Category Archives: Personal

My Desert Island Discs!

Personal, Insights

I am an avid BBC Radio 4 listener.

While I do listen to the BBC news on there, it’s always with a hefty pinch of salt… however, there are also quite a few intellectual-type programmes on Radio 4; things that engage my mind and my thinking. There’s some very good humour too, and there’s also some terrible humour, of the kind where you need to be told it’s humour or you’d never have noticed[1]. In particular, I actually find ‘Woman’s Hour‘ to be really interesting and useful, for reasons which are probably too complex to go into here.

But there’s also some more personal-style programmes on there, and one of these is ‘Desert Island Discs‘, which I usually listen to on a Friday as I am cleaning out our rats’ cage.

The format is simple. Each episode features a ‘celebrity’ – referred to as ‘the castaway’ – who is about to be stranded on a desert island, and has to choose a list of eight musical tracks[2] which they consider to be important to them for one reason or another. The show is centred around an informal ‘interview’ with the castaway, where they introduce each track and give the reasons why they have selected it to accompany them to the desert island. A short excerpt from each track is then played, or maybe the entire piece if it is very short[3].

The interview with the castaway usually elicits anecdotes, attitudes and wisdom, in a highly-varied mix from castaway to castaway, which are usually fascinating to hear. In addition, at the end of the show, they are told that, in addition to the complete works of Shakespeare, and the Bible[4], they are also allowed to choose one other book and a ‘luxury item’ that they would take with them to their desert island. And then to choose which one song from their list they would simply have to have with them on the island.

As I listened today (it’s a Friday as I write this, so it’s clean cage day once more for the ratties!), I thought to myself, “I wonder which tracks I’d choose?”, closely followed by, “This might make a good blog post!” and so here I am, about to be marooned on a desert island[5] and having to think of eight tracks, a book, and a luxury item.

My tracks are not necessarily my favourite music. But they do have meaning for me, and that’s what I’ll share.

So, here we are. My Desert Island Discs. I will present the full version of each track, and my readers will maintain full control as they can always stop each track as they get bored!

Find somewhere comfy to sit; this is a long one!

All my life, I have been surrounded by music. My maternal Grandad, whom I never met (he died of cancer shortly before I was born), was an amateur operatic performer and musician. My Mum and Dad were part of a concert party that used to do performances in local theatres. And then my Dad was a professional musician for many years working hard doing the club circuits in the North of England. Back then, in the heyday of the Working Men’s Clubs, many well-known names in British entertainment cut their teeth on the stages of smoke-filled halls filled with ordinary, everyday working-class people who were simply leaving behind the grind of everyday life for a few hours and just having a good time. This scene was what was known as ‘Clubland’. Entertainment in Clubland was provided by snooker tables; darts; bingo; slot machines; the raffle; well-priced, top quality beer; and the ‘turn'[6]  the Artiste, aka a ‘club act’. The artiste would be a musician, a singer,  a comedian, a drag queen, or maybe a magician, maybe a ‘muscleman’; a man with a bodybuilder’s physique who would pose and show off his muscles as his ‘act’. Sometimes, several acts would be on each evening, so as to provide a range of different entertainments for the club membership. There was a very wide variety of such artistes, and my Dad’s thing was to sing and play guitar and the ukulele-banjo (banjolele). His stage name was ‘Johnny Douglas’ and, in my opinion, he was one of the best turns in Clubland, retiring from performing in 1986 when he opened his bodybuilding gym in Yeadon.

This is my Dad in 1978 on one of his publicity cards:

My Dad met and worked with many such artistes, including such well-known names as Frankie Vaughan, Des O’Connor, Joe Belcher, comedian Pete ‘Machine-Gun’ Wallis[7] (so named because of his rapid-fire delivery of his jokes; he was so fast that you only got chance to laugh at about one in every three because you’d be so busy laughing that you’d miss the next couple of gags…), Freddie Starr, Bernard Manning, Tessie O’Shea, Alan Randall, Les Dawson, and many others, all of whom started their careers on the Clubland circuit. For a flavour of the sort of thing that the working-mens’ clubs used to have going, check out this episode of ‘Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club’, which was a long-running TV series in the 70’s which gently lampooned – ‘gently’, because it was so realistic – the sort of thing I’m talking about. Anyway, I used to go with him often and watch him perform; although I was only young (and therefore couldn’t drink alcohol in the clubs, not that I wanted to anyway!) I was still allowed in because I was part of my Dad’s ‘road crew’. I used to assist him in plugging in his gear, sound checks and setting things up. And later, while I was learning to drive, I used to drive him to and from his shows. Much of my pre-test driving practice was carried out at night!

My Dad performed numbers[8] from two main genres: Wartime; and Country and Western (C&W). He sang songs from both the World Wars; veterans of both conflicts were still alive in those days, and his singing of nostalgic songs which used to remind them not only of their youth, but also of lost friends, and these songs were always welcome.Songs like ‘When the Poppies Bloom Again’, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and similar. I particularly remember that October used to bring ‘El Alamein Reunions’, where soldiers from both sides of the Battle of El Alamein used to sing together, especially the song ‘Lili Marlene‘, which was the song that men on both sides of the lines used to sing at night. At these reunions, the Royal British Legion clubs, which were part of Clubland, used to host their former enemies with great enthusiasm; a marvellous thing to see.

The C&W stuff was a mix of Hank Snow, Johnny Cash, George Hamilton IV, Jim Reeves, and others. I particularly remember him doing a song with his singing partner, Kay, where they sang the classic (although not strictly C&W) ‘Something Stupid'[9]. ‘Kay Stevens and Johnny Douglas’ was the title for their double act when they were working together[10]. In addition, as part of his Second World War repertoire, he used to play a lot of songs by George Formby, including some really rather masterful ukulele playing. My Dad was really talented, but as far as I could tell, he didn’t want to become really famous because the Clubland scene already took him away from us as a family a lot. When he was fully professional, he used to have entire fortnights staying away from home, back for a couple of weeks, then away again staying in digs in remote parts of England. One of those places is the Webbington near Weston-Super-Mare, a place not too far from where I live now; back then it was called Webbington Country Club and he played there for a couple of fortnights a year over the course of several years. And this was before we had things like motorways, especially the M5 which actually runs past the Webbington. Anyway, back to George Formby. Formby songs were pivotal in bringing me into being a musician in my own right. I learned to play the ukulele at the age of seven, and Formby’s music ingrained, into my musical ear, a huge amount of practical and experiential knowledge of how music works, what sounds good and what doesn’t, and the structure and proper use of chords[11]. My stage debut – at the same age – was playing the theme tune for ‘Skippy the Bush Kangaroo‘, for which my proud Dad gave me the princely reward of half a crown – two shillings and sixpence – as extra pocket-money, which for a seven-year-old was an absolute fortune! I still have that uke in my cupboard and I trot it out now and then…

Which brings me rather nicely to my first track, George Formby’s ‘Bell-Bottom George’. I am using this song here to showcase Formby’s extraordinary talent on the instrument. While neither I nor my Dad had Formby’s talent, he was an inspiration to us both, and he’s one of the main reasons why I am a musician. This is the version from the Formby movie that it featured in, the eponymous ‘Bell Bottom George’, first screened in 1943. The ukulele solo at the end of the song is one of his best:

 

At around the same time, I was brought up on a diet of Gerry Anderson’s science fiction (SF) TV series ‘Thunderbirds‘, ‘Captain Scarlet‘ and ‘Stingray‘, and, later on, Anderson’s ‘Space: 1999‘, along with Irwin Allen’s ‘Land of the Giants‘, ‘Lost in Space‘, ‘The Time Tunnel‘, and ‘Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea‘. There were others too, along with movies such as Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘ – and above all, the Apollo moon landings[12]. And SF writers such as E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith, Clifford D. Simak and of course the inimitable Arthur C. Clarke. Also, the astronomer Patrick Moore and, again, Arthur C. Clarke, were decisive in instilling in me a love for astronomy in particular, and science in general. And not forgetting, of course, cosmologist Carl Sagan’s beautiful series ‘Cosmos’ – which came along later in my teens – and all the possibilities that it opened out for my eager and hungry mind.

The effect of these shows and authors was to give me a huge inspiration into technology, science and engineering. To have the confidence to believe in stretching the limits of the possible. To allow my mind and imagination to wander unfettered in the unknown lands of clever inventions of the future, and facts yet to be discovered. Is it any wonder that I became a professional scientist, working in both medical research and then pharmaceuticals?

As an aside, before his career as a musician, my Dad had been an engine fitter in the Royal Air Force, and was on active service in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the mid-1950’s. During his RAF career, he worked on the engines of such varied aircraft as the Avro Anson, Avro Lincoln, Vickers Varsity, Hawker Hunter, Gloster Javelin, DeHavilland Chipmunk, English Electric Canberra, Gloster Meteor and DeHavilland Vampire, and others too. He therefore taught me all I know about DIY, car mechanics, machinery, problem solving in those fields – all of this knowledge and experience culminating in me being able to help my friend Nigel build his Van’s RV-9A aeroplane in a hangar at Exeter International Airport, which is the aeroplane that we now fly and maintain as part of a small team of skilled engineers (there’s four of us). This gives us some of the cheapest flying it is possible to participate in, as we do all the servicing and maintenance ourselves.

Nigel’s Van’s RV-9A aircraft ‘G-CSAM’ under construction and nearing completion at Exeter Airport, March 2022

And, of course, it was only right and proper that my passion for all things aviation should stem from my Dad’s similar passion, including his RAF service. But I describe that passion enough in the rest of my blog, without having to expand upon it here!

Anyway, I digress again! These experiences during my formative years, of being exposed to the possibilities afforded by engineering, technology, and science, gave me my scientific and problem-solving mindset right from the get-go. In addition to being a man of faith, I am also a dyed-in-the-wool scientist. I am a competent engineer and mechanic, and a problem-solver. There are very few problems I can’t solve with the judicious application of my huge skill-set[13]. And it’s all down to the training from my Dad and the inspiration of those early SF TV series[14] and the aforementioned science authors.

But in addition to all of that, it is certain that no SF series was more influential in my life than Star Trek.

Following closely, in my timeline, after Lost in Space, Star Trek took me, and millions of others, to places that we could only dream of. And showcasing technologies that, yes, we could only imagine back then, but which have become real and even, in some cases, already obsolete[15] in my lifetime. Now, granted, we don’t yet have the Transporter Beam (Beam me up, Scotty!) nor the Warp Drive, to give us the ability to travel faster than light. But so many things that Star Trek first thought of are now commonplace in our everyday lives. Things like the ‘communicators’, which are what we now call a ‘smartphone’. Things like the ‘medical beds’, which we now call CT and MRI scanners. Even the fast-opening automatic doors from Star Trek now exist in everyday society. Star Trek was truly visionary in its scope; indeed only in the last decade has humanity discovered the awe-inspiring truth that most of the stars in the Galaxy have planets around them, something which Star Trek took for granted. My lifelong career in science is due to these powerful formative influences in my life; I love these things and they are part of me, part of my character. Star Trek and the Apollo space program especially instilled in me a near-fanatical interest in space exploration, space science, and astronomy. I am a member of The Planetary Society, and also my local astronomical society, because of this interest.

And so, that all brings me to my second track. Here are the opening credits from the original series of Star Trek. A beautiful melody with beautiful chords, and would you believe that there are even lyrics for it. Google it if you don’t believe me (“Beyond the rim of the star-light”)!

Earlier, I mentioned the author E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith. ‘Doc’ Smith wrote within a genre of SF called ‘Space Opera‘; this is essentially the classic, action-packed and rambunctious space adventure fiction involving loads of space battles and aliens, empires and villains. Star Trek, while indeed having ‘bad guys’ and things, and the occasional space battle, wasn’t really space opera as such; although it is listed as such in the link above, I’ve never really considered it to be so, it being more of a thinking-person’s adventure series telling stories which may, or may not, be linked as part of a wider, overreaching story arc. But ‘Doc’ Smith wrote excellent space opera, especially the ‘Lensman’ series, which tells the story of a vast, eons-spanning struggle of good versus evil. There’s everything in that series that a space opera fan could ever want: Galaxy-wide travel and civilizations; battles; super-powers; huge ships bristling with weapons; good heroes and evil villains – indeed, superheroes and supervillains! – evolving propulsion and weapons technology; faster-than-light travel and all sorts of other stuff. Smith also wrote the ‘Skylark‘ and the ‘Family D’Alembert‘ series; again, epic space opera novels that capture the imagination like nothing else.

And all that was simply excellent reading for a young man with a feverish imagination and no real cap on his concept of the limits of the possible.

But then came Star Wars. Here at last was the visual representation of the space opera. Sure, there’d been things like the comic strip ‘Flash Gordon’, from the 1930s, ‘Buck Rogers‘, and other similar stuff.

Star Wars, though, was different. Although it was at first just the one movie, first screened in 1977, there were also spin-off books, magazines and even some toys. I remember I bought my first lightsaber in about 1978! But in Star Wars, space opera was brought to life like nothing had ever done it before. And it has stood the test of time, too; like Star Trek, Star Wars has a worldwide cult following and, also like with Trek, words, phrases and concepts from the franchise have passed into common parlance. I would imagine that when I referred to a ‘lightsaber’ earlier in this paragraph, all of my readers would have known what I was talking about! Sometimes, in common ‘personality quizzes’, where you are asked things like ‘what’s your favourite colour?’ and similar, one of the questions is Star Trek  or Star Wars?, like it’s one or the other that you have to like. Similar to Indian vs. Chinese food. But in both cases, these are false dichotomies; there is a third option. Both Star Wars and Star Trek. Both Indian and Chinese. And, indeed, both science and faith. There is no need for any of these to be in conflict, as each part of a pair covers areas that the other doesn’t. And so it is for these things. So, Star Wars and Star Trek have both been massive influences on me both in terms of the possibilities of technological progress, and the related suspension of disbelief that is so important in faith matters as well as in imagining the limits of the possible. Both are inspirational in their own way.

I need to mention, as a (still relevant) aside here, that I have a special love for classical music. Being both a musician and an Autistic person, I find that I try to over-analyse music that isn’t classical. My mind tries to work it out, to figure out what that chord is, how to play it, what piano fingering to use, and that sort of thing. But because classical music is so a) outside my playing style, and b) beyond my abilities, I have the ability to just let classical music ‘be’, without having to dissect it in my mind. And this is a real relief; it’s really relaxing. Because of this love for classical music, I wanted to bring to my desert island a track that is classical in style. I thought of tracks like ‘Jupiter’, ‘Mars’ or ‘Uranus’, from Holst’s The Planets suite. Or maybe Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March Number 1, which always used to make my Mum cry. Or some Mozart, Grieg, Bach or Boelmann. All these are worthy, but I had to pick something. And so, I chose this piece, Imperial March, by the incomparable John Williams, because, like all the best movie scores, it is classical (in that it’s orchestral), and it represents the Space Opera which, together with the more cerebral Star Trek stuff, completes my love for science fiction and its consequent effects on my scientific mindset. A mindset which has carried me through a long career as a professional scientist and on into my retirement, in which I am still given opportunities to use my mind in a similar way. I really can’t complain!

Here we are, then. John Williams’s Imperial March, from Star Wars Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back:

 

Although I grew up, as I said, surrounded by music, I didn’t listen to music on the radio very often. I think it was because I had no control over the music that was played; I didn’t like a lot of the music in the ‘hit parade'[16] at the time. However, I did have some songs that I liked, and, if I liked a song enough, I would just go out and buy the single. A single, of course, being a 7″ vinyl disc which you played on your record player (a ‘turntable’ as they are known nowadays). I’d only be able to afford about one a month as there were other things I wanted to spend my pocket money on; things like Airfix model kits and paints in order to build up my huge collection of plastic model aircraft. But I did manage to buy the odd record every so often. Bands like ABBA were especially important to me back then, and I did indeed buy their albums… I used to go down into Bradford where I knew I could get the albums I wanted, at WH Smith in the city centre.

And I had other musical tastes too. On one occasion, when my Dad worked in Clubland, he was in ‘digs’ (temporary lodgings) in Spennymoor in northern England. My mother, my brother and I went up to visit him in his digs and, while there, we got playing table tennis with some guys from another band that were staying in the same digs. I learned many years later that the band were in fact the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), a band that had many hits in the British charts during the 70s and 80s, but who never had a Number One hit despite all that. This encounter was before they became famous! Anyway, entirely independent of those table tennis games!, I grew to really appreciate ELO’s music. Because they were semi-classical, I could just enjoy their music without analysing it. Their music was often played on jukeboxes in the indoor skateboard parks I skated at in 1978, during the ‘skateboard craze’ that was on at the time. And when I worked in my cousin’s car mechanic workshop in 1979, their music was on the radio a lot then, too. And so, my late teens were lived to a backdrop of ELO music, amongst other excellent music including ABBA and, of course, a lot of C&W music too – especially that of George Hamilton IV. On my parents’ record player, I used to flog[17] ELO, ABBA and George Hamilton IV numbers all day long. Of course, this meant that I was steeped in really good quality music. What with my Dad and his wartime and C&W stuff, and the bands mentioned above, how could I not then develop – on top of my already-existing gifting – a really good ear for what constitutes good music. And I must say that ABBA’s Benny Andersson was a huge influence on my piano style too, although it would take a very discerning ear to detect that as I actually don’t play anything like him.

So for my third track, then, I have chosen ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky, one of their most well-known, popular and indeed catchy creations. This song epitomises the musical backdrop, as I’ve said, to my teens, and reminds me of my youth spent trying to seriously injure myself doing crazy things on my skateboard – which I still have!

 

On the 12th of July, 1980 – the day I left school, in actual fact – my life was changed irrevocably by my encounter with my best Friend, Jesus. I cannot even begin to describe what my life became after I met Him, save to say that everything – everything – I am today is because of that encounter. When asked by those two rogue evangelists on my doorstep back in May what difference Jesus had made in my life[18], all I could do was laugh deeply from the wellspring of joy – ‘Jesus joy’! – in my heart. Words are simply not enough to describe it. I suppose that by reading some of my blog posts from over the nearly eleven years this blog has been in existence, you might be able to see some of what He’s done, but to try to express it in words, and especially in only a few words – is simply impossible. The Apostle John wrote in John 21:25 that “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written”. And that really is how it feels, to try to describe what He’s done with me, in me and, yes, through me over the decades. Next July, it will be 46 years since I met Him. Words cannot express enough….

And, neither can music. Yes, I was a worship leader and I led people into God’s tangible Presence on a regular basis. But even in that arena, the individual believer has to have their own, unique and individual, encounter with Him. I can’t do that for them; all I can do is to help to set them up so that they can do it more easily, if they choose. And it doesn’t need me to do it for them anyway; somehow, though, God seems to like corporate worship: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! … For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.” (Psalm 133:1, 3b) and so, it ‘works’. But still, my life has been shot through – like the letters in a stick of seaside rock – with the Songs of Heaven. They run through me like lifeblood. And while I know, and can play, literally hundreds of these songs, for me I have two favourites: When I look into Your Holiness and Great is the Lord. The stories of what those songs mean to me is related in this article, but of all the songs I know, When I look into Your Holiness is my absolute favourite. More than any other, that song sums up and epitomises the heart of worship for me. And so, unsurprisingly, I’ve chosen it as my fifth track:

 

One of the things that Jesus set up for me was for me to meet my precious wife, Fiona. Fiona was the perfect wife for me. I can’t even begin to describe why that was the case, save to say that we were soul-mates. Losing her to cancer just over nine years ago was the worst thing that has ever happened to me; much of this blog since then has been about her influence on me and how I have survived her loss.

Our life together had its ups and downs, yes, but over all that time we had eyes only for each other. We were absolutely besotted, I suppose the word is, and we were like teenagers all the time, so smitten were we! Alongside that, our love for Jesus guided our lives, and the reason why I now live in the south-west of England is solely because we followed His lead and moved here on what we believed was His guidance. And I would even be so bold as to say that the fruits of that, I suppose you could call it ‘obedience’, have remained with me to this day. This is where we were supposed to be; indeed this is where I am supposed to be, right here and right now. I have lived my life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and no-one can ever take that away from me, nor convince me otherwise. This is the effect of living the life of faith; the life in the Spirit (Gal 5:16). I say this as a declaration of fact, not as a boast of any kind. This is the only way I know how to live, and it works.

Probably the song that helped me the most, when I lost Fiona, is the gorgeous My God and King (Eyes for Only You) by Shauna Chanda. I showcased it before in my series on Fiona, but here it is once more, as my sixth song. Soak in it; feel it. You will not be disappointed.

This next track has a bit of a different slope to it. In addition to listening to Radio 4, I also listen occasionally[19] to the station Classic FM. For reasons already explained, I love classical music and, while Classic FM do tend to play only the more popular, well-known, pieces, I do occasionally discover a real gem via that station. One such piece, for example, would be the duet from the Bizet opera The Pearl Fishers; look it up on YouTube if you’d like to hear it.

But the piece I am introducing now is one of the few classical pieces I can play; it was always a firm favourite with the audiences when I used to play it on the Blüthner grand at Coleton Fishacre when I used to volunteer there for the National Trust, some years ago.

Me at the Blüthner grand at Coleton Fishacre

It’s called The Ashokan Farewell, composed by Jay Ungar, and it was used as part of the soundtrack for the Ken Burns historical documentary ‘The Civil War‘ (1990). And I first heard it on Classic FM, although the version I heard was not this one I present today[20]. And when I heard it, I was so entranced by it that I had to write down the title (so I would remember it!), and then go and find it and buy it as soon as I got home. The Ashokan Farewell is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and its haunting melody has permeated my life since the first time I heard it. No Desert Island Discs collection compiled by me could ever be complete without it. This piece is so evocative and deep, yet so simple that I can play it; it is absolutely priceless.

This version is the definitive track from the Civil War soundtrack, performed by Jay Ungar and his wife, Molly Mason. Here we go:

 

For my final track, a shorter explanation will suffice. I mentioned earlier that ABBA were a huge influence on my musical style and tastes. Well, of all their songs, none means more to me than their beautiful Thank You for the Music. I have always loved this song, from the very first moment I heard it, and once I began using music in my Christian ministry, it became almost a personal worship song for me.

I mean it full well when I sing this song (apart from the line where Agnetha sings, “I am the girl with golden hair”; I’m a bloke and I have close-cropped dark hair 🤣🤣) because I really am thanking God for the music.

So, I say Thank You, [Lord], for the music, the songs I’m singing. Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing!

There is really no other song to finish with, that encapsulates it all so well: a lifetime of music and worship for which I am so deeply grateful. With this song, just as much as with any ‘proper’ worship song, hymn or chorus, I can express from the depths of my heart the gratitude for the gifting and for the lifelong lifeblood of music that flows through me. I am so thankful!

 

Well, that’s the songs. And so now to the other items I am ‘allowed’ to take on to my desert island with me. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Bible, a book of my choice, and a luxury item. And to select the one song that would mean the most.

Well, I have to say that The Complete Works of Shakespeare holds absolutely no attraction for me whatsoever. I really don’t understand what all the fuss is about Shakespeare; I don’t know, maybe this makes me some sort of infidel or something? But I think he’s vastly overrated and is indeed only held in such reverence because nobody wants to go against the general flow and say out loud how rubbish it all is. Emperor’s Clothes, and all that. I also think that most modern people, even those like me who have a classical education, feel the same – but they daren’t say it out loud. But I have no such inhibitions! No, if we’re going to have a ‘complete works of [some classical author]’, I’d much rather it was Jane Austen. She’s just brilliant. One of my favourite books ever is her classic Pride and Prejudice; I’ve read it at least eight times!

The Bible? Yeah, I can cope with that 😀

My book would have to be The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. I have read it at least fourteen times, but I am sure I could cope with reading it a few more times if I was pressed 😉

And as for my luxury item, well that would simply have to be a piano. Preferably with something to stand it on so its feet don’t sink into the sand on the island 😉 And I would prefer it if it were my own piano, which I love and which was made in 1907 and used to belong to my maternal grandfather. Failing that, a nice Steinway grand would do…. 😉

And which would be the one song that I just couldn’t do without? Well, it’s a difficult choice, for sure. But probably the one I’d pick would be ‘When I Look into Your Holiness’. That, for me, encompasses nicely the main focus of my life, which is to be close to Jesus. ‘Nuff said.

So, there we have it. My Desert Island Discs. Thankfully, I am no kind of celebrity, so I am highly unlikely to be asked to present my track list on Radio 4, and I’d probably decline if I was so asked.

Because I really don’t like the limelight…. 🤣

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 The best humour on Radio 4 is to be found in the programmes ‘Just a Minute‘, hosted by the brilliant Sue Perkins, and ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue!‘, presented by the wonderfully deadpan Jack Dee.
⇧2 Although it has to be said that some of the tracks might well be some sort of ‘rap music’, which phrase is, to me, an oxymoron. In addition, ‘rap’ is the only word in the English language that begins with a silent ‘C’. 🤣
⇧3 This is probably to keep the show flowing properly and maintain the listener’s interest
⇧4 Or other appropriate religious or philosophical work
⇧5 Which, being Autistic and very happy with my own company most of the time, I would find quite a relief!
⇧6 They’d ‘do a turn’, which meant to get up on stage and perform.
⇧7 In that video, he talks just like I used to talk, with that broad Yorkshire accent!  Unfortunately, my accent moderated somewhat once I moved south! But, regarding Pete, I saw him once, at Yeadon Constitutional Club, and I particularly remember his parting shot was “…and please do remember to take care on your way home, because ninety percent of people are caused by accidents…” – he was hilarious!
⇧8 That is, songs
⇧9 Which, while not really their own song, was made into a worldwide hit by Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra
⇧10 Kay had a beautiful singing voice, and she sang in a local choir in Yorkshire until only a few months before she died at the age of over 100.
⇧11 Chords are where several related notes are all played at the same time, to create a fuller sound. This concept is easier if it’s demonstrated rather than explained in writing!
⇧12 Moon landing deniers: Don’t even bother commenting or communicating. Your comment will vanish without trace, into the nonexistence that both it, and you, deserve.
⇧13 Yes, this is similar to another ‘judicious application of…’ saying. IYKYK!🤣
⇧14 The word ‘series’ is both the singular and the plural word for ‘series’, so I don’t call them ‘serieses’ or anything like that!
⇧15 Technology like the 3.5″ floppy disc drive, first seen as the ‘data card’ in Star Trek, but which has now of course passed into history in favour of the ‘thumb drive’.
⇧16 A probably British term for music that was popular at a given point in time.
⇧17 ‘Flog’ meaning to play a song repeatedly again and again ad nauseam.
⇧18 Why do some Christians always have to issue challenges to everything someone says?? It’s like they’re constantly in interrogation mode…
⇧19 Usually when Radio 4 has Gardeners’ Question Time or The Archers on 🤣😂
⇧20 The version I heard on that day was one played by the band of HM Royal Marines, with the violin solo by Capt. J R Perkins. Here it is.

I Will Remember Him

Personal

I always like to acknowledge Remembrance Day by posting something on Facebook about the people who have given their lives in the service of their country. Usually, I post a list of names of people of many nations, both ‘enemy’ and ‘friendly’, who died on active service, to honour their sacrifices.

This year, though, I’m going to bring it a lot closer to home, as well as posting it here on my blog. This is Trooper Brett Hall, of 2nd Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment (2RTR). Brett was 21 years old when he died of wounds received in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. His Viking armoured vehicle was hit by an insurgent’s IED (Improvised Explosive Device, basically a home-made bomb or mine), and although he was evacuated to the UK for the very best medical treatment, he died of his wounds four days later on the 16th September, 2009.

The reason this story brings it home for me is because I knew Brett. He was from Dartmouth and was one of my son Richard’s friends at Dartmouth College. He came over to our house several times and was always a real character with an hilarious sense of humour. You can see it in his face in this portrait of him in his uniform.

It’s when something like this happens, to someone in uniform that you know, that brings it home just how precious is our freedom, and how much we owe to service men and women, both current and retired, when they enable that freedom on our behalf.

Every time I visit The Tank Museum at Bovington in Dorset, which is several times a year, I visit the RTR Memorial Wall, which is just outside the entrance to the Museum.

Brett’s name is inscribed there, and I go there to pay my respects.

Brett would have been almost 40 now, and remembering him is how I make these people’s sacrifices real to me.

I will remember him. And we will remember them.

‘White Christmas’

Personal, Humour, Reblogs

Here’s a re-do of an essay I published ten years ago, almost to the day. I’ve rewritten it but included much of the original prose in there; it’s supposed to be humorous (like I should have to explain that! 😂 ) but hey who knows.

Anyway, bah, humbug! It’s that time of year again!

Yes, it’s the time of year where the shops are full of Christmas displays, some of them works of absolute genius, some of them not quite so good. The time of year where we get bombarded with so much commercialism, adverts and just general Christmas tripe, that by the time it’s all over, many people are sick of it! 🙂 But still, the kids love it and despite all the trappings of the commercial Christmas, still somehow the magic of it has not quite disappeared, at least not for the young. And it’s always great to remember the greatest Gift of all, the Gift of Jesus ❤️

When I was about 14 years old, I had got so tired of hearing non-stop Christmas music in the stores that my cynical mind decided to make a game of it all. To me, at the time, the song that epitomised the whole Christmas selling-things-at-you environment was the song ‘White Christmas’, which was first performed by the legendary Bing Crosby on Christmas Day, 1941.

So I decided to make a game of it. And I’ve been playing that game now for nearly half a century!

I decided that, each year, I was going to see how close I could get to Christmas Day without hearing the song ‘White Christmas’ in a commercial environment.

For me, that would mean hearing it in pubs, shops, malls, Christmas fayres or on TV/radio adverts of any kind. Basically, anywhere where the song was being played in order to try and make people feel ‘Christmassy'[1] and therefore buy more stuff. Maybe it’s because I am a tight-assed Yorkshireman who keeps a solid fist wrapped around his dosh; I don’t know. And my family play it too.

But that’s the game: to see how close you can get to Christmas Day without hearing White Christmas!

I think the closest I have ever come to ‘winning’ was 23rd December, and that was in 1994. Bah, humbug, indeed!

You can make up your own rules as to what counts as a proper ‘hearing’ of the song. For example, what arrangement counts as having ‘heard’ the song? Does it have to be the Bing Crosby version, or would it still count if you heard the Michael Bolton version? What about if you just decide you want to listen to it on your iPod? What if someone learns that you are playing the game and just hums it at you ‘for a laugh’ and to troll your game? And what about the starting time for the game; what if you hear in in mid-July?

For me, I count any hearing of any version, in a commercial environment (including TV/radio ads), after 5th November – what we in the UK call ‘Bonfire Night’. For me, that’s the point at which I personally consider it fair game for the shops to put up their Christmas stuff (rather than late August as some idiots do) – so that’s when my White Christmas game begins!

Speaking of early Christmas selling-things-at-you, here is a photo taken this September!! in my local Morrisons:

I mean, what??? In September? It’s like when they put up the ‘Back to School’ displays in June or July, just as the kids are rejoicing in their upcoming six weeks’ holiday. ‘Back to school’; what already?? Just let them be kids, and don’t spoil their holidays! Commercialism certainly has a lot to answer for!

Of course, it will probably be impossible for someone working in a pub or shop to play this game. All Christmas CDs have a version of this song on them, so in those circumstances you’re stuffed. Sorry about that!

Don’t get me wrong, the song – in the original Bing arrangement – is absolutely gorgeous, full of incredible chord sequences and lovely dynamics. And I love it to bits. 

Interestingly, over the last few years, others too have invented a similar game, based on a different song. They call it ‘Whamageddon‘ and the idea is the same, except the song is Wham!’s 1984 song ‘Last Christmas’. You try to reach Christmas Day without having someone play ‘Last Christmas’ at you[2]. I love that; obviously others in this world are just as cynical about Christmas as I am!

But still the White Christmas game[3] is just a bit of fun; in my family and friends, those of us who play the game always confess to each other when/if we hear the song, and cheer on those who haven’t heard it yet. It’s interesting in that for me, I find it quite funny to see my reaction each time I hear the song for the first time each Christmas season. You know, when it’s ‘Game Over’. Sometimes I just grin wryly, sometimes I think, ‘Oh if only that queue had moved just a little quicker, and I could have been out of here!’ But whatever, my first thought is usually like ‘Ah well, that’s it for another year! Never mind….’

So then, are you in? Get to it! Good luck!

And then we’ll see you in January for the adverts about St. Valentine’s Day. But at least they don’t play a matching song at you!

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Crikey I hate that word!! Again, bah humbug!
⇧2 However, the difference from the White Christmas game is that it only counts if you hear it between December 1st and December 24th, and it has to be the original Wham! version
⇧3 Or ‘Whamageddon’, if that’s more your thing. Or both; why not?

A Dark Testimony V – The Ambush

Insights, Personal, Humour
This entry is part 15 of 17 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

As part of my series on the Problems of Evangelicalism, I’ve already shared what I called ‘Dark Testimonies’ from various people, one of whom was me. I also shared a testimony in my article ‘The Destroyer of Faith‘.

The stories in my testimonies, apart from a few which were simply people making innocent-yet-stupid mistakes, were stories of abuse at the hands of people where it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been in a church – or, more specifically, an Evangelicalism – setting[1]. As I said in ‘The Destroyer of Faith‘, this is what’s known as ‘Religious Abuse’.

Well, here’s another story from my catalogue of choice spiritual/religious abuse situations I have been subjected to. I share these stories, and this one in particular, so as to show the variety of ways and scenarios in which abuse can occur, and also to show that it happens – as far as I can tell, anyway – in many churches. Nowhere is safe, it seems; in every church I have ever attended, there has always been someone who wants to use others to push their agenda. But I’m trying to keep this one light and humorous in order to show just how ridiculous some of these people’s posturing really is[2].

So, a bit of background first. This was in early 2016, about two years after my re-entry into church life after my fifteen-year Dark Night of the Soul. At the church I was part of at the time, we had Lifegroups – no different from the more traditionally-named ‘housegroups’ – and I attended this particular one with my wife Fiona for a couple of months. It was run by a chap who was slightly younger than me – although I don’t have a problem with that – and let’s call him ‘Dennis’ for the purposes of the story.

Dennis’s leadership style was on the one hand gentle, pastoring and caring, and on the other quite rigid and dogmatic. I understand that he was from a Calvary Chapel background, which are fairly well-structured; I also got the whiff of a bit of Brethren there if I recall correctly, but this is nearly ten years ago now so I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, he was essentially hard, rigid and dogmatic under a soft (and I believe genuine) pastoral exterior. He also knew what he believed, and was not interested in hearing anything from anyone that went against that. It seemed Dennis was there to teach, but not to learn, if you see what I mean. I also remember he loved to make me hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream, just because he knew I liked it! A nice bloke, really.

I’m afraid other members of the group saw Dennis as being a bit of a pain, though, but I must emphasise that they really did have good hearts. These were mature Christians; most – and probably all – of them were further along their spiritual walk than Dennis was; they bore with him and genuinely wanted to see him develop as a leader and as a person, so in order to try to support him, they went along with his oddities and just contributed where they could. In essence, the more mature group were trying to help to raise up a younger leader in order to help him fulfil what they assumed he thought of as his calling.

I also remember a couple of occasions, though, where the façade began to crack; one funny, one not so much. These were the occasions where, in retrospect, I can see him trying to advance from the caring pastor to the beginning of the imposition of his will, as it were.

The first one was when he squatted down in front of me in my preferred position sitting on the floor[3] and said, “Anthony, next week, do you think you could deedle-eedle-diddle” (this last word while doing a sort of typewriter keyboard action with his fingers in front of himself). 🤣🤣🤣

Of course, I knew exactly what he meant; he wanted me to use my keyboard to lead worship. But being an awkward Yorkshire so-and-so, I decided to string him along a bit. “Could I do what?” I asked, simultaneously adopting my most baffled facial expression.

“You know, to bring your keyboard and lead worship”, he clarified.

“Aaaahhhh!”, says I. “Yes, of course I will! No problem!”

“Oh that’s great, thanks for that.”, said Dennis. “Now, I’d like you to lead us in that worship for fourteen minutes and sixteen seconds”.

This time it really was, “What??“, but this time, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear, I only said it in my head!

But, no, really; that’s what he said. Probably the most odd request I’d ever had[4]. I think what he’d done was to time the Bible study video he was going to show us during the meeting, and in order to make the worship ‘fit’ into his plan for the evening, he had ‘allocated’ that time to the second. To be fair, a bit of a quirky oddity much in keeping with someone with Autism or similar; I don’t think he was Autistic but I wouldn’t like to judge[5]. Well in the event I did the worship, yes, but let’s just say that timing constraints didn’t feature in the session!

Another time, in the Lifegroup meetings, I’d been sharing various things that God had shown me, over the space of a couple of meetings at least, as had other people in the group. These things I shared greatly blessed people and, when combined with the others in the group sharing what God had been showing them too, it was total blessing all around. We all did it. That’s what Lifegroups should be about. Everyone brings something along (1Cor 14:26) for the building-up of others. Anyway, I digress.

One evening, as the meeting was getting together, Dennis took me to one side and told me in no uncertain terms that anything I said that evening (‘and from now on’) would have to be backed up with chapter and verse from the Bible. Ha, he wanted me to proof-text!! My witty repartee was, “Well, I’d like hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream, but I’m afraid there’s no chapter and verse for that one. So what should I do when you ask me what I’d like to drink?” Sad to relate that this flippancy – which I see as a strength! – was completely lost on him; you tend to find that Religious people don’t allow humour in anything to do with God and it all has to be really serious![6] Needless to say, from meeting to meeting I carried on sharing what God gave me, and yes I gave chapter and verse (sometimes) when available, but to be honest most of the people there knew their Bibles backwards and so there was no need for Bible references. And anyway I don’t do proof-texting. I was the only person that he took aside in that manner; I don’t know, maybe he found my infectious enthusiasm disturbing or threatening or something. I really don’t know. But what if someone brought something where they didn’t provide such backing? Does that mean that nothing that anyone says in the meeting counts unless it is backed up with chapter and verse? If so, how would a complete newbie get on; how would they be able to contribute since it takes like half a lifetime of Bible study to be able to do that? And how would he know that even I could do that, or indeed anyone else in the group? Fiona was just as spiritual a person as I was but she didn’t have an encyclopaedic memory for Bible verses, in fact to be honest most people don’t!

Maybe he hadn’t really thought that one through…. 😉 😜

Or maybe, for some reason, he saw me as a threat to either his authority or to the purity of how he perceived the group’s doctrines should be. Well, I have never been interested in church leadership positions[7], so he had no worries on that score. And as for doctrinal positions, maybe he hadn’t learned that everyone in any group will always believe something slightly different from everyone else. This is why groups like that are so important and productive, because everyone brings something that maybe others hadn’t seen before. And so that’s how they learn[8]. And in any case, it should be the Holy Spirit Who is in charge in directing these kinds of meetings. Always.

In addition, the point about people’s differing doctrinal positions is something that any leader, new or old, has to take into account. You can’t learn things, whether ‘spiritual’ things or practical leadership things, unless you are teachable. And Dennis was so entrenched in his doctrinal rut, at least, that ‘unteachable’ could easily have been his middle name 😉

Well anyway, the meetings continued and I learned a lot, although I’m sad to say, not really from Our Dennis. Even at that stage in my faith walk, although I hadn’t learned the analogy at that point, there is little value in butterflies taking flying lessons from caterpillars. Back then, I was still getting used to the whole idea of walking in Grace and of going out into the deep Oceans waters of faith. And still the group were blessing each other.

I suppose that eventually something had to give; things had to come to a head. For me, the final straw was The Ambush. It’s taken me long enough to get around to the title of this essay, hasn’t it?

Well, this was The Ambush, and here’s how it happened.

I’d decided that it was a good idea to go out for a coffee with Dennis, so we could get to know each other a little better. To keep the conversation about personal things, like hobbies and interest, life stories, that sort of thing. For that reason, when we agreed to meet, I specifically asked him not to bring his Bible and to keep the conversation light, and I promised to do likewise.

Well, we got to McDonalds, and Dennis had a coffee and I had, of course! a hot chocolate. Almost as soon as we’d sat down, and with a fanatical gleam in his eye, Dennis hoicked up from the floor a small satchel which contained – yes, you’ve guessed it! – his Bible. That satchel could have been made-to-measure; it fitted his Bible perfectly! I remember it clearly. So he hauls out this Bible. To his credit, it wasn’t any kind of a mighty tome or grimoire[9]; it was just a softback one of about A5 size or so.

And then he proceeded to try almost to ‘lead me to the Lord’; to ‘convert’ me; to take me along the ‘Romans Road’. The Romans Road is a presentation of the gospel using mainly theological points from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans; it’s presented usually to an unbeliever, which is supposed to bring them to the point where they collapse on their knees in a weeping, repentant heap, at which point they hopefully ‘give their hearts to Jesus’ and get ‘converted’.

I mean, what?

He was really enjoying himself! At one point, he actually exclamed, “This is a great Bible study!” Speak for yourself, Dennis! 😂 But during that ‘Bible study’ – although actually it was more a back-and-forth tossing about of Scripture verses – all the reasons I gave to explain my already-existing hope in Christ were ignored. It was like talking to an online Pharisee troll, but over coffees and hot chocolates (yes we did have a second one each). It was just as if I was an unbeliever. I find it amazing how, despite the depth and obvious Bible knowledge of their victims[10], Fundamentalist and other ‘on fire’ Christians, like those two evangelists that came to my house that time as related in this article, suddenly forget, in their blind zeal, that you have an already-existing faith which is probably further on than their own, and that you have only. just. this. minute. been giving them Bible verses straight from memory. What kind of unbeliever can do that, to perform that sort of trick? Maybe the whole thing, in these cases, is the well-known phenomenon – at least to those who understand the Stages of Spiritual Growth – whereby those still in ‘Stage 3‘[11] consider those who have moved ahead with Jesus to be backsliders? Maybe that’s it. Anyway, I went home that night feeling battered and bruised, and, I’m sad to say, completely betrayed. I had trusted Dennis to behave himself and just let us have a normal conversation, over things other than our faith. I trusted him when he agreed to not bring his Bible. I kept my part of the agreement as far as I could; I didn’t bring my Bible, but of course once he’d broken the seals on the religious part, I couldn’t just not respond. And I laugh at this even now, nearly ten years later – I still never found out what his hobbies are, where he was raised, where he went to school, or anything like that. As far as I knew, he was just Dennis with the Bible, who did happen to make a very nice hot chocolate but someone whom I knew I could no longer trust. Trust is usually earned, in most personal or business relationships; in churches, however, I think it’s fair to say that it is almost assumed: this person is a Christian, of course you can trust them. Which is of course mainly why a betrayal of trust like that becomes Religious abuse; they have broken an almost unspoken rule, or at least convention, of implicit trust in your brother or sister.

And maybe that’s one of the main lessons we can learn from this piece: just because someone is a Christian does not in any way mean that you can – or should – trust them on that basis alone. They still have to earn your trust, just like in any other relationship. Their Christianity should not give them a ‘head start’ on the ‘trust curve’.

Of course, though, like any other broken trust, once it’s lost that trust is very difficult, if not impossible, to regain.

During his attack conversation, Dennis had also suggested I adopt attitudes that, of course unbeknownst to him, I had long since sloughed off during my Dark Night; things like feeling the need for a ‘covering’ relationship (which is a popular high-control religious concept where you make yourself answerable to some sort of ‘authority figure’!). He also didn’t appreciate my personal testimonies of God’s blessings either.

But still, I wanted to give him chance; I wanted to explain what his actions had done. That’s what’s called ‘maturity’. It is exercising Grace and extending forgiveness. And I also wanted to actually get him to help us agree on some healthy boundaries. And so I sent him this email:

Hey Dennis

Thanks for last night, it was good to get to know you a little better!

Although I kind-of enjoyed the ‘Bible study’ we did, in that it reminded me of the fabulous Gospel we believe in, I did feel very uneasy once I got home.

After reflection on what was bothering me, here’s what I came up with.

Firstly, I was particularly concerned about the ‘covering’ bit. First of all, although I don’t really set too much store on things being ‘Biblical’ – because ‘Biblical’ usually means ‘Biblical in the eyes of the person talking’ – the concept of ‘covering’ is in any case not a ‘Biblical’ concept. And I am under no man’s covering; should I choose to make myself accountable to someone, I can do that, but such people are few and far between. There’s nothing personal here, but although I want to honour you as group leader, I do not choose to place myself under your ‘covering’ in the sense I think you meant it, and I ask that you please honour that request.

Secondly, I did express a desire not to be proof-texted, but it seemed you couldn’t resist! Granted, I went along with it, but that I found very uncomfortable. Here’s why. As I said yesterday, I have done loads of encouragement work on Christian forums, being a voice for the broken and downtrodden (ask Jason [A mutual friend at the Church – Ed]; he has seen me in action) and I am currently having an extended sabbatical from that activity (http://tinyurl.com/gwbgd85). The main reason is because of harsh Christians Scripture-bombing me on those forums, and although I try to be thick-skinned, that has done me deep harm. I have to say that last night I felt just like I was back in battle on those forums. I respectfully asked that you not proof-text at me, and usually when I make a request like that I have a very good reason which you may not (and in this case did not) know about – but now you do.

So, please could you in future respect my desire not to do proof-texting.

Also, I am sorry but I am now also hesitant to share personal blessing testimonies with you – such as those precious prophecies I shared – because they got dissected. I appreciate that, as you explained, you have had reservations about prophecy from past experience, and I respect that. But that which I shared was precious and it felt rather like ‘pearls before swine’, I’m afraid.

This may all come as a shock to you, I realise. We did agree on much, but rather than agreeing to differ on points of difference, I felt you tried to bomb me into submission!

I do want to maintain good relationship with you; I really feel for you as the group leader and I would not want your job for any money. That’s partly why I want to honour you as group leader, and this email is intended to be constructive. Unless I name the problems, you will never know about them! I don’t want to upset you, and please be assured I forgive you! If this has upset you, then I ask that you please forgive me too!

So I need to ask you these questions:

1) What do you see is the point of the group, and then
2) What do you see as your role in the group?
3) What do you see others’ roles as in the group?
4) Can you define our relationship?
5) What’s your vision for the group – your goals and dreams for the group?
6) Are you happy with people bringing spiritual gifts in Lifegroup?

These questions may also help you to think out your ideas a bit more too.

You are a kind, gentle, pastoring guy and you have a good heart. I respect you for that 🙂 [12]

Thanks for listening

Anthony

Except – he didn’t listen. He told me that he hadn’t even read it, although I doubt that very much[13]. He said to me (in person) some mumbled story about him not liking to communicate in writing, preferring face-to-face. Which I can understand, but as Lifegroup leader he had a duty to make allowances for those who don’t quite have the same facility with face-to-face interactions as he does[14]. And to be honest, he wasn’t good at face-to-face anyway, lol 😉 And remember this was while Fiona was still alive; I was working full time and also being a Carer for my terminally ill wife. And he didn’t care; all he cared about was his agenda. Sorry for the language, but that really was a dick thing to do.

And so, we resigned from that Lifegroup and were accepted into a different group in that church, one in which we received nothing but blessing, love, hope and just general LIFE. One in which we were accepted the way we were. We stayed in that Lifegroup right up to Fiona’s passing, and I stayed in it after that terrible event. And it was in that Lifegroup that I was asked the question, ‘How can you lead worship like that, even after all you’ve been through?’, to which my answer was ‘How can I not?'[15]

Well, that’s the end of the story. I hope you got some laughs out of it! And maybe learned a lesson or two as well 😀

Before I finish, please let me reiterate what I said at the beginning of the piece: I share these stories in order to illustrate the different types of religious abuse, and scenarios in which they happen. I’m not criticising others’ faiths; what I am doing is to expose the ways in which they choose to inflict those beliefs on others, and to use those beliefs to justify their often horrendous actions. This arms my readers with information which they can then use to either recognise the risk in religious situations and thereby avoid them, or to recognise the signs when they happen. Because it’s often insidious and can creep up on you, and before you know it, you’re hooked. These people think nothing[16] of using these tactics to inflict their beliefs and requirements on others, and their potential victims need to be aware of this.

Grace and Peace to you.

Header picture depicts two Polish soldiers preparing an ambush position. At least, I assume there’s two of them; there could always be more of them concealed in-frame! It is an ambush, after all….

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Although, of course, you’re probably going to get abuse in any kind of organisation or group of people, churches or other – but people in churches really should behave better than they do!
⇧2 I think that as long as you laugh at yourself regularly, you should feel perfectly free to laugh at others, so long as you do it privately!!
⇧3 For some reason, I always feel more comfortable sitting on the floor in these kinds of meetings. Many’s the Lifegroup, or other meeting, when I’ve gone in to the room and sat on the floor, and some gallant soul has sprung up and said, ‘Oh! Sit here!’, much like someone giving up his seat to a pregnant lady on a bus. But I always decline; I prefer to sit on the floor! Just one of my quirks, if you like…
⇧4 Including when some clot asked me to play a load of Gilbert and Sullivan opera music just because I had a piano in front of me 🤣😂. Still, to be fair, at the time of the request, I was at the piano in the Saloon (which has gorgeous acoustics) at Coleton Fishacre, the country home of the D’Oyly Carte family; the house celebrates its hundredth anniversary next year, if I recall correctly. The D-Oyly Cartes were a well-known Victorian operatic company, so that was why that was relevant. Anyway, I declined; I can’t play opera to save my life (except the duet from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, and even then only the chorus)
⇧5 For me to get my own Autism diagnosis, it took at least six sessions with a clinical psychology doctor specialising in Autism. Therefore, I myself would never even presume to diagnose that condition in someone else merely by personal impressions!
⇧6 But of course they would say that ‘God has a sense of humour ahahaha ahaha aha. Ha’. but without providing any examples 😉
⇧7 Even the leadership roles I have actually had, such as Musical Director and Worship Leading, were not really people-leading in that I wasn’t like a pastor or an Elder or anything; the roles were more technical in nature. Not everyone can ‘do’ music at all, much less live instrumental playing and all that that involves.
⇧8 I don’t think he knew about my formal theological training; if he had, he’d really have felt threatened – but still his fears would have been groundless!
⇧9 A grimoire is a spell-book used in magic rituals; the thing I’m trying to convey here is a large, dusty tome with heavy leather or wooden covers, thick parchment pages and with the fading words written in blood, hopefully not human blood. Well, Dennis’s Bible wasn’t like that, although some people do have Bibles of that kind. You really wouldn’t want to drop one of these things on your foot. You see, many Fundamentalists see the Bible as a spell-book: speak these words, claim your promises and speak the magic words ‘In Jesus’ Name’ at the end and all your wishes will be granted! Honestly, that’s no different, really, from casting a spell!
⇧10 Note how my status has now changed to that of being a victim; this is where the abuse came in!
⇧11 As Dennis likely was, although that’s not for me either to say or judge.
⇧12 Well, he was, at the heart of things. He was just going about things in a disastrously wrong way, is all.
⇧13 Yes, I am indeed saying he lied! People like Dennis can’t help but read things sent to them, because they consider themselves too important.
⇧14 For those who don’t know, I am Autistic, and I find it very difficult to hold face-to-face conversations and maintain any kind of coherence in the conversation.
⇧15 As related in this article
⇧16 If indeed they think at all, as most of us would understand the term!

Father

Others' stuff, Personal, Ministry, Music

Given my recent slew of postings on dark subjects, I thought it time to refocus on the good stuff; the benefits and blessings of knowing God as Father and Jesus as Friend. And so we’ll take a bit of a healthy break from all that darkness. Today, I share a song that has blessed me and many others, in the hope that it will also bring blessings to you, my gentle readers.

As with most people[1], there are certain songs which remind me of specific times in my life. In my case, this is especially true of worship songs, because many of the songs I know and sing, I first learned (and then led) in my church in Leeds before I moved down to Devon.

Even though, then, I was quite legalistic – because I had been taught by my church peers not to know any different – still, underneath all the religious baggage, I had a deep love for Jesus and for my Heavenly Father. And the worship songs I used were more to express that love and devotion to God than they were to express any commitment towards a particular church or denomination[2].

On one day early in June, 1989, God revealed to me in no uncertain terms that I am His child. The Vineyard song ‘Precious Child‘, by Andy Park, came along a couple of months later to really cement that truth into my heart in a song – being a musician and worship leader, that’s always going to be a great way for Him to impart truths to my heart! – and for that reason I have loved that song ever since.

Also in 1989 came another song, this one by Danny Daniels, and another Vineyard song, called ‘Father (I can call You Father)’. This one, too, joined ‘Precious Child’ in cementing that truth into place. I will always be grateful to those songwriters for adding another dimension to that truth that I already knew, by enabling me to sing these songs to express that truth into being even more real to me.

And so, here it is. ‘Father, I can call You Father’; a seminal song in my faith journey and one which means as much to me today as it did thirty-six years ago, because the truth it expresses is just as real now as it was then. It’s performed here by its composer, Danny Daniels, and it’s the first version of the song I heard; right when I first learned it:

 

Father, I can call You Father
For I am Your child
Today, tomorrow and always, you are my Father

Father, how I love You Father
I will sing Your praise
Today, tomorrow and always, for You’re my Father

Chorus:
Father, Father, Father to me
Father, oh Father, Father to me

Father, I will serve you Father
I will seek Your face
Today, tomorrow and always, You are my Father

Chorus

That just makes my heart swell with gratitude, praise and love. And there may also be some spontaneous hand raising going on as well, if I’m honest 😉

I hope this song has blessed you. If you can’t really identify with this concept of really knowing that God is your Father, and that you are His child – experientially, more than just as an abstract concept through a book – then please ask Him to reveal it to you. Your life will never be the same when He does.

Grace upon Grace to you

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Or, at least, I think this is the case!
⇧2 Regarding the commitment to the actual congregation, sure, I wanted to serve them, of course. But sometimes, I felt like just giving the whole thing up, throwing my hands up and saying like “Right, that’s it; I’m not doing this any more”. Sometimes, it was actually the case that I loved worship leading so much that this was the only thing keeping me in that environment. Moving me to the South-West was God’s way of removing me cleanly and simply from that situation and giving me a new start, and that on so many levels.

A Dark Testimony IV – Me

Insights, Personal
This entry is part 5 of 17 in the series The Problems of Evangelicalism

Each of the dark testimonies I have shared so far has been different, and yet they’ve had disturbingly similar features too.

So, for this last testimony, I will share a few of my own[1] stories of abuse at the hands of a former church. And mine is different again from previous testimonies. Plus there’s a couple of minor anecdotes too 😉

I was a worship leader in a Charismatic Evangelical house church, which had grown to the size where the main congregational meeting was held in a hired public hall. In many ways, I was the worship leader, in that I was the Director of Music for the church, and led the worship group consisting of a couple of rhythm guitarists, bass guitar, me on piano/keyboards and lead vocals, and two backing vocalists, Cathy and my wife Fiona.

Every week, I would lead a congregation of a couple of hundred people in worship, from my keyboard, and the worship was always amazing. People would come from all over the region to join in; we had a reputation for it.

I didn’t have any ego problems, except that being an honest Autistic person (I didn’t know it then) I didn’t have any qualms about knowing how good it was.

And my secret was very simple. I just said that I was going to worship Jesus now, and anyone who wanted to do so was welcome to come along and worship with me. And that was it; everything just flowed from there.

It was quite interesting once… on one particular occasion where the leadership decided they wanted to try a new variation of dishonouring me and, by extension, the rest of the congregation, this time they got in another worship leader – a very arrogant one, as we shall see – and put him on for like a first ‘spot’ during the worship time[2]. The guy, whom we will call Johannes for the purposes of the story, was an existing member of our congregation. He was the leader of a well-known (in Christian circles, anyway) Christian band who had several recordings published in those days, you know, vinyls and cassette tapes[3]. The worship wasn’t bad; the music was good, as you’d expect from a professional musician and his band – but nothing really seemed to be happening in the worship sense.

Anyway, once Johannes had finished his ‘spot’, the leadership then expected me to just get up and carry on as normal, ignoring that I was outside my usual routine and also being deliberately put up on stage for ‘comparison’. Quite what their objectives were has never been made clear to me. I wouldn’t even want to begin to speculate; God’s ways are higher than our ways, we are told, but I am sure that the Elders’ ways were higher even than that 😉

So, as Johannes left the ‘stage’ area, he literally turned towards me, sneered at me, and said, ‘There you go; follow that!’ Really, that’s what he said!

Well, I just grinned at him. This is my calling; to lead others into the presence of God, and nothing on Earth would prevent that happening. I said to the horrified crowd, ‘Let’s just worship’, and stood at the keyboard for my first worship song.

As soon as I played that first chord, the Spirit just came down like a flood. What an amazing worship time it was. Not boasting or anything; that’s just how it happened 😀

Later, I did think it was kind of like that Elijah vs. the Prophets of Baal scene in the Old Testament (1Kings 18:20-40), except no-one got hit by any fireballs, neither aimed ones nor stray ones. Or, maybe, going even further back, it was like the bit in Genesis where God accepts Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s (Gen 4:4-5). Well actually no;  I am absolutely sure that God accepted both of our worship sets – it wasn’t Johannes’s fault. He wasn’t a bad bloke really; he had a heart for worship and a real heart for God, but he had an arrogance about him, and to be fair to him it was all a set-up anyway – both Johannes and I had been set up – by the totally incompetent leadership. But God came through despite them.

Well, that’s the story. It isn’t all that much in terms of hurt on my behalf; what happened more was that the congregation, of course, saw the whole thing and must have wondered what on Earth was happening, and themselves been hurt by it.[4] To see their beloved, faithful, reliable and servant-hearted worship leader being treated like that must have hurt them a lot. I’m just glad that they will have found some healing in the worship session that I led that day – because that’s what happens when you’re in the manifest presence of God. Still, though, what confidence does that give the congregation in their leadership, when they pull a stunt like that? Setting up an upstage scenario like that (either way; Johannes upstaging me, or me upstaging Johannes, or even both!) – I mean, really?? And they’d also set Johannes up for rejection too; like I say in one of the footnotes, it kind of put them off Johannes after that. How stupid of the leaders; how senseless!

I mean, I wouldn’t want to be a church leader for any money. But somehow it seems that church leadership are not chosen for their competence, and this lack of competence in leadership shows throughout congregations – and especially Evangelical congregations, where people are told that the only ‘ability’ that is required is ‘avail-ability’ – all across Christendom. In fact, when you really think about it, in the grand scheme of things, these men are essentially nobodies. They’re nothing special, at least in terms of abilities or anointing. At least, this lot weren’t. They’re just ordinary guys[5]. And yet they make decisions and announce edicts and rules and stuff that can seriously affect people’s lives, and all the while forgetting, it seems, that attendance at any church is voluntary, not mandatory[6] and that at any time people can just leave and not come back. Even if it’s in the middle of a song 😉

Speaking of leaving in the middle of something, Fiona and I did once get a bollocking for leaving a service at ‘half-time’. We’d done the music and we went out before the sermon. That was because my parents had booked us to have lunch with them, so we left in order to make that rendezvous with them. So these two Elders  turned up at our house as a team, to air their grievances. ‘You shouldn’t have left at half-time; when you’re there, you’re there for the duration'[7]. I can’t remember whether it was in private or in some sort of meeting; most likely it was the latter because I seem to remember there being a good few other people there too… it may have been at a music group practice? I can’t remember. So anyway we were told off good and proper, and poor Fiona burst into tears. One of the Elders was very harsh: ‘There’s no point in crying about it; you’ve done something wrong!’ sort of thing. And this was in our own home as well; invaded and violated by these two. And it also needs to be said that the harsh Elder in that pair later ran off with another congregant’s wife, so there’s that.

We should really have left the church there and then, after that castigation, but sadly we stayed – mainly because I was still sure that our calling was to lead worship there. In later days, our reluctance to leave would also be partly because the Roland JV-30 keyboard that I was playing (which didn’t belong to me; it was the church’s) was a real joy to play and minister with; it was state-of-the-art and such a lovely instrument 😉 [8]

Another time, a preacher got annoyed with me because I had to go and lie down behind the rear seats at the back of the hall after a particularly powerful worship session. When you’re leading, you can’t really let yourself be ‘overcome by the Spirit'[9] like most congregants can, because people are relying on you to play and lead. You can’t just fall over at the keyboard because a) you might break it, and b) you can’t play any longer because you can’t reach the keys from your new position on the floor 😉 When I left the stage area after that session, I was shaking all over and could hardly walk, such was the power of the Spirit on me. So I staggered to the back and collapsed there, out of sight – or so I thought!.

Except that the beady-eyed preacher[10] had spotted me, and he told me to get up because you shouldn’t be lying down during the sermon. Like, you see, the Spirit has to stop doing Her stuff once the music stops; She’s not allowed to carry on blessing someone and speaking words of love to them, because that would interrupt the far more important words that the preacher was about to say. Interesting how that is almost a precursor for any behaviour where humans’ words are placed on a pedestal above God’s words or, in this case, actions. He was blind to what God was doing with me that day. He’s also the same preacher who, on one memorable occasion,[11] began his sermon, then after half an hour of blindingly dull droning, he said, “Right, so that’s just the introduction!” And I kid ye not, an audible, dismayed groan went up from the congregation at that point. And he actually didn’t notice! For crying out loud…. 🤣

I remember once, not long after our Church started, during the worship I sometimes used to sit on the front of the piano (this was a real upright piano, not the Roland keyboard I had later) during phases like the ‘collection’ or the ‘notices’; times where there wasn’t a lot of music going on, so I’d lower the lid over the keyboard and sit on it with my feet on the piano stool so I could watch what was going on. Trouble was, I was so poor at that time[12] that I couldn’t afford new jeans, and so there were huge holes shall we say, ‘under’ the jeans. Thus, although I of course wore underpants, the view was apparently quite disconcerting to certain members of the congregation. And I didn’t have a clue about it 🤣😂 So, of course, as is typical in churches (which is why I am mentioning this particular adventure) some of the offended parties ignored Bible passages like Matthew 18:15 (in their own Rulebook, remember!) where Jesus encourages people with a grievance to go and talk privately with the offending party, and instead they went and told the Elders. Those people had probably been like that at school, too; going and blabbing to the teacher whenever they see something they don’t like. And they’d never lost the habit 😉 Anyhoo, one of the Elders (my ‘favourite’ one, with whom I had a close relationship as we went to Bible college together) came to me and shared the ‘problem’ really sensitively and gently. I hadn’t realised there was a problem but I took it well and sorted it. Can’t remember how, though. Maybe I just stopped sitting on the piano 😉 But what he did say was that when they told their tales to him, he did say to them, ‘Have you ever thought of buying Anthony a new pair of jeans?’ One of the great leaders, that man was; it’s a shame that he had to leave the church later because of the way they treated people. This series is most emphatically not about him!

Then there was the time in 1990 when I was musical director for a presentation of the Graham Kendrick Christmas musical, ‘The Gift‘, at Guiseley School in West Yorkshire. After three months of rehearsals and practice, with a very large music group and choir gathered from across all the churches in the area, we were ready for what was sure to be a really big event. Not only was I musical director, but I was also lead pianist, and lead vocalist on two of the tracks.

And they wanted me to buy a ticket to get in.

Yes, they wanted me to pay to get in to my own show. Only in churches, eh? Only in churches. This time I did stand up for myself, though. “What do you call this, then, ‘pay as you play’? I can’t afford a ticket, and I wouldn’t buy one if I could. My dad was a professional musician and he never had to pay to get in to one of his gigs, duh. If you won’t let me in, then the show will just have to flop, won’t it”. They caved 😉 Unsurprisingly. And the show went a bomb[13].

Here’s a photo of the show in full swing, and that’s me at the piano. Back when I had hair. They let me in after all 🤣🤣😜[14]

And finally, I remember once we’d been at a Christian Festival; a week-long camping event that was essentially a clone of the Dales Bible Week, and we’d come back all ‘fired up’ and full of new songs that we’d learned there. Of course, being a gifted musician and fully capable of playing the songs – at least those I liked, anyway[15] – as soon as I’d heard a song once or twice, and played it once through on the piano, I’d know the song for life. Anyway, on this particular occasion, one of the Elders was leading worship and he wanted one of the new songs and he decided to use my gifting – which he knew about – against me, and outside the parameters of its proper use, as far as I was concerned, anyway, which is all that matters when it comes to gifting. We hadn’t practised the song as a band, nor was there an overhead projector slide (Remember those?!) with the lyrics on it. So I gently refused to play it. Very quickly, the situation deteriorated to the point where he was growling and shouting at me through gritted teeth to play the song. Quite what the congregation thought, I don’t know. But I played it, and once again they got away with it. His tirade burst the ‘worship bubble’, though 😂; no-one felt like singing very much after that….

So, there we are. That’s just a few stories of whole loads of ridiculous nonsense heaped upon just one man in just one church[16]. I don’t know a) why they thought they could get away with it, and b) why I let them get away with it. Actually, that latter isn’t quite correct; like I said earlier, I was there because I knew that was my calling. And also for the other reasons mentioned in some of my footnotes. Maybe they knew that about my calling, though, and they knew that nothing they did would divert me from that calling – and took full advantage of that.

I don’t know; I find it hurts my head just to try to think down to that level. Far better for me to live my simple life of faith in the One Who loves me, than to get embroiled in church politics – because that’s what it was.

A far cry from the Grace under which I now live my life 🙂

Grace and peace to you!

[Addendum]: Just after finishing this essay, I had a really surreal experience. I happened across a YouTube video featuring my old pastor, who’s now well into his eighties, preaching a sermon. And I listened to it; he’s still saying the same things and doesn’t seem to realise that God has moved on…. still, the surreal bit was that his preaching is still just as compelling as it always was. It’s not surprising that they had us under kind of a spell. Really really strange feeling to hear that quite-nasal voice again, to see his gestures and mannerisms, and, yes, see the actual warmth of his heart. It’s really really odd. And I know he’s not a bad man; he’s more of a teacher than a pastor is what I think nowadays – and I still love him. But I would still never go back.

[Edit II: 21st November 2025] Funny but I have just remembered another episode where they used poor Johannes to damage us – and this time it was a bit of a bad ‘un; we nearly left the church over this one. As background, I’ll explain that, as lead musicians, Fiona and I always used to get to the church building about an hour before the service was due to start. For things like set-up, communication with other participants, instrument tuning, pre-service prayer session, that sort of thing. On this particular Sunday, we turned up at our usual time ready to set up and minister, and, dragging all our kit with us – keyboard and stand, foldback amplifier[17], cables bag, kids and kids’ clobber – you get the picture! – we opened the inner door and were totally surprised to see that Johannes and his band had already set up and were doing their tuning and things. We weren’t expecting Johannes and his band to be on at all. So there we were; having prepared for the morning, and with no warning whatsoever, we’d been bumped off the playlist and, well, I don’t know what they expected… whether we were supposed to sit and join in, whether we were to join their band as a sort of team effort, whether to go home, whatever. We were just completely surprised and indeed shocked by it and were really shaken and at a loss. So in the end we turned around – literally, turned around – and went back to load all our gear back into the car again to go home. Our two lovely, gentle guitarists, who loved us really deeply, had spotted us and they hastened out to try to help us, but we were too hurt to want to go back in. Later, those two told me that they had gone and told the leaders what they thought of their nasty surprise for us that morning, and asking like what the hell they thought they were playing at. As far as I remember, their response was something to the effect of ‘Oh, it’s Anthony and Fiona. They’ll get over it’ – meaning that they felt they could do whatever they wanted and we’d just have to suck it up. My guitarists nearly left over that attitude. I really don’t know why we, or the guitarists, stayed in the church after that. They had to do apologies and all sorts to get us to go back; we also took some time off and received a lot of healing when our dear band members took us up to Hollybush Farm Christian Fellowship for one of their evening meetings, so we could just worship and receive. Just what we needed; they even did some Don Francisco songs that really ministered to our hearts on a deep level. But, again – as with the first Johannes story – I still don’t know why they did it. It wasn’t as if they’d forgotten to mention to us that our services wouldn’t be required that morning and to take the morning off. I really don’t know. Maybe they thought we were getting burned-out (which does happen when intensive ministry goes on week after week), but if that was the case then they should have just asked us/told us that that was what they thought and put it that way. But instead, if it was a burnout issue, then this just made it worse as it made us feel even more like just jacking in the whole thing. Great leadership! </sarcasm off> Lol.

Header image is an artist’s impression of a neutron star, the remnant cinder of what was once a huge supergiant star which, once upon a time, more or less ran out of fuel and exploded in a brilliant supernova, leaving a cold, dense, dark core spinning in space forever and warping everything around it. Bright and powerful, then burned out yet still breaking things. There’s a message there, isn’t there? 😉

 

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Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 Just a few of many, believe me!
⇧2 I must make it clear at this point that no-one had told me that this was going to happen; it was completely out of the blue, as it were.
⇧3 This was before anyone had even dreamed of CDs and mp3 files!
⇧4 And sadly, but understandably, they didn’t really like Johannes all that much after that episode…. ‘Follow that!’ indeed! 🤣🤣
⇧5 I can’t remember who it was, but it may have been Douglas Adams, or maybe Terry Pratchett, or maybe even the great Arthur C. Clarke, who said that people who put themselves forward for high leadership positions are usually the very last people who should be in such positions.
⇧6 Except of course in the more high-control churches, but to be fair ‘my’ church wasn’t really like that.
⇧7 Something that they failed to appreciate was that we could have done it in a different and far more inconvenient way. We could have told them that we were not going to be there that week, and simply not gone to Church. And they’d have had to arrange something else in terms of musicians; anyway most of the band was still there after we’d gone, and fully competent they were too. But we could have simply not been there at all. Instead, though, we did what we saw as the ‘right thing’ and turned up to play, and then left when we’d done our bit. There was no further inconvenience to anyone apart from maybe having to do their last song a capella (unaccompanied), although like I said there were still other competent musicians there and they were happy with our leaving at half-time. There wasn’t even a keyboard to pack away as this was before we’d got the Roland synth. If we’d not been there, and made arrangements for cover, we’d not have been castigated; instead, we did turn up and we got a bollocking anyway. How utterly, utterly stupid and irrational is that??
⇧8 Also, it says a lot for either our indoctrination, our reluctance to ‘rock the boat’, or our subconscious reluctance to give them an opening for further bollockings – somehow, you know that if you protest, you will fall even further from their favour – that we let them get away with that, absolutely scot-free. I feel terrible now – remorseful – that I did not stand up for myself, nor especially for my beloved wife, on that occasion. Nowadays, of course, I wouldn’t put up with it at all.
⇧9 Being ‘overcome by the Spirit’ is when the power of the Holy Spirit is so strong on a person that there are physical ‘manifestations’; sometimes the person will shake/tremble, sometimes they will just be almost unconscious of what is going on around them, so overcome are they with the power and presence of God, and sometimes – most people will have seen videos of this sort of thing – they just fall over as if poleaxed. Hopefully someone will catch them on their way to the floor. I was once ‘ministering’ to a young man on the floor who suddenly opened his eyes and rolled away, because he had become aware that his mother – who was ‘quite a big lady’ was also about to fall over and land on him 😂 Someone would have caught her, all right, but that someone would have been her son. Sort of. 🤣
⇧10 And yes, he did have a really beady, disapproving stare!! I suppose the correct term for it is ‘baleful’ 😉
⇧11 Only memorable because of what happened!
⇧12 Partly because of having to tithe to the hilt!
⇧13 That means it went well 🤣
⇧14 Interestingly, though, the bloke I had the ‘chat’ with ended up becoming a ‘Grace’ believer. I even got an apology out of him; he volunteered it too. Sorry for anything I did when I was an Evangelical, sort of thing. Very refreshing.
⇧15 For some reason (probably Autism-related), my musical gifting, in terms of playing songs, only extends (musically speaking, that is, not necessarily in terms of lyrics) to pieces I actually like. Songs I don’t like, musically, just don’t stay in my head well enough for me to remember how they ‘go’, and I am completely hopeless at reading sheet music. Songs that have great tunes but dreadful lyrics I can play, but why would I ever want to?? 😉
⇧16 That church is now an unrecognisable shred of what it once was. It is a sad fact that congregations who express the unconditional love of Christ are few and far between nowadays. Much more common are groups where the love of Christ has gone cold, and all that is left is the cold, shrivelled neutron star (what’s left of a powerful supergiant star, once its fuel runs out); a cinder of a church that has had its day; it’s only carrying on going in order to try and recapture memories of its past glories, and it’s about time it closed down completely. I’m sure Jesus still turns up, which to be honest is likely all that keeps them going at all. It’s interesting that folks in such remnant congregations generally have only sin-policing and dislike of ‘worldly’ systems as their common/uniting factors, rather than uniting in love and letting that love leak out into their community. In a sense, they are closed systems with no new life. Maybe that’s why their fuel has run out…
⇧17 Foldback is where you have a separate amplifier or loudspeaker that plays your instrument’s or microphone’s output back at you, so that you can hear what you’re playing or singing. This is important when the overall sound is controlled by the boys on the sound desk, as, depending on their mix of inputs/outputs, you may not be able to otherwise hear your playing/singing – which you really need to be able to do.

The Destroyer of Faith

Insights, Stories, Personal, Humour, Asperger's/Autism, Wisdom
A long Essay on Spiritual Abuse and Religious Trauma

TRIGGER WARNING:

This is a personal story involving religious abuse, and contains descriptions of religious abuse, religious trauma, and the techniques used by religious abusers. It may even come across as a bit of a rant, but I think it needs to be said in any case. It’s not for the faint-hearted. You have been warned! 😀

There are certain Christians who abuse other Christians in various ways. These people can so easily wreck and sometimes even destroy others’ faith by their words, by the damage those words cause, by their actions, and by their example.

I quote Oppenheimer above in order to emphasise that this kind of behaviour brings death. It is spiritual abuse, which brings spiritual trauma and kills a person’s spirit within them. Spiritual death[1]. And so, these kinds of Religious people are guilty of bringing that spiritual death to other people – sometimes unwittingly, sometimes as a fit of pique, and sometimes deliberately and maliciously. Sadly, I have seen all three 🙁 Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that they reflect the character of ‘someone’ who is not Father God… indeed, they reflect more the character of the Accuser, who cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy (Jn 10:10 (KJV))- steal your assurance, kill your joy, and destroy your peace.

But, as always, by their fruits you will know them (Mt 7:16). If their words and actions cause suffering and the ‘steal, kill and destroy’ antics expressed above, you can be sure that that spirit is not from God. And while I realise that faith is a gift from God (Eph 2:8-9), the phenomenon I am describing in this piece is where someone’s God-given faith is so badly desecrated, mauled and smashed by religious abuse – often from a person that the victim should have been able to trust, which is partially why it’s ‘abuse’ – that the person finds it is no longer possible to practise, express, exercise or enact their faith due to the damage that has been done to it. It is rendered lifeless by the abuse endured, partially because the abused person no longer feels safe to express that faith, at least not in the context they live, whether religious or social – or both. That’s why I refer to spiritual abuse as being ‘The Destroyer of Faith’.

In many of my posts, I have railed against Religious people[2] who seem to think it’s their job to police other people’s moral life. Many groups also have people amongst their number who feel free to assume that everyone is subject to their criticism and has to not only listen, but also agree and do something about any points raised, whether or not it’s someone they know and whether or not they have their permission. Certainly, if there is no actual relationship there, then they shouldn’t be doing that.

As a case in point, as my dear friend Derrick Day once said, “If you have a problem with me, call me. If you don’t have my number, then you don’t know me well enough to have a problem with me!”.

Now, granted, you may well offend or injure a complete stranger, in public or in private, and they would be well within their rights to complain to you. ‘Oi! You just trod on my foot!’ or something. And you would hopefully apologise, and that would (again, hopefully) be the end of it. But it’s superficial; there is nothing deep about it, nor is any other action required other than to apologise and maybe pay their medical bills if you injured them. There was no intentionality in it, either malicious or benign; it’s just neutral. I don’t need to expand on this; all of my readers will be familiar with this sort of thing.

However, there are some people, usually Religious people (and some political activists) who demand more. In short, they want blood. They want to know why you did something, what your motivations are, whether or not you are sufficiently contrite (sufficiently, that is, to their satisfaction) and most of all how you are going to make significant lifestyle changes to prevent further occurrences of your wrongdoing. Okay, maybe I’m being a bit hyperbolic, but anyone who has ever received a bollocking from a self-righteous Religious type will know exactly what I’m on about. The bottom line here is that any response to such a complaint is entirely your business, and no-one else’s.

Ten years ago, something like that happened to me. In fact, I wrote some of my first posts on this blog in response to that episode. One such example is the beautiful February 2015 article ‘Confrontation‘, which lays out the sort of approach that a believer, at least, would be advised and indeed expected to adopt, when confronting someone with something that has offended them. Certainly, it must be done in a spirit of restoration and reconciliation, not one of condemnation. No Christian should ever do anything that would cause someone to doubt that God loves them, by whatever means, but especially by lading guilt and condemnation, which can take literally years to throw off, and in some cases the person never recovers[3]. Three articles that may help when it comes to people correcting/judging are here (the ‘Confrontation’ piece referenced above), here and here.

Unfortunately, certain Christians seem to excel at that kind of condemnation, especially when it is inflicted on fellow believers. Maybe that works so well because they know that Christians are especially vulnerable to conscience problems, particularly those who are ‘sin-conscious’ and/or ‘sin-fixated’. Such condemnatory people cause tremendous damage and hurt[4]. While for Jesus it’s true that ‘a bruised reed He will not break; a smoking wick He will not snuff out’ (Isaiah 42:3), many of His followers do not have that same gentleness. As a friend of mine said on Facebook the other day, “Christians are the only ones who go out of their way to make sure that hurting people know they aren’t loved by God”.

Aye, I had to admit to him that, sadly, I’ve seen that first hand. In my case it didn’t work, because I know the truth about myself and about how God sees me, but they did try their best. Ten years ago now, it was.

So, here’s the story, with a bit of background too:

In August, 1999, I began my ‘dark night of the soul‘, where I stopped doing Christian things entirely. The short version of this is that I was being stripped of all the junk that had been hindering my faith for so long; religious requirements that had layered over my simple faith, and other things too. And it lasted for fifteen years. On on Sunday 2nd Feb, 2014, God said to me, ‘Ok lad, it’s time to go back’, so I duly went along with Fiona – and I got thoroughly zapped. Here’s what I posted on Facebook that afternoon: “What a morning. First time voluntarily in a church for fifteen years, and getting thoroughly zapped by God: weeping, laughing, complete acceptance, forgiveness. Wow, wow, wow! Going again tonight hehe”. That divine encounter was simply profound. I had never felt anything like that before, and I later said that I likened it to ‘being born again, again’! Since then, I have known that I would never, ever want to go back to the legalistic, religion-centred faith that I had previously had; it was like becoming a butterfly, having emerged from my fifteen-year chrysalis. My chains had indeed fallen off, and my heart was free!

To continue with the butterfly analogy, the problem with being a butterfly is that, while the butterfly can still speak caterpillar, the caterpillar cannot speak butterfly. It’s like you have a different language. The word ‘Grace’ now actually means something, rather than just something you say at the end of each meeting while holding hands and trying to avoid each other’s eyes, or a short prayer at a meal. Forgiveness is real, ongoing and at the same time permanent. You know that God ‘remember[s] your sin no more’ (Heb 8:12, which quotes Jer 31:34). You know that nothing can snatch you from His hand, nor can you jump! 😉 So that by the time of the story I will tell below, my faith was real, vibrant and living, and my assurance complete, my sonship sure and my attitude to ‘sin’ was one of complete freedom to just leave it behind. My joy, despite Fiona’s illness and prognosis, was full and real; indeed, nothing but real joy would have survived the terrible agonies we were going through as a family due to the illness. And my whole frame of reference had shifted, from one of partial reliance on complying with Law, to one wholly, solely and completely dependent on Grace. That’s why I now speak ‘butterfly’!

In December, 2014, in the face of Fiona’s terminal cancer diagnosis, we renewed our marriage vows in a beautiful service in our local Anglican Church, where we were members at the time[5]. The wedding was awesome and many friends old and new came along to bless us, including even some from our former life in West Yorkshire. You know how with some people you have a ‘life bond’; a friendship where even if you haven’t seen each other for like 20 years or more, somehow you just pick up where you left off and things are just as they were before. Well, friends like that.

One of those friends, Sally[6], told us that she was organising a worship conference in February 2015, where Christians from all over the country could get together to learn more about worship. And she invited us to go. The conference was to be a residential one at a Christian centre somewhere well up-country, quite a way from our home in South Devon. But we decided we wanted to go, so we could get a handle on the latest knowledge about practical Charismatic/Evangelical style worship. So off we went, and me just a year into my new life walking in butterfly freedom 😉 There was me, Fiona, our daughter Ellie, and my best friend at the time, a very practical and down-to-Earth man called Edd; we considered ourselves to be each other’s ‘wingmen’. We attended (what they referred to as) seminars, and took part in a sort of ‘open mic’ evening; we joined in and generally enjoyed it. We didn’t really learn an awful lot, to be honest[7], and the food was pretty dire[8]. We learned, a lot of, quite frankly, not very useful words denoting different aspects of (I think I recall correctly) worship practices of the ancient Israelites, and similar stuff, but to be honest it was pretty pithy and not much of it was of use. On the plus side, we met some amazing people and made some wonderful new friends, with whom we are still in touch nowadays, and we still continue to bless each other. While in some of the seminars, I heard things I didn’t really agree with, I generally went along with it because I know that not everyone believes the same thing, even at an Evangelical retreat. But there was one point – it was so insignificant that I can’t even remember what it was! – where I put up my hand and asked a question. The speaker, a lady whom we’ll call ‘Joanna’, was a bit nonplussed by it, she tried to answer it, and later I spoke to her privately, to make sure that she knew there was nothing personal involved; it was a genuine question. Little did I know that I had become a marked man! Obviously, for Joanna and her fellow speakers, the word ‘conference’ was nothing of the sort; it didn’t involve any two-way at all; we were expected to just sit there and listen. I am a trained Adult Education Tutor (I used to teach basic computing in evening classes at a local college) and I know that people have different learning styles; evidently Joanna didn’t know that. Probably not a teacher, or probably so full of herself that… well I need say no more! But the next day, I raised my hand to ask another question, and the speaker (not Joanna), even though she saw my hand up, quickly averted her eyes and ignored me. It seemed to me that she’d been briefed to watch out for that guy with the Yorkshire accent, because therein lies trouble! 😉 And then, in a later seminar, it was Joanna’s turn to speak again and she said that (and I quote) ‘God can’t do anything without faith as a prerequisite’. Well, that was something I couldn’t really accept, and although I didn’t put my hand up (because I knew I would be ignored), I did put a small post on Facebook that evening:

“I’ve just heard the phrase, ‘God Can’t’. And that at a worship conference, no less. Well, I’m here to say God Can!”

That was it. That was all I put[9].

The next morning, I ran Edd to the local railway station early on, because he had to get back to Devon for some football coaching he was doing that day. I returned in time for breakfast – rubbery sausages, some sort of hard-fried egg with a pale yolk (we have free-range chickens, so we are somewhat spoiled!), Sainsburys Savers beans and the Tesco in-house version of Coco Pops. As I was eating my final bowl of (air quotes) “coco pops”, Sally and Joanna approached the table with facial expressions like those disapproving expressions that used to be worn by Cissie and Ada in the Les Dawson Show. The photo here, of Cissie and Ada[10], does not do Joanna and Sally’s faces justice because they both had tight lips like they’d been sucking lemons, and their heads both held in an identical tilt to the left 😂.

Well, they must have indeed been disapproving expressions, because despite being Autistic and generally unable to read any sort of body language, even I noticed, and Ellie called out ‘This looks like an intervention!’ Displaying no humour whatsoever at Ellie’s brilliant comment, as is usual for the Religious when they are ‘on a mission’, they agreed that it was an ‘intervention’. They wanted to take me to task about my Facebook comment of the previous evening. Well, for me, breakfast is a sacred time, for eating not arguing, so I told them I hadn’t finished my breakfast and I was going to do so first. So they sat and watched (something I can’t stand, being Autistic) while I finished off every last orangey-brown drop of cheapo-chocolate flavoured milk from the “coco pops”. Remember this was at a fully-occupied breakfast table with about another four people there in addition to myself and my family – of course, Edd was on a train back to Devon so I didn’t have my wingman there to watch my ‘six’. Anyway, before they started in on me, I made it clear that I am my own man and that I do not recognise any authority over me, including theirs, and they agreed with that on the surface, probably just to get their own way. But in the presence of all these people, in full violation of any Biblical principle about confronting people (Mt 18:15-20) – they made up their own rules as they went along – they proceeded to lambast me verbally about my post, concluding that it was ‘all over the World Wide Web'[11], this being concluded by Joanna’s contemptuous chucking of Sally’s phone (which she had been brandishing) on to the table. Accompanied not only by the obligatory sniff, but also by a demand that I take down the comment. Sally had shown Joanna on her phone what she’d seen on my Facebook feed, and Joanna had gone straight on the warpath. They’d clearly jumped straight to their own conclusions and given it no thought before coming to administer me a bollocking! In addition, she also told me that I had done ‘nothing but contradict her since [I’d] been there’, which is a bit of an exaggeration as I’d only asked one question, and made sure afterwards that we were ‘all good’. Hardly the actions of a disruptive person. And this all being done to a chap who has had only a year to come to to terms with having his faith restored in quite a surprising way, in the presence of my daughter who was just beginning to flourish as a young Christian girl, and my lovely Fiona who had a terminal cancer diagnosis. All these factors; those two women knew about them all. How callous is that? How selfish? I refused to take the comment down, mainly out of principle, because I detest the suppression of free speech just because someone doesn’t like what is written. Fiona was stricken and explained that I have Asperger’s Syndrome, and that most likely I would eventually see their point of view and take the comment down. But they were having none of it. Joanna even said, literally through gritted teeth, that if I was Autistic then they could pray for me![12] I mean, I would probably have got turned into a toad or something! Honestly, words cannot express the depths of the disgust that this episode engendered in me. Needless to say, we returned home that day, missing out on the rest of that last day of the conference – not that we’d have learned much, I’m convinced. Just as the first seminar was being set up – Sally was going to be teaching on that one, so I am sort of sorry I missed it – Fiona went in to see her and to give her a hug; she must have known that this was the last time they would ever see each other and Fiona wasn’t the sort of person who would leave something like that up in the air. But we left. My peace damaged, my mind in a turmoil, my ladies gutted on my behalf. But once the dust had settled, I learned a lot from it as I will describe below. To be honest, I don’t think, now, that Sally intended for Joanna to go off on one like that; I think she was just hurt and shared it with Joanna to share her burden. And Joanna decided to take her already – existing dislike for me (for being trouble enough to listen carefully to what she was teaching and actually ask a question!) into a public shaming event. Shame it tarnished her own reputation more; those around the table got to see just how toxic she was. The old phrase ‘that says a lot more about them than it does about you’ was particularly apropos there! Anyway, I did actually take the post down, within a day in fact, because my attitude was that if it was hurting someone, then it shouldn’t be there, and I messaged Joanna to let her know, at which point she promptly blocked me with no reply. Petty and ungrateful, much. A relevant point here is that while a person may well feel free to take someone to task about something they don’t like, the response to the criticism is always in the hands of the one being criticised. Someone may well feel free to criticise my actions, but they don’t get to dictate my actions. This is a principle that all members of medium- to high-control groups could do with knowing.

But back to the story. It might not seem like much, but for an Autistic person to be publicly humiliated like that – indeed for anyone to have that happen to them! – it’s pretty bad. For someone who is an innocent, clean, joy-filled and free Christian believer acting in good faith – it wasn’t even a bad comment! – to be attacked like that. For a new believer to have to see something that ugly. For a dying lady to have to see the husband she adores being treated like that. That – is disgraceful. And sadly it’s not untypical of religious people to do things like that.

The next few paragraphs may seem a bit random or confused; a bit ‘all over the place’, but please see it as a mosaic of different impressions and realisations, also some expressions of reality, from the fall-out from that event. I have left them like this in order to simulate, in some small measure, the disjointed thinking and shock and damage effect of what it’s like when something like this happens.

I didn’t actually hold anything against the women in the story, and I still don’t. I forgave them, as you can see from the article I wrote only a few days later. I have not published the details of what happened until now; I have certainly not named-and-shamed. I have thought in depth about when – or even whether – to publish this article, or even to write it. Indeed, I am writing it only a few days before it will be published. I have waited on this for ten years. So, it is obvious that it is not coming from a place of either unforgiveness nor bitterness. I am still good friends with Sally[13]. I’m not saying that Joanna is the Destroyer of Faith, nor am I saying that she is a Destroyer of Faith. What I am saying, though, is that her actions are an example of the sort of behaviour that is the Destroyer of Faith.

I wanted to publish the story because I know that this is not an isolated incident. It may well be for Joanna, of course (although I doubt it; usually people who do this kind of thing already have a habit of it), but still, people need to know that this sort of thing goes on in churches, especially those where the ‘authority’ of leadership – even if they are ‘only’ conference speakers – is held as a licence to abuse people. Joanna’s husband is in the leadership team of Sally and Joanna’s church, so she’s probably seen as some sort of ‘untouchable’. The Evangelical idea of ‘do not touch the Lord’s anointed’ is rife in churches like theirs – although their pastor is one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever met (he’s not Joanna’s husband). I wonder if he knows that stuff like this goes on among his flock?

I understand that my post was received as hurtful, for which I apologised at the time, and I almost – but not quite – understand why. It was their ‘baby’; they had put a lot of work into the conference (although sadly the other organisers hadn’t put much money into the food budget 🤣 ) and they were offended by my post. That said, my post was more of a general comment anyway, it was not targeted against anyone (I don’t do things like that) and it was posted in all innocence.  It wasn’t even about the conference; it was about something that someone said. And if it was that hurtful, why did Sally have to share the hurt even further, except to cause trouble? Why didn’t she come to me, one-on-one? No-one could tell from the post where I was, nor whose worship conference I was at. Part of being Autistic is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for the Autistic person to see things from others’ points of view, especially when it’s all so convoluted, inferred and second-guessed. This is partly why I stay away from people in general, and occurrences like this only serve to reinforce that attitude as being the correct one in my case.

Leading on from the thing about the conference being their ‘baby’, yes – I get that. But I think that linking my comment about faith with the quality (or otherwise) of the conference was really taking themselves a bit too too seriously. This is a classic example of offence being taken rather than given, as I have shared in other posts. When someone is told that offence was not intended, but they still insist on receiving that offence, then that’s a sure sign that the problem is with them, not with the comment or its creator.

As an illustration of how this incident improved the way I approach life, I wrote, in this article, the following, very observant, comment, which references the events in this story:

“Interestingly, about a year ago I was once again subjected to an (uninvited) barrage of accusations/doctrinal correction/call it what you will, from a ‘non-free Christian’, and it made me realise, while in the process of categorically rejecting that person’s diatribe, just how far I have come in my freedom. I never want to go back to that life. My ‘detoxification’[14], as it were, has released me into entirely new freedoms to love people of different views without judging them or trying to change them. And that, to me, is real freedom!”

And now a thought about how some Christians seem to think that they hold some sort of power over others. These Christians could be either leadership, their relatives (‘Elders’ wives’, as it were) or others who feel they have something to say and that they are too important to leave it unsaid. Remember that I stated clearly (after I’d eaten my “coco pops”!) that I did not consider myself ‘under’ Joanna’s authority in any way, which, of course, she then proceeded to ignore. At least from her side, anyway; it didn’t affect the way in which I received the criticism. I still rejected it, and her authority along with it.

Anyway, these kinds of abusive people mis-use the faith position of the victim in order to facilitate their attack. In other words, they know that a fellow believer is likely to have sufficient conscience and gentle heart to listen to criticism, whether that’s in the interest of maintaining harmonious relationships, wanting to ‘keep short accounts with God'[15]or any other good and noble reason[16], and this makes the victim open and pliable for what comes next. Their defences are down; why would they want to raise their defences against a fellow member of the Church family? Until it hits them, of course, but by that time the damage is done.

High-control church leadership invariably go on about people making themselves ‘vulnerable’, citing it as being a ‘softening of the heart’ so that Jesus can change it. There was even a Graham Kendrick song some decades ago, called ‘soften my heart’ which espoused that principle. While the sentiments behind a favourable response to this softening idea is seen as admirable, and indeed it can help some people to become more compassionate, it has two problems. Firstly, such a softening should and must only occur under the prompting and direction of the Holy Spirit, and not from a human, whether or not it’s set to music 😉 And it’s usually an unconscious thing; I find that all of a sudden I have reacted to a need in a way I wouldn’t have done before, and I never noticed that my attitudes had changed. That’s how the Spirit works. Secondly, it opens up the believer to abuse; specifically, abuse aimed at the vulnerability of that softened heart. Abusive leaders take full advantage of that, and this was what happened in Joanna’s case with me. And that’s partially why it hurt so much. Although in my case, the main thing was what it did to Fiona; the poor girl was devastated. As was Ellie. ‘Dad, you’ve come so far, and she goes and does that to you’. And she was right. I would also add that these abusive leaders don’t necessarily consciously realise that it’s the ‘softened heart’ they are targeting; they just know that it works. Or at least it does with people who submit to them, at any rate. I cope with the ‘softened heart’ concept in my own way. My heart is indeed soft; I have deep compassion for, well, everyone, including all life, really – animals, plants and so on. But I also have an armoured box, which granted does remain open most of the time, but it stands always ready to snap shut on the approach of nasty people. That’s how I defend; your method may vary.

And it really is time for these destructive people to learn how to respect boundaries. Even for those visiting ‘evangelists’ on my doorstep a couple of weeks ago; they had crossed a boundary. They had knocked on my door despite the clear presence of signs on the door (and right next to the doorbell, too!) that said ‘No Cold Callers’. I wrote to the church a few days later (of course, I am still awaiting a response at the time of writing!)[17] and said this:

“No-one is going to change their mind about not wanting to be disturbed just because it’s religious people doing the disturbing, nor are they likely to want to attend your church if this is how badly people’s boundaries are respected”.

The question of boundaries is indeed an important one. For example, and at the risk of seeming to behave like them!, only in a church will someone ask you a question about sexual matters. They love it. They will even feel free to ask a couple if they are sleeping together! In our pre-marriage ‘counselling’ sessions, Fiona and I were asked straight up if we had ‘misbehaved’ together. I kid you not. No doubt the Elders got some sort of cheap thrills out of it; Fiona was always absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. But the fact remains that they crossed a boundary in asking us that. Christians do so love to talk about sexual matters, all in ‘love’ of course, and ‘strictly as a matter of spiritual healthiness’. I do think it gives them a cheap little frisson of forbidden sexual thrill. But in what world is it ever acceptable to ask someone a question like that? And even more, to expect an honest answer, which in some groups could earn you instant punishment as a reward for your openness? No way!

The take-home message for that is this: I can see absolutely no reason at all to ‘open oneself up’ to the potential of abuse by lowering one’s defences and making oneself vulnerable. [18]. I share this recommendation so as to protect you, my gentle reader, from making the same mistake. There is absolutely no need to make yourself vulnerable to anyone outside your family.

Let’s put that another way: Churches are not family, no matter how much they claim to be. Blood is definitely thicker than water. When I left my church in Leeds, only a very few people from that church maintained contact with us; those who really loved us. Mark and Alison (who greatly helped us in our move south, although I won’t say how because it would embarrass them), Richard and Elizabeth, Chris and Dawn. That’s about it. Not the Church Elders; you know, the men who used to conclude their Elders’ Meetings with a Chinese takeaway paid for with church funds, when I and my family were living on the breadline and tithing to the hilt. The Elders who told me that I couldn’t buy the church synthesiser to go to Devon with me, because how would they find someone who would know how to buy another?[19] Please don’t interpet this prose as a complaining diatribe, nor as bitterness. Like I said, I’m well past all that. But maybe see it as a warning that you simply cannot trust church leadership anywhere near as much as they would tell you that you can. As they’d be the first to tell you (after saying ‘Do not touch the Lord’s Anointed!, of course!’), they are only human. But it further reinforces my belief that the only reason why they put up with me in that church was because I was just so damn good at leading worship 😀 They weren’t bothered about me as a person.

This is encapsulated perfectly in the following quote from the Irish writer-poet, Dylan Morrison:

“Religious and spiritual movements both tend to come and go, with only Divine Presence remaining constant.
“May I respectfully make a suggestion, one born out of personal experience.
“Don’t pour your whole identity into a movement, no matter what the brand.
“Why not?
“Well, it all usually ends up in tears, disillusionment and deep confusion.
Best to open up one’s heart to the One without change, I reckon”.

– Dylan Morrison

Now, that says it all.

Another factor is the Religious spirit. I go into some detail about that in this article, but for now let’s just say that, as I have already mentioned, some Christians take themselves far too seriously, and that is often (though by no means always!) due to the Religious spirit[20] Here are a few quotations where the lightness and levity of being a free believer are contrasted with the load of being under the religious yoke:

“The Religious of Jesus’ day complained that He was a glutton and a drunkard. Sounds like He was enjoying life pretty much to the full, while at the same time preaching how much God loved people. To me, what they found offensive was that someone could take life so lightly while at the same time taking God so seriously. Religion can’t cope with that”. – Me

“…pride [in this case, pride engendered as part of the effects of the Religious spirit – Ed] cannot rise to levity or levitation. Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One “settles down” into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man “falls” into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.” – G. K. Chesterton

“Maybe people should more often than not just [accept what the Bible says] and shake the dust off and leave when their message is not being received? According to the Bible, saying nothing is actually a good thing and shows maturity and wisdom. But alas… They probably won’t, because such is the religious spirit[21]. It always has to be right and always has to get the last word, or it will eat them up inside. Their comments will never seem to be about correcting for love’s sake, but will more than likely seem to be about correcting because nobody is as right as they are.” – Tim

“In general, I’ve found that people who are very legalistic try very hard to recruit others to their ranks. My opinion is that the more insecure one is in what one believes, the more that person will need the validation of others, which is often gained by getting others to join them and by refusing to even hear any other views. I suspect they’re also jealous of those who’ve found freedom by not having to beat themselves over the head daily with guilt and shame and “laws”. Jesus made it clear he didn’t / doesn’t appreciate spiritual enforcers, those who think they’ve got such a grip on righteousness that they are hammers, and everyone who doesn’t agree with them exactly is a nail that needs to be hammered.” – Jack B

And yet, Jesus wants even those with the Religious spirit to loosen up and actually enjoy life with Him. Of course He does. Listen to this:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” – Mt 11:28-30 (Message)

And He meant it, too. For so many Christians, their faith walk is one under the heavy load of religious burdens. My life changed when I shed those burdens and walked free.

“The enemy of the Truth does his best work through the religious folks. He keeps them sin conscious while convincing them that they are Christ conscious. They are the first to throw stones, point out specks and elevate the Bible to the level of an idol. But thanks be unto God that He will bring them too into a realization of Himself through Christ in due course of time. For now ya just gotta love them. They can’t help their blindness.” – C Andrew May

I sincerely hope that this happens, especially to Joanna. Wouldn’t that be great? 😀

Another point is that who would want to go to a church, any church, where it is expected that you open yourself up to this sort of thing? It’s actually the main reason why I’m writing this essay – in order to warn people of what can happen if someone overcommits or overexposes themselves in this sort of environment. Ok, so I am putting people off going. I’d rather that than have them come to harm, and in any case the churches have brought it on themselves.

No, if you want to go to  a church, go to a simple, quiet little CofE church or something, sing the hymns, feel the presence of God (after all, that’s the whole point!) and leave after the service, or after coffee if you’re feeling brave. Don’t let them rope you into anything. And don’t feel you have to put anything in the collection plate, if they have one. You don’t have to tell anyone your ‘doctrinal position’ on matters like Hell, salvation or LGBTQ+ issues. If you feel judged at any point, get out and don’t go back. And never, ever ‘hang on in there’ for just a little bit longer hoping that things will improve, because they just won’t. It might also be an idea if you don’t get drawn in to a political discussion! If you have special talents, abilities or Autistic superpowers, don’t tell anyone. If you’re gay, definitely don’t tell anyone. If anyone asks you about anything sexual (and believe it or not, they might!), find the pastor and report them to him/her. And then leave. Yes, if you go alone, people might ask if you’re married. If you go with a member of the ‘opposite sex’ (and yes I’m aware that this is a ‘problematic’ concept nowadays!), keep your relationship status secret. Keep ’em guessing!  If you go with a member of the same sex, don’t entertain any questions about anything to do with your sexuality. And then report them to the pastor. Yes, there are sick Christians who do indeed ask questions on matters like that…how can that ever be considered normal?? But they do. And then they gossip about you.

Despite all this, I would say – and not even grudgingly! – that Christianity in general does produce an awful lot of good stuff. There’s social initiatives, there’s soup kitchens, there’s programmes to help the poor, there’s all the good things that Christianity has done down the ages like initiating national education, abolishing the slave trade, establishing hospitals, and many more things. There’s some really good worship music, that I still find a real blessing (I have a Christ for the Nations playlist playing as I type this, despite them being a highly legalistic organisation[22]) I get all that. And to be fair, I actually think that Christianity does more good than it does harm, for all its faults. But what I’m doing here is to give my readers a general feel for the sorts of nastiness that can befall someone who gets involved in any medium- to high-control, culty, church where certain of its members seem to think it’s ok to interfere in other members’ lives, and to castigate complete strangers just because they feel like it. And I hope I am also helping their potential victims to gain a real and healthy wariness when considering membership of such a group. The thing is, they will inculcate you gradually, so that you don’t notice what they’re doing. One little thing you don’t like here, but don’t call it out, leads to another one there, down the line, where you don’t call that out either and, little by little, they’ve got you. And, sooner or later, I guarantee that someone will be nasty to you; you can absolutely count on it. I think that my shock on being confronted by Joanna was so great because I hadn’t seen it for a long time; she assumed I’d still be susceptible to that kind of thing (because Sally had told her some of my former background, back before I discovered Grace) and she came in with that assumption. And of course it no longer washed with me, whereas maybe it would have done before. Actually, even then, I would likely have kicked back. I was never that badly inculcated. But it made me remember just how bad it is in Evangelical churches for this sort of thing, and reminded me of the freedom I really have by not being part of one. The Anglican church I was part of at the time didn’t have that sort of thing going on (dunno why!) and was only nominally Evangelical anyway (maybe that’s why!)

If you’re already a believer and thinking of joining such a church, or any church for that matter, be sensitive to what God is calling you do do, if anything, and don’t go beyond that. If, during the after-service coffee, someone wants to rope you into something, go and find someone else to talk to. Watch especially for the old lady in the tweed skirt; it’s her job to get complete strangers to bake cakes for after next week’s service 🤣 I kid you not; the first time we went into our ‘new’ Evangelical church in August 1995, there she was, and that was what she did!

Someone wrote a comment to me recently, saying, “Ain’t no hate like Christian love!”, and in a sense, he’s right. While I have a dear friend in Northern Ireland who is currently experiencing the real love of God expressed through a church congregation, it is a sad fact that such congregations are few and far between. Much more common are groups where the love of Christ has gone cold, and all that is left is the cold, shrivelled neutron star (what’s left of a powerful supergiant star, once its fuel runs out) of a church cinder that has had its day, it’s just going on to try and recapture memories of its past glories, and it’s about time it closed. It’s interesting that folks in such remnant congregations generally have only sin-policing and dislike of ‘worldly’ systems as their common/uniting factors, rather than uniting in love and letting that love leak out into their community. In a sense, they are closed systems with no new life. Maybe that’s why their fuel has run out.

For further help, let me say that there are many books out there on recovering from spiritual and religious abuse, some better than others. Search for them on Amazon or wherever, and read the reviews too. Some of the reviewers of a given book may say that although they found the book helpful, there were bits they didn’t like. As always, with anything like this, when you read a book, feel free to eat the meat and spit out the bones. Keep what is useful; discard what is not.

While this attack and the whole incident did shock me, and it rattled me, and gave me what we used to call ‘a bit of a clattering’, it did not kill my faith. Fortunately for me, my roots in Jesus are so deep that this did not damage my faith in the slightest; in fact it made it even stronger because it is in adversity that our faith is tested – not tested by God, Who doesn’t need to test it (He knows all about it already), but tested by the circumstances so that we can see for real how our faith stands in adverse circumstances. However, I did find that the unjust and irrational nature of the attack did offend my Autistic sense of justice; injustice really rankles with me, and I have tremendous difficulty coping with irrationality, particularly from humans. But my faith is based on actual, historical events that happened in my own life which have given me foundational security in my faith. Two of those events (there are more) are given here and here; I even have the dates and times for them, they had such a profound effect. Furthermore, because I am a ‘butterfly'(see above!), the best (or I suppose you could say ‘worst’) efforts of the caterpillars do not reach me on a faith level anymore, because I live my faith at a level they cannot even imagine. I don’t want that to sound boastful – although in some ways I’m not bothered if it does! – but this is the truth. My faith now works at a level that is so far beyond what it was like before my ‘rebirth’, that it bears little resemblance to it. In a way, my former faith was in two dimensions; my new life is in three dimensions. It is as different from my former life as a cube is to a square – the same basic shape, but with real substance. Or, in keeping with the theme of my blog, it’s like being able to fly, and work in three dimensions, as opposed to the two dimensions to which a mere ground-dweller is restricted. Such is the effect of Grace on a believer’s life. I would moderate that with the following two caveats, though:

“Once you say ‘higher level’ (regarding one’s level of spirituality), you appeal to the ego, and all the wrong instincts in people.”

-Fr. Richard Rohr

“When you begin to refer to where you’re at on your journey as a “deeper place,” “higher level,” “another dimension,” or some other such thing, you create a space where pride, arrogance, and superiority can thrive in the name of spirituality. No, we’re journeying, and on this journey, mountains are laid low, and valleys exalted. Every place is an equal place for the sincere, it’s just that we are never all in the same place at the same time, and tend to assume wherever we’re at is the place to be.

“The place to be is wherever you are”.

-Jeff Turner

I still fully agree with those two quotes. But how else can I express it, that which has become a reality to me? Except just to say that I am aware of no pride or superiority in my thinking; it’s just the way things are. I am stating facts, not putting myself on a pedestal. I suppose that at the end of the day, I am just expressing why the comments of the ‘caterpillars’ do not affect the life of the ‘butterfly’, and why they did not in this case (and they certainly can’t make me into a caterpillar again!) It’s that they don’t understand; indeed they cannot understand. Until you have seen Grace, you can’t understand it. But once you have seen it, you can see nothing else, it is that life-changing.

For those whose faith does get badly damaged, though, there is still good that can come of it. As you will have seen when reading this essay (assuming you haven’t fallen asleep, that is), you can learn so much, just as I have done. And setbacks in your faith walk can be made into strengths as you discard old beliefs and ‘faith positions’, and learn modified ones. This is a part of the ‘Stages of Faith‘, which few Christians know about, but which is what growth in Christ actually looks like. Take a look at my series on spiritual growth; while Christians do tell their congregants that growing into Christ is important, and indeed is one of the objectives of the Christian faith, most of them do not know what this actually looks like, much less do they teach it in any detail. And even by reading this piece, you have put your experiences into a wider context, which will definitely help you from this point onwards. Let Jesus lead you into Grace; read this blog and search for all the teaching on Grace. If you want to find it in the Bible, begin with Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and take it from there.

I hope this has been helpful.

Grace and Peace to you all.

Sorry there’s so many footnotes – more in fact than in any other piece I have written. It’s just that in this post, there are so many side issues that needed to be explained, but without breaking the flow of the main piece. Still, I suppose that’s what footnotes are for… 😉

 

Footnotes

Footnotes
⇧1 In this piece, I am describing a different ‘spiritual death’ than that espoused in Evangelical doctrine, which holds that ‘spiritual death’ is what happened to Adam and Eve in the garden. Although God ‘clearly said’ that when you eat the fruit, you will surely die (Gen 2:17), they obviously did not die, else humanity would not exist, if indeed they were the ancestors of all humanity. And so, they invented the term ‘spiritual death’ in order to make that ‘death’ that God warned about into something we can’t see, so that it can be neither proved nor disproved. Clever, eh? Just tack the word ‘spiritual’ on the front and that explains the whole thing without actually explaining anything. In this present case, though, ‘spiritual death’ means the death or extreme (death-like) damage inflicted on a person’s spirit by religious abuse.
⇧2 I define Religion as being the concept of humans trying to please, appease or otherwise placate ‘the gods’ (including the God of the Bible) so that said humans will not be subject to those gods’ wrath, whatever form that wrath may take – volcanoes, famine, flood, going to Hell, or even just plain and simple ‘bad luck’. Usually, Religion involves performance of some kind: doing rituals, magic spells, sacrifices, obeying rules either written or tacitly inferred. Religious people are people who feel that this ‘doing stuff’ is necessary in order for them to be able to approach God/the gods. Personally, I think that’s just a modern form of superstition.
⇧3 Because I am irrepressible, though, I’m still going to sprinkle a lot of my usual low-key humour through this piece 😜
⇧4 The other thing, of course, is that if their target is not a ‘Christian’, nor indeed anyone else who is expected to just behave themselves, and lie back and take such abuse, then their intended victim will likely just tell them to go and get stuffed. Some more liberated Christians might even do the same, myself included. This suggests to me that these abusers only go for the easier targets; those who will not bite back for fear of appearing ‘less Christian’ to others around them. This makes the abusers also bullies, then, in that they are attacking people they see as weak. Can’t be doing with bullies, not at all.
⇧5 Not long after Fiona’s funeral, and just as our Vicar, Mark, moved on to pastures new, I stopped going to the church. There was no animosity, nor did I leave under a cloud; indeed, I am still friends with those dear people. But our house group had ‘ceased trading’ (the leaders felt they were not called to lead it any more) and I just felt that this was the end of that particular season in my life. As my regular readers will know, I do what I see the Father doing (John 5:19) and this gentle breakaway was indeed what He was doing at the time. So I went with it.
⇧6 Not her real name of course; names have been changed to protect yada yada yada and all that
⇧7 Apart from me learning that Evangelicalism hadn’t changed at all in all the time I had been ‘out’, and the worst parts of it were just as bad as ever, as I was to discover all too soon – in spades!
⇧8 Being a Christian conference, the food was most likely provided by the lowest bidder. People familiar with the ‘generosity’ of Christian organisations will know exactly what I’m talking about. Legend has it that when a ‘sinner’ goes to Hell, they will have to pay for their own handbasket because there’s no way the church will cough up for it 😉
⇧9 Edd said later that he was convinced that God didn’t need anyone’s faith to help Him when He made everything!
⇧10 As played by the late genius comedians Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough.
⇧11 Yeah right. My Facebook profile is visible only to my actual FB friends, so no-one else would have seen the comment outside of that circle anyway
⇧12 Like being Autistic is an illness that needs to be cured!!
⇧13 At least, maybe not after she reads this, if she ever sees it. ‘Sally’, if you want to talk about it, you know where I am!
⇧14 That is, my ‘dark night’ followed by my ‘rebirth’
⇧15 Keeping short accounts with God is a peculiarly Evangelical concept (although it has likely been pirated by other denominations too; that’s what religion does) that assumes that every. single. ‘sin’. has to be confessed, individually and specifically, in order for that ‘sin’ to be forgiven. The concept is based on a mis-reading, misinterpretation and/or misapplication of the verse in 1 John 1:9, which says that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness”. As always with this sort of thing, the concept is, and has been, passed down from generation to generation of Christians without anyone (in that group at least) questioning it or challenging it. They just believe it because they’ve been told it. And it stands in complete contradiction to the other verse in Heb 8:12, which quotes Jer 31:34, which says, “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more”. When you really think about it, their ‘short accounts’ concept means that just. one. ‘sin’. in the final second of your life means that you will not be forgiven, because you won’t have had chance to ‘confess’ that ‘sin’. So, say you see someone point a pistol at you and in your mind you think ‘You b@stard!’, then that’s it. You used that ‘cuss word’, even though it was only in your head! You never got the chance to ask for forgiveness. You’re toast. What a stupid concept that is!
⇧16 Or even that they don’t want to argue or get angry, because then they would definitely be ‘seen as’ being in the wrong, and they’d be judged and criticised for that too; for simply defending themselves vehemently, and which the abuser has jolly well asked for. In other words, Christians are, or want to be seen as, ‘too nice’ to bite back. This is a tactic which many abusers rely on to avert any comback. And that’s absolutely disgusting.
⇧17 This clearly demonstrates that, while they expect others to be answerable to them, they do not feel answerable to others! – [Edit]: Actually, I did later get a reply, which, to be completely fair to them, did include an apology!
⇧18 If I use the first-person pronoun euphemism ‘one’ any more, I’m going to start sounding like a member of the Royal Family, so I apologise.
⇧19 The synthesiser disappeared sometime after that; in fact it was at this up-country conference that I heard (from the lady who had taken over from me in the Musical Director’s role in the church) that it had disappeared. Stolen, then!
⇧20 I don’t really care whether that spirit is one of a type of actual ontological beings, or whether it’s simply the way the human mind works when damaged by Religion (I won’t go into details on that) –  still the ‘manifestation’ is the same.
⇧21 See the fourth bullet point in my article here for more on what a ‘Religious spirit’ looks like
⇧22 I have a friend who was expelled from Christ for the Nations because of a certain ‘sin’ he was struggling with. He was expelled because he couldn’t defeat it; all he would have had to do would have been to keep quiet about it, and he’d have been fine. God knew his heart anyway. But, because of his honesty, they penalised him. That’s disgraceful.

Be like Chad

Insights, Personal, Humour, Asperger's/Autism

I have noticed a phenomenon which I find quite amusing, and also a bit unsettling, if I’m honest.

When Christians meet other Christians that they don’t know, there immediately follows a period of religious butt-sniffing, like dogs do when they meet.

The idea for each person is to categorise the other people into the person’s self-designed pigeonholes, so that they know where they stand. Are you a Protestant, are you a Baptist, are you Like Me, and for some, sadly, there’s even the attitude of ‘are there things that you disagree with me on, so that I must settle those differences by telling you how wrong you are, before we can ever get along?’ In short, they are generating ‘labels’.

But I’m not having any of that.

This is where listening more than talking comes in. I don’t declare my own definitions openly; they are mine and mine alone. In any case, I am Autistic and the standard pigeonholes do not apply to me anyway, because I am wired differently. And no, I am not using Autism as a label in its own right, because it has been my experience that even amongst Autistic people, they are all wired differently from each other. There is no ‘standard definition’ of an Autistic person and as such we are all different; all equally unpredictable.

It’s funny; I met a Christian man about 24 years ago who, when we did the religious butt-sniffing thing on him (I was different then!), he just stayed silent.

He ‘went’ to a particular church but it seemed like he was only loosely attached.

But a more Christlike man I have never met. He never declared himself; never showed any affiliation other than to Jesus.

Chad was his name.

I want to be like Chad.

Grateful

Personal, Testimony

The more I look, the more I am grateful for the amazing Grace of God in my early Christian walk.

I was not pulled in to the Kingdom by the threat of Hell, nor by some street preacher asking where I would go if I died tonight, nor anything like that. What pulled me in was a combination of the music, a definite calling which was what I’d been looking for all those years – I virtually felt God hoick me to my feet and out to the front! – followed by some very specific points where God told me in no uncertain terms how He felt about me. In short, I was brought in by the love of God and the sensation of His Presence. I bless God for that.

And now, looking back at my life then (we’re talking July 1980 onwards), I see all the points where God steered me in my life, where He provided for me, and where He made His presence felt in order to guide me and assure me of His Presence. He helped me never really believe in Hell, although I paid ‘lip service’ to it. He helped me to question the beliefs of others in my church/cult, albeit in my head and not overtly. He made sure that I had an overriding sense of His Presence most of the time, except maybe for those times I termed a ‘Divine Sulk’, when I couldn’t feel His presence; the sort of time where Job’s Comforter Christians tell you you are ‘harbouring’ some ‘secret sin’ or some other such rubbish. Lollz.

So now, when I just happened to look up one of the ‘famous local preachers’ (let’s call him ‘Phil’) in what was then my area (north Leeds) and see that he’s still stuck in the same hellfire and brimstone, judgmental of strangers, still being lickspittled by others of a similar ilk, I am even more thankful – because I never went down that path. Not so much as ‘there but for the Grace of God go I’; more of a ‘I never believed what he used to puke out anyway’. He always made me uncomfortable – which of course in those days was seen as a ‘good thing’. I’m not saying he’s a kiddie-fiddler or anything; just that something about the ‘gospel’ he preached didn’t sit well with me.

I am so glad that God got me out of that area, both spiritually and physically (because if I hadn’t moved to Devon I’d likely still be rotting in that church environment) and gave me a new start. Not long after I arrived in the South-West, I had my ‘Aha!!’ moment on Grace, which led me to fifteen years of the Dark Night of the Soul, which some might think of as a ‘deconstruction’ – although it wasn’t really that per se. Emerging from that, just as a butterfly from its chrysalis, I realised that once the church junk was stripped away along with people like Phil and his beliefs and vomiting, the Gospel was actually more or less exactly what I’d known all along that it should be.

Unfortunately, this twisting procedure in new believers is standard practice. Once a new believer is snatched up from their cradle and incarcerated/incorporated into a local church, the purity of their initial encounter with God is covered up and layered over with church kopros. Effectively, the initial encounter is taken away as it struggles for air under all that rubbish and is eventually suppressed. Only a mighty work of God, which in my case was an effortless fifteen years out of church, can shift that and restore a believer to their first love.

But, because my background is different from everyone else’s, everyone else’s story will be different from mine. We all have different attitudes, biases and wounds that will need to be changed, surgically removed and healed in that Dark Night, and afterwards too. But never again will that believer want to return to that former cage. Once you have seen it from the outside, you realise what it really is, and you’ll appreciate your freedom all the more.

My chains (of legalism) fell off in 1999, and after the fifteen years, I began openly walking with God again what will be ten years ago in a couple of weeks. February 2014 was when all that I had learned in my Dark Night became the key to my new freedom.

And God has held my hand the whole way.

No wonder I’m grateful!

Taking a Break

Personal, Site Admin

Just a quick post to let my readers know that I will probably not be posting quite as regularly over the next few weeks, if at all.

I am going to be taking a bit of a break, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I see this as what Father is doing with me at the moment; He’s teaching me in the quiet of my heart and, like the Teacher in Matthew 13:52, I will be learning new things and be reminded of old things from the storehouse of my heart.

Can I encourage my readers maybe to do the same – if that’s what you feel Father is calling you to do – and revisit, in this New Year, the foundations, the truths and your experiences of Him that form the basis of your faith. Cast off the shackles of men’s expectations, sit at Jesus’s feet, and listen. That’s what I am going to be doing.

Secondly, I am currently suffering from a long-term illness (not life-threatening!) that is, amongst other things, preventing me from thinking clearly, and from doing justice to the subject matter with which I Iove to bless my readers. That also means that flying is off the table for me at present due to the illness, and that’s a real bummer as this time of year is the heart of the night flying season – I love night flying so much – and I was really looking forward to flying G-VIZZ at night this year. Well, hey-ho 🙂

So let me just leave you with these exhortations: Stay close to Jesus; carry His burden and no-one else’s; and remember there’s nothing at all that you can do, or fail to do, that can change how God feels towards you.

Grace and Peace to you 😀