Christian? Only when I feel like it (From Oxford Mail)

Christian? Only when I feel like it

2:00pm Friday 19th December 2008 in

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Me? I’m a fairweather Christian. Which means, of course, when everything’s rosy, I don’t need God. But when work’s awful, or my plane hits turbulence, or the doctor writes me a letter, then miraculously, I believe.

And it’s always been like that.

Logic, common sense (and pride) tell me one thing, fear and loneliness tell me another.

Not surprisingly, I have always been jealous of those who do believe unconditionally, irritated by their smugness, their naïve optimism, their ‘rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights’ fatalism (I hate that line – “the meek shall inherit the earth”). And yet, truth be told, I dislike them most for the dark corners their conviction illuminates in me.

I have an old friend of 25 years’ standing. He’s a Baptist minister, a passionate and devout believer, who throughout our long friendship has never once; 1. presented me with a Bible 2. suggested we ‘have a talk’, or 3. invited me to a Christian getaway in Exmouth.

Instead, when I visit, he, his wife, and four children simply treat me as an ordinary guest.

And consequently, at the end of a weekend, I invariably leave depressed.

Why? Well, because they’re fun, easy-going and normal.

They don’t chant, eat lentils, or hand out leaflets on Saturdays.

Instead, their dining room boasts a pool table, football shirts hang everywhere, and posters of Troy from High School Musical, litter the girls’ bedrooms.

Yet they’re not Right-On Christians (the children don’t have names like Apple or River), they’re not Yuppy Christians (they don’t drive a Volvo or look embarrassed when you mention the word ‘mortgage’) and they’re not Wacko-preach-on-the-streets Christians (‘Jesus loves you, so repent now of your sins’).

No, they struggle financially like the rest of us, and like most of us, too, they bicker, they shop at Tesco’s and they despise George W. Bush (He who counts Jesus as a buddy lest we forget).

But if I did want to believe that a star really did guide the Three Wise Men, or that a boy born unto a virgin truly was – and is – the Son of God, then I’d just pop round to their house on Christmas Eve. Or better still during the footie on Boxing Day. Or on a cold, dreary morning in February (I may not be able to prove the existence of God, but February certainly makes a case for the Devil...).

So, what have they – and millions of others like them – got to do with Christmas?

Well, simply put, many are our neighbours; they might not do anything extraordinary, like raise the dead, or cure the infirm, but in the crippling mundaneness of everyday life, they refuse to be cynical, they treat strangers as they themselves would want to be treated, and rather than wax lyrical about ‘charity’, they just get on with it.

And that, surely, is a miracle...

Merry Christmas.