"I’ve talked about the sudden change of heart that happens when a new faith opens up inside someone. Early Christianity clearly recognized this as possible.

Philosophers are partly right when they emphasize the power of habit and how slow, difficult, and gradual moral improvement usually is. They doubt abrupt conversions can happen. But they don’t have the whole truth. 

I believe the popular view—that real change can strike suddenly—contains a deep reality. Most genuine popular beliefs about inner human experience usually do. It’s true that instant, total transformation of the mind is rare, especially today. Yet nearly all the most remarkable moral recoveries we see (and there are far too few) happen exactly this way.

Yes, the normal path—wrestling your way out of destructive passions through sheer willpower and reason—is slow and exhausting. If all change worked like that, the philosophers would be correct to call it uncommon and laborious. But real transformation often comes from a higher, more powerful source. 

It begins with a new, intense feeling—a fresh surge of reverence, shame, or love—that then pulls reason and conscience along behind it. 

The bad habits and failings aren’t carefully dug out one by one like weeds in a garden. Instead, they’re burned away in a sudden blaze of divine shame and love.

This kind of change cannot be planned or counted on. Trying to calculate or schedule it is extremely dangerous. The deepest movements of the soul pull away from our schemes and predictions. They come unannounced—or not at all. 

If you try to force or rely on them, you only drive them further away, revealing how barren your own heart has become. Self-cure is incredibly hard. What is impossible for us on our own may be entirely possible for God.

In the end, denying that such sudden changes can happen—while pretending to be wise about human nature—actually shows a profound ignorance of real people." James Martineau.