Each time in the past I have given basic summaries. I feel each leaves out little bits of insight. Having a bit more time perhaps I can be more thorough this go around. First, a general comment: conversion experiences do not happen in a cultural vacuum. When people turn to religion, they gravitate to what is most familiar. Midwesterners do not generally turn to Islam or Hinduism. Middle Easterners do not generally turn to Shinto or Rastafarian practices. My own denomination, Second Advent or New Church, does not find this problematic, which is another topic entirely.
As for myself, I was raised in a Christian home. The community church did not “feed” me. Church was a Sunday ritual. Youth group was a social club. We were taught blind faith without doctrine. As I came of age, I couldn’t just believe in something because the adults said so. From middle school through high school I learned about the major philosophers, in general, and the existentialists in particular. My exposure was pretty shallow. I still believed in Jesus, but considered it an “irrational stance” within an absurd world. In college I loaded up my electives with philosophy courses and ended up one credit hour short of a minor. In my junior year of college, being an atheist in practice I accepted that I was an atheist in belief.
For a while I became very interested in the psychologist Abraham Maslow. That really hit home. Part of my mental make-up is a propensity toward “peak experiences.” It doesn’t take much: a warm cup of coffee on a quiet rainy day, a long run by the lake in the winter, etc. While the religious describe this in spiritual terms, I considered it a curious and wonderful psychological experience that gives you a calm sense of place in the world. And I actively pursued it. I read about the many of the mystics to learn from their practices; St. John of the Cross’s “dark night of the soul”, St. Teresa’s agony that was indistinguishable from ecstasy, William Blake’s art and poetry, and, yes, the visions of Swedenborg. I learned to meditate, mostly mindfulness, and found that shedding contingent aspects of self to find the irreducible personal existent comes naturally to me. I still attribute most of this effect to the “relaxation response” used by many athletes.
All this time, I never lost interest in philosophy of mind. From college the issues started by Descartes and chewed by Ned Block, Dennett, Churchland, Nagel, and Chalmers remained fresh. Compared to my own visceral meditative and flow experiences, then and now, the conclusions of the analytic philosophers seem to be missing something essential. Because I am heavily invested in the visual arts, I have also been profoundly influenced by semiotics.
My first step back toward the Christian faith came from this mix of transcendent experiences, philosophical speculation, artistic practice, fighting for human dignity, and a commitment to existential freedom. I had the start of fairly coherent intellectual framework for expanding my understanding of reality. I slowly build on that, including my participation with AF.
The above sufficiently explains my turn toward a more spiritual worldview. It does not explain how I became a Christian. As I said in the beginning, I lacked much doctrinal education. From my philosophical perspective most of the traditional doctrines made no sense to me: God-in-Three-Persons, Jesus as both man and God, etc. Orthodox belief isn’t for me, I can accept some mystery just from being human, but the paradoxes of traditional doctrines are too blatant to overlook.
All that changed after a personal and unexpected revelatory experience. I was working on a house project in the basement when I was overcome by a profound sense that the biblical text was somehow actually alive, every “jot and tilde”. And I remembered hearing this idea before in the writings of Swedenborg. I gave him a second look. To my surprise it started to make sense. He explained the Holy Trinity, Christ’s mission, and spiritual reality in a logical way. And for the first time really the Holy Scriptures opened up for me, filled with riches and insights on so many levels.
I would be remiss in my duty if I did not mention that throughout my conversion I became increasingly aware of the sin in my life. Many Christians describe hitting bottom and turning to Christ. I cannot say that I had one defining moment but I did have several dark nights of the soul when I was forced to confront the lingering sins from my atheistic perspective. These sins included permissive attitudes toward libertines, approval of licentious and self-destructive behaviors, scoffing at people with simple faith, and no shortage of bad habits. I think that’s the regenerative process described by St. Paul as “working out my salvation with fear and trembling.”
For me God is no longer an abstract concept. He is a fundamental aspect of reality, obvious once understood, hidden in plain sight, or as the hymn says, “Tis only to splendor of light hiddeth Thee!”
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