Back
to Church
After a lapse of a couple of years I
plucked up courage and went back to Turramurra Methodist church. This
time it was social and peer contact that I was desperate for, so I
went to the evening service where all the young people went.
The one thing I remember from the first
service I attended: I noticed a girl. Yes it was the “across a
crowded room” thing as in the song in old musical “South
Pacific”. I though God said:“That’s the one you are going to
marry”.
The second week I asked someone who she
was. They said “Sue Wright”. Well it may be corny but I thought
“Ah, my Miss Right”.
Well, being painfully shy it took
several months for me to pluck up courage to ask her out on a date.
But finally I did, she accepted, and we went out to dinner. As I
recall it was the “early” sitting of the popular Pymble Eating
House. We got on so well we talked through both sittings.
Before I go on let me say that now
I know that if God gives a future goal or prediction one then prays
“OK God, I’m in, what do you want me to do about it”. Sometimes
of course he is going to make it happen and is just telling you the
end so that you can hang in during the bumpy ride to get there. Other
times he is letting you know what he would like you to accomplish by
the normal methods yourself. I didn’t know that then. I didn’t
know much about anything then – least of all, about women.
In my ignorance I simply told Sue that
I was going to marry her. I couldn’t quite understand why she took
it so badly! She had already agreed to go on a second date and being
a person of her word she did, but she made it quite clear that it was
to be the last date too!
Christmas holidays came and went. To my
surprise when term started who should I see on the train but Sue. I
was now in 4th year engineering at Sydney University. Sue
had been a first year at New South Wales University the year before
but had just transferred to Sydney. It was a strange year. Sue was
“going out” with a really nice boy from our church youth
fellowship, John Derrin. Yet every day she was spending time with me
on the train and having coffee with me at uni (I was on a cadet-ship
and could afford to bribe her with free coffee). But you understand
she wasn’t talking to me!
By the end of the year I was doing a
lot of talking to God about it! Mostly along the lines that he had
made a big mistake! I thought he kept saying that I would marry Sue;
but from my viewpoint it did not look likely to happen. He also
started saying I was going to be a minister.
By the start of next year (1972) I was
working, it was fun, life was great, except no girlfriend and I was
becoming convinced the “marry Sue” bit was a mistake
Meanwhile I had been helping out in the
junior youth group at church, occasionally joining in the activities
of the senior youth group – which were my peers, and studying for
the local preacher’s exams.
The Methodist church was then (and
still is) going through a “liberal” phase. The books I had to
read for the local preacher’s exams were all by liberal
theologians. These assured innocents like myself that, among other
things, the “virgin birth” was a myth, Jesus was just a good man
who taught wise things but didn’t mean to get himself killed, and
certainly didn’t physically rise from the dead. His body was “still
lying in some Palestinian grave” one author assured us. Prayer was
“of course” just talking to your inner self. I did try to read
what I could find of other theology books, but it seemed that the
more letters the author had after their name (which I naively thought
meant they really knew something) the more they doubted the
Christianity I had been brought up to believe. Of course I know now
that their doubt is their problem (possibly one should say
“the sin that they have encouraged to control their lives instead
of God”).
The other thing I noticed was this: in
my younger days I had just read the Bible. Now I was being encouraged
to read books about the bible. Soon it was a case of reading
books instead of the bible. I thought I was learning more and
more about Christianity when in fact I was being shepherded further
and further away from it. It was the spiritual equivalent of someone
leaving a lush well watered oasis and chasing a mirage further and
further out into the parched sands of a desert.
One thing which helped me wake up to
what was happening was being presented to the local preachers’
meeting of our circuit. These were crusty old saints who had no time
for the liberal modernism of some of the ministers. One struck me to
the quick, although he possibly never knew it. I don’t remember
that he even said anything; I think he just looked at me. But in that
look was … well something that shot me through. I think it was
disdain, maybe pity, certainly it conveyed that I was, to him, a
non-believer. It hurt, it was like a splinter under the skin that
kept niggling at me. In the providence of God, it saved me.
To cut a long story short I did apply
for the Methodist ministry. I was rejected, very kindly, on the
psychological report that my diffident nature was better suited to
dealing with machines than people. That was the second thing I had
though God was saying to me that appeared to come to nothing. In a
way that was a relief. I was “off the hook” so to speak and I
could with a good conscience enjoy carving a career as an engineer,
which was rather good fun.
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