C.S. Lewis, one of the great Christian apologists, didn’t become a Christian without resistance and struggle. He grew into adulthood nursing a certain skepticism and agnosticism. He wasn’t drawn naturally to faith or to Christ. But he was always radically honest in trying to listen to the deepest voices inside and at a certain point he came to the realization that Christ and his teaching were compelling in such a way that left him unfree. In conscience he had to become a Christian.
Many of us are familiar with the words he wrote on the night when he first knelt down and gave himself over to faith in Christ. Having just come back from a long walk and a religious discussion with J.R.R. Tolkien (who was his colleague at Oxford) he describes how he knelt down and committed himself to faith in Christ. But, by his own admission, this wasn’t an easy genuflection: I knelt down as the most reluctant convert in the history of Christendom. Wow! Not exactly what we take for first fervor.
But he goes on to describe why, despite all his natural reluctance, he became a convert: Because I had come to realize that the harshness of God is kinder than the softness of man, and God’s compulsion is our liberation. What is God’s compulsion?
Here’s an example. There’s a famous incident in the Gospel of John where Peter, like C.S. Lewis, is also a reluctant convert. This is the story.
Jesus had just identified himself with the Bread of Life and ended that teaching by saying that unless we eat his body and drink his blood we cannot have life in us. Understandably this was both confusing and perplexing to his audience, so perplexing in fact that the Gospels tell us that the crowds all walked away, saying this is an intolerable teaching. Then, when the crowds had gone, Jesus turned to his disciples and asked them: Do want to walk away too? Peter was not exactly enthusiastic and affirmative in his answer. He responded by saying, “We have no other place to go.” However (and this is one of Peter’s shining moments in the Gospels) he then adds: We know that you have the words of everlasting life.
When you parse out Peter’s response, here’s its substance. Peter has just heard a teaching that he doesn’t understand and what he understands he doesn’t like. At that moment, Jesus looks like the opposite of truth and life. Peter’s head is resistant and so is his heart. But underneath both his head and his heart there is another part of Peter that knows that, irrespective of resistance of his head and his heart, this teaching will bring him life.
At that moment, like C.S. Lewis, Peter is a most reluctant Apostle. However, he still gives his life over to Christ, despite the resistance in his head and in his heart. Why? Because like C.S. Lewis, he had come to understand that God’s compulsion is our liberation.
I remember once seeing an interview with Daniel Berrigan. The host asked him, “Father, where does your faith lie? Is it in your head or in your heart?” Berrigan’s response was both colorful and insightful: “Faith is rarely where your head is at, and faith even less rarely where your heart is at. Faith is where your ass is at.” By way of commentary, he added: “Anyone who has ever been in a commitment over a long period of time knows that there will be times and seasons when your head isn’t in it, your heart isn’t in it, but you’re in it because you know that the path to life for you lies in staying inside that commitment.”
What ultimately do we trust enough to give our lives over to? I believe we need to answer that question not with heads nor with our hearts. It’s not that our heads and our hearts are untrustworthy in themselves, it’s just as we know from experience, they don’t always speak for what’s deepest inside us. God’s compulsion sits below our thinking and our feeling. Our heads tell us what we think is wise to do. Our hearts tell us what we would like to do. But a deeper voice in us tells us what we have to do.
The deepest voice of God inside us isn’t always at ease with our head or our heart. That voice is God’s compulsion inside us and it can make us the most reluctant convert in the history of Christianity, it can have us standing before Jesus telling him that he looks the opposite of truth and life, it can have us looking with utter disillusion at the seemingly chronic infidelity of our churches, and still have us say, we have no other place to go. You have the words of everlasting life. Doubt, disillusionment, and lack of understanding aren’t virtues, but they can push us to a place where we have to decide before what ultimately we need to genuflect.