faith.
And yet here I was … berating a young Mormon missionary for lacking the courage and integrity to do what I, myself, had never done.
It was one of the most significant moments of my spiritual life — the beginning of my own, personal conversion.
Add comment