Three Paths

When I was young, evangelical Christians placed a great emphasis on “witnessing.” Whether you sat next to a stranger on an airplane or lived next door to someone in your college dorm, you should be sharing your faith. The preferred way to do so was using the “Four Spiritual Laws,” a little pamphlet published by Campus Crusade for Christ. It presented a simple gospel message as a set of spiritual “laws” parallel to physical laws such as gravity. Becoming a Christian was a matter of accepting the logic of those “laws” and acting on it through a prayer of commitment.

I’m not knocking it. Many people were helped by it to find a way into a life of faith. Now, though, it has fallen out of favor, for lots of good reasons. The idea of spiritual laws akin to physical laws was always a stretch, and logic seems like an inadequate basis for being “born again.”

Another time-honored pathway was epitomized by the Billy Graham Crusade—mass events where preaching led to an emotional appeal to “go forward” and surrender your life to God. Those who did were met by “counselors” bearing the Four Spiritual Laws or something like it.

This way, too, has fallen out of favor, mostly because American culture has grown so insulated from religion it is hard to talk your friends and neighbors into going to a religious meeting.

People still are drawn to God, however. How does someone make that transformative step from unbelief to belief, from materialism to spirituality, from autonomy to trust in a living God? Some people would like to be converted but can’t see how. They are stuck in unbelief and alienation and can’t talk themselves into belief. They may see how good a life of faith would be, but they don’t know how to get there.

The process is mysterious, and no doubt different for each person. It seems to me, however, that there are now three main pathways.

One is the path of gratitude. It depends on a sense that we are surrounded by beautiful realities: our family, friends, environment, community. We hear birds sing and watch the clouds move across the sky and know that we should be grateful. Thankfulness sometimes wells up in us, and when it does, we sense that we are our best selves. Then the logical question becomes: grateful to whom? It makes no sense to be grateful to an impersonal universe. A pathway to God can begin by simply saying thank you—saying it in a heartfelt way, saying it again and again. The Who may be mysterious, but the Who is Someone. When we adopt a life of thanking that Someone, we become believers. Given time, we may discover that Someone has a name.

This is why people who become parents sometimes become believers. Looking at your child is a primal experience of wonder, and God help the person who is not grateful.

If the path of gratitude is theocentric, the path of Jesus is Christocentric.

There is no reason to doubt the reality of Jesus: he is an historic figure who lived two millennia ago, and his life and teachings were written down. We have the source documents, and anybody can access them. A great many people have never done so, or have not done so since they were 18. Reading the life of Jesus, you encounter an extraordinary person. Again, this is not controversial—anybody can see for themselves that he is (was) unlike anybody else. To read his words is to come face-to-face with an extraordinary man. Encountering him, one must decide what this extraordinary teacher is to oneself. Some will conclude that they are encountering God himself in human form, and they will begin to experiment with living according to the principles he taught, and even with speaking to him.

A third way I will call the path of fellowship. Here, longing leads us to join. For the sake of friendships, for a love of music, for an appreciation of ritual, we join a church or some other fellowship. It feels good. It feels healthy. We find ourselves part of a group of believers and, over time, we assume their beliefs. There may not ever be a point of decision. We fall into it. (This is how faith comes to those raised in a Christian family, as I was.) This leads naturally and organically to faith in God.

The life of faith is a great deal more than what I have sketched out here. These are merely pathways that can be followed to enter. They offer a plausible way to move from unbelief to belief. Each pathway is less than a total commitment, but it involves initiative. For those who are seeking, these pathways can be a starting point.

And we desperately need starting points! Do you know of other pathways that people follow to go from unbelief to faith? I’d invite you to describe them.