TO PRAISE HIM

What Christianity Means to Me

Photo: (Front) Sunday morning worship

at a church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This booklet was written for a British

soldier who asked me if there was a
book which explains Christianity. We
were stood in an old church, with angels
faces painted all the way across the
ceiling. My intent was to offer him not
just a summary of the story told in the
Bible, from a Christian perspective, but a
sense of what it feels like to believe that
story. Indeed, to be a part of that story.
Any errors are my own.

The ordinary agnostic has got his facts

all wrong. He is a non-believer for a
multitude of reasons; but they are
untrue reasons. He doubts because the
Middle Ages were barbaric, but they
werent; because Darwinism is
demonstrated, but it isnt; because
miracles do not happen, but they do;
because monks were lazy, but they were
very industrious; because nuns are
unhappy, but they are particularly
cheerful; because Christian art was sad
and pale, but it was picked out in
peculiarly bright colours and gay with
gold; because modern science is moving
away from the supernatural, but it isnt.
It is moving towards the supernatural
with the rapidity of a railway train.

A child of seven is excited by being told

that Tommy opened a door and saw a
dragon. But a child of three is excited by
being told that Tommy opened a door.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

f all the lines in the Bible, the

one I recall the most is this: I
tell you the truth, unless you change
and become like little children, you
will never enter the kingdom of
heaven.
I once took assemblies at a primary
school on an estate in West
Yorkshire. Every time I started, I was
aware that, not only the children, but
probably most of the staff, had little
idea about God. They werent even
anti-Christian, or anti-religious, but
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most simply had no idea what any of

it was about. They had grown up
without seeing people pray at home,
or talking about God outside
assemblies like this.
I was there on behalf of a local parish,
and although it was not an official
Church school these visits were
regular enough for me to know many
of the characters in the hall, young
and old, and to appreciate their
position. There wasnt much
difference between the staff and the
smallest children, except the younger
ones listened more closely. Either
way, I knew that I could not get away
with using the usual Christian phrases
like salvation and redemption,

because they meant so little. One day

I expressed myself like this:
As a Christian, I believe that God,
who created the trees and the
clouds, the hills, and you and me,
came down to earth, not as a superhero to zap all the baddies, but as a
tiny human baby, and that he grew up
and died in love for you and me.
Afterwards, a young child ran up to
me and said I love God! Me too, I
said. Maybe I should talk like that
more often, I thought.
You have to believe God exists
before you can love him. Many dont
believe, though considerably less
outside Europe than within. European
churches are in the habit of
responding to this by conducting
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surveys, like soft drink companies.

What would make you come back to
Church? they ask. The answers tend
to fall into three broad categories: I
dont believe in God; Its boring/not
friendly/I had a bad experience; or I
wish I had faith, but I dont
Believing in God, loving God, and
praying to him from a depth within
me that is hardly my own, is
something I know a bit about. The
fact that I am far from perfect is a
part of my story, but praising God is
also part of my story, and the part I
wish to share here. To that extent,
this is offered as an account of what
it feels like to be a Christian.
Years ago, on a very long car journey
with my son, I realised that his ideas
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for when and where we stopped

were often better than mine. His
mind seemed to be more attuned to
the context and his intuition sharper.
Eventually (and the journey lasted
weeks) I came to the conclusion that
my job was to discern which of his
ideas was genius and which were
selfish and short-sighted. I was better
at doing that than coming up with
new ideas myself.
To pretend children do not have a
selfish side to them would be oversentimental. They say that as infants
we are unaware of any reality at all
beyond our own desires. The
concept of other people existing has
not yet dawned, let alone empathy. It
takes time to shake off the illusion
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that the world revolves around us,

and some, bluntly, never seem to
manage. Maybe none of us do
entirely. Most religions and
philosophies (though not all)
encourage people to see beyond
their self-obsession; to be
community-minded and
compassionate, and to contemplate a
reality beyond them themselves.
But, in amongst their bursts of selfish
madness, children are also capable of
seeing things very clearly. Sometimes
frighteningly clearly. Often more
clearly than adults. They arent as
distracted by background thoughts of
money, relationship or time. Their
priorities are joy, fun and immediate
warmth the sort of priorities that
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the wise and aged encourage on their

death-beds. Children have bigger,
readier hearts than most middle-aged
adults. And you need a big, ready
heart to enter the Kingdom of
heaven, for it is a place of love.
Consider this moment in the Bible:
Then Jesus went into the temple of God
and drove out those who bought and
sold in the temple, and overturned the
tables of the money changers and the
seats of those who sold doves. And he
said to them, It is written, My house
shall be called a house of prayer, but
you have made it a den of thieves.
Then the blind and the lame came to
him in the temple, and he healed them.
But when the chief priests and the
scribes saw the wonderful things that he
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did, and the children crying out in the

temple and saying Hosanna to the Son
of David! they were indignant and said
to him, Do you hear what these are
saying? And Jesus said to them, Yes.
Have you never read, Out of the mouth
of babes and nursing infants, you have
perfected praise?
Children arent just at times
adorable, the Bible tells us; they can
be very wise.

arly Christian leaders were

sometimes referred to as
Guardians of the Story. Christianity
is certainly a story. Its a story that
some read every day and still
discover something new each time
they do. Children are clever with
stories. They like the voice telling the
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story as much as the story, and they

know which voices they trust most.
Stories have been a part of every
human culture. They fulfil a need for
more than information. In the very
telling, they give a sense that things
hang together, and reassurance
before the lights go out.
I once heard about an 18th Century
English traveller who, while on a tour
of Russia, visited a great, aristocratic
estate. He and his host were
entertained one evening by a
storyteller of great charm. Disaster
struck when the storyteller halted his
story for a moment, for the host was
so incensed at having the story
broken that he had the storyteller
executed.
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Stories can and do affect our state of

mind. In our own era, publishing,
music, movie-making and even the
news media are huge industries for a
reason: rich and poor, we consume
stories.
There are different kinds of stories
that could be said to have an impact
on us, beyond the movie or book.
There are the weird, wonderful and
fractal ones which we dream while
we are asleep, and the (more
coherent) day-dream fantasies or
paranoid scenarios that we play out
while awake; they all run, as do
memories, into the reservoir of ones
disposition. They are powerful: I have
seen prisoners hang rosary crosses

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on all four of their bedposts to stop

having nightmares.
Then there are the sugared stories
sold to us by advertisers and
businessmen, fantasies which can
affect our mood and actions. To that
we could add the narratives offered
by managers, academics and
politicians. And the Church.
We are all at it, all the time. We
need stories just to get through the
day. Indeed, the whole medicine of
psychology could be said to be the
study of an individuals internal
stories; which are healthy drivers of
behaviour, and which arent?
Everyone has stories going on. The
man trying to make ends meet has
just as much a driving narrative going
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on as the man hooked on revenge, or

the prisoner of conscience refusing
to refute his beliefs. Or the addict, or
the determined athlete, artist or
businessman.
Stories can vie for attention within
our mind. For example, the drive to
be a great father and a success at
work. But we still need stories, for
we need purpose.
No wonder children like stories, for
stories are the currency of our
human mind. To that extent, one
might say that any story is better
than no story. But best of all would
be to have a story that incorporated
all your other stories, an overarching
story you could invest yourself in

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unreservedly. Ultimately, we want

the truth.
What is the truth? Jesus was once
asked, by a man who could not see
that the truth stood right then before
him. Why do we call early Christian
leaders guardians of the story,
rather than guardians of a story, or
guardians of their story? Jesus did
not answer the man. The Christian
story is not a debate to be had, but a
story to be believed as true, or
rejected.
So what is the story? As Jesus said, it
is a story that one can only hope to
believe as a little child. I believe the
whole, miraculous story told in the
holy Bible. I believe that there is a
God and that He is a good God, and
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that He created the world, the stars,

humans and other animals, the air we
breathe, the sea we swim in.
l believe that Jesus was standing at
Gods right hand when God created
these things, and that we, of all
creatures, are made in Gods own
image. That is to say, of everything in
the universe, we look the most like
God. We are uniquely important and
(sometimes) uniquely infuriating to
the God who made us. I believe that
humans, and the choices we make,
are the main reason for the whole
universe existing. When we get it
right, the whole of creation will have
been fulfilled, like a pregnant woman
giving birth to a child.

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Unfortunately, we are not very good

at making decisions. The first two
humans were a man and a woman.
God placed them in an unimaginably
beautiful garden and set them free to
start making their own decisions.
They had enough food forever, were
close to the presence of God, and
would never die. In essence they
were in paradise. They could have
built a life and family there.
But they chose to do the one thing
that messed this up. They tried to get
equal to God. This was not possible,
and it was wrong. We look like God,
and we are nurtured and loved by
God. We can even be filled with his
glorious Holy Spirit, but we can
never be equal to God, who made us,
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and sustains us. He gives us breath

and created the universe. Forgetting
that fact is the gateway to all our
mistakes.
The first two humans, our ancestors,
had a choice: to enjoy the paradise
God had given them, where they
could meet with Him, or to listen to
the devil, whom God had allowed to
test them. The devil, in the form of a
serpent, told them that if they ate a
single fruit he pointed them to they
could be Gods equal. The devil knew
this to be a lie, but was fixed on
rebellion. God had warned them not
to eat that particular fruit. They
believed the devil, ate the forbidden
fruit he had offered them, and waited
to see what would happen.
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Something certainly happened. God

was still God, and humans were still
humans, but now we were in trouble.
We were going to have to embark
on a long journey to get back to
Gods side, to prove that he could
still trust us. We were going to have
to pass through many obstacles,
births, miracles, wars, hard work and
experiences before we got back
there. But we would, and we will get
back there. That, God promised to
Adam and Eve as he removed them
from the Garden.
The two of them were taken to a
harder place east of the Garden and
left there. It was far less fertile, and
more dangerous than the world they
had known. Something else had
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changed: they started to grow old.

Slowly, but it was happening. Adam
would live to 930 years (the average
age would soon start to fall) but he
would know death, which had not
existed at all in the Garden.
Their first two sons (Cain and Abel)
fought with each other, and one
killed the other. That wasnt a great
start either. They had other children,
who bred between themselves, and
produced more. They also
encountered ghoulish heavenly
creatures and giants in this land, who
started breeding with Adams
daughters and grand-daughters. It can
only have been a brutal nightmare for
Adam and Eve, who remembered the

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Garden, where even the animals had

cohabited and death had not stalked.
Whatever Adam and Eve had told
them of God, their heirs grew up for
the most part brutal. They lived like
the animals did. They made decisions
based on brutal urges. Finally, God
sent a flood to wipe them all out,
save for one family, that of a man
named Noah.
Noah had survived by building a
wooden ship, on Gods instructions,
before the rains and erupting springs
laid the world under water. On that
ship, he had gathered a remnant of
every animal species, as well as his
family; his wife, sons and their wives.

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After the flood abated, Noahs family

landed, and the human story began
again. Despite everything, in the years
that followed the story grew dark
again. As they grew more numerous,
these ancestors of ours decided to
build a giant tower at a place called
Babel, so that they could reach God.
They built vast brick kilns, as Noah
had built his ark. But, unlike Noahs
ship, building a tower to heaven was
not only humanly impossible, but not
blessed by God. Quite the opposite;
it showed that we still harboured an
obsession with equalling God.
We hadnt changed much since the
Garden. We were not, and are not,
the Creator. We are part of his
Creation. We could not and cannot
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reach heaven by our own ingenuity,

but only by Gods intervention. We
will reach heaven again, but not that
way.
So God sent a spirit of confusion
among the builders of this vast and
doomed tower, so that Noahs
descendants started speaking in
different languages. They couldnt live
together after that, but began to
splinter into races of shared
languages, and to roam the surface of
the world from which the Flood had
receded.
Years passed, years in which these
races split further, and grew, and
began to settle into nations. One day,
in a place called Ur, a few weeks
south-east of where Noah had
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landed, a herdsman named Abram

was instructed by God to leave his
people and travel with his wife and
servants into a land he had never
been to before. Abram had no
children of his own, but he heard
God promise that were he to trust
him, and depart on this journey, he
and his wife would give birth, not just
to a family, but to a nation; a new
nation that would lead the human
journey back to Gods side.
And so that journey now started.
Through the faith shown by the
herdsman Abram and his wife, the
story turned. Abram wasnt perfect,
but he trusted God at moments on
that journey when everything seemed
lost, and it was his faith above all that
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pleased God. In honour of Abrams

faith, God renamed him Abraham,
father of a multitude.
Abraham had no sense of precisely
where God wanted him to settle this
nation-to-be, so he continued
wandering as a nomadic herdsman,
with no fixed abode but his tents, far
from his parents and brothers. He
kept moving because God told him
to, and he trusted God. A miraculous
child was finally born to Abraham and
his wife Sarah when they were both
approaching 100 years of age.
They called the child Isaac. Isaac did
not doubt the destiny his father told
him, but his extended family was still
tiny compared to the nations who
considered these pasturelands of
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Canaan their own. These people

worshipped their own national idols,
and cared little for the universecreating God of Abraham. Indeed,
had Isaacs clan been any bigger,
these residents of Canaan would no
doubt have felt compelled to push
them off. But they were nothing, just
a small family of travelling herdsmen.
Isaac was succeeded by his son Jacob,
who wrestled with both God and the
scale of his familys destiny, but still
he too kept believing. God called him
Israel, which means wrestler. The
family grew, but the nations around
them were also growing.
A larger nation, out of sight, but
whose unsurpassed influence loomed
over this country, was the southern
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empire of the Pharaohs in Egypt. As

stories of that empires splendour
reached the plains of Canaan, it must
have been hard for Jacob to believe
that it was the destiny of his family to
rewrite the history of humankind.

hen drought struck all of

Canaan, Jacobs tiny dynasty
were forced to travel down to Egypt
to buy grain. Thanks to the brilliance
of one of Jacobs twelve sons, Joseph,
the Pharaoh of the day looked kindly
on them and offered them land to
settle. With no better option while
the drought continued, they
accepted.
The stay in Egypt was to be longer,
more traumatic and significant, than
Jacob or anyone else could have
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imagined. During 400 years in Egypt,

and now static, the dynasty did
indeed balloon into a nation. But that
very growth of population, and their
obvious talents and unique nature,
attracted problems, for the Egyptians
became jealous and unnerved by
their growth. Finally, with Jacob a
distant memory, the Pharaohs moved
to enslave them. They lost their land
and freedom overnight, and were put
to building and endless drudgery,
driven on by violent slave-masters.
The nation promised to Abraham had
arrived, and numbered in the
hundreds of thousands, but it was
trapped in captivity in Egypt. They
cried aloud to God.

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God heard these cries, and began to

stir the heart of a man named Moses.
Moses was an official in Pharaohs
government, but an Israelite by birth.
Though privileged, he could not
ignore his inheritance, for the
Egyptians would not even eat with
him at meals. They treated his
compatriots meanwhile as mere
donkeys, to be beaten or killed with
impunity. What could he do? The
Egyptians had wealth, magic and
military might on their side.
To every eye, it was an impossible
task to challenge such an empire, but
one day, in the street, Moses
witnessed an incident that propelled
him into leadership. An Israelite slave
was being beaten in the street by an
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Egyptian. Although Moses risked

losing his job, he killed the Egyptian.
When he realised what he had done,
he fled the capital, and hid deep in
the desert with nomadic herdsmen
who grazed, as his ancestors had
done. He became a shepherd himself,
married a woman called Zipporah,
and tried to forget the life he had left.
But God had plans for him. God is
rarely in as much a rush as we are he knows what is going on at a level
deeper than we can think. He is the
ultimate storyteller. When Moses
was almost an old man, 40 years on,
resigned to his humble desert life;
that was when God knew Moses was
ready. He appeared to him one day in
a burning bush.
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When God speaks to people, he

does so in different ways; from a
soaring conviction in their hearts, to
an audible voice, to a meeting with an
angel. God spoke audibly to Moses
from those flames, and instructed
him to return immediately to Egypt,
where he was ready to use Moses to
lead the Israelites out of slavery.
Despite the miracle he was
experiencing, Moses objected. He
knew more than any Israelite the
power of the Egyptian empire. He
knew too that his own people had
been so broken down by years of
slavery that most of them could not
even imagine escape anymore. He
cried to God: They wont listen to
me!
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Trusting God is always the answer to

such cries. To encourage Moses
further, God performed further
miracles before him that day in the
desert, miracles he instructed Moses
to perform himself in Gods name in
Egypt. Moses was emboldened, but
kept objecting: he complained he was
weak at speaking. Now growing
exasperated with Moses lack of faith,
God agreed to stir the heart of
Moses brother Aaron, in Egypt, to
speak on his behalf.
In obedience, Moses set off with his
wife and family. As he approached
the city, Aaron did indeed come out
to meet him. The two of them went
before the Pharaoh, asking that he
allow the Israelites to leave Egypt for
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three days to worship their God with

a festival in the desert. The Pharaoh
laughed at them, and even at the
miracles Moses performed, calling his
magicians to imitate them, which they
duly did.
God then sent terrible signs through
Moses, including signs the magicians
could not emulate. Attacks of locusts
and hailstones and gnats and plagues,
and torrents of blood, and death.
Finally, Pharaoh submitted. Stop! Take
your Israelites and get out of Egypt
forever!!
These miracles had been witnessed in
the whole land, and the Israelites filed
out of the cities in obedience to
Moses and Aaron. They followed him
east, as a nation for the first time,
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headed on the long journey to

Canaan. They had hardly gone, when
Pharaoh changed his mind and sent
his army to bring them back. The
imperial chariots reached them as
they stood on the shores of the Red
Sea. Moses held out his staff, by
which he had performed all the
miracles, and the waters of the sea
parted, allowing the Israelites to
continue to the other side. Once
they were over, Moses dropped his
staff, and the waters closed in and
drowned the pursuing Egyptian army.
Only a child-like faith can today
believe this miracle actually
happened.
It was such an immense miracle, that
Moses must have thought that it
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would be enough to secure the

peoples trust in God forever. That
so amazed and grateful would be the
Israelites, they would thereafter trust
him and Gods providence, as he
attempted to move them all back to
Canaan, the land where Abraham was
buried.
But humans are as capable of
forgetting miracles (even big ones) as
they are of forgetting God and, if we
forget God, we soon turn into selfish
cowards, and not the holy, brave
people God would have us be. No
sooner had the songs of praise faded
after the disappearance of the
Egyptians, but Moses found himself
leading a degenerate crowd, whinging
about how they were going to eat in
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this wilderness, how they were going

to drink, and how they would survive
against the armies in the North.
Moses was wondering that too, but
he was trusting God. The people
were driving him mad. They had been
slaves for so long they had forgotten
how to live. So God led Moses up a
mountain, to a place called Sinai, and
there he gave him clear
commandments to give the people,
about how they should live their daily
lives. Above all, they were to trust
him and be respectful to each other.
Regarding the other nations, God
warned Moses: I will not defend you
against other nations unless you live
uprightly as I have instructed you.
You are a small nation, and you are
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going into a land where there are

more powerful nations, who will not
be pleased to see you, and who will
look to destroy you. If you trust your
own strength, you will have no
chance, for they are stronger than
you. But if you trust me, and live as
upright humans should, I will not only
defend you, but bless the whole
world through you.
It was not a destiny that would be
fulfilled in Moses lifetime. Nor would
reaching Canaan, the peoples
wariness and backsliding causing a
constant stall on their progress.
There were moments of great
delivery from starvation, when the
people sang the praises of God, but
there were other moments when the
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people frankly wished they were back

in Egypt. We may not have been free,
they told Moses, but at least we were
safe there. Moses died exasperated
but confident. You have two options,
he told the people with his last
words: Life or death. Chose life. In
other words, chose God.
It became clear that if they were to
reach land that could sustain them,
they were going to have to fight for
it. They had not fought in 400 years.
Indeed, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had
been so small in number they had
never been a threat, or even a prize,
to the nations of Canaan. Now they
were a nation, and no one was going
to let them have land worth settling
on without a fight. As spies brought
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back reports of armies poised like

swarms of locusts, the men, women
and children were terrified.
It fell to Joshua, Moses successor, to
muster a fighting spirit. Moses had
placed in a wooden box the written
commandments he had been given, as
well as two pieces of evidence of the
miraculous help they had received
since leaving Egypt; a staff with a bud,
and some of the miraculous bread
that had appeared on the ground.
Joshua took this box into battle and,
as they advanced, more miracles took
place: cities fell to them, vast enemy
armies turned on each other,
gruesome victories were won. Until
enough land was secured to divide up
the nation into its twelve tribes.
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However, once they were settled in

Canaan, the people returned to their
old ways with alarming speed. They
established their homesteads and
towns, and fretted about the business
of life. The commandments gathered
dust in their acacia box, as the people
grew superstitious. In fact, they
started to resemble any other nation.
They had certainly forgotten they had
destiny to lead the nations back to
God.

he empires of the Philistines,

Babylonians and the Assyrians
had all heard through the trade
routes how the Israelites had been
delivered from the Egyptians, and
defeated the nations of Canaan. But
whenever the Israelites slumped back
40

into complacency, God used these

same empires to wake Israel up.
A deadly pattern emerged. Only in
distress would Israel return
wholeheartedly to God and prayer.
By then, enemy armies would be
gloating over her: Where is your
God of Israel now!? Then God
would inspire the Israelites to push
them back.
It was an unstable existence, and the
people of Israel longed for a King,
like other nations, so they could be
stronger and safer. God spoke to
them through a holy man called
Samuel, whom he had filled with the
Holy Spirit from childhood to be a
prophet. Samuel told them that they
did not need a king. They had the
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Creator of the Universe Himself.

They were not like other nations.
They just needed to follow God, and
live righteously, and he would keep
them safe.
But the people insisted that they
wanted a king. Samuel relented, and
chose a tall, strong man named Saul,
to be the first king of Israel. Saul was
not a great success. Although he
initially looked the part, he lacked
faith. The size of the enemies around,
constantly looking for revenge, or to
exploit any weakness, meant that
physical strength was simply
insufficient for Israel. They needed
miracles to survive, and Saul began to
lose his nerve on that front. He was
scared and, fearing the Israelites
42

knew he was out of his depth, he

grew paranoid.
The Philistines sensed the weakness
and raided at will, even capturing the
holy acacia box containing the
commandments and the remnants of
the miracles. With it, Israel had lost
its very identity, and all that had been
achieved by Abraham and Moses
seemed, once more, about to be
forgotten in chaos.
But when humans forget about God,
that does not mean God forgets
about them. Indeed, he seems to
watch us particularly closely when we
are in trouble. Israel was in pain, and
cried out again to God. Enter a boy
named David, not yet old enough to
carry a shield.
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What God did through David was

certainly miraculous, and (in any
ordinary sense) unbelievable. David
was working as a shepherd for his
father in the fields around Bethlehem,
the youngest of his fathers many
sons. Samuel knew that King Saul was
doomed, and that God required of
him to find a future leader who could
lead Israel in prayer, not just battle.
Samuel knew that it would be young
David as soon as he saw him.
Following his meeting with the
prophet, David was sent by his father
to take food up to his brothers, who
were fighting with Saul in the
apparently endless war against the
Philistines. Among the Philistines
number was a giant called Goliath,
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who would come on to the

battlefield and taunt anyone to
challenge him, vowing that the whole
Philistine army would retreat if any
challenger could defeat him in oneto-one combat.
No one dared try, not even the giant
Saul, who sat wretched in his tent
beside the battlefield. He offered use
of his armour, and a daughter in
marriage, to anyone who would beat
Goliath, but no one took him up, and
Goliath taunted them all the more.
Soon after David arrived on the front
with his brothers food, Goliath came
out again to mock the Israelites, and
their God. Incensed, David
challenged him with his shepherds
sling, shot a single stone into
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Goliaths temple, and killed him

instantly.
Saul found Davids subsequent fame
and popularity to be as trying as
Goliaths. His depression was
legendary, and had not been lifted by
the retreat of the Philistines, or the
further battles that David now fought
in. He gave his daughter Michal in
marriage, but Saul burned with
resentment at Davids presence in
the royal court.
Among his many gifts, David played
the harp. The music soothed Sauls
troubled mind whenever he heard it,
and half of him was glad of having him
around. But the other half detested
the sight of the hero whom the
Israelites sang their own songs about.
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One day, in a fit of jealous rage, he

tried to kill David as they ate
together, throwing a spear at him.
David vanished into the hills, joined
by a group made up mostly of
desperadoes who had nothing to
lose. They lived as outlaws, as Saul
hunted them down, falsely accusing
David of attempting a rebellion.
David and his men were often close
to starving in the wilderness. During
this time, David sang heartfelt songs
to God, songs we still sing in Church
today; praying to be delivered from
the injustice of his plight; songs that
often began with bitter complaint,
but ended in praise of the God he
trusted.

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In fact, David was everything a boy

could hope to be: a righteous outlaw,
a passionate singer; a handsome
soldier who women adored, and a
man whom other men would
sacrifice their lives to follow. Who,
after Sauls death, did indeed become
King of Israel, pin back her enemies,
and founded a great city. This was
Jerusalem, a capital in which the
worship of God was to be at the
centre of everything. A place where
heaven and earth would meet in
prayer. Zion, the City of God.
Had David been any more perfect,
the whole story might have ended
there. Israel would have had its
ultimate role model and shepherd, to
take them back to God. But David,
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though blessed and used by God, was

not perfect. When he started plans
to build an enormous temple at the
heart of Jerusalem, God told him
through the prophet Nathan to stop.
His heirs would have to do that.
David had too much blood on his
hands to construct such a holy place
himself. He had enjoyed war too
much.
David had another issue, which
surfaced soon after. He fell in love
with the wife of one of his generals
and could not, would not, get her out
of his mind. So he summoned her to
his royal palace, and slept with her
while her husband was at war, and
then (when she fell pregnant)
arranged for her husband to be killed,
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as if by accident of war. But it wasnt

an accident, and David knew it. He
begged God for forgiveness, and was
granted that peace. But the human
fallout included a civil war which
killed his son Absalom and dominated
the last days of his reign.
If hard times can feel the hardest
times to trust God, then good times
can be the easiest times to forget
him. David shone bright, and Israel
had gained a confidence under him
that it would never entirely lose. But
he too had fallen short, and fallen
hard. The story of Israel was still not
finished.
Davids son Solomon finished the
temple, and the city prospered, as
surrounding empires now sought to
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trade rather than fight with the

resurgent nation. But, amid the
prayers, business and splendour of
Jerusalem, Solomon fell, like his
father, to the dangers of worldly
success. He was wise and eloquent,
but lust ultimately overwhelmed him.
He took 700 royal wives, and 300
concubines, but was cynical and
unsettled. The man who had
dedicated the Temple before all the
people of Israel reached the point
where he could barely pray to God
at all. He left a Kingdom wracked in
decadence and division.
Israel wrangled with itself, split into
two, and mourned a golden age
which had glittered all too briefly.
The nation may have flourished in
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wealth and size, but that now

resembled a prize, rather than an
intimidating prospect, to surrounding
enemies.
Dark clouds were on the horizon,
and no one pronounced that clearer
in the years that followed than the
prophets. These were robust, mostly
unpopular voices, who could see all
too clearly that serious danger lay
ahead if the people did not wake up
to their responsibility under God.
The prophets tried to wake her up,
to break her obsession with worldly
pleasure and petty disputes, but the
nation continued to drift; increasingly
splintered and alone.
Enemies far more unified lined up to
plunder the nation on a scale that had
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never happened before. At one point,

the entire political, artistic and
military elite of Israel was captured
and transported to the city of
Babylon in exile. Behind them was
only rubble. The great temple in
Jerusalem was ruined, and jackals
haunted the once proud streets of
the capital.
During the rupture and loss of this
second exile, the words of the
prophets were no longer feared, but
were treasured and repeated, for
they were all that held any hope of
the destiny of Israel. Amid the
destruction, only the prophets
voices now avowed that the nation
was not broken; that the great
destiny of leading the whole world
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back to God was not subject to men,

a promise commanded by God.
One prophet, Isaiah, had glimpsed,
beyond the foreboding horizon, a
figure brighter even than David. Like
David, this redeemer would appear
to the nation in the form of a child:
Behold, the virgin shall conceive and
bear a Son, and shall call his name
God-with-us. Through this child,
prophesied Isaiah, not just Israel but
creation itself would be blessed: The
leopard shall lie down with the young
goat, the calf and the young lion and
the fatling together. And a little child
shall lead them.
But, as the years wore on, no saviour
child such as this appeared, nor a
military leader such as Moses to
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restore freedom. Even the prophets

fell silent. Babylons supremacy gave
way to Persian, which in turn gave
way to Roman occupation for Israel.
The humiliation of being bossed by
foreign powers with bigger army and
better technology continued.
Jerusalem was rebuilt, and certainly
the unique story of Israel was kept
alive in worship, law and custom. But,
on the map, Israel had now become a
small and quite battered outpost of
the very modern Roman Empire.

f it is a stretch today for many in

Europe to believe that there is a
God at all, and that he was born as a
baby boy in Roman-occupied Israel
just over two thousand years ago,

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then it was certainly a stretch for

Israel to believe it.
There is so much that could be said
about Jesus, whose name was
pronounced Yeshua by his family and
those who knew him. He is the most
talked-about person in human
history. His public life lasted but
three years. He left no writings, no
buildings, no army.
He left only his story, a story told
and countlessly re-told by those who
followed him, and those like me who
came to follow him. His story has
been contested for authenticity,
diluted, distorted, appropriated and
ridiculed. Somehow, it seems to have
a power to transcend all this, and its
full power will not be muted. There
56

are more Christians, in more nations,

today than there have ever been. He
appeals to the poor and the hurting,
of which there is no shortage at
present, and he appeals to children.
He has had his critics from day one.
King Herod tried to kill him as a
baby. He was spat at by soldiers,
disbelieved by religious leaders, and
mocked by a criminal who lay on a
cross next to him at the end. He
performed miracles, but avoided
publicity; preached of a Kingdom, and
yet he had no house. He overcame
death and yet was supremely human;
weeping at the suffering of friends
and the confusion of others. He was
God, and yet he knew fear. He was
so scared as he prayed in the Garden
57

of Gethsemane on the night before

he died, that sweat resembling drops
of blood fell from him.
He rose from the dead, and appeared
to his disciples. My Lord and my
God! said Thomas. He had asked
them all months earlier: Who do you
say that I am? Simon Peter had said:
You are the Christ, the Son of the
Living God! Christ told him. This
was not revealed to you by flesh and
blood, but by my Father who is in
heaven. Christ means The Anointed
One, the one Israel had been waiting
for.
And then he was gone.
Seven centuries earlier, after seeing
his vision of a child bringing peace to
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the world, Isaiah had also seen a

vision of a grown man suffering;
despised and rejected by men, a Man
of Sorrows and acquainted with
grief. Isaiah saw the fullness of the
prophecy: He was wounded for our
transgressions, bruised for our
iniquities, the punishment for our
peace lay upon him, and by his stripes
we are healed.
At the beginning of his public life,
Yeshua stood up in a synagogue, as
was his custom, took the scroll of
Isaiah and read from it to the
congregation:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor; He has sent me
to heal the broken hearted; to proclaim
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liberty to the captives and recovery of

sight to the blind. To set at liberty those
who are oppressed; to proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord.
After reading this, the Gospel of Luke
says, Yeshua sat down, and the eyes
of everyone was on him. And then
He told them: Today this Scripture is
fulfilled in your hearing.
The people did not know what to
think. I would probably have not
known what to think. For thirty years
of my life I did not know what to
think.
And then He came to me.
The word bless comes from the old
French word blesser, which still
carries the meaning of to cut or to
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wound. In all cultures (some still to

this day) sacrifices have been made to
mark moments, or to honour
spiritual entities. As the life-force left
the animal, the intention behind the
sacrifice was understood to be
marked in time. At the temple in
Jerusalem, hundreds upon hundreds
of such sacrifices were performed
every week to God, in guilt and
gratitude.
What could I do to regain the
innocence I had lost as a human, even
the peace I had known as a child? I
had tried everything. And then, one
day, in a church in Africa, I tried to
believe that Jesus hung on a tree for
me, like the congregation was singing.
And I knew something was
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happening, beyond entertainment.

Three days later, I asked the
preacher to bless me. I knelt in a
township, and he blessed me in the
name of Jesus, and by His stripes and
His love and His grace and the Holy
Spirit, I was healed.
There is a Gospel hymn I sung the
other day. I must have heard it
before, but the words jumped up at
me:
I will sing the wondrous story of the
Christ who died for me;
How He left his home in glory for the
cross on Calvary.
I was lost but Jesus found me, found the
sheep that went astray;
Threw His loving arms around me, drew
me back into His way.
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I believe that God is offering us

reconciliation of all that Adam lost
through Jesus, and the once-and-forall sacrifice he made on the cross. He
could have called down a thousand
angels to stop it, but he didnt. I
believe people of every race are
being released by that sacrifice,
because of the genuine faith that it
was done for them.
I was bruised but Jesus healed me, faint
was I from many a fall;
Sight was gone and fears possessed me,
but He freed me from them all.
Days of darkness still come oer me;
sorrows path I often tread,
But the Saviour still is with me, by His
hand Im safely led.
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The calf and the young lion have not

laid down together yet, but I believe
that peace and justice are coming to
transform the world. On a glorious
day, when Christ returns in full glory,
I believe death shall die, the dead
shall rise, the earth be utterly
renewed, and I will dance with the
faithful from every race in the new
and heavenly city of Jerusalem. There
I will witness the healing of the
nations and will see my God face to
face. Because of the innocence Jesus
restores to me I can bear seeing all
that.
The hymn finishes:
He will keep me till the river rolls its
waters at my feet,

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Then Hell bear me safely over, all my

joys in Him complete.
Yes, Ill sing the wondrous story of the
Christ who died for me;
Sing it with the saints in glory, gathered
by the crystal sea.

his is what Christianity is to me.

It is personal, and crazy, and
would mean nothing if it were not
true. Even still, it takes a child-like
faith to believe it. My faith tells me it
is true. I dont know exactly what this
faith is, or where it comes from, but
it came to me the day I chose to
believe, and it hasnt left me yet. I
value it beyond words. I have kept a
sense of humour, and I still make
mistakes, and I am not in denial of
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the ways of the world. I know how

cruel it can be. I know how alluring it
can be. I still have to ask God daily
for forgiveness. But the older I get,
the more fragile I perceive the world
to be, and the more peacefully my
hope, joy and my sanity rest in
praising God.

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