Matt Umbarger is a recipient of the Dally Evangelism award and he graduated from OCC in 2000. His life has been eventful ever since. This Kansas boy moved to Israel, where he now lives with his wife and three children. Currently he is completing his PhD at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. But perhaps the most significant point of his spiritual growth came from outside the university. In 2004, after much prayer and meditation, Matt and his family joined the Catholic Church. As you will see below, Matt has thrived in the Church, but as he will be the first to tell you, his leap of faith was not without its difficulties. Yet throughout this process Matt has demonstrated a maturity, a commitment to humble self-evaluation, and above all an abiding faith. What you can read below is an excellent example of the integration of learning into spiritual praxis. I invite you to read with an open heart, and see that “all who wander are not lost.”
Solomon Burchfield: Tony Blair. Newt Gingrich. Matthew Umbarger. Aren’t you just another case of a celebrity converting to Catholicism for political gain?
Matthew Wade Umbarger: Yeah. Today Beer-Sheva. Tomorrow the World!
[Laughter]
SB: So, you grew up in a conservative tradition derivative of the Protestant reformation, what attracted you to the Catholic tradition?
MWU: That’s a hard question to give a single answer to. As you would expect, I am asked that all the time, and I find myself giving a slightly different answer almost every time.
In retrospect, I keep coming back to aesthetics. Catholicism cares a great deal for beauty, and that’s important to me. But the biggest reason was an ache for the unity of Christ’s body. That provoked us to make this decision more than anything else. Those two things, unity and aesthetics, probably sum the rest up pretty well.
SB: How would you define aesthetics in theology, and why is it important?
MWU: I’m no philosopher, but somewhere in philosophy there is this idea that truth, goodness, and beauty are all different modes of being. Evil has no substance in and of itself. It only perverts and mars “being.” God is the only self-existent being, and is, in a matter of speaking, pure Being. All other “beings” are dependent upon him for their existence. Even His name, YHWH, seems to mean “being” in Hebrew. Taking all of this into consideration, it only makes sense that truth and beauty should be closely related. If I am trying to articulate truth in a manner that is not inherently beautiful, then I think that raises real issues about how in touch with truth I really am.
I think this explains a lot about the process of revelation. God chose subjective vessels like poetry and narrative to reveal Himself in. Even the Torah, the law-code of Israel, is framed in narrative. They didn’t just get a pile of statutes or a constitution with glowing letters. And of course, the incarnation is the summit of this process of revelation, and with that you get more beauty and more subjectivity.
This is not to say that objective truth is non-existent or irrelevant, but it seems to me that God cares just as much about the way truth is conveyed as He does about what data is communicated.
SB: The Restorationist tradition (Christian Church, Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ) you grew up in was also dedicated to and animated by a vision of church unity right?
MWU: For sure. In fact, and this always gets a really colorful reaction from folks, I really believed that we were pursuing Restoration Movement principles when we decided to become Catholic. For a long time I was convinced that we had not really left the movement. Looking back, I realize that we were pretty naive about all of that. I now see that we interpreted that unity message in a different way than most Restorationists do.
When I say something like that, I always hear Obi-Wan shouting, “You were supposed to destroy the Sith! Not join them!” I have gone back and read the Campbells since all of this, and I have to admit, I was hearing what I wanted to, I guess.
Let me just add, while I’m on the subject, that I’ve always been very grateful for my experiences at Ozark and get homesick for the Restoration Movement quite often. I have long dreamed of being able to return there in some manner.
There is a real tension between unity and doctrinal purity in the Restoration Movement. I must say, much of the ecumenical movement has pursued unity at the price of giving up a whole lot of doctrinal purity. It’s not even an issue for so many. It’s seductive, because pursuing unity without pursuing truth will only lead to more fragmentation, ultimately. I still agree with what I was taught at Ozark, “Truth is the only way that you can really achieve unity.” I still admire the Restoration Movement for this.
But we all have to admit that none of us has the truth down 100%. So there is a need for charity in our pursuit of truth.
I think that a lot of the criticisms of the Restoration Movement began to sound uncharitable to me at a certain point. There seemed to be a lot of pride involved, an unwillingness to concede that there was a possibility that their other brothers and sisters in Christ might be right about a few things, too. Sometimes it seemed as though other viewpoints were painted as willfully rebelling against the Word of God, rather than obeying their conscience.
All of this raised questions. Ultimately, it raised the big question: “Were the Reformers justified in splitting the Western European Church?” Eventually, I had a hard time believing that they were. Please understand, I know that the Catholic Church was in dire need of reform at that time. I’m just not sure that it was the Spirit of God that was telling the Reformers to take their ball and go home.
I must add, by the way, I see that God has used all of these divisions, rooted as they are in our human falleness, to accomplish great good.
SB: As you wrestled through these issues, who influenced you the most? And when did you decide you needed to take the plunge and become Catholic?
MWU: My biggest influences were the Apostolic Fathers. They had inherited leadership of the Church straight from the Apostles, and their ecclesiology is very Catholic. They preach over and over again on the necessity of remaining united with the local bishop in all things. They were writing just about the time that Gnosticism was making real inroads in the Church. They insist that unity with the bishop is unity with Christ. The tradition I grew up in has tried to interpret this development of “monoepiscopacy” as an aberrant, local development, but at a certain point that seemed to be a real stretch. It’s just too widespread. It’s hard for me to believe that so many orthodox Christians would have unanimously allowed such a development to occur if they had not been prepared for it by the preaching of the Apostles.
I remember one day a box of books arrived in the mail from “The Coming Home Network,” a Catholic apostolate dedicated to bringing non-Catholic clergy into the Catholic Church. Robin, my wife, asked me what they were, and where they had come from. Now, you have to understand that I was absolutely terrified of where this road was going to take me. I had kept most of my studies private, even from Robin. But now I couldn’t hide it any more. I told her that some guy that I had met online had sent them to me, (which was essentially true). I took out a book entitled Journeys Home, and said, “Here, why don’t you read this?” I was pretty sure that she would either refuse or read it with a lot of criticism of what she found in there. I was actually hoping that she would. Instead, she read it through and came back to me a few days later and asked, “So, are we going to become Catholic, or what?” That’s when the crisis moment came. I walked to the university in the rain that day, and I remember praying the whole way, propping up one reason after another why it was just ridiculous for us to do this, reminding Jesus how much we stood to lose. After each reason, He replied the same way. “Do you love Me more than your family? Do you love Me more than your support? Do you love Me more than Ozark? Do you love Me more than being an ordained minister?”
We were in contact with a catechist a few weeks later. That was about six years ago.
SB: Now that you’re Catholic, what are the biggest differences you see between the Evangelical and Catholic theological perspectives? And have you found the experience of community and mission to be different?
MWU: This may sound ironic, but I find Catholicism to be much more focused on God’s grace rather than on our own works. Most spiritual instruction has a greater emphasis on retreating and allowing oneself to be embraced by God’s love as received in the sacraments as well as in non-liturgical prayer and meditation. There is not as much of a “let’s do something great for God” kind of push about it. This has been hard for me to adjust to, because I came into the Catholic Church wanting to do something great for God. My spiritual directors remind me time and time again of the necessity to allow God to do what He has already begun in me, and to be patient with His agenda. I am learning a lot more about the virtue of prudence, I guess. I suppose that this is more a question of spirituality than theology.
The biggest theological difference, I think, is probably that Evangelicals read the New Testament almost as a legal document, and Catholics consider the New Testament to be a covenant in the same way that marriage is. This touches on virtually every thing that we read in the Bible and every doctrine that we hold true. For instance, for Catholics, justification is not just a “legal fiction” that we acquire in the divine courtroom through Jesus’ blood. For us, Jesus’ blood not only takes away our guilt, but it actually transforms us into righteous people. We are not declared justified. We are made just, conformed into the image of His Son.
I know that when you get down to it, Evangelicals believe that, too, but they have a different way of explaining it. They tend to say that our good works flow out of a gracious heart in thanksgiving for what Christ has done, for instance. We would say that those good works are the result of the infused life of Christ that we have received in baptism, the Eucharist, etc. Really, I have to admit, that it all kind of seems like a semantic argument to me at times.
Another huge difference is that Catholics have a truly different understanding of the role of suffering in our life. Suffering has a purpose. It disciplines us, and can bring us further into fellowship with the Father. But more than that, all of our suffering is a real opportunity to participate in Jesus’ passion. It can become a type of prayer and intercession. When we are going through a hard time, we tell each other, “Offer it up.” We actually believe that having a cold can be a way to help save the world.
Our experience of “church community” is not so different, I don’t think. Theologically it has a different tone in that Catholicism is not nearly as individualistic as Evangelicalism. You don’t hear things like, “personal relationship with Christ” as often, (although it would be wrong to say that it has no place in Catholicism. It is especially prevalent in the mystics, for instance). We have a rather communal experience of salvation. And, of course, we read Scripture as a community rather than relying on individual interpretations.
Missiology is truly different. I think this goes back to relaxing and allowing God to do His work through His grace and in His own time and way again. You will not find many Catholics urging one another to go on evangelistic crusades in the same way as Evangelicals do, for instance. This has been a major adjustment for us. In more specific, local terms, the Catholic Church has clearly and routinely stated that she does NOT have a mission to the Jews. This does not mean that we do not maintain a witness to the Jews, as we do for all peoples, and anybody, including Jews, are welcome to become Catholic, but we do not actively preach the Gospel here as the Catholic Church does in other countries.
SB: What about the doctrine of papal infallibility and the role of Mary in the Catholic system of belief?
MWU: When I became Catholic, those were the two biggies that I was still not sure about. I did not consider them to be grave enough differences to prevent us from entering the Catholic Church. Today, we joyfully accept those doctrines, and most of that has come about by way of putting it into the perspective of the whole of Christian doctrine instead of analyzing them up close. I’ll try to explain that, but first of all it will be important to clarify what it is that we believe about these things.
By papal infallibility, we do not mean that the pope cannot be wrong about anything, like I have heard lots of Protestants say. It is a very specific circumstance, when the Church is at a quandary about an important matter of faith or morals. The pope, guided by the Holy Spirit, has the trump card that can guide the Church down the right path. This is called speaking ex cathedra, “out of the seat.” Now, to put that into perspective, it is important to realize that this is just a corollary to a belief that the Church has had as far back as we can trace, and that is that the Church itself is infallible (I can hear the rustle of eyebrows rising on that one). This means that we have the certainty that the Holy Spirit will not allow the Church to be shipwrecked on the rocks of heresy. We see this particularly in the ecumenical councils, where infallible doctrines were pronounced, things like the Trinity and the Canon of Scripture.
Now, I realize that this is still pretty far out for most Evangelicals to deal with. It’s really not any more far out than belief in the infallibility of Scripture, though. They think it is incredible that we believe that the Church is protected from doctrinal error by the Holy Spirit, but they have no problem believing the same thing about the authors of Scripture. I have come to see infallibility of the Church/Pope in this perspective. I doubt that I have convinced anyone with that, but that’s my stance.
Mary is a little different. Can I say that I believe the Marian doctrines of the Church because the Church has infallibly proclaimed them? [laughter]
Let’s begin with what we do and do not believe in regards to Mary. We do not believe that Mary is a goddess. We do not believe she is inherently righteous. We do not worship her.
But we do believe that she was preserved from sin through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross in a retroactive way. So she was preserved as a holy vessel for the Incarnate Word of the Father to receive His genetic material from and for him to be raised by. She is the Ark of the New Covenant.
We love Mary because we love Jesus. Historically, questions about the person of Christ have always provoked Mariology. For instance, you find that the Arianists were the first ones to assert that Mary was not Ever-Virgin. Jerome was outraged by this and considered it to be an assault on the doctrine of Christ’s divinity. That doesn’t make sense to our modern mindset, perhaps, but I’m just trying to show that all of these Marian doctrines were built up to protect the Church’s proper understanding of who Jesus is.
The other thing about Mary that is important to understand is that she is Bat Zion, the “Daughter of Zion,” the archetype of the Church. So, for instance, when we see her assumed into heaven and crowned, that is a picture of our destiny. That should excite us. I know that it’s not in the Bible, but it’s not all that far-fetched, is it, when we see the same thing happening to Enoch and Elijah? Why couldn’t He have done it for His own mother? And Revelation 12 seems to hint just a bit at it. Of course, ultimately, this is the big difference between Catholics and Protestants: Catholics don’t have to have everything spelled out for them in Scripture to accept it as authentic apostolic teaching.
When we pray to Mary, we are actually asking her to intercede for us, even while we’re praying with her. We do not pray to her in the same way that we do to God, at all. It is an affirmation of the Communion of the Saints. Saints pray for each other, and that doesn’t stop when saints go to heaven.
SB: Some Evangelicals do not consider Catholics to be true Christians. Was becoming Catholic hard on some of your relationships with colleagues, friends or family?
MWU: Of course. I think that every one of our relationships has been strained to some degree, if for no other reason that we had to get re-filed into different folders for everybody. I have had every response imaginable. Many folks have expressed their continued fellowship and esteem. Some, after a bit of a squabble, were able to accept us more or less. Others broke off fellowship. We were asked not to come back to the Messianic Jewish fellowship we had been attending here in Beer-Sheva.
I think the most difficult thing was hearing all of the reasons that folks had conjured up for our decision. It has been very difficult for some folks to accept our explanations. I have been told that we were sucked in by the nice Catholic church we met here after being isolated from the Restoration Movement, that I was arrogant and thought that I knew better than our teachers and preachers, and I was even asked once how much the Vatican had paid us to convert!
SB: Some people find large-scale changes hard to believe. Another thing that has changed for you as you’ve pursued your PhD at Ben Gurion University is how you approach the Bible. If these are fair representatives, how would you compare the approaches of say, Hermann Gunkel and Gleason Archer?
MWU: Wow! Gunkel and Archer! Let’s take a minute to explain just who these guys are. Let’s begin with Archer, because he represents the school of thought that I have strayed from. In my Old Testament Introduction course, taught by my revered teacher, Wilbur Fields, we used his book, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, as the standard by which other approaches to the OT were to be judged. This book was first published in 1964, has had three revisions, and the edition we used is copyrighted 1994. In the introduction, in the section labeled “The Purpose of the Bible” (p. 15), Archer states that the “Holy Bible comes to us as a set of directions, right from the hand of the Manufacturer who first invented and produced the human race.” There you have it. The Bible, for Gleason Archer, belongs to roughly the same genre as the manual for my Toyota. Riveting. (With literal rivets).
The rest of the book is dedicated to a thoroughgoing polemic against non-Fundamentalist readings of Scripture. I brought this book to Israel with me as a defense against the “liberal” instruction that I knew I would be bombarded with at Ben-Gurion University. Within a week of my studies here, I had pretty much shelved it and have not picked it up much since. I realized very quickly that the ammo that Archer was providing me with was woefully inadequate.
Today, I find two severe weaknesses in Archer’s approach (apart from its greatest weakness, which is the utilitarian appreciation for the Bible that I have already underlined). First of all, Archer assumes that there are basically two schools of thought: Fundamentalism (which he labels orthodoxy) and Source Criticism as defined by Wellhausen. The entire book is filled with JEPD this and JEPD that. The problem is, although Wellhausen is indeed responsible for opening new critical approaches to Scripture, no one has really relied on him for a good 100 years. In fact, the question of literary sources, though it creeps up often enough, just isn’t that important to modern Bible researchers. So Archer (and his disciples) are blasting away at source criticism without realizing that they are attacking an empty bunker. (By the way, Gleason Archer passed away in 2004, so it isn’t accurate to depict him as actively involved in the debate any more like I am doing here).
The second weakness is that Archer’s arguments are not very convincing. He dedicates pages and pages to exposing disagreements between various non-Fundamentalists, alludes to archaeological discoveries that confirm, for him, the historicity of the biblical account, and includes dozens of superficial linguistic studies that supposedly prove things like Mosaic authorship. But he doesn’t really address any of the difficult questions that biblical researchers have posited over the last hundred years. For instance, how do we explain the apparent contradictions between passages that state unequivocally that Jerusalem is the only place the sacrifices are to be made and those that seem to refer to legitimate sacrifices being made elsewhere? (The story of Elijah comes to mind). Folks in my university consider arguments like Archer’s to be ineffectual attacks upon straw men.
When I came across Hermann Gunkel (d. 1932), I was pleasantly surprised. I was predisposed to regard him as yet another unbelieving critic undermining faith in Scripture as the Word of God, mostly because of critiques from folks like Archer. Instead, I discovered a man with a vibrant faith. Here is a fellow who found himself at a dramatic period in biblical studies in Germany. A few years before his birth, the first essay in the first volume of Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftliche Theologie in 1858 suggested that Christianity needed to stop bothering about doctrine and pursue the real core of religion, which was supposed to be ethics. Then Wellhausen put forth his version of the documentary hypothesis. Almost immediately, atheistic critics of Christianity thought they smelled blood in the water, and began turning all of these new ideas to their advantage. More traditionalist scholars, like Franz Delitzsch, laid the foundations for Fundamentalist readings of the OT at this point in reaction to these attacks. It got pretty ugly for a while. Most of the research at this time was pretty polemical. Both sides, in thoroughly modernist fashion, were obsessed with bolstering their opinions with scientific proofs. They had a tendency to approach Scripture like archaeologists attempting to excavate the history of ancient Israel. The title of Wellhausen’s magnum opus, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (“Prolegomena to the History of Israel”), exemplifies this trend very well.
Then along comes Gunkel, and he does something really remarkable. Basically, he says, “None of this really matters. Isn’t the text itself, as we have it today, what is important? What can we understand about the text of the Bible by comparing it with other literatures from the ancient Near East? What is the artistic form of the text? What genre does it fall into?” He appealed to approaching the Biblical text as literature. Today that doesn’t sound very earth shattering, but the world that Gunkel was writing in needed to be corrected in just such a way. He was one of the first biblical scholars to make extensive use of comparative literatures. He also established form criticism as a worthy opponent to the source criticism of the day.
Most important from a theological standpoint, Gunkel never forgets that the Bible is the Word of God. Yet, he is not threatened by sincere inquiries that call into question harmonistic approaches to the text. For instance, he did not have to insist that Moses wrote the Pentateuch for it still to have value.
Many of Gunkel’s approaches have been discarded today, and for good reason, but my encounter with him was invigorating, because it showed me that the dialogue between the various schools of interpretation is full of various nuances, and that it is not fair to just label everyone as a “conservative” or a “liberal” and assume you know all about how they interpret the Bible or what their relationship with God is like. Gunkel prepared the way for the hermeneutic called “canonical criticism” which cares more for the final, edited product of Scripture than any considerations of literary sources. If I had to categorize myself as anything, I guess that I would be a canon critic.
It all comes down to aesthetics again. Gunkel reads the Biblical text as a work of art that conveys truth. It is not so important to him whether or not the literature that we encounter there is always a historical narrative in the modern sense of the word. Gleason Archer, who represents the school of thought that Ozark Christian College holds to, more or less, is more interested in polemics. The Bible is a vessel of true facts. You can read it using the same rules of hermeneutics that you would use to interpret the newspaper. I think this is the chasm between the two schools: a narrative of truth versus a collection of true facts.
People in the restoration movement do not like to be labeled as Fundamentalists. But, apart from a few things (Calvinism, Eschatology), they pretty much hold to a Fundamentalist hermeneutic. All you have to do is pull out the Creation narrative on them. If a preacher or teacher were to assert that the question of whether or not the world was created in a literal six days was irrelevant, they would not be able to hold their position for very long in most of the Christian Church institutions that I am familiar with.
There is a truly atheistic skepticism that is indeed at work in much of biblical research, but we can become distracted by it and lose track of the real message of Scripture if we’re not careful. Aesthetics again. Scripture is not just a collection of facts. If we are threatened by honest questions about how we received the Bible, does that not reveal that we have accepted the assertion of the atheists that the critical approach to Scripture has rendered it obsolete, at least to a certain extent?
I do not dare to let on as though I have this all figured out, but I think it might help to clarify all of this with a certain case in point. Most mainstream biblical scholarship accepts the hypothesis that the book of Isaiah as we possess it today is a redacted work composed of at least three compositions that have been (masterfully, I must say), welded together by a later editor. For instance, the prophecy of Cyrus by name in Isaiah 44:28 is considered by most interpreters to have been written not by Isaiah, but by a contemporary of Cyrus.
Archer seems to assume that the only reason that anyone would reject Isaian authorship of this verse is that they were rationalistic and had an anti-supernaturalist stance that prevents them from believing in the possibility of authentic fulfilled prophecy (A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, 370). That’s not a fair treatment of all of his opponents’ positions, though.
Fundamentalists have wasted a lot of ink on all of this, going to great lengths to “prove” that there was only one author of Isaiah. But you can’t prove something like that. Eventually, after spinning my wheels over here in all of my courses, it occurred to me that it really doesn’t matter whether or not Isaiah wrote the entire book attributed to him or not. If a contemporary of Cyrus wrote that prophecy, it is still inspired by the same Holy Spirit, and it still has the power to convey God’s truth. In fact, kerygmatically, it makes more sense. What would Hezekiah need to know about Cyrus for?
Fundamentalists would probably say that I am a rationalist, and that’s why I think someone besides Isaiah wrote 44:28. But that’s just silly; after all, I’m the one that believes that Jesus turns the bread and wine into His body and blood every time I go to Mass. So there.
It’s not that I don’t believe that the Holy Spirit could have inspired Isaiah to prophesy Cyrus by name. I just don’t understand why we have to insist that this must be the case when there is an easier explanation. We need to use Ockham’s razor here, I think. I mean, does it really make sense that the Holy Spirit would lower Himself to do the Nostradamus shtick?
One last thing. For most Christians I know, all of this is highly irrelevant. A good friend of mine who is a priest pastoring a flock of Filipino foreign workers here reminds me of this continually. He has managed, with God’s help and a lot of patience, to plant a deep love of Scripture in them, and to make it an important element in their daily lives. He says that if he were to take tangents in his Bible studies with them to explain the various critical approaches to Scripture, it would probably destroy their faith. I am sympathetic to what he has to say. Bible-dweebs like me live in an alternate reality where practical application of God’s Word is not as important as the Ugaritic background of the Leviathan myth.
But when a more educated person begins to expose themselves to the various non-Fundamentalist hermeneutics out there, there comes a dangerous moment of questioning when it looks as though the foundation of their faith is not very solid. If we insist that it’s an all-or-nothing proposition of Fundamentalism or atheism, then we will endanger such a person. (Trust me. I have passed through that death-shadowed valley).
Besides this, those same Filipinos would be done an equal disservice if all my friend did when they were studying the Bible together was obsess about all the bozos who had said the particular text they were reading was not true and give his list of archaeological proofs to show that it was. Fortunately for them, he bypasses all of that treacherous territory and consistently and prayerfully orients them to the Father and His care for them through that text.
SB: You’ve read a lot of primary source materials from the church fathers. What benefit would it offer the church today to reexamine some of these ancient books? Do they exhibit the same perspectives prevalent today?
MWU: Well, first of all, reading the Church Fathers is beneficial for all sorts of reasons, not the least being that they had a lot of wisdom and wrote a lot of very beautiful things. I am routinely edified by my encounter with the Fathers. Moreover, no matter how far removed we may feel from them, no matter how low church, modern and simple we may be, at least some of our Christian heritage has come down to us by way of these great men of God, and exposure to them helps to put our present-day faith into perspective. Finally, I think everyone ought to read the Church Fathers, because if they do, they will become Catholic like me.
I’m just kidding [laughter]
But seriously, the Church Fathers raise serious questions about just how “primitive” our faith is. The Apostolic Fathers do this more than anyone else, but Justin Martyr and Irenaeus are helpful (or troublesome, depending on your point of view), too.
You know, anybody can read at least some of the Fathers today, because they are on the Internet in English translation. I don’t know that everybody ought to do this, but nobody can do the same old smear job that anti-Catholics used to do without someone like me saying, “Wait a minute. Did you read what Ignatius said about that?”
The second question, about perspective, is pretty important. The answer is, surprise, surprise, the Church Fathers did not think or read the Bible like we do.
They were pre-modern. They were Eastern. They had a holistic, eternal perspective. By this, I mean that they were not troubled by questions of chronology and history like we are. For instance, it made sense to them that the Mass could be substantially the same sacrifice as was made on the cross, because they considered prayer and liturgy to have an eternal aspect to it. They didn’t have any problem using allegory to approach the biblical text. Those are just a few of the differences.
I do not think that we necessarily have to have the identical perspective that they had, but it would be wrong for us to scorn their interpretations as stupid like I have heard certain teachers do. Exposure to the Church Fathers can broaden our perspective of the Body of Christ in the same way that taking a missions trip can. It is exposure to a whole new culture. Some of it will be threatening to us, to be sure, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
SB: How has living in Israel alongside devout followers of another religion affected how you view other faiths?
MWU: It’s made me more charitable. I am less likely to try and convince someone that I am right and they are wrong. My own faith has been enriched by exposure to Judaism, in particular. I sometimes use a Jewish Siddur (prayer book) to pray. I have become more aware of the work of the Holy Spirit among non-Christians. (This reflects the teaching of the Catholic Church, as well, by the way). Jesus is the only Way to the Father, but I see more clearly that the Son and the Spirit are at work drawing people to the Father in ways that we cannot anticipate. We still have a duty, as the opportunity presents itself, to share our testimony, but I feel a lot less pressure about this than I used to. It does not depend on me. It depends on Him.
SB: What counsel would you offer to other people who may be considering a path similar to yours?
MWU: Do not deceive yourself. Don’t be naive like I was. This is going to hurt. You are not strong enough, big enough, smart enough, charismatic enough or holy enough to handle the fall-out from it. You will suffer more than you believe is possible. But at the end of it all, you will find a Holy God waiting for you to rest in His arms.
Apart from that, I would suggest two things. One I did. The other I did not. First of all, you need to read everything you can get a hold of concerning this “other path.” You need to know it inside and out. You need to know just how it is different and how it is similar to the tradition that you have grown up in. It is not a decision to be made lightly, and you want to be able to know for yourself that you knew what you were doing, because there will be a lot of people who say that you do not.
What I wish that I had done, that I did not do, is this: I should have talked to some of my mentors in the Restoration Movement about what I was going through with all of this, so that it would not have given everybody theological whiplash. In the months before we converted, Robin kept telling me that I needed to call or write to one of our professors from Ozark. I was afraid to do that. I admit it. I was a coward. Eventually, circumstances over here forced us to make our announcement in a really unfortunate manner. Someone in similar circumstances should have at least two father figures from their tradition that they have discussed this with. They should be prudent about this, though. Don’t tell everybody, because everybody doesn’t need to know. There is a fine line between openness in the Body and prudence. I am not sure yet where that line is drawn, but I can see that I was not even looking for it back then.
And one more thing, I think I spent way too much time trying to vindicate myself after it was said and done. (Is that what I’m doing here with you?). I think it might have been better for everybody concerned if I had just deleted a few of the e-mails I received without responding. Some of the bridges that I have tried to rebuild didn’t need to be, in retrospect, and I do not think that I convinced a single person that I have debated with in the years since.
The Turtle Dialogues 