DAWN Fridayfax 1996 #29
DAWN News from England
When the penny drops
Source: Martyn Harris, Daily Telegraph, 25 May 1996
Christianity: badly-dressed people with no style
- At 14, I stopped attending the Methodist church where I grew up. I refused confirmation even though I was proud of the liturgy: two Bible readings, six songs, a sermon and then home for lunch. There wasn't much of intellectual interest in the church; the pastor never seemed to deal with the basics of the faith and seemed to spend his time trying to draw modern parallels to the gospels. It seemed to me that science and the modern world had so terrorised Christianity that it had given up dealing openly with the central mysteries. The church consisted mostly of old widows and the most unattractive and worst-dressed youths imaginable. Exactly the people you avoid in school. Religion, I concluded, was for old people afraid of dying and young people with no style.
The little demon of scepticism sits on every journalist's shoulder
- As a journalist, you are often in lively bars or violent demonstrations. You then have to find the one shouting the loudest and ask him the most stupid questions to turn the situation to your journalistic advantage. Applied scepticism: it became almost second nature to me. Science's triumphalism - "Give us another minute and we'll show you God" - seemed to me just as naive as religious fundamentalists' frothy exuberance. As a journalist, you quickly see through people's hollow excitement about themselves. Even admiration of a painting or the goosepimples you have when reading a particularly good line of poetry often come only from the fact that someone has expressed what you always thought yourself.
Love instead of stupid optimism
- And then I had cancer. I was probably the last person who should have cancer, I told myself. The treatment didn't catch, my hair had fallen out and I had frequent dizzy spells. Why shouldn't I just commit suicide, I asked myself during a period in hospital. Wouldn't suicide bring physical freedom? The best reason for living was simply that it was probably better to continue even if there is no reason for living. The acceptance of the survival instinct - head up, march on! - is probably the only speck of morality left after the desolations of scientific materialism and existentialism. The most important influence in my life at that point was that people were nice to me. I had always had a sort of stupid optimism about other people and the world, but in a crisis like mine, ambitions, money and belongings fade to gray and life's really important structures are revealed: my wife, children, family and friends, and our love for each other.
Christianity's political potential
- And then I took another look at Christianity. From a small corner of Palestine, Christianity conquered the Roman Empire in three centuries without a single battle. In the form of peaceful resistance, it drove the English out of India, won the fight for civil rights in the south of the USA, won against apartheid in South Africa and even caused the fall of communism. It was, despite the economic and diplomatic moves in the background, always the peaceful masses who made the decisive achievements. I slowly realised the incredibly potent political insight: love your enemies, turn the other cheek, don't forgive 7 times but 70 times 7 times.
Historical phenomenon with followers in awful shoes
- Despite their brevity, I had never read any of the gospels completely, and was often ashamed when someone came in when I was reading the Bible. I used to quickly cover the Bible with another book. Weren't Christians the people who knew nothing about Bob Dylan and Joe Cocker, with fish stickers on their cars and an incredible taste for awful shoes?
And what would my friends think? "Poor Martyn, cancer drove him to God's army"? But I could not keep myself away from the gospel any longer. I was fascinated: the Bible's poetic language; the suggestive and seemingly paradoxical teaching; Jesus' strong authority, a historical phenomenon at the least, who caused those who knew him to leave their houses and families to follow him. What I found in the Bible were not the tepid children's tales of the sweet little Jesus, but reports of spiritual transformation and revolution. Today, I look my own death in the eyes more strongly and without the previous spiralling panic which it previously caused. And even my wife says that my temper is no longer so bad. After reading the existentialists and scientists such as Stephen Hawkins, Richard Dawkins or Philip Larkin, I sit here in front of my computer, smell the flowers outside and listen to the noise of my family downstairs and think to myself that I now know which model I follow: that of Jesus. Yes, I think so. I don't know. No. I hope. Yes.
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