Miracles

by Eric Metaxas

  But that’s just not what I experienced and there are innumerable instances of conversions that don’t involve these feelings. Perhaps I already knew Jesus in some way and perhaps this was just a big and important step in embracing him fully and wholly. Who knows? God knows. All I know is that in that dream he revealed himself to me in a way that changed everything and from then on I have had no doubt that he is exactly who he says he is and that I want to give him my whole life.

  Paul’s truly classic conversion on the fabled and proverbial Road to Damascus was not one where he was delivered from a load of guilt and sin. We have no record that he rejoiced that he had been forgiven and that Jesus’s death on the cross had delivered him from his sins, that it had paid his debt to God. Surely he would come to understand and feel those things eventually—and help all of us since to understand them—but when he was blasted off his high horse that day, none of these things seems to have entered the picture. It was simply an encounter—and a humbling encounter—with Jesus himself.

  Actually, I have come to think of conversion not as crossing a finish line but as crossing the starting line. Only once we know God and invite him into our hearts can we begin to run the real race we were meant to run all along. And once that happens, all kinds of things begin to change in our lives. Sometimes those changes are very fast; for example, I have heard of many people who suddenly experienced a sudden lack of desire for something to which they were previously addicted. They are suddenly freed from a desire to do crack or heroin. It’s clearly miraculous and what Christians call a “deliverance.” But others continue to struggle with addictions for many years, or for the rest of their lives, despite a genuine commitment to God and a desire to be relieved of that addiction, or that besetting sin, whatever it is.

  In my case, the only thing that seemed to change quickly was my attitude toward sex outside of marriage. I suddenly knew that I couldn’t have any part in that any longer, despite a long-term relationship with someone I loved and thought I would marry. I suddenly knew that it was incompatible with the new person I had become, and that to honor God I had to give that up. But the miracle for me was that giving it up was suddenly second nature. I felt that God’s holiness was much more important and I wanted to be close to him and to give him full rein in my life, so this was not difficult. I suddenly felt a desire to want to channel this toward marriage. But it was so powerful a change that I knew it really was miraculous. It was as if I could somehow feel God inside me, filling up whatever part of me had sought him in that direction. I suddenly didn’t want what I had previously wanted. I knew that God was the answer to all my desires. I wanted God.

  WHY THESE MIRACLES ARE SO POWERFUL

  Some of the strongest evidence that genuine conversions are indeed genuine—and therefore miraculous—is that they often overwhelm the one who has been converted. We’ve all met people who couldn’t shut up about their faith, who suddenly become insufferable, as though every single conversation has to be about God and the Bible. Sometimes its merely annoying and evidence of something that God has little to do with, but in many cases it’s evidence that that person has had an overwhelming transformative experience that they themselves can hardly make sense of. It’s often been compared to falling in love. Someone head over heels in love is wont to make an idiot of himself or herself, gushing about the object of their love at every opportunity. Much of that has to do with a volcano of emotions they’re hardly at liberty to stop from erupting. When someone finds God in a real and powerful way, the effect is often the same. They talk about God and just can’t stop talking about him or thinking about him.

  I can speak from personal experience. I’m sure in the months and first years of my conversion many of my friends and relatives thought I had flipped. And to some extent I had flipped, depending on the meaning of the verb “to flip.” Practically speaking, as with any torrid love affair, it will eventually simmer down to a manageable boil. In my case, it really did take years. I eventually got much better at learning how to channel my faith and my zeal for God in a way that wasn’t entirely and quickly off-putting. I’m not fooling myself into thinking it’s not still off-putting at some times to some people, but I know I’ve made progress.

  During my first few years as a believer I not only couldn’t shut up about my faith, I was sometimes judgmental toward some of those who didn’t share it. But on the other side of that equation, I remember having powerful feelings of love and empathy toward total strangers, a sense of God’s love for them, and a desire to do anything I could to show them his love, to bless them, to help them. It was all somewhat overwhelming, but I’m happy to say that most of it was on the positive side of this equation.

  I was often hardest on those who were already in the Christian world but whom I felt were not as zealous as they could be in reaching those who didn’t know God. As is typical, I was hardest on my own—my family and my childhood church, the Greek Orthodox Church. I saw it as an institution that had essentially failed to prepare me for the wide world and for the secularism of that world. I waded into a swamp full of alligators and when God finally pulled me out to safety I wondered why my childhood faith had not at least armed me with a shotgun or something to protect me.

  I remember having conversations with Father Peter Karloutsos, the wonderful Greek Orthodox priest at the church in which I grew up, who is a dear friend. But I know that many of the things I said to him must have made him think I had become a religious fanatic or joined a cult. I was a young man and very ardent about my new faith in Jesus, and in my broken way I was trying to communicate this to him. But I don’t doubt half of what I said came across more as judgmental toward him and the ancient Orthodox faith, and I’m sure after a few of these conversations he decided just to give up on me, for his own mental health. At least for a while. I’m sure it was fatiguing for him. I’m glad to say that after fifteen or so years we came to understand each other and have a love for each other, as we should, considering we’ve known each other for almost forty years. But back then I wouldn’t have predicted that.

  But I was in a pickle. My conversion to faith in Jesus had been so powerful that I felt I had to go wherever he was leading me, and at that time he was leading me toward evangelical expressions of my faith, and not to the ancient Orthodox church. But for many Greek Orthodox, the church is the only connection to their ethnicity. For me it was the community in which I had grown up. I hadn’t stopped being Greek or loving the people I knew in that community. So sometimes when it came to the church from which I felt exiled, I felt like a robin in winter, wishing I could come in, sit down by the hearth, and perhaps eat a souvlaki and drink a shot of ouzo.

  I remember about three years after my conversion, I woke up one Saturday morning and was just praying about the day ahead. I had no particular plans and as I prayed I felt God nudging me to drive up to Danbury to help out with the Greek Festival. It was that weekend at the Assumption Church. So I got dressed and drove the forty-five minutes north and offered my services. They couldn’t turn me away, could they? I had gone to this church my whole life, and my parents still went. These were my people. Just because I didn’t attend on Sundays was no reason I couldn’t help out at the festival. When I arrived, Father Peter’s welcome was tepid, but when I asked how I could help, they put me on what I think of as the front lines of every Greek festival—the souvlaki booth. It’s the hottest and loudest and busiest place to be. But I was thrilled to be there, helping out in my community. I wanted to repair the breach I had created by some of my arrogant statements and at least show that even though I might be attending another church, I was still Greek, and I was still part of this community.

  It was exhilarating working there and as firm a proof of one’s Hellenic bona fides as anything could be. A few hours into my time, wilting from the heat under the tent of the souvlaki booth, smelling of pork smoke and oregano, I overheard some people talking about something controversial. As I continued lis
tening, I gathered that there was someone at the front of the church driveway handing out Christian tracts, someone who had nothing to do with the Greek Orthodox Church. Father Peter was nearby, and I heard him say in a clearly derisive tone that it was some “born-again Christian.” It stung a bit to hear this, because for all I knew he had wanted me to hear it, but in a few minutes it dawned on me that I ought to go over and see who this person was and what they were handing out.

  I walked the thirty or so yards down the church driveway to where the man was standing. He had positioned himself so that almost anyone coming to the festival would pass him. He was handing out evangelistic brochures or what Christians call “tracts”—which many mispronounce as “tracks.” But here was the real surprise: He was Greek! Evidently he thought it clever to come to the festival and tell his fellow Greeks about what he had found, about being “born-again” and having a personal relationship with Jesus instead of a meaningless and nominal “religion” that consisted only of attending church. He desperately wanted to communicate that and he thought this would be just the place to do it. In some ways I found it funny, and secretly couldn’t help cheering him on. How wonderful if all the people he was talking with would find what he had found—and I had found!

  I didn’t know who he was or where he had come from, but what he was doing clearly rankled the leadership of the church. Then one of the members of the church parish council came out, a short man with a mustache. I had seen men like this over the years. They had little patience for this sort of thing. “Go on and get outta here!” he said to the man. “We got our own religion! Our religion is the oldest religion there is!” I understood what he meant to be saying, that Greek Orthodoxy was in some ways the original form of Christian faith. To some extent that’s correct. I understood that what he said came from a place of pride, both good and ill. It’s good to know about your heritage and to take pride in it, but the man had no sense of what this other man had experienced, that this man had evidently found nothing in the Greek Orthodox Church but empty tradition, and now that he had found the joy and the peace of a real relationship with God, he wasn’t going to shut up about it.

  I went back to the souvlaki booth, chuckling to myself. Later on I drove to my parents’ house. We planned to return to the festival for the evening, when there would be Greek dancing. My brother and his wife showed up too, and around six we decided it was time to drive to the festival. But in the hours since I had left, I had been strangely haunted thinking about the man handing out tracts. For some reason I kept thinking I knew him. I wouldn’t get the chance to find out anyway, since it had been many hours since I was there and for sure he had left. But when we drove up Clapboard Ridge Road toward the church, I was thrilled to see him still handing out the tracts and talking to people about his faith. We parked the car and I immediately hustled over to him. Now that I was up close, I saw that he seemed to have a positively angelic glow about him, a joy. He wasn’t an angry man; there was a kindness and gentleness to him. He wasn’t someone with a theological ax to grind; he seemed to embody the peace of God, the way Christians are supposed to but so often don’t. As I looked at him, he still reminded me of someone, and I was by now burning to find out if I was correct. I asked him a few questions about his work history and within seconds I had the unbelievable answer: It was Manolis, the short-order cook from the Hilltop Diner. I hadn’t seen him in thirteen years. He was so different from the man I had last spoken with in 1978 that it was downright startling. Whatever he had been, he was no longer. He was profoundly changed. Christians often quote the Scripture verse that says God makes us a “new creature in Christ,” and this man was the most vivid example of this that I ever could have imagined.

  Of course, I asked him what had happened to him to account for the change and he told me. His wife had become a born-again Christian. At first, he had rejected it entirely, but over time he came to see that her own conversion was genuine and positive, and he had eventually followed suit. From my point of view, that day and forevermore, it was nothing less than a miracle. It is the one instance in my life of seeing the miraculous transformation of a human being, of seeing just how very miraculous a real conversion can be. I am sure that I will never get over it and will never stop talking about it until the day I die.

  • • •

  The remainder of this book is, of course, comprised of miracle stories. I thought it would be right to have the first of these stories, which now follows, be the extraordinary story of my friend Ed Tuttle’s conversion. Ed is the person to whom this book is dedicated and is the person whom God in his mystery and grace used to bring me to faith in the summer of 1988. A conversion is often called a “second birth,” and those who come to faith often say they are “born-again.” With all such spiritual births, just as with physical births, they do not only bring one person into being but often portend the future births of others. So Ed’s being born-again was the preamble to my own second birth, as my second birth has been the preamble to the second births of others, and so on and so on, just as it should be, world without end. Amen.

  BECOMING THE PERSON YOU WERE MEANT TO BE

  I met Ed Tuttle in the fall of 1987 when I began working at Union Carbide in Danbury, Connecticut. Our friendship dramatically changed my life, as I tell in the story after this one.

  Ed Tuttle grew up in Southington, Connecticut, in what could reasonably be described as a very Catholic home. When his parents were courting, Ed’s father made Ed’s mother a crucifix-shaped box for her rosary beads. Ed remembers that there was a small chapel in their house, which one saw immediately upon opening the front door. Jehovah’s Witnesses and other visitors wouldn’t need much time to know what they were dealing with.

  As a young boy, it was Ed’s great ambition to become a paleontologist. Ed attended St. Mary’s Elementary School in Waterbury and one day in the fourth grade he had an overwhelming experience that changed his dreams and ambitions in a moment. He remembers sitting in the fourth row back, near the window, when suddenly, and quite unrelated to anything being said by the teacher, a powerful wave seemed to come over him that he knew instantly was a call to serve God. It was so overwhelming that he immediately tapped on the shoulder of the girl in front of him (like an overwhelming percentage of girls from that era, her name was Dawn) and flatly told her that he was going to be a priest. Dawn shrugged at this confession and turned back to face the front. But Ed knew what he had experienced. As soon as he got home he told his mother that he knew that he wanted to be a priest, which, given his upbringing, was the only possible interpretation of being called to serve God. His mother proudly recalled his announcement very often for others in the years that followed.

  After eight years at St. Mary’s, Ed attended four years at a Catholic seminary high school in Cheshire, Connecticut. After graduation, to pursue his studies to become a priest, Ed decided to continue at a seminary college in the Northeast run by the same Catholic order as his high school. In accordance with seminary requirements, Ed was pursuing his BA in philosophy.

  The years at the seminary were increasingly confusing. Ed was so bright that he skipped a grade in grammar school, and he was only seventeen when he began his freshman year. He soon found the atmosphere at the seminary difficult to comprehend in some ways. He had girlfriends at this time, but was strongly discouraged from seeing them because it would interfere with his calling as a priest. Still, he knew that on weekends many of his fellow students would go with some of the younger priests to gay bars in Boston. In the confused thinking of the seminary, this was somehow considered acceptable because it wouldn’t lead to marriage.

  One weekend in his sophomore or junior year, one of the priests who had befriended Ed took him to the Cape on a weekend night. The priest, who was about thirty, bought Ed dinner and strongly encouraged him to drink. Later that night Ed woke up and was startled to find the priest next to him in bed with his hands where they shouldn’t be. Ed hadn’t seen this
coming at all, so he was very upset and confused by it. Ed remembers that the head of the religious order who oversaw the seminary flew in and had a conversation with Ed about this incident, telling him that he shouldn’t be too hard on the offending priest; after all, everyone is different and he shouldn’t make too much of it. The message Ed took away from this was that he must not talk about it with anyone, and it was only years later that Ed was able to tell his parents about it.

  This incident and atmosphere, coupled with what had been a very difficult relationship with his father for some years, only added to Ed’s depression and confusion, both sexually and theologically. He knew that spiritually and morally he was drifting, but he knew not where.

  One night as he sat quite depressed on the bed in his dorm room, Ed found himself staring at a tall oak tree just outside his window. He remembers thinking that if that tremendous tree had grown out of a tiny acorn, God really was powerful and could do anything. Ed continued thinking about God when all of a sudden the room was filled with a presence so powerful that it nearly paralyzed him. He felt that he almost couldn’t breathe or move. But he knew it was God. Then he heard an audible voice say: “I’ve taken care of you for these eighteen years. I’m not going to stop now.” It was unlike anything he had experienced since the wave that had come over him in fourth grade. It so affected him that when he walked down the hall of the dorm his friends asked what had happened to him.