Why I believe:

I am a 23 stone virgin, with the social skills of a drunkard. I am innumerate and severely dyslexic and dyspraxic. I have been bullied and mocked most of my overly long life and sometime because of my faith but yet I still believe. I believe in the full Christian doctrine; not only in some vague distant God but in a personal saviour who loves me and shed his mortal life for my salvation so you may ask why?

Well I want you to remember a film; the 1950 version of “war of the worlds”. In this the female lead explains to her eventual hero that when she is scared she runs into a church, indeed her uncle a minister tries to make peaceful contact with the alien and dies at the very start of the film. When she is separated by a crazed crowed from her protector and he goes in search of her, she is found in a church. Other church’s full of the injured and faithful are destroyed but theirs is just spared as germs kill off the Martian threat.

The point of this forgotten moment is that the church is a place of safety if not for the physical from then for the more important spiritual aspect of it. It asks and answers a key question. If you were dying or some disaster was befalling you and those around you where would you go? If you could no longer run away where would you make your stand?

I know where I would run to, I would run to Caversham Heights Methodist church and I pray my beloved minister would be there and I know what I’d choose to be doing, singing the old hymns and looking after the scared, faithless and injured. In these day of utter darkness I would shine at my brightness and the light of the Lord would shine from every church in the land as a beacon of hope maybe not for the salvation of the mortal world but salvation in the best world, God world.

Oh brothers and sisters I would die just as you will but I will die in faith and joy not hiding or zoned out on drugs, sex or booze. My death will be no less painful or horrific but then reward of a life spent in God’s service and the protecting hand of God will make it all the better when I go onto the choir immortal whilst others in the fear and desperation sell their souls cheap for the illusion of physical security and survival.

It may not be the best reason for faith in God but it was my first step along the path of salvation and redemption. The knowledge of the eternal church is a great joy to me, it is my faith in time of trouble and in the end we must all have somewhere and I can think of no better place than a temple to the Lord of love and mercy. I can think no brighter place to confront the darkness then in the house of the Lord.