Conversion (Part II)

Cook County News-Herald THE GOOD NEWS for July 11, 2009

We write these columns to persuade people to convert. You knew that, right? We write of different worldviews, different values, of God and of his Son, Jesus, each from our own perspective, but each with either an implied or explicitly stated invitation to change your thinking and your life, to accept God’s offer of mercy, forgiveness, and new life. Each of us knows the burden we carry to call you to identify and engage in a relationship with your Creator. Admittedly, we conceptualize the nature and course of that relationship differently, but I believe the invitation shares a qualitative commonality: come and know God for yourself.

The invitation to come and know God for yourself anticipates “conversion,” movement from a life without God to a life lived in relationship with God. Today I want to offer one illustration of what a “converted life” looks like.

Little is known of Dirk Willems, but what is known is extraordinary. I don’t know when he was born or how many brothers or sisters he had. I don’t know with certainty his father’s name and found no reference at all to his mother. I know from his arrest record and the script of his court appearance that he was more than twenty years old. I know that Dirk was Dutch and was a Protestant Christian during the time of harsh Spanish rule under the Catholic Duke of Alva in the Netherlands. I know that Dirk believed that when a person was converted to faith in Jesus Christ they ought to be baptized as an expression of their own personal belief, even if they had been baptized as infants in some other church. And I know that Dirk lived what he believed.

Dirk was arrested and imprisoned in 1569. The arrest came because Dirk’s religious convictions countered those in position of power and authority. One night Dirk escaped from his palace prison. Using a knotted rope he climbed down the wall and dropped onto the ice of the castle moat. The ice was not thick and Dirk’s position was precarious. But his time on prison food had left him thin if not nimble and he crossed the icy moat to the far side, away from his captors.

One of his captors, a prison guard, caught sight of Dirk as he made his escape. The man pursued him over the ice. The guard was not so lean as Dirk and the ice gave way beneath him. The guard, in desperate peril, cried for help, but those on the castle side would not risk their lives for their friend.

Dirk, however, was cut of different cloth, converted cloth, if you will. The man’s pleas reached Dirk’s heart as he paused to catch his breath. Realizing the guard would die unless someone came to his rescue, Dirk returned over the treacherous ice and pulled the man to safety. Dirk did not just believe the words, he lived the words of Jesus who said, “Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you.”

The guard, once again in possession of his life, wanted to let Dirk go, but the magistrate called across the moat reminding the guard of his oath and his duty, and perhaps even of what would await him should he not apprehend Dirk once again. History shows that the magistrate’s words held great sway over the man’s thinking. He arrested Dirk Willems on the spot and returned him immediately to a more secure cell. Days later, on May 16, 1659, Dirk Willems, the rescuer of his enemy, was burned alive in the Dutch village of Asperen by those who would not rescue one of their own.

This is the character of life to which those who answer the call to conversion commit themselves. In this they are like Jesus who first gave himself to rescue his enemies, and whose enemies put him to death, that “whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

Dirk answered the call to be like Jesus. And he was. This is every Christian’s calling, to be like Jesus.

Next time, a bit more about citizenship in the kingdom of God.