earticle

영어

The purpose of this paper is both to fulfill my personal interest in conversion and to explore a part of my identity and the root of the Christian faith of our family. In doing so, the story of a teenager is introduced as an example of conversion, and the teenager is my father who has become a model of the Christian life to the members of our family. Since my father has a unique and special conversion experience, I hope that the story of his conversion will naturally reveal its historical, sociological, and psychological components in the phenomenon of conversion. The paper has a limited concept of conversion. It will basically deal with the Christian conversion, that is, the conversion to Jesus Christ. For the method of the paper, the researcher attempted to follow the method of a sequential stage model of Lewis Rambo. According to Rambo, a stage model is appropriate in that conversion is a process of change over time, generally exhibiting a sequence of processes, although there is sometimes a spiraling effect-a going back and forth between stages. Rambo theorized that religious conversion consists of a process involving seven stages or dimensions such as context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment, and consequences. In this paper, the researcher will chiefly focus on the dimensions of context and crisis, which are the significant elements in the conversion narrative of my father. Conversion is always a complicated phenomenon that can be approached in various ways. In order to understand the genuine reason behind conversion, it needs to be seriously considered in light of culture, psychology, history, and the whole context in which a convert is living. It can be a dramatic and radical event. It can be an ongoing process of change in need of lifetime involvement. It is true that the conversion is created totally by the action of God in the case of my father's narrative, but it is also regarded to be created totally by the action of humans in the special cultural context in which a convert lives, thinks, questions, and decides.