What is conversion?

Let's illustrate Christian conversion with some comparisons:

i) Suppose I was born blind. I have an older brother. We're about 2 years apart. We're very close. He's always protected me. I know him by sound, scent, and touch–but not by sight. 

Suppose, due a medical breakthrough I received an eye transplant using cloned eyes. After surgery, when I open my eyes, I see my brother looking down at me. I see my brother for the first time.

Of course, my brother always had a visual dimension. It's just that up until then, I didn't have the capacity to sense that dimension. 

ii) Suppose my teenage brother has a poster of a pinup girl in our bedroom. I'm still prepubescent, so I don't see what he sees in her. When I hit puberty, the poster suddenly has the same effect on me it has on my older brother. 

The poster hasn't changed. Same face, figure, eyes, and hair. But I have a new capacity to appreciate something that was there all along.

iii) To take a more subtle example: suppose my dad is crazy about opera divas. He loves the timbre of a classically trained female vocalist. 

I don't get it–until I hit puberty. Then I suddenly find the sound of an opera diva seductively appealing. Nothing changed in the voice. Rather, something changed in me. I heard the same voice, but I didn't perceive it the same way before and after I hit puberty. 

These examples have a male bias, but I could illustrate the same principle using the reaction of a teenybopper to a boy band. 

Conversion creates–or restores–a capacity to perceive something that was always the case, but we suffered from a psychological impediment that blocked recognition and appreciation.