KEY POINTS:
I should have known that mentioning my conversion experience would be seen by some people as the equivalent of "coming out". That's how countercultural Christianity has become, at least here in Godzone.
Last week's column drew more emails than anything I've written in the last year or two,
not just from those who wanted to share with me their miraculous Damascus Road experiences, but those still searching for that elusive "something" they can't quite put their finger on, some deep spiritual longing that isn't satisfied by shopping, bigger houses, or the latest car (no matter how hard advertisers insist that such expenditure is good for the soul).
Clearly, we'd like to talk more about God, but the conversation tends to be hampered by the level of ignorance and hostility in our secular world. Most people, it seems, get their theology from The Da Vinci Code.
Having become a Christian, I can see why I resisted it for so long. People who dismiss it as a crutch for emotional cripples are wrong. Although I find the world a better, richer, more compassionate place with God in it, there's no getting away from the fact that Christianity is a demanding religion. I've no problem loving my neighbours as myself but loving and praying for my enemies has so far proved more of a struggle (though I have ceased to wish them ill).
And not only am I supposed to face up to my awful imperfections, but I'm supposed to do something about them.
Though, needless to say, before I became a Christian, I didn't really think I had awful imperfections, just tiny ones that didn't matter very much.
And I could never see why my devoutly Christian mother thought I needed religion when my life was going so well without God.
If there was a spiritual deficit, I was too busy to acknowledge it.
In any case, I could always pick and choose from the kind of undemanding, New-Agey, non-specific spiritualism that left me free to do whatever I could rationalise - which, to be frank, included quite a few things I'm ashamed of now.
I wish I could be satisfied with the kind of secular karakia that an academic friend of mine recites with her university students at the start of each class. It pays homage to the wind and the sea, which would be a relief actually, because they aren't likely to make demands upon my time and conscience, the way pesky Christianity does.
I've wished, too, that I could enjoy my spirituality from the comforts of my bed on Sunday mornings; that I could still believe the mantra about Jesus being a great moral teacher but organised religion being an unnecessary waste of time, because it would save me having to trek to church each Sunday morning, where I used to feel a little like C. S. Lewis.
"To me," he wrote, "religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters. And then the fussy, time-wasting botheration of it all! The bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organising. Hymns were (and are) extremely disagreeable to me. Of all musical instruments I liked (and like) the organ least."
But, as Lewis pointed out, Jesus required it, through the observance of Holy Communion, and it has become, for me, a necessary spiritual rev-up, and a way to connect with a community of like-minded people, many of whom spend their days doing good works in their neighbourhoods, backed by the church.
People ask me about my denomination, but I don't think it matters. I've worshipped at loud, American-type churches, where the singing and dancing and preaching reminded me of African-American services. And at the more restrained, traditional church, where modern worship and singing is mixed with old-fashioned English hymns. I like both.
Televangelists may preach the benefits of the "prosperity doctrine", which promises financial riches for Christ's followers, but I tend to think of Christianity as more a case of: ask not what God can do for you, but what you can do for God.
Or as the brilliant German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in 1937, "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die".
Bonhoeffer worked against the Nazis as a double agent during World War II, and was hanged by the SS three weeks before the war ended for his complicity in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In his view, "obedience to God's will may be a religious experience but it is not an ethical one until it issues in actions that can be socially valued".
That, says progressive American preacher Jim Wallis, author of the best-selling God's Politics, is what's been missing from religion today - the biblical vision of social justice and healthy societies.
The Old Testament prophets and Jesus cared far more about the poor and the oppressed than they did about sexual and cultural issues, says Wallis, and would have seen the widening gulf between rich and poor as the real immorality.
* Tapu. Misa@gmail.com
