![A photo of Rev. Timothy Himei](https://www.datocms-assets.com/118011/1721847487-126_93_rev-timothy-himei_web_1600.jpg?auto=format&w=1088)
Rev. Timothy Himei
Tokyo, Japan
Conversion: A Change In Consciousness
So, a missionary had a Bible study at her house. She taught us English for free and she served a supper that really sounded good. So I attended her Bible study. Two months later, Saturday, June 16, 1962, we had an English Bible study afternoon. The meal was supposed to be served after the English Bible class but her maid was late to serve. So I had to wait. Some other students had already gone, but I was there because I wanted to eat supper. I stayed in the tatami room where we’d had Bible study. The missionary came in and said, ‘Oh Himei-san, why are you still here?’
I said, ‘Oh yeah, I have lots of time today because I want to eat supper. So we have some time today.’
Then she said, ‘Why don't you come to my study and I’ll talk with you about Christ?’
So, I went to her study and she explained to me the Bible, but no matter what part of the Bible she opened to and read, her conclusion was always the same: you are sinners; Christ died for you; if you believe in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven, and when you have to die, if you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord, you can go to heaven. Three points: you are sinners, Christ is your savior, believe Christ and your sins are forgiven.
So I thought, ‘Umm, I am not such a bad man. Even if I died, according to the Japanese custom my body would be burned and become ash. That's all.’
So I said, ‘Well, I don't have any trouble in my life.’
But she said, ‘OK, do you know the purpose of your life?’
‘Yes, I want to be a businessman.’
‘OK, and but you have to die, so do you know where you’ll go?’
‘Well, probably I’ll go to the grave, the tomb. My body will be ash. And someone buries my ashes in the tomb. That is all.’
And then she said, ‘Well you have been in my Bible study for two months, but you’ve missed my teaching. You don't understand the Bible.’ And then she started again talking about the meaning of life and when you die, where you go. She told me that Jesus died for my sins. At last she said, ‘Well, you don't understand completely, fully, so please continue to come to my Bible study. Anyway, the time for dinner has come, so we have to go to the dining hall. But before that, I will pray for you.’
She began to pray for me. I closed my eyes and listened to her prayer. At the end of her prayer, she said, ‘...in the name of Jesus.’
So because I learned I should say it, I said, ‘Amen. Let's go to the dining hall.’
She kept closing her eyes and was quiet. I didn't know what or why she did that. Probably she forgot to pray for something. So I kept waiting for her. And I kept quiet but she didn't say anything.
Then the Holy Spirit talked to me. ‘You are sinners. I love you, I died for you.’
I realized, ‘I am the sinner.’ So I confessed my sins. I opened my heart to accept Jesus Christ as my savior. And I began to pray. And last I said, ‘In the name of Jesus, amen.’
She put her arms around my shoulders and said, ‘It's good for you, it’s good for you. Today is your spiritual birthday. Write it down, today's date.’
So I put it down: 1962, June 16th. That's why I remember it. Thank you.”
Daniel’s Reflection
I was pleased to meet Rev. Timothy Himei in Tokyo, especially to hear about the story of his conversion to Christianity as a young man. He started taking Bible study lessons when a friend suggested it was a free way to learn English...and the teacher served a free dinner. One night when he was the only one who stayed for dinner, the teacher called him in privately; she was clearly unimpressed with his progress in understanding Christian principles, and she prayed for Timothy. That was when he felt the Holy Spirit envelop him and he accepted Christ in that moment.
Well, free English lessons and dinner? There are more indirect ways to be led to a spiritual awakening!
The whole notion of conversion is less frequent in the experience of Jews since Judaism is not currently a proselytizing religion. In fact, a rabbi is directed to turn away a potential convert three times before agreeing to take them on as a student...and then it usually takes a full year to convert. The only converts to Judaism I knew while growing up were those who converted for marriage. My dear friend, Dr. Anne Harbison, did research while at Harvard Divinity School which taught me Judaism actually did have periods of active proselytizing when it was a dominant religion in a land, but it created more barriers and exclusivity in times when it was a minority, such as today.
My experience since my 30s is that the will of a Higher Power is done in ways that are not always explainable. One of the most beautiful concepts for me as I listen to stories of faith is that of grace. I think of grace as the unearned spiritual gift of which you cannot demand or even expect. I believe the personal transformation that comes from a conversion experience is grace. In fact, sometimes grace can be quite inconvenient, like the story of Paul’s conversion in the New Testament.
The definitive study of spiritual experiences such as conversion is actually in a fairly old book. It was published in 1902 by the Harvard psychologist and philosopher, William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature. It is a compilation of 12 lectures given at the University of Scotland, Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology, which continue to this day. A dear friend’s daughter would read this book to help her go to sleep! In Lecture Nine, William James describes the conversion experience beautifully:
All we know is that there are dead feelings, dead ideas, and cold beliefs, and there are hot and live ones; and when one grows hot and alive within us, everything has to re-crystallize about it. … The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. Hope, happiness, security, resolve, emotions characteristic of conversion, can be equally explosive. And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
This won’t come as a surprise, but James’s book was a great inspiration for Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Wilson actually relied upon William James’s description that there are two kinds of spiritual experiences: the sudden, overwhelming kind, and, the slow gradual kind. Here’s what Wilson wrote in Appendix II to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous:
Though it was not our intention to create such an impression, many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming "God-consciousness" followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook. Among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics such transformations, though frequent, are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the "educational variety" because they develop slowly over a period of time. Quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself. He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life; that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone. What often takes place in a few months could hardly be accomplished by years of self-discipline. With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves.
So whether it is sudden, like Rev. Himei’s experience, or slow and gradual, I love William James’s description in Lecture Ten of what is common to most conversion experiences:
The central one is the loss of all the worry. The sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the willingness to be, even though the outer conditions should remain the same.
The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before. The mysteries of life become lucid...and often, nay usually, the solution is more or less unutterable in words.
A third peculiarity of the assurance state is the objective change which the world often appears to undergo. ‘An appearance of newness beautifies every object,’ the precise opposite of that other sort of newness, that dreadful unreality and strangeness in the appearance of the world, which is experienced by melancholy patients.
The most characteristic of all the elements of the conversion crisis, and the last one of which I shall speak, is the ecstasy of happiness produced.
There is no more famous spiritual awakening recorded than that of Trappist monk Thomas Merton. It happened when he was running errands in the downtown shopping district of Louisville, Kentucky in 1958. He’d already converted to Catholicism, and had become a monk and a priest some years earlier. But this further spiritual transformation was the most impactful that Merton experienced.
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Many of us would consider these more typical of Christian conversion experiences. But my own experience now, having gone around the world collecting these sacred stories and experiencing my own personal transformation over time, is that when a spiritual experience takes hold of someone, it reorders them in a way that cannot be explained. Problems seem to slip away and life’s agitations somehow get resolved with ease. Acceptance of others and their idiosyncrasies seems easier. Having healthy boundaries with others feels more natural even when others set their boundaries. For me, this kind of realization is ultimately true whether a spiritual awakening is a sudden conversion or an elongated ‘educational variety’ experience. Personal transformations are not limited to any religion. Sometimes the ‘rearrangement’ comes in the form of feeling ‘at home’ after many years feeling out of place and of always searching. Sometimes the “change in consciousness” comes from giving up the negative messages of an earlier theology or earlier behaviors.
I love how at the end of my interview with Rev. Hemei that he talks about how congregants sometimes criticize him but that he still prays for them and loves them. To me, this is the true test of any spiritual conversion experience: does it make a person more loving and more willing to serve others, especially those perceived to be “the other?” Thank you to Rev. Timothy Hemei in Tokyo for welcoming me into his church with a big open heart.
Permissions and References
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James, William. 1917. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. Longmans, Green, And Co. New York, London, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras.
Quote taken from The Project Gutenberg which offers the text without restrictions: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/621/621-h/621-h.html#toc15
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Alcoholics Anonymous. 195. The Big Book (2nd ed.). Alcoholics Anonymous World Services. Appendix II, pages 567-568.
https://www.aa.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/en_bigbook_appendiceii.pdf
2nd edition is in the public domain.
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Merton, Thomas. 1966. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Image (reissue Feb. 9, 1968).
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