by Adam Linton » August 23rd, 2005, 1:51 am
Thanks for the question.
I was raised to believe in God, but my family was not church-going until I was seven years old. I remember our first visit vividly. We were very active until I was twelve -- we moved, became disconnected. I was in the last couple of years in high school when I first was no longer sure that I was a Christian, then later no longer sure that I was a theist.
Without God, the universe seemed to be both a less risky and more lonely place -- the reality that I could claim to be in charge of had less depth to it.
But somehow, the sense that all true reality is either "charged with the glory of God" (as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it) or haunted by that same presence kept bearing down on me. And in spite of my oft-stated insistance that I was through with the Christianity-project, I also found myself drawn -- claimed by the figure of Christ.
The arts played a role in this for me, too. I remember one summer morning, listening to J.S. Bach's Cantata No. 140, "Sleepers, Wake!" [how very apt that was]. I was deeply enjoying it; and then I was struck by a jolting realization, "Who I am kidding? I'm not 'through' with this at all!"
The process was difficult and lasted a number of years; at least in part during it I could have felt something of what Lewis was talking about in being a reluctant convert. Much wrestling, thought, interior and exterior debate. Reading Lewis' Perelandra, by the way, pushed me right to the edge -- the very edge. I could feel myself start to slip.
Then one day, I found all this unexpectedly and decisively resolved. I knew myself to believe in God and to be a Christian.
I say "resolved," but living with this and into this over the years has been its own on-going adventure.
Regards.
Adam Linton
we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream