Going to Israel to Find Quebec

National Post ^ | Oct. 12, 2011 | Barbara Kay

[jjotto]

There are the countless stories of conversions from one religion to another, from atheism to belief and from belief to atheism.

All of these leaps of faith are interesting, because the same uniquely human faculty - the ability to critically examine the received wisdom of one's youth, and to reject it in favour of other more compelling resolutions to one's spiritual discomfort - can lead to so many disparate and often contradictory solutions.

Whatever the intellectual process that leads to such a dramatic change in a life, the final step is always a leap of faith. On Oct. 1, La Presse published two extracts from a newly published book recounting a double conversion - first political, then religious - requiring a leap of faith over such an unusually wide chasm that it deserves our attention. The author of Juif, une histoire québécoise, is Richard Marceau, a former MP for the Bloc Québécois from 1997-2006.

Early in his tenure, Mr. Marceau took a trip to Israel. Up until then, he had not seriously questioned the reason why most Quebecers, and in particular those dedicated to the sovereigntist option, reflexively sympathized with the Palestinians against Israel.

What he saw in Israel awakened first his curiosity and then his admiration...

[jjotto]

A strange story indeed, though the bottom line seems understandable: "He assigns his profound inner revolution to a need for meaning that could not be met by anything short of a reconciliation with God."

[marron]

He assigns his profound inner revolution to a need for meaning that could not be met by anything short of a reconciliation with God.

That line rings with me too. I've been a Christian all of my life and I've had to come to the same conclusion again and again.