Conversion is just a psychological trick akin to brainwashing
How is it that people who firmly believe there is no God will suddenly change their minds and claim to have had a living experience of God's reality? How is it that people whose lives have been selfish and egotistical can suddenly be transformed, and fling themselves into a career of reckless self-sacrifice and caring for others? Is it God who brings these changes? Or is it just something psychological?
New beliefs can be manipulating people's minds. We know that from the brainwashing practices carried out by some unscrupulous governments on political prisoners and prisoners of war. We've seen graphic examples of i in the rise of mind-bending religious cults over the last twenty years. But normally such techniques depend on isolation, fear, vivid suggestions and constant repetition. Does anything like that happen in Christian conversion?
Dr. William Sargant, author of Battle of the Mind, who has studied 'brainwashing' in many different societies claimed that the famous conversions in the Bible an in history - St. Paul, and John Wesley - had been secured by unfair mental pressure; and that Christians were guilty of using the same techniques today.
What is the truth? Well, there are undeniably psychological forces at work when people are converted. It's no mere coincidence that a lot of conversions happen in the mid-teenage years; that's the age when, psychologically, young people are making up their minds about what they will believe for the best part of their future lives, and thus they are open to persuasion as they won't ever be again. And sometimes one can see that individual people probably turned to God because of some inbuilt mental inclination, or some deeply-felt psychological need,which conversion helped to resolve. But that doent mean that conversion is just a psychological phenomenon. There can be more than one level of explanation for anything that happens to us, as we'll see later; a conversion can have a psychological explanation and still, on another level, be a genuine miraculous outpouring of God's grace into somebody's life.
To make his case sound plausible, Sargant has to leave out a lot of inconvenient details! For example, he points to the Apostle Paul as a clear example of somebody whose mind was tampered with. But he also says, 'A safeguard against conversion is, indeed, a burning and obsessive belief in some creed or way of life.' And nobody had a more 'burning and obsessive belief' than the Apostle Paul before he became a Christian! Yet he did change his mind - despite having what Sargant calls 'a safeguard against conversion' to protect him! It doesn't add up.
The same is true of John Wesley's story. To fit Sargant's theory, Wesley's conversion should have taken place in a crowded, excited meeting; in fact it came about in a quiet discussion group. The facts just don't fit the theory. Psychology can explain some things, but can't explain them away.
Let me give you three other reasons why I firmly believe hat conversion really happens, and the Bible is speaking the truth when it says that anyone who becomes a Christian 'is a brand new person inside' (2 Corinthians 5:17). First, the effect of conversion last, and are big. Brainwashed dupes will often leve their new beliefs as suddenly as they acquire them. But I know men who were murderers who are today as gentle as lambs. I know people who were written off as 'human vegetables' who have passed all their exams and gained good jobs. I know people who were motivated by hatred of the world and themselves, whose personalities have altered completely as they have found in themselves a new love and openness that they never had before. Brainwashing doesn't do this.
Second, conversion to Christianity happens in so many different ways. For some, it's a blinding flash of insight; for others, a long pilgrimage with no awareness of when the final point was reached. For some, it happens in a large meeting; for others, while quietly reading a book. C.S. Lewis became a Christian on a top deck of a bus. For me (Chomps), it was probably while squashed between four others at my second Youth Alive concert. For my friend, it was in a group discussion after watching a video during a camp with other friends. Another one believed after a walk on a mountain top. You can't make generalisations about psychological tricks when the circumstances are so varied!
Third, conversion happens right across cultures. I know people from nations with a different outlook, education, world view and language from myself, who have had exactly the same experience of Jesus Christ that I have. Visiting their countries and making friends with them just reinforces the impression: their story is no different from mine. We have all met the same person. And he's real.
Christians are really no better than other people
'Church minister sexually abuses young boy', 'Secret life of Sunday School teacher', 'The preacher with three Rolls Royces' - headlines like that don't improve the image of Christianity, do they? And tabloid newspapers rarely let a month go by without digging up one such story from somewhere. It all confirms the impression many people have: 'These Christians say that Jesus has made them good and holy and whatever, but really under the gloss they're no better than the rest of us. It's all an act.'
So are Christians really better than others?
No, they're not. And the Bible never claims they are. In fact, the first essential for someone who wants to become a Christian is to realize that he's a failure - someone who can't live up to God's standards properly, no matter how he tries. Nobody can come to God without making this basic admission first. And then God gets to work on tht person's life - forgiving his sins, putting a new moral power inside, implanting new desires to do the right things instead of the wrong.
But that doesn't necessarily make him better than other people - just better than he would ever have been without Jesus to help him! You see, we all start from different moral backgrounds. Born to different families, different circumstances. You might find it diffidult to be a fairly pleasant, genial person, thoughtful and courteous to others. You might have a kingsize chip on your shoulder which it would take years to remove. And if you become a Christian, for a long time you'd probably still be way behind the nice person next to you, as far as personal charm is concerned! So the fair questio to ask is not,'Is person A better than person B?', but, 'Is person A with Christ better than person A without Christ?'
And the answer to the second question, in case after case, has got to be 'Yes'. We've seen the impact that Christian experience makes on the average human life. It doesn't turn anyone into an angel, with a faintly perceptible halo floating six inches above the head! But it does begin a process of change and development which goes on for the rest of a person's life.
'I am confident of this,' wrote the Apostle Paul, 'that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. He was confident because he had seen it. It works.
You can't be sure you know God - it's all wishful thinking
The early Christians were a confident bunch of people. They didn't just 'think' or 'hope' or 'assume' that they were Christians. What drove them out to conquer the unfriendly Roman Empire was their blazing conviction that they knew. And this word 'know' comes up again and again in the New Testament:
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so tht you may know that you have eternal life. We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him... I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.
How can Christians be so sure? After all, they have never seen Jesus or spoken to him personally. Today's Christians weren't even born when he did his miracles and supposedly rose again. How can you be so certain about something invisible and intangible?
I think there are three things than enable a Christian to be absolutely sure it's not just wishful thinking.
First, you know by what happens inside you. If the Bible said, 'Yea verily, when a man shall become a Christian, lo, his nose shall turn green', and it didn't happen, you would immediately be able to say Christianity was untrue. But if it didn't happen to everyone who professed faith - perhaps there might be something in it!
And the Bible does predict certain results will follow when somone's life is opened up to the transforming power of God's Holy Spirit:
... the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control...
I have seen these results slowly begin to appear in the lives of people who become Christians - again and again, too often to be mistaken. I have experienced the same things starting to stir and develop in my own life as God's power gets to grip with our imperfections. When I see changes in myself that I could never have brought about myself, I know that a power greater than my own is at work shaping my life.
'Hang on, though,' you might argue. 'How do you know what your subconscious mind can and can't do? Perhaps you've induced all these changes in yourself by some kind of self-suggestion or hypnosis. You believe strongly that it's going to happen to you; and so it does. You're just subconsciously fulfilling your own prophecy.'
Now that is possible - though extremely unlikely. But there's a second reason for being sure. You know by what happens outside you. If God simply affected the 'inside' things, then certainly it could be just a subjective fantasy. But I find him at work in 'outside' events too - things I can't imagine, in the real world. He answers my prayers. He shapes the events of my life into a meaningful pattern. He brings about 'coincidences' that happen just too often for it to be a coincidence any longer.
I am well aware that it is possible to become too superstitious, and read a deep meaning into every little thing that happens to you. ('My show lace has snapped! What is God trying to tell me?') But all I can say is that the more sceptical I try to be, the more the proof presses in on me. To deny that God is at work in the daily events of my lie would be unrealistic. In fact it would be a lie.
And then there's a third reason for being sure. You know by what happens to others. If I were the only person in the world who had ever had this strange experience, I might well seriously consider that I had been deluded. If you got up in the morning adsaw a pig flying past your window, you might think you had gone mad. But if that morning several hundred people reported a sighting of an airborne sow, you'd be a little more confident that your vision had been real! And when millions of people all over the world have had the same experience of friendship with God, I can't doubt any longer that I'm onto something genuine.
I spend a lot of time on the internet. At first it was a very strange place. Some people wrote me unpronounceable messages, weird jokes - a completely different outlook on life from what I was used to. Some of them were Christians (in fact a lot of my net friends are Christians - great support through a growing prayer chain!!! Thankyou if you're here, because you encouraged me to upload topics that were important to you and me!!! Encouraged me to read lots, and pray lots!!! THANKYOU!). Living in a culture totally different from mine, exactly the same experience of the living Jesus that I had. And despite the cultural difference there was an instant bond between us; because we recognised exactly the same reality in one another.
With all of this going on, it would be hopelessly timid for a Christian to say, 'I feel I may be in touch with God.' The only word that fits the circumstances is 'I know'. And that's not arrogance. It's a stone-cold sober assessment of the facts.
It is arrogant to force your religion on others
Agreed. To force people to accept Christ at the point of a sword, or through some kind of blackmail, is quite unacceptable. Usually, too, it doesn't work; the converts will return to their former beliefs as soon as your back is turned. And serve you right.
It is right, however, to reason with other people and to try to persuade them. As long as you are not coercing them by some kind of unfair emotional pressure, it isn't wrong to use every argument at your disposal to help people see the exciting potential of what you have found in Jesus, and convince them that they need to share it too. Not to do this wouldn't be fair to them. If you really believe that you have found in Jesus Christ the one and only solution to the gravest problems confronting the human race, you'd have to be truly selfish not to want to broadcast the news as widely aas ever you could.
This, of course, is assuming that you believe you have something vital to share. If you believe that all religions say one and the same thing (and we've dealt with that idea on an earlier topic), you will naturally feel diffirent about touting to the world our favourite version of what everybody's already got anyway.
However, Jesus insisted that 'no-one comes to the Father except through me'. That he had something to offer the world which was absolutely unique and unprecedented, and that anyone who deliberately turned his back on Jesus Christ would never find the true light of life. If this is true, it would be grossly unfair not to tell the whole world about it. And to do so is not arrogant, because Christians are not claiming to be anyone special; they didn't find out about Jesus through their own superior spirituality, or their incredibly penetrating brain; they have simply stumbled on a secret which belongs to all the people, and they are passing it on because they daren't do otherwise.
Now it is true that sometimes Christians have been insensitive and overbearing in the way they have done this. But do remember that it's hard to be 'laid back' when you believe you are conveying a life-or-death message! And it's true some Christians have been proud and pompous in the way they've shared their faith. But often that is simply a cover for lack of confidence and fear of rejection.
Suppose you are a doctor who knows the only cure for a particularly deadly disease. And one day you come across someone wo is dying of the disease - but who could be saved if you told him about the cre. Would you really think, 'No, it's arrogant to force my cure on other people', and leave him to die? Or would you do your utmost to persuade the dying man to take the medicine?
Now suppose you're the patient. Would you really refuse to take the cure just because you couldn't stand the doctr who offered it to you?
Don't make the same mistake with Christianity!
It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere
I believe that Adolf Hitler was God. Jews should be murdered. Gypsies should be disembowelled publicly and their remains fed to little children. I believe that the London Underground is a tool of the Antichrist, and trains must be set on fire wherever possible. I believe it is morally justifiable to explode a bomb in the middle of a football crowd. I believe that grasshoppers are a superior form of life who must be invited to ruld this planet...
Would you accept all those statements as valid beliefs? Of course not. If I came out with too many statements like that, you'd have me locked up. Yet I could be perfectly sincere in believing them!
And if it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere, these beliefs and ideas are just as worthy and important as yours!
Do you see the point? It's possible for someone to be sincere and wrong. All the sincerity in the world won't save you from the results of your own errors. If you get on a train heading for Sydney sincerely believing it's going to Melbourne, your sincerity won't be enough to turn the train around and make it go in the direction you want. You will just have to admit your mistake and get off the wrong train.
In the same way, religious believers of all sorts can be perfectly sincere in all they profess. They may be absolutely convinced that what they believe is incontrovertibly true. But if they've got it wrong, their sincerity will be of no use. They will hae to admit their mistake and change trains!
It's a good thing, really, that God doesn't actually judge us on our sincerity. For human beings are often very insincere. We say one thing, and do another. We claim to stand for certain principles, and then when the pressure is on we compromise. I know how much basic dishonesty there is in me, and I would guess that you're not much different. If God looked for total sincerity, which of us would stand a chance?
But God's standard of judgement is different. God wants to know how we have responded to the truth when it has been presented to us. And if what we have said so far is true, Jesus Christ is the truth in a unique way. He can do for you what 'sincerity' never could. He can change your whole life...
Of course it matter what you believe; it matters desperately. Make sure you choose correctly, because if you don't bother to do so, all the sincerity you can muster will never substitue for what you will be depriving yourself of.