MAKING A DECISION -- PART 1

My conversion to Christianity came at age 53 as the culmination of a long process.  I apparently had to reach that age to finally realize that I was not in control of everything in my life.  Grown and growing children clearly brought this fact to light.

It also slowly dawned on me that I would probably never be able to fully live up to the duties and obligations that I had set for myself.  I had always thought that I was basically a "good person," but over the years became aware that I often disappointed myself, as well as others, by the things I did or didn't do.  Even though I had maintained an active interest in God and religion for most of my life, God remained an abstraction.

I finally reached a point where I had to admit that my life had a spiritual void.  I also had to concede my own inability to fill this void through my own intellectual effort.  I owe these insights to my experiences within the Episcopal Church and to one of its spiritual renewal programs called Cursillo.

At this point, I was blessed with the opportunity to meet and to hear General Charles Duke tell about the spiritual changes in his life.  As a former astronaut and military man, his words spoke to me in a particularly meaningful way.  He said that he finally came to realize that it is impossible to view Jesus Christ as simply a great teacher or historical figure if we look carefully at what He said.  In fact, He is either who He claimed to be -- the Son of God -- or is the biggest fraud in history.  We are faced with that question.  We can read, study, think, and weigh the pros and cons.  However, we can't weigh the pros and cons forever.  At some point, we have to decide our own answer.

-- Larkin Spivey in “God in the Trenches”

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