Very important question: can anyone tell me who this guy is…? [show photo of cookie monster] Yes! Cookie Monster! He's great, isn't he?
For those of you unaware of this blue icon of children’s television, as his name suggests, Cookie Monster is really into cookies—like absolutely feral for them! When he sees cookies, he goes in on them so quickly (and with such fervour) that crumbs go flying!
As such, unsurprisingly, Cookie’s whole identity is built around him being absolutely obsessed cookies—like to a point that he has chosen to forgo his birth name of Sid in preference to being called Cookie Monster (as the world learned in a tweet from his official Twitter page on October 13th, 2022).
But I want you to imagine… and I know this is going to be hard… but I want you to try to imagine that one day, Cookie woke up and shared with the world that he now hates cookies (absolutely abhors them) and that he now wants to be knows as “Anti-Cookie Monster”!
What would you think when you heard this news?! What would your first thoughts be?! Would you perhaps double check the date to see if this could possibly be an April fools joke? Would you perhaps think that this was just some big media stunt to get him trending on Twitter? Would you actually be able to believe that Cookie Monster—the Cookie Monster—now hated cookies…? I don’t think I would be able to! I think I would really struggle to believe this sudden change of heart in Cookie, because it would just seem so out of character of him. Like his entire identity (thus far) has been built upon being really freaking into cookies; how can he now all of a sudden hate cookies?! It just seems impossible!
But, here’s the thing, though… such a radical change of heart is, indeed, very possible. So possible in fact that one of the most important figures to the spread of Christianity in the early days of the church had an origin story that to many in his day and age, sounded just as crazy as us hearing that Cookie Monster now (all of a sudden) hated cookies. This figure’s change of heart sounded equally as ridiculous and impossible.
Meet Saul of Tarsus. Saul (later becoming known as Paul in his work with the church) started off his career as a Pharisee in the temple in Jerusalem. Just in case we don’t remember, the Pharisees were the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus and (very unfortunately) were the group that ordered for Jesus to be executed on the cross for claiming to be the Son of God.
So as a Pharisee (and quite a prominent one at that), Saul became very well known for his persecution of early Christians. Indeed, so well known that the Book of Acts (chapter 7) mentions that Saul was actually at the very first Christian martyrdom believed ever to have happened, which resulted in an early Christian in Jerusalem by the name of Stephen being stoned to death for refusing to stand down from the position that Jesus was the long-prophesied Son of Man that the Hebrew Scriptures spoke of.
Saul’s heart was so eager to stop the spread of Christ’s Good News (believing that it was the correct and faithful thing to do for God) that his persecution of Christians was not just limited to Jerusalem. He traveled to various different locations that Jews lived to enact his persecution, and it was actually on one of these trips away from Jerusalem that everything in Saul’s life changed in an instance.
As described in the Book of Acts (chapter 9), Saul was travelling to Damascus (in Syria) to crack down on the early church’s presence there, when all of a sudden, a light from heaven flashed around him, and the light called out and said: “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?”
And in that very instance, Saul’s heart did a complete 180. No longer was he the chief persecutor of Christians, because now, he was one.
But just imagine for a second that you’re one of the Christians in Damascus that Saul had been on his way to persecute! It would probably be really hard to receive with open arms the man that (quite possibly), personally, oversaw the death of several of your Christian friends. It would make a lot of sense for you to suspect that this was some sort of stunt for him to gain insider knowledge to then use to set you up! How could the man who was very well known for hating Christians now be saying he was one? It would make a lot of sense if you felt like this was an impossible change of heart—kind of like Cookie Monster saying that he now hated cookies.
But, unlike this hypothetical example with Cookie Monster, Saul’s change of heart actually happened, with him eventually becoming one of the most important figures to the spread of the early Jesus movement! Thirteen books of the New Testament are traditionally ascribed to being written by him. Now that is some influence!
So, it would seem that one of the core takeaways from the story of Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus is to expect the unexpected when it comes to God—that seemingly impossible changes of heart can (indeed) be possible.
Perhaps that one person in our lives who’s always just been… the way that they’ve been… shouldn’t be given up on quite yet. And, maybe we shouldn’t rule out the possibility of Cookie Monster one day becoming the face of an anti-cookie campaign! What a thought!
