Missionary

How Do You Explain a Conversion?
by Geoffrey Biddulph

How do you explain a conversion?

How do you explain how a person can hold a long set of beliefs all of his life and then over a relatively short period of time come to hold the exact opposite beliefs?

Many secular critics see the religious conversion process as something similar to the character in George Orwell’s 1984 who is finally convinced through years of totalitarian brain-washing that he is really seeing four fingers when there are in truth only three. According to this line of thought, religious conversions are usually the acts of desperate, emotional people trying to bring sense to a mad, difficult world.

For others, the conversion process is simply a healthy paradigm shift, a change in worldview that allows a person to see something that he or she never saw before. In a way, this conversion can be compared to a person getting a new “sense” that allows him or her to see and experience things that are truly present in the world but that the person simply never had the ability to perceive before.

And, in my opinion, a true, positive conversion is impossible without some miracles. They can be a series of small miracles over years or decades leading to a final climatic breakthrough, or, in some cases, the conversion can be triggered by one large, quick miracle in which a person has a whole new world revealed to him or her like a curtain rising before a play.

How Do You Convince Somebody?
How do you convince somebody that your conversion was a positive, life-affirming crescendo that turned the world from a blurry pastel pallor to a portrait of sharp, clean crystal? And then, once they agree with you that the conversion might have been a good thing for YOU, how do make them see that this is something they could absorb into their own lives?

All you can do is tell your own story. You hope the listeners will agree without necessarily saying, “Wow, how great for YOU” as if they were talking to a young child who had learned to share his toys. You hope they will really listen to the significance of the story and catch the cosmic urgency of the event. If they can grasp that urgency, you have found somebody who truly understands a conversion. To take the next step and look at applying it to themselves, some kind of miracle must take place.

Both my mother and father were from long-time LDS families. After their divorce when I was young, I did not attend any church regularly. I was raised without in-depth reading of any scripture until I picked up a Bible in my mid-thirties.

I had the politics and worldview of most college-educated people of my generation: I was generally liberal and viewed all religions with suspicion. I was an agnostic who saw religious people, especially Mormon religious people, as misguided. My constant refrain was: “All extremism is bad,” meaning all people who were extremely religious in any manner. In my personal behavior I was an ardent secularist.

It took an outside event to begin to change my perspective. My stepson, only 14, began to have serious drug problems. He also had problems with violence and was relentlessly drawn to the worst elements of society: gangs, foul language, and pornography. I had never seen anything wrong with the occasional swear word or the semi-pornographic magazines in my house, but suddenly the situation changed when my stepson became attracted to these influences.

Out of Control
The situation escalated until it was completely out of control: my stepson Edgard started bringing drugs to the house and would disappear for entire weekends while my wife, pregnant, would roam the streets at night looking for him (while I watched our second child). Edgard practically stopped going to school and would go through violent periods of depression during which he would seriously talk about suicide.

Although I did not recognize it at the time, I was being brought face-to-face with real evil. The denigrating effects of a life without the construction of a true family morality of right and wrong had helped create a situation where “anything goes.” I had built my house on sand, and the foundation was being worn away by drugs, alcohol, pornography and violence.

Desperate and unable to sleep, I got out of bed one morning at 3:00 to surf the Internet for possible solutions. What could we do with Edgard? Military schools? No, he would run away or he would be kicked out. Check him into a drug rehabilitation program? No, that was extremely expensive and may not be effective in the long run. We needed a second home to send him to with experts who could take care of him.

We found perhaps a dozen different programs, and decided on one called Teen Help. They had a school in Jamaica called Tranquility Bay where my stepson would be well-treated and would have time to recover from his drug dependency. How to get him there? I lied and told Edgard I had won a vacation trip to Jamaica for two. His mother was pregnant and couldn’t come; would he like to “take a break” and come with me? He reluctantly agreed to go.

His mother packed his bags. As she did, I found myself taking a Bible off the shelf and placing it in the bag. Why a Bible? I had never read it myself, but it seemed “good,” something that would be a good influence on him. Maybe it would help him turn his life around.

Edgard and I got on the plane, and at the airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica, I handed my stepson over to a security guard from the school and took a plane right back to Miami. I got home, drank a half-liter of whiskey and dissolved into a puddle of tears and self-pity.

The school cost $2400 per month and I earned just about that after taxes. How would I pay my mortgage, food and also pay for Edgard’s school, not to mention buy anything for my daughter and the baby on the way? I had no idea, but I knew I had done the right thing. I knew that I had helped keep Edgard alive for a few more weeks, perhaps months, and that was the right thing to do.

Something “Good”
A few days later, I picked up a children’s Bible that was lying in Edgard’s room. If there was something “good” in it, maybe it would be inspiring to me. I certainly needed inspiration.

I remember very clearly the first time I read the Sermon on the Mount. I kept on thinking: “This is really good stuff. Why don’t more people talk about this? This Jesus said some really cool things.”

I then bought a real Bible to replace the Children’s Bible. I read most of it in a few weeks. I was fascinated. What was this book all about? Did people believe that there was really an Adam & Eve? I became very interested in what other churches had to say. I quizzed religious friends of mine about their beliefs.

One friend was going to the Congregational Church near my home, so I went several Sundays. It was very interesting. I loved singing the “Lord’s Prayer.” I went to a meeting for new members at the minister’s house, and I remember seeing everybody drinking wine. I said to myself: “What is a Minister doing drinking wine?” Somehow, it didn’t seem right to me, but I didn’t know why.

Habits
That made me wonder about my own habits with alcohol. I would drink several beers a day and maybe more on the weekends depending on if there was a football game. But I had been drinking more during that time because of the stress related to my stepson, and I felt bad about that. I felt like I should stop drinking, and I knew the best thing to do would be to just stop all at once.

I remember very clearly the day I decided to stop drinking. It was October 1998. I was making margaritas for myself, my wife and my mother-in-law, and my two-year-old daughter toddled up and said, “Daddy, I want some.” I said, “No, this is not for little girls,” and she started crying. And the thought came into my mind very strongly: “Why are you putting in your body things that you are ashamed of, things that you wouldn’t give to your own daughter?”

The next day I made a strange kind of pact. It wasn’t really a prayer because I had never prayed, but it was kind of a deal I made with the “forces of the universe,” which I was just beginning to define as God. It went something like this: “God, if you keep my daughters safe, I will stop drinking.” I have not drunk alcohol since then, and my daughters are extremely healthy and happy.

At the same time, my financial situation magically improved. I was in sales at the time, and suddenly I began selling like crazy, and my income tripled. It was just enough money to cover my suddenly huge expenses. I ended up paying for nearly three years of Edgard’s school at $2400 per month, and I never took on any additional debt.

Sister Baptized
A few months later, my sister called me out of the blue and told me she was going to get baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now this was a huge surprise to me. She and I both had many family members in the church, but neither she nor I had really had much interest in the church. I remember saying, “You know, there are a lot of other churches. I’m going to this Congregational Church.” And she said, “No, this is the right church. It’s our family’s church.” And I said, “You’re sure they’re not just after your money?” And she said no and asked me to come to her baptism. Her two oldest children, 10 and eight, were also being baptized.

So I flew across the country to go to her baptism at the San Rafael, California ward. I distinctly remember as I walked into the church hoping the ceremony would not be too boring. The chapel was old with ugly yellow-brown stained carpet (it has since been remodeled). It certainly was not as nice as my Congregational Church, which is a beautiful Old Spanish style building near Miami.

The moment my grandfather got up to offer the opening prayer, something happened to me. It was as if a small cloud floated down onto my body. I was suddenly infused with joy, pure joy. I remember looking around at the people in the chapel and feeling nothing but love for them. I felt a concentration of my senses and a keen reminder that I needed to listen carefully to the service.

Family members talked about the importance of baptism, and I found myself following their words as if my very life depended upon it. At one point, a speaker reminded people in the audience that everybody should be baptized, and I had to literally stop myself from getting up and declaring I wanted to be baptized.

The rest of the day I walked around in a kind of a daze. I was so happy, so at peace.

Rainbows
The next morning I went running by myself in the hills of northern California. I was running along a trail that rode the top of a hill, and there was a rainbow that went from the top of the hill I was on to another nearby hill. As I ran along, another rainbow appeared directly above me, a small rainbow inside the larger rainbow. I literally ran underneath the two rainbows.

Now, I am more than willing to be convinced that the rainbows were simply the coincidental refraction of light from two sources. But I will not be convinced that what I felt in that chapel was not special. Something happened that had never taken place in my life before. And I liked it.

I flew back to Miami wondering what had happened to me. I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to read the Book of Mormon, especially because I had read the Bible and other religious books. So, I began to read it and got a growing sense that I needed to be baptized. I took the discussions with the missionaries and began going to the Flagler Ward in Miami. I got baptized four months after my sister and her two children.

For me, the crucial moment was the feeling of the Spirit in the chapel where my sister was about to be baptized. That was the time that the curtain was lifted and I saw a whole different play taking place. I have never seen the world the same way since then.

The Fruits
What are the fruits? I have two beautiful daughters, six and three years old. Edgard, my stepson, is healthy and alive and working in Miami. I have a great job in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I have a wonderful relationship with my extended family members, all of whom are ecstatic about my conversion.

On a personal level, people seem to like me better and seem to consider me more sincere and honest than in the past. I have lost almost 20 pounds and am in great physical shape. I am more positive and upbeat than ever.

I am fascinated by the history and the intellectual tradition of the Church. I have read literally hundreds of books on church history, Latin American and Middle Eastern archeology and religion in general. I cannot get enough information; I have a constant need to absorb it.

It is increasingly clear to me, as I gather more information from a wide variety of sources, that logic as well as the Spirit dictates the Church is true. All of the available, reliable evidence points to the fact that Jesus Christ was the son of God and died for our sins; all of the available, reliable evidence also points to the fact that Joseph Smith was a prophet who restored the true church of God in this dispensation. I am the first to admit that the Spirit had to come first; but that does not diminish the factual evidence supporting the Restoration.

Here in Brazil, I have two tough callings: I am the Young Men’s President and also the Sunday School teacher for teenagers. I have discovered, much to my surprise, that the person who learns the most in Sunday School is the teacher, not the students. Sundays are my favorite day of the week by far.

My wife and I get along better than ever, but there are still many tensions. She is Catholic and has not joined the church, and, frankly, she has a lot of negative feelings about the church. She feels that the time I dedicate to my church callings detracts from our family life. It is a constant struggle to balance what I believe is the right thing to do in my church callings with her desire that I put her and the family first.

My life has completely changed. I no longer go to R-rated movies, and I watch virtually no television. I find myself turning my eyes away from suggestively sexual advertisements, and I have cleaned up my language noticeably. I make a strong effort to do positive, uplifting events with my wife and children.

I am much more hesitant to discuss politics in public than I used to be because I think religious evangelizing is much more interesting and important than political evangelizing. Still, my politics are much more conservative than they used to be. I find myself turning more and more to politics that emphasize helping the construction of a moral center in society, a center based on time-honored values in the Bible and Book of Mormon.

A Paradigm Shift
I believe it is a well-known fact that the major advancements in human history have taken place because people were willing to make a paradigm shift, a change in their basic worldview. Einstein did not discover something small, some incremental change. He created a huge revolution in science, and it happened because he was willing to think differently. Every great innovation in the business world happens because somebody is willing to make a change, try something different, look at things from a new angle.

In the same sense, I believe it was necessary for me to look at a paradigm shift for my own life. The way I was living before was clearly making me miserable. The changes I have made have brought true, lasting happiness by any standard.

So, I have had a conversion. To return to my original two examples in the beginning of this article, am I the victim of a totalitarian cult-like brainwashing or am I somebody who has been given a wonderful gift of a new “sense?” Jesus said we would know true prophets from false prophets by their fruits, and I believe that applies also to personal experience. Are the fruits of my conversion positive or negative? If they are positive, the experience must be true.

But I will take this a step further. Why is it that we newly converted people go around bothering others and trying to get THEM to convert? Ah, there’s the rub. Most people are willing to admit that I might be happier and therefore, good for me, but relatively few whom I have met are willing to take a look at their own lives. And they certainly get tired of me bringing up religion all the time.

Here’s why I keep on bringing it up: you may have heard of the example in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” Plato gives the comparison of people who have been chained in a cave all of their lives. They do not see the sun, and their only light comes from fires lit in the caves. The only reality they know if the reality of shadow people and events playing on the walls around them. Plato says if one of the people were to escape from the cave, he would encounter our world in all its brightness and it would take him time to adjust, but then he would see that our world its infinitely better than the shadow world where he used to live.

A person who had gone through a true conversion knows with unrestrained certainty that there is a better world than the cave world before the conversion. The converted person wants to go back to the others who are still in the cave and make them break their chains and take a look at this other world. Most of them will not, but we’ve got to keep on trying with gentle, constant reminders. And maybe we will help a few people have their own miracles.

2002Meridian Magazine.  All Rights Reserved.