An email response on repentance

Here is a response from a long-time email correspondent to this post:

Yes. That's my experience. When we discussed 'self-identified' Christians - this is the distinction (although not necessarily a real one but certainly one that I can sense). Some of us have lived a contra life and come to Christianity almost with our heels dug in, total resistance, kicking and screaming - it's simply not anything we want to accept or face up to and yet, everything tells us we must. And it takes a lot to break us down. I think CS Lewis had an experience something like this and I certainly did. So long as I was playing on the fringe, it was okay, more like a shock to awaken others but once it was really real and I was faced with the Truth, the shock was all mine. That's why statements like "Christianity is not a religion it's reality" have resonance for me where to others they seem like some sort of blind arrogance. If it wasn't a fact I could deny it. There is in any case a lot of internal struggles that go along with it as part of the process. I've always struggled with the 'christian community', the church as a legitimate body, and also a lot of the debates that Christians take up. We are just laden with associations too and we know everyone else is, coupled with our self-pictures and vanity and the whole thing is deeply threatening. Perhaps in a way, although I didn't follow you (C) into a deep study of theology, I tagged on, listened and followed up on certain leads as if to help me acclimatise and understand something that I may never have been able to tolerate otherwise. So a lot of the theology was really useful and a lot was crap or just good for the moment. Some outstanding stuff too. But it is this fact that one is changed emotionally that takes a lot of intellectual pondering to understand. (Speed of centres at variance. It's already happened but poor old intellect just can't get it's head around the heart of it, it's too big, too mysterious, too ... ) I would have been very content to find a groove with the 4thWay and just pursue that. Seen from below the Christian aspect came as an intrusion, seen from above we are fed heritage and restored to high places.

We never know who is called. This is the other thing we have always to remember. You. Me. Anyone. In company of a Christian, a pagan or an atheist - it's all the same, we just don't have a call on who gets saved, where and when the Spirit is working. We can't possibly know. It's a mystery. What man says he is, what claims he stakes is his own business. But that's just it, the 2nd commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Maybe Dawkins has the Spirit chasing him down and like Pharaoh his heart just hardens.

- Paul of England