13. Conversion
The Body of
B. Franklin
Printer;
Like the Cover of an old Book,
Its Contents torn out,
And stript of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be wholly lost:
For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more,
In a new & more perfect Edition,
Corrected and Amended
By the Author.1
Ben Franklin composed this epitaph for himself at the ripe old age of twenty-two. Home in Philadelphia two years after his difficult London trip, he was setting up shop with the drunkard Hugh Meredith and meeting regularly with the Junto. Even as a young man, Ben had already stared death in the face—in his own nearly fatal bout with pleurisy and the passing of his mentor Denham—and emerged with his whimsical spirit intact.
Never actually engraved on Franklin’s tombstone, this verse still displays not only Ben’s unique wit but also his ostentatious humility. Yes, that’s a contradiction in terms, but that is what made Franklin so charming—he expressed his humility in an artful way. These lines also reveal a somewhat Christian theology—the resurrection of the body to life everlasting—but, as usual, Ben was crafting his own system. The epitaph is often appended to his 1728 “Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion,” a worship liturgy Ben created for his own use.
All of this confirms the impressions we’ve already been gathering: Ben Franklin was a very religious man—only he was making up his own religion. According to George Whitefield, that wasn’t good enough.
“I have seen your Epitaph,” George wrote to his friend Ben about twenty-six years later. “Believe on Jesus, and get a feeling possession of God in your heart, and you cannot possibly be disappointed of your expected second edition finely corrected, and infinitely amended.”2
We can imagine that George appreciated Ben’s humility. That was a fine Christian virtue, and also an essential way to approach the Creator. George would have no problem with Ben’s dismissal of sectarian religion, since George himself wasn’t pushing any particular denomination. And if he had picked up a copy of Ben’s “Articles of Belief” with the epitaph attached, he would surely have loved a prayer that Ben had written there: “Thou art a Lover of Justice and Sincerity, of Friendship, Benevolence and every Virtue. Thou art my Friend, my Father, and my Benefactor. Praised be thy Name for ever.”3
But there was one crucial thing missing: Jesus.
In 1752, the year that Ben flew his famous kite, George wrote, congratulating him on his scientific fame, but adding, “I would now humbly recommend to your diligent unprejudiced pursuit and study the mystery of the new-birth.”4 George was citing the third chapter of John’s gospel, where Jesus conversed with Nicodemus, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
This verse, with the idea of the new birth, became George Whitefield’s battle cry as he built his preaching career. Over three decades, he issued the same challenge to rich and poor, men and women, free people and slaves, miners and actors, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and even deists. No matter how moral you were, you needed to be reborn in the name of Jesus.
He had learned this himself as a lonely Oxford student in 1735.
Faith Breaks In
George had tried to be righteous. When his roommates went out to party at night, he stayed home. He was praying, singing psalms, fasting, studying Scripture, and receiving Communion on a regular basis. The “serious call” of author William Law found an answer in his own “devout and holy life.” George was practicing discipline in his daily doings, striving to be the best Christian he could possibly be.
It was a great day when he finally connected with the Holy Club, joining Charles Wesley for breakfast. And the books Charles lent him—those had more of an impact than even Charles could imagine.
In The Country-Parson’s Advice to His Parishioners, for instance, George would have read: “The Reward, which God intends for [his servants], shall not be proportioned to the little Merit of their Services, but to his own Infinite Goodness. . . . It is a Gift, as the Apostle tells us, Rom. 6:23, and such a gift as shall shew the Infinite Goodness and Beneficence of the Donor.”5
The Bible verse cited by this anonymous author declared, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23 KJV). Now any serious Christian, like George, would understand the first part. Sinners earned eternal death through their sin. That’s why it was so important to avoid sin, so that you could earn God’s favor and be welcomed into heaven rather than hell.
But that’s not what the Bible verse was saying. As the “country parson” pointed out, eternal life was a gift. It had nothing to do with the “little merit” of striving people like George. It had everything to do with God’s “infinite goodness.”
Besides the country parson’s book and Nicodemus, or A Treatise Against the Fear of Man by the Pietist August Francke, George received another volume from Charles Wesley: The Life of God in the Soul of Man, by Henry Scougal. In his memoirs, Whitefield cited this book as the one that especially changed his life. “I never knew what true religion was, till God sent me that excellent treatise by the hands of my never-to-be-forgotten friend.”6
Scougal was a Scottish minister who died in 1678. This short work was essentially a letter to a friend who had lost his faith.
“At my first reading it,” George wrote, “I wondered what the author meant by saying, ‘That some falsely placed religion in going to church, doing hurt to no one, being constant in the duties of the [prayer] closet, and now and then reaching out their hands to give alms to their poor neighbours.’ ”7
Falsely placed religion? This was what George’s life was all about. What could possibly be wrong with these holy activities?
George’s testimony continued: “ ‘Alas!’ thought I, ‘if this be not true religion, what is?’ God soon showed me; for in reading a few lines further that ‘true religion was union of the soul with God, and Christ formed within us,’ a ray of Divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul, and from that moment, but not till then, did I know that I must be a new creature.”8
A new creature. The words come from another text written by the apostle Paul. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV). Through his reading, George was discovering that no amount of effort would gain him salvation. He needed to be created anew. It was the work of the Creator.
Sometimes conversion is a process. Though Whitefield mentioned the ray of light that “instantaneously darted” upon him, his journal went on for a dozen pages describing a difficult period of intense (and unhealthy) religiosity that followed.
He blamed Satan for the ingenious temptation that would take godly impulses and push them to dangerous extremes. Increasingly, George withdrew from normal life, neglecting school assignments, becoming a laughingstock on campus, and even pulling away from Holy Club members. “Near five or six weeks I had now spent in my study, except when I was obliged to go out,” he explained later. “During this time I was fighting with my corruptions, and did little else besides kneeling down by my bedside, feeling, as it were, a heavy pressure upon my body, as well as an unspeakable oppression of mind, yet offering up my soul to God, to do with me as it pleased Him.”9
A severe Lenten fast sapped George’s energy to the point that he could hardly climb stairs. His school tutor eventually called a doctor, and George was laid up for seven weeks. At the end of that convalescence, he returned to health not only physically but also spiritually. “After having undergone innumerable buffetings of Satan, and many months inexpressible trials by night and day under the spirit of bondage,” he wrote, “God was pleased at length to remove the heavy load, to enable me to lay hold on His dear Son by a living faith.”10
George’s attitude was completely transformed. Where he was previously burdened by the pressure to attain a surpassing level of righteousness, now he seemed to relax in the work of God. “But oh! with what joy—joy unspeakable—even joy that was full of, and big with glory, was my soul filled, when the weight of sin went off, and an abiding sense of the pardoning love of God, and a full assurance of faith broke in upon my disconsolate soul! . . . a day to be had in everlasting remembrance.”11
Versions of Conversion
Apparently George believed that this was the day he received the new birth—after the seven-week illness. His understanding of the new birth—that “ray of divine light” he saw after reading Scougal—was merely the beginning of a process that took him through a spiritual wilderness and into the arms of God. There was a highly emotional moment—joy unspeakable—that clinched it.
“Thus were the days of my mourning ended,” he wrote, concluding this chapter of his journal. “After a long night of desertion and temptation, the Star, which I had seen at a distance before, began to appear again, and the Day Star arose in my heart. Now did the Spirit of God take possession of my soul, and, as I humbly hope, seal me unto the day of redemption.”12
It is not unusual for people to go through such a process, even today. It often starts with a mental awareness of the story of Jesus, the validity of the gospel, or one’s own need for a “new birth.” The struggle can have various causes or take various forms. But then there is a release, an acceptance, a reception, often emotional in nature.
Notice the way Whitefield described it. The active verbs described the action of God—breaking in, taking possession. George was the recipient of these events. His role in the transaction was to stop struggling, to say yes, and to receive the blessing that God was dishing out.
Throughout his preaching career, George was accused of overemotionalizing the gospel. His dramatic antics got people so excited, they might agree to anything, or so the critics said. But that was the whole point. Whitefield knew that the gospel broke into most people’s lives through their emotions, not their minds—especially in a highly Christianized culture. People knew the Bible. They belonged to churches. They had a sense of Christian morality. What they lacked, George felt, was a transformation of the heart—and that would best happen not through logical argumentation, but through an emotional appeal. Those who hear the gospel “have more need of heat than light,” he once preached. “Would to God we had as much warmth in our hearts, as light in our understandings!”13 George knew this because it was his own story. He got it before he got it. He understood the mental concept of the new birth, and was even sharing it with others, months before he had the emotional experience of receiving it.
Strangely, George’s mentors in this matter, John and Charles Wesley, trailed behind him. Both of them traced their moments of conversion to 1738, three years after George’s, even though they were seemingly model believers long before that date. Not only did they start and lead the “Holy Club,” but they also became ordained as clergy and even traveled to America as missionaries late in 1735.
On John’s ocean voyage to the colony of Georgia, a fierce storm came up, and he feared for his life. But John noticed a group of Moravian Christians who remained calm through the danger, praying and singing psalms. Impressed by their faith, John struck up a friendship with them. His time in Georgia was difficult, and he came back to England in 1738 defeated and despondent. Then a Moravian friend invited him to a service, and he heard a preacher expound on Martin Luther’s commentary on the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. In his journal, John said he went “unwillingly,” but he went.
We might imagine that John Wesley did not learn anything new in that sermon. He himself had surely read Luther before, and he had studied the New Testament in its original Greek. Yet something happened that night that had never happened before. “About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”14
Now it was personal. All of John’s head knowledge had finally worked its way to his heart. The hard work of proving himself to God was finished. He was forgiven. He was accepted.
Just three days earlier, Charles Wesley experienced a similar conversion. He too had befriended some Moravian Christians, and they had been counseling him in their simple faith. “I felt a violent opposition and reluctance to believe,” Charles wrote in his journal, “yet still the Spirit of God strove with my own and the evil spirit, till by degrees he chased away the darkness of my unbelief. I found myself convinced, I knew not how, nor when.”15
Some theologians question whether these experiences were actually conversions. They were emotional moments, to be sure. They were epiphanies that brought these men closer to God—no one disputes that. But can we truly say that John and Charles Wesley, with all their personal devotion, were not Christians prior to these events? Some religious groups recognize these as “second blessing” experiences or “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Perhaps that’s what we have here—an attainment of a higher level of spirituality after an initial commitment to Christ. Given the amount of religious work the Wesleys did in the years before these epiphanies, wouldn’t that explanation make more sense?
Yet it’s pretty clear that John Wesley himself saw this as a saving moment for him. Three years later, he preached powerfully about the “almost Christian”—the person who does everything right except trust in Jesus:
I did go thus far for many years . . . using diligence to eschew all evil, and to have a conscience void of offence; redeeming the time; buying up every opportunity of doing all good to all men; constantly and carefully using all the public and all the private means of grace; endeavouring after a steady seriousness of behaviour, at all times, and in all places; and, God is my record, before whom I stand, doing all this in sincerity; having a real design to serve God; a hearty desire to do his will in all things; to please him who had called me to “fight the good fight,” and to “lay hold of eternal life.” Yet my own conscience beareth me witness in the Holy Ghost, that all this time I was but almost a Christian.16
Almost a Christian! By his own testimony, all John Wesley’s religious work was not enough to get him into God’s kingdom. Charles Wesley and George Whitefield would tell similar stories. For that matter, so would Martin Luther, whose writing was instrumental in John’s conversion. It’s quite appropriate that John on that fateful evening would hear a reading of Luther’s commentary on Romans. Luther had grabbed the apostle’s tag line “The just shall live by faith” and used it as an anchor for Reformation theology. As a monk, priest, and professor, Luther had tried to earn his way to heaven through religious works, but then he came face to face with this New Testament principle.
Even the apostle Paul had this experience. As a Pharisee, Paul had piled up plenty of good deeds before he saw the light (literally). Later he wrote about his impressive religious credentials, only to say, “these I have counted loss for Christ.” He went on to use even stronger language, calling them “rubbish” (a relatively polite translation of the Greek word Paul used). Paul threw out all his religious accomplishments, he said, in order to “gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God” (Philippians 3:7–9).
In the days of Whitefield and Franklin, many people assumed that the aim of religion was to make people behave better so they would be worthy of heaven. Many still assume that today. And that might be true for some religions, but it’s not the message of New Testament Christianity, as George Whitefield and these other leaders discovered.
According to the biblical teachings of Jesus and Paul, as understood now by George Whitefield, human beings simply cannot be good enough for God, no matter how hard we try (and it would be difficult to imagine anyone trying any harder than George Whitefield or his Holy Club companions). Human righteousness cannot save us. We need to be reborn. We need God to make us new.
This was the conversion George Whitefield experienced, and it’s what he preached for the next thirty-five years. In one sermon, he acknowledged the challenge of preaching about conversion to those who already considered themselves Christians. “Preach conversion to the drunkards,” they would say. But he realized from his own life that people could be blinded by their own religious actions. “If we are truly converted, we shall not only be turned and converted from sinful self, but we shall be converted from righteous self. That is the devil of devils: for righteous self can run and hide itself in its own doings, which is the reason self-righteous people are so angry with gospel preachers.”17
It’s evident from George’s repudiation of theater (as well as card playing and other diversions) that he had a strict moral code. Yet he made it clear that such “holy living” was not an attempt to win God’s favor, but a reflection of the ongoing relationship with God that had already begun. A person reborn lives differently. “There will be new principles, new ways, new company, new works; there will be a thorough change in the heart and life; this is conversion,” he preached.18
George might have learned this principle in that life-changing book by Henry Scougal, who differentiated between good deeds that are “actuated only by external motives, driven merely by threatenings, . . . bribed by promises, [or] constrained by laws” and the behavior of believers who are “powerfully inclined to that which is good, and delight in the performance of it.” He went on to say:
The love which a pious man bears to God and goodness, is not so much by virtue of a command enjoining him so to do, as by a new nature instructing and prompting him to it; nor doth he pay his devotions as an unavoidable tribute only to appease the divine justice, or quiet his clamorous conscience; but those religious exercises are the proper emanations of the divine life, the natural employments of the new-born soul. He prays, and gives thanks, and repents, not only because these things are commanded, but rather because he is sensible of his wants, and of the divine goodness, and of the folly and misery of a sinful life.19
Thus, according to Whitefield’s newly adopted belief system, reborn Christians are highly motivated to live God-pleasing lives, not because they’re afraid of the alternative, but because they are now “new creations.”
Compare this approach to personal morality with that of Benjamin Franklin. In some ways, they’re similar. Franklin kept embracing the attitudes and actions that led to what we might call “the good life,” and he avoided vices that would keep him from living fully, freely, and successfully. For instance, when he worked in a London print shop as a young man, he withdrew from the beer-drinking customs of his coworkers. Not that he didn’t enjoy an occasional pint, but he recognized that this would diminish his productivity at work. As he posited, “certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden . . . [but] forbidden because they were bad for us.”20 He was not cowering in fear of a score-keeping God. He was just choosing the ways that helped to improve his life.
Similarly, Whitefield observed a strict personal morality and preached it widely, and this too was in pursuit of “the good life”—only he would define that as a life full of love for God and a desire to please him. He wasn’t cowering, either, but grateful for God’s grace and responding with the disciplined behavior of a “new creation.”
It might have been refreshing for George to find a friend who cared about living right, yet unbound by legalistic religion. Perhaps he felt that Ben would make a really good Christian if he ever received God’s gift of grace. He certainly kept trying to woo Franklin into the kingdom. And Ben kept resisting.
We can’t know what transpired in Ben’s soul in the later years of his life, but we know he never responded to George’s calls to convert. In his autobiography, he wrote that George would sometimes “pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard.”21