A conversation with Roy

A conversation with Roy

I suppose before I became a Christian, the most influential book I had read was Slaughterhouse-Five. Really, those Tralfmadorian 'dudes' had a unique way of defining reality. The book made me aware of time. For some reason, that was the last big issue my mind dealt with before my conversion. It fit somehow. To fill time or freeze an instant seemed to me to be the secret God held before my nose. I felt I was close to a big breakthrough. To me, an all-knowing God had to be all-existing, not limited at all by time itself. Now, don't ask me why this led me to Jesus Christ. I can't tell you. That's just the thought pattern I seemed to be in when the Gospel finally made sense to me. This brings me to believe that God operates on a higher understanding of time than we do. God had a plan for the world, and "when the time had fully come," the plan was sent forth. God decided when the time was right, not man. Jesus came into the world and left the world on God's timetable. Try as they would, man just had no say in the matter. A strange thing to think then that we should have all the pull when it comes to "accepting Jesus."

When I became a believer in Christ, I didn't hear any new message. I'd heard the Story since I was old enough to go to Sunday School, and it was the very same Gospel that suddenly dawned with meaning upon my senses sometime during November of 1976. Just as He entered the world physically, Jesus entered my world spiritually when the time had fully come. Uneventful is about as provocative as you're going to get when considering my conversion.

I remember reading another book about that time in which the author described becoming a Christian on the 90-day rental, all-payments-apply-towards-purchase plan. This ingenious method was an all-stops-pulled commitment to Christ for three months. If by then, you aren't completely satisfied, your life is refunded in full, and you can try elsewhere. This seemed fair for some strange reason and, since I wasn't really doing anything else with my life, I tried it. I don't remember when the 90 days were up. I was having too much fun to notice.

Another thing about books I recall is deciding to give less weight to people's books giving their opinions about Jesus and more weight on Jesus' view of Himself in the Bible. I determined that I would take my stock of really tough questions and see if God, by way of the Bible, could handle them. "Come, let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18) seemed like an offer I couldn't refuse. Now, I know a lot of people who are engaged in perfecting AAA. This is the Art of Answer Avoiding. Answer Avoiding is a self-perpetuating habit in which the only response one gives to an answer is "not satisfactory." I would stress the word habit here. We think we have the privilege of editing God's answers and, in the final analysis, it’s our minds that give the final signal to accept it or reject the answer if we feel threatened by it. We are free to ask God any question at all, but when He gives us the answer, it's the end of the discussion. God's not going to pull a fast one on us. He is honest and, sometimes painfully, direct.

James 3:17 talks of the quality of God's answers. His answers spring forth from pure wisdom, which is OPEN TO REASON. That's logical. If something is absolutely pure, it can stand the test of examination. We can take God's wisdom and look it over, turn it this way and that, flip it over, bite it, look behind it … accept it. It's pure. 100% healthy. God deals in straightforward answers. We would be silly to refuse such purity by labeling it "insincere.”

The habit of disbelief in God is a deadly trap leading to the most severe warning in Scripture (Hebrews 6:4-8). I agree that honest questioning is far from apostasy, but be very careful. Watch out that an honest inquiry doesn't lead to skepticism of God's authority. RSV translates it this way, "Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God." (Hebrews 3:12) Each time you find something in the Bible you decide you can't believe, you make it that much easier to disbelieve the next thing you read. Your heart is now beginning to harden as you form the sad habit of disbelief which leads you to disobedience which leads you to fall away and never enter that restful relationship of assurance and trust with "the One with whom we have to do." (Hebrews 4:13)

You wouldn't steal money from your own wallet. That's silly. So don't rob yourself of God's blessings by refusing to accept what you asked for: An honest answer. We're so conditioned to receive the runaround from men whenever we ask anything that it becomes easy to expect the same from God's Word. But, watch out! That attitude is very costly!

Anyway, there's not much flash to my conversion account. I just got to the point where I quit asking questions and started accepting answers. God did the rest… just as He said He would.

Roy Knecht (Sept. 8, 1953 — Aug. 4, 2021)