What happens when we find God? What does it take to convert to Christianity or to another theistic religion?
Once we gain an awareness of God - once revelation is complete - then what happens?
Redemption, ideally, but not necessarily.
Once we gain this knowledge and experience of God, He continues to be a gentleman and doesn't impose His will on us. It remains up to us to accept what He has to offer. We get to choose what to do with our new-found knowledge of God. It's our choice whether to proceed to the step of redemption or to stop just with revelation.
When we meet God, we're confronted with how unlike Him we are. This is the Being from which creation springs. This is the Being who gave us our marvelous capabilities. This is the Being who sent His Son to die on a cross for those who are so far from being like God that they couldn't ever have reached Him otherwise. He is Love. He is Good. He is inexplicably determined to direct that Love and Goodness towards us.
What is an appropriate response to meeting such a Being?
One option is to maintain your prior agenda, to continue being exactly who you were, to keep your worldview, your ambitions, and your pride intact and to conform God to your image.
Has such a person really converted to Christianity? Where is the conversion portion of their experience? Have their actions conformed to the character and essence of God that we're supposed to mirror?
If someone can't admit their need for God, if someone can't acknowledge their need to be transformed by God, if someone can't put God's agenda for man above their own agenda, isn't this revelation without redemption? Aren't we seeing only one step in a multi-step process. Isn't the process of conversion incomplete?
Isn't the conversion experience one in which we must first find God and then look inwards and find ourselves anew in the context of God's existence? Have we completed the process of conversion if we have only found Him but have not found our need of Him?
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