"Put Down Your Gun and We'll Talk"

And falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"
-- Acts 9:4

Sherwood Wirt: "In your book Surprised by Joy you remark that you were brought into the faith kicking and struggling and resentful, with eyes darting in every direction looking for an escape. You suggest that you were compelled, as it were, to become a Christian. Do you feel that you made a decision at the time of your conversion?"

C.S. Lewis: “I would not put it that way. What I wrote in Surprised by Joy was that ‘before God closed in on me, I was offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice.’ But I feel my decision was not so important. I was the object rather than the subject in this affair. I was decided upon. I was glad afterwards at the way it came out, but at the moment what I heard was God saying, ‘Put down your gun and we’ll talk.’”

-- from The Final Interview of C.S. Lewis, conducted by Sherwood Wirt

You did not choose me, but I chose you...
-- John 15:16a

. . . Christ Jesus took hold of me
-- Philippians 3:12
Jared Wilson