JOURNEY TO FAITH
By Rev Simon Tillotson, Team Vicar of All Saints and St Peter's churches in the Whitstable Team Ministry
By Rev Simon Tillotson, Team Vicar of All Saints and St Peter's churches in the Whitstable Team Ministry
A short background introduction to Rev Simon Tillotson can be found by clicking on this link
I have decided to explain how I came to faith, as it may be helpful to you, especially if you are searching for a deeper faith, or have questions about the Christian faith.
Where should I begin my journey? Not in my very happy childhood days, growing up in a most beautiful part of Cambridge, but instead on a cold February day in 1982. I was at boarding school and was giving a talk to my school year and the year above on why I wanted to be confirmed. “You don’t have to be square to be a Christian” I remember saying, as the sleepy congregation peered quizzically at me. “I’ve got a spiked haircut and I am a follower of Christ”.
All rather embarrassing in retrospect! These were the early days of my boarding school life, and relatively happy ones at that. I had attended a day school before arriving at boarding school and had grown used to having a Hi-Fi in my bedroom and a television close by whenever I wanted to watch it. Now at boarding school, I was not even allowed a radio (and would not be allowed one till I was 15) and I was only allowed to watch television on Saturday evenings under the close supervision of the matron of the house, and that was for only 90 minutes! This is why my knowledge of 80’s television programmes is so limited.
Despite these severe curtailments in liberty, I was still too young, in 1982, to have rebelled against the system. Aged only 14, I would dutifully attended Holy Communion on Wednesday afternoons and would be an enthusiastic attendee of the weekly Confirmation classes. It was this enthusiasm which had led the chaplain to ask me to make such a fool for Christ of myself on that cold February morning in chapel!
Something, however, went wrong when 1984 went along. Having been a keen cricketer, rugby player, and pupil, I began to come under the influence of some of the less dutiful members of the school. In retrospect I think this was a delayed reaction, bourne out of the transition from day school to boarding school. I began to find the school more and more imprisoning and suffocating. I have a book of poems that I write from this time and it shows how unhappy I was. I gave up sport and instead would walk into the local town and drink coffee in the various coffee houses.
There seemed to be a big hole in my life - a loneliness and confusion that brought no peace.
This time of disillusionment continued, although I did continue with my school work and progressed through O levels to the A level stage. By this time, I had joined three or four rock bands as the lead singer, and I have recordings of the music today to prove it.
At heart though I disliked the school intensely. I found it far too formal and regimented. What is worse, within the boarding house there was a great deal of bullying. Psychological bullying was the worst, though I was a relatively popular person so was not bullied myself. One poor lad was constantly picked on. His year group from the boarding house would come in and take down all his posters from the walls and then empty all his cupboards and drawers and put everything on the floor in the middle of the room. Then, when he came down to sit with his year group for the evening meal, they would all stand up at the same time and move to another table. This went on for some months. Bullying at a day school is terrible, but at a boarding school it is even more intolerable.
By the time I had taken my A levels in 1986 I was a long way from my previous christian faith. I no longer attended church and thought little of the christian religion at all. I was far more interested in existentialism and nihilism as two philosophies by which to live! But then an interview was to change my life forever.
The interview was at the organisation “Gap”. Based in Reading “Gap” help young people between school and university find a useful form of altruistic involvement overseas for periods of six months at a time. I had my name down at London University for October 1987 and so leaving school in July 1986 meant I had a whole year to fill.
Although initially I wanted to go to India with “Gap”, I ended up being assigned to work with muscular distrophy children in Jerusalem, Israel. Not quite knowing what I was letting myself in for, I left for Israel with five other volunteers from England sometime in early September 1986. After we had touched down at Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv, I remember leaving the plane and thinking it was the heat from the aeroplane’s engines that we could feel as we walked down the steps of the plane. No - it was the Middle Eastern sun!
We quickly settled into our new roles as auxillary voluntary nurses at the hospital. We were all shocked to see how thin and weak the children appeared. These children, who came from a mixture of Jewish and Palestinian backgrounds, suffered from the illness, Progressive Muscular Distrophy. This is an illness which, at its worst, can waste away the body muscle leading to premature death when the chest muscles collapse. Quite a number of the children were already on ventilators and bedridden, and nearly all were unable to use any of their limbs, with the exception of their fingers with which they could control their electric wheelchairs.
One of the most challenging things about those early weeks that, after having been a student all my life, I was faced with real physical work. It wasn’t very easy work either. Having to wash a child who has been to the toilet, helping them shower, and eat, and brush their hair by letting them hold the brush while you did all the work, all required patience. Some of the children could be extremely demanding and would lose their temper with me on a number of occasions. Fortunately I was too young and idealistic to complain to myself about what I was being put through. A humbling experience it certainly was.
There was one spiritual experience in those early weeks which I have sometimes referred to in sermons. The very evening of our arrival we walked into the hospital and were shown round the wards. I was shown a young baby who had, from memory, a very serious illness. The baby seemed so helpless and weak. The nurse invited me to pick the baby up in my arms and I did this, and as I held the baby a powerful sensation came over me. For the first time in my life I became aware that life was not a neutral thing, something that we take just for granted, but is instead a vibrant force of overwhelmingly exciting proportions. The sheer miracle of life gripped me, albeit transiently. On later reflection, I have come to realise that awareness of the miracle of life is something that brings us closer to an awareness of God himself.
Jerusalem itself was a pulsatingly exciting city to explore. The mixture of Jewish and Palestinian cultures, along with Greek Orthodox, Anglican, Russian Orthodox, Ethiopian and Roman Catholic forms of Christianity, all made a heady mixture which delighted the senses. We marvelled at the powerful sense of identity amongst the Jewish people, seen most potently on the Sabbath when the whole of society shut down for 24 hours. We loved the warm hospitality of the Palestinans that we met, who would invite us home for a cup of Arabic coffee and a wonderful pastry, and would make us feel like royalty.
One of my fellow volunteers, John, was a Christian, and as he was going to church one Sunday, I agreed to come with him. It was Christ Church, a very lively Anglican church inside the Old City, not far from the Jaffa Gate. I remember arriving there and being surprised to see such joyful worship, with the congregation clapping and dancing and singing along to the tunes. Not quite my experience of Christianity back home! We returned on another occasion. There was a Bishop from England there called David Pytches. He was talking about the Holy Spirit, and inviting the Holy Spirit to minister to the congregation. As the congregation stood, with their hands outstretched, asking for the Holy Spirit to come, the Bishop said “He is coming”, and as he spoke about twenty people in the congregation fell over, as if knocked down by a wave. I immediately walked out of the church. This nonsense was not for me, I muttered to myself, or so I thought. God had different plans though.
As I walked away from the church that Sunday my mind was still taken up with one question. Was Christianity true, or was it a collection of well thought up ideas but with no real truth underpinning it?
I was privileged to be working alongside Paul, a very devout Christian who had settled in the Holy Land some years ago with his young family. During the coffee breaks on our shifts, Paul and I would chat together about a whole range of issues. Firstly, we explored the historical evidence for Christ outside the New Testament. I realised that many non-Christian scholars and historians, such as Josephus and Suetonius, had written about the existence of Christ, so I could only conclude that Jesus must have been a real life historical figure.
I then debated with Paul what is known as the self-authenticating nature of Christ’s teaching. The argument goes as follows. If you were to discover that the Mona Lisa was actually not painted by Leonardo Da Vinci, but was instead a fake, would that make it any worse a painting? Of course not! The Mona Lisa derives its strength not from the artist who painted it, but from its own innate qualities. The same argument can be used with the teachings of the Bible. If it were proven that Jesus had not spoken the Sermon on the Mount, then would that make the words of the Sermon on the Mount any the less important? Our natural instinct is to agree that they would have less power, but I then realised the question in itself had a fatal error. This is because the words of the Sermon on the Mount have a self-authenticating power. They reveal a holiness and purity which any fraudster could never have invented.
Put it this way, if someone else had written 1 Corinthians 13, and not St Paul, then that someone else must have shared exactly the same holiness and wisdom as St Paul. He could not have been a fraudster as a fraudster could not write like that! Either way, the words lead us to God. Of course, historical data leads us to being confident that St Paul did write these words, but that in a way is less important than this fundamental realisation – namely, the Bible speaks with an authority of its own. It does not need to be justified or proven, even though there is ample evidence to back it up.
Paul, my colleague (not St Paul!), and I began then to talk about the nature of God’s love and how it differs from human love. Strange but truthful realisations began to dawn on me. For example, I realised, somewhat cynically and yet realistically, that nearly all human relationships are based to some extent on self-interest. For example, down the hill from the hospital was a lovely English family who had asked me to teach reading and writing to their five year old child. I am still very good friends with them to this day. When I was there they would treat me to the most wonderful cooking – quite a contrast from the egg and salad menu in the hospital canteen.
As I discussed with Paul, I realised that even my friends’ hospitality was based to some extent on self—interest. They were enjoying my company because I was fairly articulate, extremely appreciative, and someone from their own culture. If I had been a local person, with no experience of English culture, would they have been so hospitable on such a regular basis? Of course not! Neither, come to think of it, would I do the same either if I were in their shoes. Having said this, this particular family are about the most loving and kind people you can possibly find.
I began to understand, through speaking to Paul, that God’s love, as recorded in the Bible, is not based on self-interest, as human love is. Here I began to read again the story of a God who gave up his Son to painful betrayal and gruesome torture, before finally being put to death in the harrowing shame of death on a cross. The crowds that had greeted him a week before, were now turning and howling their derision and sarcasm at him. Why? Because God’s love is not based on self-interest, but genuine love for all humanity. Through the death of Christ on the cross, I began to realise that anyone who believed could receive forgiveness for their sins, and the assurance of eternal life. This was only possible because of the amazing love of God, who on the cross bore our sins in his own Son Jesus Christ, and paid the penalty for humanity’s sin instead of us.
But this still was not enough for me. I needed to see some real proof of God’s existence. The thought of joining a belief system based on falsity terrified me, and so I was determined to continue my search to find out if it really was true…..
So it was that I started to pray – “if you are there, God, will you reveal yourself?”. There are occasions in the Bible when we read of people challenging God in this way, to see if He was there, or to determine His will, or to seek help in a difficult situation. The story of Gideon and the fleece in Judges chapter 6 is perhaps the most famous example, but Paul tried, unsuccessfully, with his “thorn” in 2 Corinthians, and Abraham argued with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18. There are several other examples too.
By this time, my thinking had become quite agitated. Much of this is personal, but I will reveal two “testing” prayers when I really wanted to know if God was there or not. On one occasion, I was on a bus in the middle of Jerusalem and I prayed; “God, if you are there, would you let another volunteer from my hospital team get on the bus at the next stop”. Strange, maybe, but that is how I prayed. At the next stop, an elderly lady stepped onto the bus. “What a fool I am to think in this way!” I reflected. Then, at the next stop, my fellow worker Juliet stepped onto the bus. There were only six in the team and the population in Jerusalem was 200,000!
There were other similar examples of where I "tested" God and something strange happened. I am still convinced that such experiences were not a case of deluding myself in hindsight. They are not to be recommended, as it is generally seen as improper to test God - but I think God was gracious as I was in a time of great uncertainty and tension. They may also seem very eccentric now, but religious doubt and conflict is a painful experience to undergo (read the poetry of John Donne or George Herbert or the writings of John Bunyan and you will be only too aware of this). I was intensely focussing on being totally honest in my search for whether God existed or not. My biggest fear, as I have already explained, is that I would be sucked into a belief system that brought peace and joy at the expense of the truth. I honestly doubt I would have allowed myself to believe these things for my own convenience, as I was so wary of deluding myself.
Interestingly though, such experiences never brought me to faith. They were really minor, if memorable, experiences in the journey. If I am asked what brought me to faith, it was the searching experience itself. As I prayed, and read, and wrestled with God, it was similar to Jacob wrestling with God, yet on a spiritual, not physical level. I was encountering the conversion experience that Christians down the centuries have all testified about – namely that it as we search, and pray, and question, that we begin to sense the Holy Spirit entering our lives.
This happened with me gradually to begin with, but then suddenly, when, around January of 1987, things really began to change inside. I would walk round the Old City of Jerusalem and experience a type of intimacy with God that was breath-taking and joyful in the extreme. It is difficult to put these experiences of the Holy Spirit into words, but they transcend anything that the world can offer, and cast a totally new perspective not only on life, but death too and the expectation of life beyond death. It is as St Paul writes in Romans 8 chapter 15
“For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father””.
Such experiences set me on a totally new spiritual path, which have led me eventually to type these words as Vicar of All Saints and St Peter's Whitstable.
It has refreshed me spiritually to remember those special days in such a sacred city. The text that I would like to finish with is from Matthew chapter 7; “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you……” Simon Tillotson
