My StoryMy StoryI guess my earliest 'religious'-type thought happened while sitting on the toilet as a little boy getting very distressed. I think I had just done the washing up after dinner, or something of that sort, and my Dad had praised me for doing so. In one of those moments of contemplation which are unique to the lavatory, a rather shocking idea occurred to me. If God sees everything that we do and rewards or punishes us, then there can be no such thing as a selfless act, no such thing as an action motivated purely by love, since we know full well that any good action we perform will be seen and noted by God for reward. In fact, do the words 'good action' actually mean anything, since everything we do might be motivated purely by the desire to work our way into heaven. I think I forgot about this quandary quite quickly, and it was only many years latter when I realized that I had found a solution.
My last few years at prep-school (The Dragon School in Oxford, where I boarded), were extremely happy ones, I had a wonderful group of friends, not much pressure of work, and the days seemed to pass by long and lazy as if in a Calvin & Hobbes comic. It was therefore a big shock, in September of 1991, to find myself at a huge, strange and unfriendly Secondary school, where I seemed to come up to no higher than the waist of the older boys. I was petrified from the start, and was unlucky enough to be in a particularly 'traditional' house. This meant bullying in quite a systematic way (the 2nd year bullied the first year, the 3rd year bullied the 1st and 2nd years, the 4th year... and so on), and inevitably there was bullying within the year groups themselves, so that in effect the weakest boys in the lowest year had the weight of the whole house on top of them. All very Darwinian. The trick was to play lots of rugby, have copious supplies of cigarette bribes [the same as for Chinese customs officials] and keep your head down for the first few years. I didn't get the trick at all. Therefore, two terms after arriving, I left that school and moved instead to Radley College, back in Oxfordshire, where some of my friends from prep-school had gone.
Radley was certainly an improvement. The setting, for a start, was much nicer and less foreboding, a grassy campus; and there was none of the systematic tradition of bullying and fagging at Radley. There was however a little bullying from a few people, abit on a far lesser scale, indeed one might describe it as friendly bullying [I expect any girls reading this will not understand this phrase, but there is such a thing] as opposed to the actively hostile sort I had experienced before. In fact I think if I had started at Radley to begin with, I would not have considered it bullying at all. However, I had just spent 6 months living in continual fear, and even the tiniest bit of bullying was enough to completely destroy my optimism about a fresh start. In a way I was even more depressed than before, because my dream had been shattered and, for a while at least, I was as confused and friendless as I had been before. It was in this context that I began meeting some boys in the higher years who genuinely took an interest in me for some reason, who would talk to me to find out how I was doing, not to order me to do something for them (or maybe just spit on me). It was through these boys that I arrived, one dark Tuesday evening, at a physics teacher's warmly glowing house at the bottom of the Radley drive; this was where the school's Christians met each week for fellowship and teaching. I can't remember when exactly this day was, but it was during my second term at Radley, so it must have been September or early November 1992. I think that from that point onwards, I missed only about 2 meetings over the next 4 years. Initially I went primarily for a sanctuary, for a cup of warm coffee on a cold night, but more importantly for friendly faces and warm hearts.
Many Christians will be able to very clearly put their finger on a time and a date and say something like: "at 6.04pm on Friday 7th March 1986 I invited Jesus into my life and was born again". I can't do that, and it doesn't really matter that I can't. To begin with I don't think I really listened or thought much about the talks each week, which covered many aspects of the Christian faith and daily living. I had been used to going to the village church or school chapel every sunday of my life, and so was quite experienced at nodding off discretely during religious meetings. However, I must have begun listening as I began to get to know some of the speakers, and had plenty of opportunity to investigate many of the big questions - How can God allow suffering? Is everyone sinful? Where do other religions fit in? Hasn't science disprooved God? and so on. I also, by default, got to hear lots of bits of the Bible and, as Paul says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing from the word of God" (Romans.10.17). I had always considered myself a Christian, in much the same way I have always considered myself an Englishman. But, over the next few years, I began for the first time to understand myself and my sinfulness, to understand Jesus' character and the reason for his mission on Earth and his crucifiction. I began to ask for forgiveness when I was concious of cheating at work, think and speaking hatred to people, being rude to my parents and so on. Through prayer and freindship with His people, I began to recognise God and communicate with Him. I stumbled on it quite by accident (or at least so I thought), but the intimate ongoing relationship that I now have with Jesus is the most wonderful and foundational part of my life, and I could no longer make it through another day without Him. I cannot concieve how I once managed to get by without his love and fellowship, nor how so many other people in this hurting world still manage.
I found it hard to know where this story of mine begins, and I certainly can't give it a neat ending either. In fact I'm not expecting any sort of ending at all! I've just taken my first few footsteps into eternal life. Daily my situation and mood fluctuates like everyone else, however I know that there is actually a positive progression: "And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord." (2.Cor.3.18). I may get frustrated, stressed and depressed sometimes, but I will never again experience the complete loneliness and hopelessness which I did before. Looking back over the past few years, I can see places where God has helped me change, controlling my temper, improving my listening ability, making me more thoughful of others. Some wise bod summed it up like this: 'I'm not the person I should be, I'm not the person I will be, but, praise God, I'm not the person I was!' I've still got a very long way to go before perfection, but I know that the destination is certain, and I have a good and faithful guide and companion on the journey. All the glory to Him!
Justin Alexander (October '96)
P.S. The answer to my quandary on the toilet is simply this: Yes, God does see our good actions and count them in our favour on the heavenly scales while our sinful actions count against us. However the score we need to be righteous in God's sight is not slightly over 50%, or above the human average or even a solid A-grade. The score we need to get is 100%. And I can't achieve it, in fact no one can achieve it. Only God himself can live up to his own standard of perfect righteousness, therefore the only person who has ever and will ever be righteous of his own accord is Jesus. And the only way that anyone else can become righteous is though recieveing a helping hand from Jesus, since "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteouness" (1.Peter.2.24). Any reward I might recieve from doing good is insufficient, but that doesn't matter since Jesus has paid the full price. Therefore I am free to engage in totally selflessly motivated actions, since any brownie points they might be worth are totally irrelevant. Now, I only wish that I actually performed a few more of these selfless actions!
See Also: Why I am a Christian
"God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, so that
whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John.3.16)