What’s wrong with me? “Not a problem,” some “On Faith” commenters would say and without hesitation have told me. More thoughtful, a cognitive therapist would muck about in my ideas to find the one labeled “Mail System Error: This message was undeliverable….” The therapy indicated? Get me unblocked, so communication can continue.
I can imagine a cognitive therapist asking me, “What passage or verse in scripture or literature best defines your own faith or beliefs? Why?” That’s fishing not for where I’m blocked but where my spirit is flowing free, confident, joyful, hopeful for myself and for everybody.
“Own” is the spear point of the this-week’s questions coming down from “On Faith” above upon the pates of us panelists. My “own” is more than what I profess and possess. It is what “owns,” possesses, me. And without hesitation I can say what that is. Rather, who that is. And I shall answer, as directed, with a quotation:
“G0D, who commanded light to shine forth out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ.” (New Testament: 2 Corinthians 4:6)
Most religious conversions occur in the late teens, when all one’s human powers have emerged and none are yet fully developed. Consciousness, the last and greatest mystery to science, peaks in an awesome gradual-or-sudden increase of appreciative awareness. “Seeing the light” is the most common metaphor for it. I had that experience one evening during my seventeenth year and have never since doubted God’s loving and purposeful presence in my life.
In Boston a few week ago, I met a university professor from China, on a project at Harvard. When I politely inquired as to his religion, with quiet joy he said, “Jesus Christ in my heart.” That does it for me, too. He and I are converts to Christ—he, from a non-Christian start in life; I, from a superficially Christian.
Christian conversion is a “turning around” from arrogant and anxious self-centeredness to humble and joyful Christ-centeredness. In some cases, conversion seems sudden, but always it’s the heart-and-mind conclusion of personal accumulated evidence. I was lord. Now, in the words central to Christian creeds, “Jesus is Lord.” The heart of the Christian Story is the paradox that Jesus became Lord not by lording it over anybody but by humbly serving all. The drama is on a two-level stage. On the upper level, the Son of God enacts the humility he is to live as Jesus and to model for us:
“Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus. Although he was God in his very nature, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in human appearance, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (New Testament: Philippians 2:5-11)
That’s the play you see when you walk into the Christian theater. As you walk out, you may conclude that you have heard a heavenly voice calling you to be of some earthly good. Or, if you didn’t get it, you will conclude that what you have heard is nonsense, white noise.
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