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It would appear that I have been asked to write my ‘Testimony’. This is mainly, I suspect, to prove that Christis does publish testimonies of its members occasionally, and perhaps because I can always be relied on to drivel on at great length! I have a certain suspicion of the tradition of elevating testimony, particularly with a capital ‘T’, to a special ceremonial position in Christian life and worship. I feel it tends to focus on individuals rather than the community, and thus unbalances the need for the whole body of Christians to recognise that we are made up of various differently flawed and differently skilled people, who have to work together under God’s influence. Anyway, here’s two things about me — an account of my Christian wobblings since I started aspiring to be loosely ‘adult’, and an account of a specific, deeply personal moment when I felt close to God.
My Christian education has always been in, around, and across the background of, that wooly conglomeration of people and ways of doing things known as the Church of England. In it, I went to a supportive, intelligent and prayerful church on a fairly regular basis with my family from an early age. Around it, I picked up from an education in Church schools the impression that the whole ‘Christianity thing’ failed to connect with the majority of people, particularly the people who one would actively want to be friends with. Gradually, this changed. As Sixth Form and ‘A’ levels got their evil claws into my adolescent mind, I met a bunch of people who I am still friends with today, and whose shared experiences in Christianity have helped me, taught me and encouraged me. Over a period of about two years I gradually realised through the work of my own Church that Christianity was not simply an indication of the culture I had been brought up in — it’s both a collection of cultural and personal attitudes to God and a call to action. Some of my friends were involved with a local church that held (and still holds) a service for what might be generally described as ‘Youth’, featuring lots of very loud music, which is of course no bad thing at all. There — and at home — whilst I learnt the importance of analysing and evaluating for oneself what is being taught, I was ‘bashed’ quite heftily with the fundamentals of an active spiritual life — a personal, not recited, knowledge of the Bible, and the realisation that prayer works effectively. The youth of my own church, were in their own ways at the same time getting involved in this way of seeing Christ as relevant to our own lives and the net result has been to add to the ministry of a fairly traditional Anglican church an increasingly successful group of young people with guitars and cheesy grins called ‘Freedom’ (CD available on request!).
Obviously at the same time we were all at different times going through the discoveries of self-confidence, the opposite sex, the art of listening to loud music in hot sweaty rooms, alcohol and a sense of what must be called ‘style’ simply for lack of better word. Basically, the upper ranks of being a ‘teenager’ were being as alternately uplifting, frustrating and bowel-openingly terrifying as they are for anyone in this country. As stuff progressed, I came here (hurrah!), and went through a first year (I’m now in my third year) of ‘settling in’, becoming involved in the CU and on the fringes of Christis, MethAng and Cassoc.
But no more of this. It’s a fairly sketchy explanation of where I am coming from, and those who want any more can ask me. What I want to say next is more important. Last summer it became apparent that my Grandad was dying. This was not unexpected — he was 88, and though he had remained unfeasibly healthy up until the year before, he had become discernibly less enthusiastic about life with the death of my Granny in 1990. A man for whom I had the deepest love and respect, he had lived most of his long life before I was even thought of, and had maintained both a deep scepticism about the way the world was going (such experiences as losing most of his friends in the London Blitz as a volunteer fireman and subsequently being ‘trained’ to deal with nuclear war as part of the Civil Defence Volunteers in the 50s probably count) and a determination to respect and deal honestly with those he met and loved.
What at the time provoked in me mixed reactions of confusion, spiritual doubt and (perversely) guilt was that this man who I loved dearly and was definitely going to die was not to my mind a Christian and never became one as most would understand it, a result partially I am told of his treatment by those ‘Christians’ who tried to educate him as a child (being beaten with a piece of wood wrapped in leather for not going to church does little for anybody’s faith), and partially of the world problems he, as an intelligent working class man, saw as being caused by political abuse of and involvement in ‘Religion’ — a patronising, manipulated, force that repressed people and tried to put them in their place. And who can blame him? Frequently it has. He made no attempt to halt any of us in our discovery of God, and had in fact sent my mother to Sunday school and confirmation classes at the local church, but his own reserve remained.
I had gradually absorbed the idea from people who I respected and trusted that unless one made an intellectual and self-aware dedication to Christ before one died, one was going to be punished. Of course, Biblically it says that Christ reserves judgement to himself, but the degree of leeway left to God was considered to be fairly slim. The smug, glib intellectual adherence I made to this state of affairs made the right conditions for a spiritual kick in the goolies as the fact of my Grandad’s impending death hit me. One Friday night late that summer (Grandad had been in hospital and only sporadically capable of contact with others for a while now) my parents came to the dinner table and said that the hospital had phoned and said that the chances of him outlasting four days or so were slim. This was of course painful, even though we had known there was no way back for a while now. But there’s a difference between letting go of the handle and watching the door slam.
I made preparations to leave the house, drive off on my own and meet with friends for a normal Friday night down the pub. As I drove I was in an intense state of confusion. Had I ever shown enough of the honest convictions I felt about God to Grandad? Would doing this, or attempting it, and doing it badly, have done anything at all? I gave up. Somewhere on the main road I turned off the radio (which is always, but always, on when I drive) and managed to do something I have never managed to do properly to before or since — to drive a car and pray passionately and coherently (which is difficult anyway, never mind simultaneously trying to adhere to the Highway Code!). All I prayed was something on the lines of this: “Jesus, even if he can’t be with you, please be with him”. I doesn’t take a theologian to drive a truck through the holes in the logic of that, yet what I was basically (and primitively) praying for was for release from my own self-obsessed tying of myself in knots from the only person who could offer any help. He gave it, in a way. The mere fact that I had placed my burdens on God quieted me and I believe that that night I did feel His presence.
The next day my Grandad died, a little over a year ago now. That event still had, and still has effects and repercussions on me and my family. God does not stop events. Life goes on, and since then much has happened in my life that has taken me further away from the person I thought I was a year ago. I haven’t as a result of this experience ‘backed down’ from a position of sincere belief. Rather, I’ve learnt more about those damn annoying grey areas that humans have made to fill up God’s black and white, and also about how God is there in those grey areas, not dicatorially driving us out of them into positions of complete constant self-confidence, but working with us to change us into caring, compassionate people. I still believe it is crucially important for all Christians to show out their faith to those who do not share it, primarily in love and service, but also by openly stating what they believe - coherently and resolutely, but not jarringly, rashly or domineeringly. This is just one of the handful of occasions on which, both as an individual and as part of a group, I feel God has poked his head round the door of the messy teenage bedroom that is my life. Sometimes He reveals, sometimes he relieves.
Perhaps what I am trying to say here is both “don’t give up” and also “don’t think it’s easy” — support and guidance from those around you is key, not necessarily in terms of overt teaching, but just in terms of prayer and affection. I had that, and still have that, and try to give that to others. Nothing can eclipse the emotion I felt before this when a close friend of mine down the pub casually mentioned he’d been praying for Grandad. We don’t and should never have to do it alone. But through the pain of being knocked back in our spiritual assumptions, of feeling alone and lost, we can come to a God who has made it possible for us to come to him at any time in many ways. At a Christian Union meeting recently, a man spoke on how many people add specifications and qualifications on to God — “I believe in God — but”, “I believe in God — if”. Sometimes the sheer effort of just trying to hold on to “I believe in God and” is too much. It is then we must just turn to Him and say “I believe in You”, without any idea of what to cling to but Him alone …
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Last modified: 25th November 2005