The Gospel Brings Reversal

Yesterday, we looked at Mary's Magnificat where we saw that the Christmas Gospel is Covenental. It brings Reversal. And it's Personal. (Message is now posted in all the usual places.)

Speaking of the reversal that the Gospel brings. . . have you heard about the recent coming to faith of Anne Rice, the auhor of Interview with a Vampire and other dark stuff for over 30 years? The Gospel is grabbing this lady and bringing a great reversal to her values, ambitions and life.

In contrast to Dan Brown, author of the Da Vinci Code (which we mentioned a few posts ago) who mocks the historicity and reliability of the Gospel accounts, Anne Rice painstakingly examined the New Testament historical data and became convinced that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

Here's an excerpt from a World Magazine article detailing Mrs. Rice's conversion entitled, Into the Light. . .

Mrs. Rice's research took her through the literature written by those she calls "the skeptical critics," beginning with the New Testament scholars of the Enlightenment. "I expected to discover that their arguments would be frighteningly strong, and that Christianity was, at heart, a kind of fraud," she writes in an author's note in her new book.

But she plowed on, "ready to risk everything," particularly her newly recovered faith: "The skeptical New Testament scholarship tries to prove to you that the Gospels don't hold up. It takes great fortitude to subject yourself to that kind of literature, to seriously take notes, to follow the arguments, to draw conclusions. You could come out destroyed." But she came out concluding that the skeptics were wrong, perpetrators and victims of some of the worst scholarship she'd ever seen, built with poor research and reasoning on a foundation that presumed the Gospels weren't true. . . .

She continued scouring the Gospels herself, not only to absorb the unfolding life of Christ, but to delve into the how of Christianity itself: "I could see that this was a great mystery. How could Christianity bust into the Roman Empire and take over the world in only 200 years? I was looking to see how this thing worked itself out, day by day, month by month, year by year." She came to understand that Christianity achieved what it did because Jesus rose from the dead: That was what made sense of Christianity's spread.

Understanding this, for Mrs. Rice, was a turning point, and there were others, such as the dawning in her mind of the Gospels' "unique coherence, their personalities—the inevitable stamp of individual authorship."

So where are you seeing Gospel reversal happen in your own life, in the lives of others or in the community?