THIS IS MY STORY, THIS IS MY SONG
A visiting preacher, Nick Cuthbert, reminded us recently of something he first told us on the church weekend retreat in January 2012 - that we ought to 'tell our stories' to others. I think I ought to tell my story, following on from what was said. I am aware that, having been a follower of Christ for a long time, this could become very long indeed, and that it could be very boring. I shall try to condense those parts of the last fifty years which aren't directly relevant to this particular story - how and why I became a Christian.
I was brought up in a village in the Cumbrian countryside. My father was a nurseryman, and my mother a PE teacher. Consequently, my first few years were spent, mainly, outside. School came as a nasty shock! I was bullied, badly, from day one. I suppose initially because I was an obvious target - I so obviously hated being there! Cooped up in a big room, with a lot of other children, the only windows, like those in a church, having sills far too high up for a small child to see anything but sky, it was the antithesis of everything I'd experienced up to that point. I was brighter than most, and keen to learn. That seemed to set me apart from my peers too.
God didn't feature in my life, or those of my parents, at all. There was a lady in the village who used to run a Sunday School (after school on a Tuesday afternoon, of all times - what was the sense in that?), but I didn't go because it would have meant spending yet more time with the other kids from school.
Starting secondary school didn't improve matters at all really. I did have friends, but they weren't 'just friends' - they were people I swam, played water polo and sailed with, so we had something in common. Those activities, and the friendships I made through them, were really what I lived for. School was just there to be endured. I enjoyed learning, but the rest of it was torture and I was an unhappy child. School remained a miserable experience until I changed schools again to go into the Sixth Form. There I met a few 'kindred spirits' - other bright teenagers, with enquiring minds and a good attitude to learning. I was still rather a loner though, and didn't really form many new friendships - I'd been hurt too much to risk 'opening up', and solitude had become my normal habit.
I became very interested, by turns, in various philosophies of life, particularly existentialism and later existential nihilism. Life seemed to have no purpose, and the world no real meaning - it just was. The only meaning to life came from within each individual, and that was the only place it could come from. Science, as far as I was concerned, would ultimately explain everything. Humans were just bags of water with a few chemicals thrown in.
I was gradually befriended by a girl, Isobel, also new to the school. I was very lonely so, though incredibly nervous of 'opening up' in any way, I also craved friendship and love - which, I suppose, neatly clobbers the 'bag of water' theory... It helped that she was a tall, bubbly, vivacious, attractive, brunette - but that had the side-effect of making me even shyer, and it took her a long time, and a lot of patience, to draw me out of my shell. I was 'warned off' by one of my peers: "You fancy Isobel don't you? You do realise that her Dad is the vicar of that weird church on Lonsdale Street, don't you? He's about 6'7", and built like a brick outhouse." I wasn't bothered. I had a 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' attitude in those days - still do I suppose!
Anyway, Isobel started to debate with me, and to question my (lack of) beliefs. She gradually 'introduced me' to the concept of God. Amusingly, I later learned she spent many hours with her father, working out how to answer my many questions, and how to counter my utter refusal to believe in anything that couldn't be touched or measured. There wasn't, and isn't, a proper answer to that - or, at least, not a human answer. I did, though, gradually begin to 'open up'. I also realised that there was something 'different' about Isobel. I began to attend the school Christian Union - which Isobel ran. They were a lovely, and very loving, bunch - I hadn't really experienced anything like that before.
I drank, swore, and was given to fairly random acts of violence. Most of my peers, with a few exceptions, used to give me a fairly wide berth - probably in case something they said annoyed me and I attacked them. My temper was fairly short and my reactions in any situation fairly unpredictable. So the CU must have found me a pretty awkward customer.
During my upper Sixth year, I managed to break my wrist whilst playing hockey. That was a bit of a disaster with 'A' Levels only about three months away. And, as most of my sporting interests concerned water (swimming, water-polo and sailing were my passions), I very rapidly became extremely bored - doing school work all the time was out of the question. One can only go to so many parties and consume so much alcohol too. So, Isobel made the bold move of inviting me to go to church one Sunday evening.
The first problem, having arrived (a bit too early really - habit of a lifetime!), was how to get into this imposing red sandstone building? I'd approached from the East, so, in logical fashion, I started with the first door I could see - locked. So I moved on to the next - also locked. At which point, a big, bumbling, grinning, bloke wearing jeans and a bomber jacket came up to me - 'Are you trying to get in?' His name was Ian, and he was to have a big influence on me in the next few months and years.
Church was very, very, odd - a complete ‘culture shock’ without ever leaving England’s fair shore!! I could only remember ever having been to a church service once before - when one of my cousins got married. And this was nothing like that, not at all, no sir. It was noisy, and pretty confusing, but very, very, friendly. So I went back the next week, and the following week. It was most odd though! For one thing, they sang all these songs with gusto - as if they meant them, and believed what the words said. They seemed to believe that the 'Gifts of the Spirit', detailed by Paul in his letters to various churches in the First Century, were still 'available'; that God was real, and that he worked through His people to reach out to others. How weird was that - and how could it be real, almost 2,000 years after Jesus' supposed death?
After a few weeks, the 'oddness' really hit me, smack between the eyes. The effect was probably not unlike being run over by a truck. A man I'd seen before, but never even spoken to, stood up at the front and said he had a 'word of knowledge' which was relevant to someone there. He proceeded, over the course of what felt like a lifetime but was probably little more than five minutes, to detail the course of my life; my hopes, fears and ambitions; my deepest, darkest secrets; the worst of the things I'd done in my life; and so on. This was incredibly scary. How did he know? How could he possibly know? A lot of this stuff I'd never told to a living soul - nor would I - I’d far rather have died than divulge my secrets!
There was an altar-call, but I didn't respond - I was too terrified about what might happen. I left church that night very, very, frightened. Somehow I knew that God existed, that he knew all about me, and that what he knew wasn't good - any of it. I spent the next week pretty much wishing that the earth would swallow me up - it was hellish!
To be continued...