The great wit, C. S. Lewis, started out a doubter. He saw British Christianity a pale and bloodless business. It did not excite him. In fact, to his reasoned, calculating way of thinking, Christianity made very little sense. It smelled of superstition and made promises about the future he was sure it could not make good on.

But C. S. Lewis came to see that he was missing something. He began to slide into a cynicism about life that frightened him. He wanted something to believe in. Someone who was on the Christian pilgrimage helped him to see that there was room for him in the parade. Not suddenly, but rather quietly, unspectacularly, Lewis came into the Christian camp. We know the rest of the story: He became a great intellectual apologist for Christianity, writing and speaking to confound the critics of the Faith. He was the reverse of Ralph Vaughan Williams, taking on the critics of the Christian faith in Britain in a series of radio broadcasts which became enormously popular among a population growing steadily more indifferent to Christ.

A similar story can be told of Malcolm Muggeridge, a British thinker who in later life came to see that the Christian Faith made far more sense to him than clinging to agnosticism. He, like Lewis, became an apologist for Christianity. He said "yes" to the invitation, after he first had said "no."

It isn't how the journey starts that counts. It's how it ends that matters.