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| Driving to My Conversion A few months ago, something happened in the tiny South Pacific island nation of Samoa that attracted the attention of people around the world. Perhaps it was the sheer audacity of the enterprise, or the stupidity of it or the utter gratuitous nature of it. Whatever it was, people noticed. It was audacious, but it wasn’t stupid, and I guess it was necessary. Samoa became the first country in more than 40 years to change driving lanes. That is, Samoa decided that whereas their drivers had been tooling down Samoan highways and byways on the RIGHT side for like forever, from henceforth as of last September 14, they would begin motoring on the LEFT side of the road. The government said it wanted to bring the country in line with New Zealand and Australia to encourage expat Samoans in those countries to ship used cars home to relatives. Can you imagine what that Monday morning back in September must have been like? First, if I am in Samoa, a country of 180,000 residents, as a tourist or a resident, there’s NO WAY I am getting out on the roads in a taxi, bus or as a driver. No way. Think of yourself as a driver getting out of the house, and for the first time in your life, you’re going to start driving on the left. If I did that, I’d be wearing a crash helmet and padded clothing, and be strapped in like you wouldn’t believe. I’d be going 30 miles an hour and praying fervently as I rounded blind curves that the drivers coming my way were traveling just as slowly and were equally as frightened out of their wits. To make the transition as safe as possible, the Samoan authorities did their homework. There was strenuous debate, of course. Then the government widened roads — to give drivers more room to swerve and avoid each other. It added new signage. It declared a two-day national holiday beginning with the day of the switch to reduce traffic on the roads. And most important: It banned the sale of alcohol for three days prior to the switch! Then it got the church involved: On Sunday, the day before the switch, the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa, the nation’s biggest denomination, prayed for the driving conversion to go smoothly and offered blessings for all those who would be on the roads the next morning. The switch was to take place at 6 a.m. Monday morning. At the appointed time, Police Minister Toleafoa Faafisi went on national radio and told drivers to stop and pull over wherever they were. A few minutes later, the prime minister got on the airwaves and gave step-by-step instructions as to how to switch sides to make the conversion complete. And so it began, with onlookers lining the streets cheering loudly and offering their applause for the idiots who were actually going to put their lives on the line, go through with this conversion and start driving in a different lane. The miracle is that on day one, not a single accident was reported! So here I am. It’s almost Lent. And come Ash Wednesday, the Holy Spirit is going to invite me to get in a different lane and start a new driving adventure. I am reasonably confident that God would be quite willing for this conversion to begin right now, but I think working up to this gradually might be the best thing. After all, the Samoans declared a national holiday to make their conversion work. We call this Mardi Gras, and then we wake up to Ash Wednesday, ban alcohol, put on the ashes and hope there are a few people to cheer us on. This is what a conversion is like: moving from the lane in which I’ve been driving, and beginning to drive — fearfully and cautiously, but with hope — in a completely new lane. To make this work, everything must change. I must think differently. I must have an entirely different frame of mind, being utterly intentional about my every movement while at the same time aware of the movement of others. I must drive a different car, or at least one that’s equipped differently. And if it is hard enough for me to do this as a person who’s reasonably in control of his choices and will, think of the difficulty of an entire nation attempting to change lanes. One need only think of the debate about health care. Whether we should or shouldn’t — it’s simply hard in America to effect dramatic, sweeping change. So many drivers on the road want to make the rules or be a part of the discussion. As a country, there is so much room for conversion. As Jim Wallis, for example, said years ago in his classic Call to Conversion, “The poor are not our problem; we are their problem.” It’s hard to change our ways, whether as a nation or as individuals. It requires an incredible application of will, determination and passion. And this brings us to the question of what conversion is, or at least, what kind of conversion I’m talking about here. I’m not talking about the process, sudden or gradual, by which we became persons of faith. That may have been a dramatic, Damascus road experience, or it may have been a process so gradual that you are unable to point to contextual or situational factors or situational determinants — in psycho-speak. You are a person of faith, and you don’t know how you got there. In the Scripture, the call to conversion often is addressed not to the “heathen” but to people of faith, the people of God. “[I]f my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14, NIV). Isn’t it amazing that we can be a people of God and can be “called by my name,” yet still be an unconverted people — people in need of “turning” from wicked ways? There are all types of conversions: intellectual, mystical, experimental, affectional, revivalist, coercive and probably more. But most scholars of this phenomenon agree that the single most important element of conversion is change, often radical change, in which we are changed for the better. William James in Varieties of Religious Experience said it is a change in the “habitual center of [a person’s] personal energy through which religious ideas take a central place in a person’s consciousness.” Conversion often includes a change in group membership. You were part of a drinking crowd. Now you attend AA meetings. You once ate ice cream and doughnuts with your family in front of the TV; you now work out in the gym and belong to Weight Watchers. You once thought exercise was getting up from the couch to get a beer from the refrigerator; you now belong to a bicycle club. What’s important to be thinking about as we hit Ash Wednesday is that the idea of conversion is not simply for those people “out there” who are unchurched and nonbelievers. Conversion is very much a subject for us to address as we confront people, including ourselves, in the conversation about our driving habits. We need to pull the car over. Pray. Listen for instructions. Take some time off. Stay sober. And then move our lives over into another lane.
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