On Conversion

A letter correspondence with Benjamin Carlson

The Wailing Wall, JL Gerome, 1880

This letter is a response to Benjamin Carlson, the author of the newsletter The Carlson Letter, the former executive editor of The Atlantic and former China correspondent for AFP. His work has also appeared in The New Republic, Esquire, and Rolling Stone, and he was my colleague at GlobalPost. I contacted Ben with the idea of a letter exchange and he selected the topic. Before reading my response below, I suggest starting with his initial letter.

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Benjamin,

The matter of belief and conversion are topics rather close to my heart. My father was not particularly religious, but my mother, like many Bahamians, has always been a faithful Roman Catholic. I inherited her faithful heart and so, as a younger man, rather than enter university I almost followed the seminary path to becoming a Jesuit monk.

My attraction to the Jesuit Order lay in its reputation for exegetical analysis. I was a voracious bookworm (to this day, I try to read at least three books a week) and the idea of devoting myself with Talmudic intensity to the study of the holy pages sounded like an eternal vacation.

To no one’s surprise, I later attended college where I studied philosophy and literature.

Like you, I too have spent many years rummaging through foreign faiths and the strange ideologies of other lands. I studied zen meditation in Japan, yoga in India, Tibetan Buddhism in the Himalaya. Like a poor man’s Bruce Wayne, I traveled to various kung fu temples across China and asked the masters, “teach me your ways.”

I never became an exceptional fighter, but then I was never in it for the bloodsport because I was digging to unearth far richer gifts.

I have also tried to study the major faiths as deeply as I can. Once in university, two Mormons came to my door and I thought to myself, “I haven’t studied this one yet.”

I invited them in, and before they returned the next week, I read the Book of Mormon and a biography on Joseph Smith, and this time I had questions. For example, did the Church really used to teach that the mark of Cain was being black and that black people would become white if they converted?

I followed the steps toward joining the faith of the Latter Day Saints, including attending service, but stopping short of baptism. I was not seriously tempted to join, but I was grateful for the opportunity to learn.

When I lived in India for several years, I studied Hinduism. In Jordan, I studied Islam, and also learned an enormous amount from my Muslim ex-girlfriend.

In all this, I began to notice throughlines, fundamental concepts repeated in different formulations or with different metaphors, and it began to seem to me that the things that every faith says the same, are probably the things that we should look at carefully. I started to pocket these philosophic seashells, and often these have turned out to be among the most beautiful lessons that I’ve learned.

But to answer your question, what belief system did I come closest to adopting as my own? If we’re talking about religion, and putting aside my initial flirtation with the monastic life, then the nearest I ever came to embracing a faith would be when I was studying Judaism while living in Jerusalem.

Reasonable minds can disagree, but no one can convince me there is any better place on earth to fall in love with the Jewish faith than in the Holy City itself. The observance of mitzvot (commandments), the value of human life, the importance of family, the commitment to study, the principle of tikkun olam (repairing the world), the beautiful holidays, and of course the Hebrew language itself all captured me.

Not to mention, having traveled all across the world, Israel remains one of my favorite countries.

It’s interesting to read how you made Scientology your beat. I didn’t do that with Judaism, but I did study the beliefs, rituals, and practices. I discussed conversion with a rabbi. I learned some Hebrew. I got involved in Jewish community life. And most importantly, it felt good.

Reading how you burrowed into the thousands of hours of content by L. Ron Hubbard, it sounds like we both had studious approaches.

But in the end, I did what I have done with other faiths. I took what I could carry and continued walking on the path. In other words, I kept the principles that resonated most and incorporated them into my life.

Your distillation of Scientology into a method for emotional restraint and personal drive has made me reflect, how would I distill what I learned of Judaism?

I hope my Jewish friends will forgive the amateur attempt at summary, but one thing that comes to mind is that the highest aim of Christian life tends to be devotion to God, in the sense that it is good for a Christian woman to marry, but a better act of devotion is to “marry the Lord” by becoming a nun. Similarly, priests are expected to follow the example of Jesus by remaining celibate.

In contrast, Jewish rabbis are encouraged to marry because according to the faith, one cannot otherwise fully understand or counsel others on matters of utmost importance, and this is because matters of utmost importance are not about giving oneself entirely to God to the extent that you do not live a fully human life, but the opposite—living a fully human life as a way of thanking God. I love this.

Instead of rejecting life as an illusion that must be endured until one makes the transition to Heaven, life is instead viewed as something to be fully celebrated, because remember, in Judaism the concept of the afterlife is not as centrally defined as in Christianity, and many Jews do not believe in it at all.

This is a gross oversimplification, but in many ways to be Christian is to live a life so as to prepare the soul for what comes after, whereas to be Jewish is to live a wholly present life here and now, and as a philosophy, this approach rhymes with the music of my heart.

You put it very well when you write:

Even as a critic—especially as a critic—if you can’t understand the attraction of what you study, you'll never see the full truth of it.

Yes, this is why the best critics of Communism and Marxism were those who understood it from the inside such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I have always believed this not only about ideologies but people and places too. If you leave a country not liking it, I tend to suspect, you didn’t spend enough time or dig deep enough to find the parts you would’ve loved.

But that’s a topic for another day. The point is, being open to foreign ideas, especially ideas that you would otherwise reject, is a form of intelligence because it means you are ever open to being corrected, and therefore always learning, whereas to close oneself off from that experience is to close oneself off from intellectual evolution.

So it isn’t that conversion is essential for growth, but what is essential is at least the willingness to be converted.

Talk to you soon.