By smcintos

Do you consider yourself a convert?

This is a very important question for everyone who believes something, or belongs to some movement or religion. How did you start? What is the story of your conversion?

I hope you are free to choose your own path in life, and it is good for each of us to know where we started, and what important events happened along the way. Everyone should know their own life story, how we got to the place where we are now.

There are at least two paths to where you are, and who you are: What you chose … and … What you were assigned.

Recently, politicians in one part of India decided to bring capital punishment as a penalty for religious conversion by force. I don’t live in India, and I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know what “force” means, in that legal system, but it might mean being an aggressive or enthusiastic evangelist, for something that a person doesn’t already belong to.

Also, I don’t know if “capital punishment” means a death sentence, or a long prison sentence, but clearly the punishment will be severe. If you want to read more:

• READ: Indian state could introduce the death penalty for religious conversions

In many parts of the world, religion is assigned. Citizens have ID cards from the Government, and each person’s religion is named, on the card. This status is an assignment for life, and it is probably inherited from the birth family. Changing an official religious status can be difficult, or impossible, and in some places, people can be killed of they try to change their official religious status.

In the proposed law, people who try to convince others to change their religion can be punished severely. Many of us don’t understand that this is how billions of people live in our modern world. We might imagine that what we believe depends on what we think, and that becomes who we are. 

In many places, in the world, that is not true. Conforming is not always believing.

Most of my communication is in English, and I’m sure I miss many discussions on this topic. Also, since the topic of conversion can be risky, I’m sure many people keep their ideas quiet. If you are interested, I have found a question that directs an active discussion: “As a Muslim, what would happen if you converted to atheism or even another religion?” If you search that title, you will find some interesting discussions.

I am writing as a Christian, but I think conversion to something new, or dropping out and becoming and Atheist or an Agnostic, is an important topic for the younger generation in our modern world. With the Internet and a flood of new ideas, young people have many things to think about.

One analysis, in the discussion, was the ‘religiosity’ of a modern society: 

1. Die Hard and Aggressive, about 5%
2. Moderate and Peaceful, about 45%
3. Thinking and Reasoning (probably moderate and secular), about 15%
4. Bare Minimum (conformists), about 30%
5. Irreligious, about 5%

The half of the population in categories 3, 4, and 5 probably don’t care about people who convert to new ideas, but the other half do.

I think the writer is a Muslim, at least by assignment, but I agree. My experience, growing up in a religious family, in an Evangelical Protestant church, fits that description. Many of my friends did not become strongly religious, when they became adults. They moved away and got busy with the things that were important to them.

This conflict between assignment and personal decision is not a new idea. In a very old part of the Bible, a leader named Joshua spoke to the people who were assigned to follow God, the People of Israel:

If it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.(Joshua 24: 15)

So, are you a convert or a conformist? I struggled with that question for many years, until I made my own decisions about spiritual things. I might have been easy to just satisfy the older generation, but I decided that I needed to make a relationship with God, and I became a convert.

I hope you find that same truth.