I’ve lived in London for the last 20 years, the last four in Streatham. Like many people life is busy: I commute up to Westminster to manage a design and publishing team, coming home to Lisa my wife and our six children (no, we haven’t got a TV!), with spare time spent stretching my DIY skills on the Victorian house which brought us to Streatham in the first place. So Sunday might be a day to stay indoors, kick back, and relax.
I’ve been to church all my life, so maybe I go out of habit, or maybe because I’m a ‘religious’ person?
But the truth is, I go to church because I believe that the historic Christian faith is, well, true. And that there’s ultimately more to life than work, sleep, eat, repeat - with the occasional holiday thrown in.
I became aware of my need to be ‘right with God’ when I was a child, mainly, I think, to avoid going to hell. Obviously a childish faith like that would be tested over the years and it has been in a variety of ways through the twists and turns of life.
When I was 18 I went with a friend to live in New York to volunteer at a homeless shelter and drug-rehab centre. We were thrown in at the deep end, living in a large dormitory with recovering addicts whose lives were very different from my own.
Through that experience I learned that people are people and that we’re all capable of doing things that are damaging and destructive to our lives, whether visibly and with immediate consequences or more internally and subtly.
Either way, I understood what the Bible meant when it says ‘For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3 v 23).
In the States I was exposed to a variety of Christian influences both in New York and when we travelled around America – ranging from being the only white guy in a storefront Pentecostal church in Brooklyn, to staying in a Cistercian monastery in Kentucky, to living with Mennonites in Pennsylvania.
That meant that I came back to the UK wondering what did I really believe and why did I believe it?
Now in my early 20s I started seriously looking in to what the Bible said and going to a church that explained it clearly.
I realised that being a Christian wasn’t based on a decision I’d made or my ability to perform life to a certain standard (and constantly failing), but was instead based solely on what Jesus had done for me as my substitute through his life, death on the cross and resurrection from the dead – real events in history and not some unverifiable abstract philosophy.
A man called Paul put it like this: ‘…if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!’ (the Bible, 1 Corinthians 15 v 17).
So, I’m not a Christian because I think it will make my life better (although it probably has) or because it makes my life easier (it probably hasn’t), but because it’s true.
And because it’s true I want to go to church, to thank the God who saved me, to learn more about what the Bible says and to spend time with others who have come to realise the same thing.
