I'm Still Muddle-Headed About God...

Radio Record, 31 July 1936, Page 5

I'm Still Muddle-Headed

About God...

Says

Trevor

Lame

EFORE my boarding school days I was packed off regularly every Sunday at a quarter-past two to St. Michael’s on the banks of the River Avon in Christchurch, . One day | hit on the bright idea of playing truant, but there was one thing that worried me. What to do with the sixpence intended for the schoo] collection? Buy some sweets? Take a punt on the river? A bottle wf fizz? B I did none of these things. In my small mind | knew hat that sixpence was God's

money; I didn’t feel at all guilty about staying away from Sunday school, but my conscience would have smitten me good and hard had I bought sweets or gingerpop. And so J laid the coin under some stones that were a part of the foundation of a new. building and went home. Looking back now | think that was the first time that I was really conscious of God. I said my prayers every night-‘‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’-kneeling as near to the gas heater as J could conveniently manage, but they were just a part of the evening round. For years God was a fearsome apparition who watched

with baleful eye my misdeeds, and subsequently recorded them in a large book "for, future reference." But it is only within the past year that God has entered into the everyday scheme of things in my life. A year ago when people talked about God in matter-of-fact tones I felt uncomfortable-the sort of feeling one has when sex is suddenly sprung into the conversation in a drawing-room. I argued at the time about the Hon. Miles Phillimore, the young Cambridge man who came out to New Zealand as an apostle of the Oxford Group. "It’s a rummy business," I eaid, "to hear a chap talking

about God as if He was the next-door : neighbour, or the fellow you drink a bow! of tea with in the middle of the morning." . "And why — shouldn’t Phillimore talk .about God like that?" I was asked. "You listen to people discussing golf and racing and stock quotations, so what's | wrong with talking about God?" "T’ain’t natural, that’s all," I said, rather weakly. Since then I’ve found more and more people talking about God-the real’ God whose son, Jesus Christ, had a sense of humour (which we can call a sense of pro_portion) and was a far more profound _ thinker than most. of the social leaders of to-day; not the God that has come to be associated with swelling ergan music, white lilies and candles. These peo-

ple, by sweeping the smell of incense from their nostrils and peering beyond the flowers and the candles, say they have found something real, the God who, when you go down on your knees in alj humility and say, "I've been a fool. I'm sorry for it-and I need Your. help," will understand and give you spiritual and mental comfort. And yet, without wishing to turn what I have already written into paradoxical nonsense, | must confess that I'm still muddle-headed enough not to know whether I believe that God actually exists, or whe-

ther the "Thou shalt nots" in my life spring from my own conscience -that the New Testament is really an appeal to the conscience of mankind. Quite frankly, I don’t ' know that I want to meet God face to face. If I were to die tomorrow and ascend to the traditional heaven, would J expect to be formally introduced to God? "This young man has just arrived here." "How do you do," God might. say. "I'm pleased to isee you. I hope you had a pleasant journey." (Please don’t think ‘I'm being frivolous about this, I’m deadly serious-but I am trying to fit God

; into the modern persons conception of what goes on after death. I'm not a Rationalist, I'm not a member of the Oxford Group; I’m merely a young man who is becoming increasingly aware of ‘a something in his life that is slowly increasing his powers of logic and reason, tempering his judgment with sympathy and common sense. You say that it is. merely a growing maturity, natural to anyone? I don’t think so. I'm still fully capable of enjoying the things I've always enjoyed. Beer hasn’t gone sour on me since I made a place for God in my life-I can still quaff a mug with the best of ’em. | still get a kick out of the twirl of Joan Crawford’s eyelashes-in other.words

1 havent "gone religious" in the fanatical sense.) Do you remember that line from an Ibsen play"Without a fixed point: outside myself, I cannot exist." In a world of change and rebellion, millions of people are turning to God as the only. fixed point. Religion is a unifying and ever-present force . which can help to solve the inevitable moral and intellectual complaints. of parents, children and society at large. Even if the Bible doesn’t mean very much to you-after all it did grow "up in a piecemeal manner, with one person after another rewriting certain parts and adding his own trimmings _- you can still make -God a part of your everyday life: For whosoever will save: his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake will find it.

Next week’s signed article, decrying intolerance toward American English, has been written by Keith Gunn.