I DON’T believe in God. Not as a result of any great intellectual reasoning on my part (tempting though it is to claim otherwise).
I didn’t comb the Bible for inconsistencies; wonder how other people’s gods can possibly fit into the heavenly scheme of things; wrestle with the conflict between science and religion; or reflect on the conflicts caused by religion, before adopting a position.
All of those came later, except for the first point, which tires me out even thinking about it. No, I don’t believe in God for the most banal of reasons: I have always found it impossible to. And goodness knows, for a long time I tried hard enough.
Throughout my childhood and early teens, church and Sunday school were a weekly ritual, from where I would return feeling something of a failure. Everybody else seemed capable of believing. And without too much effort, either. Yet, try as I might, I couldn’t manage it.
As a consequence, I suppose, of childhood feelings of religious inadequacy, I’ve always had a sneaking regard for people who can genuinely put their faith in God. Not the hardline lunatics, of course, but the countless decent people who try to live their daily lives by the teachings of Jesus (who, incidentally, I do “believe in”, but that’s another story).
In particular, I have often been deeply impressed and more than a little envious of the courage, inner strength and sheer goodness that true Christians can derive from their faith (I am certain that the same can be said for genuine members of other religions).
I take many things after my mother, but an unwavering faith in the Almighty, and the raw courage she gets from that, are not among them. Many years ago, when in her late seventies, and lying in hospital the night before undergoing a quadruple heart bypass operation, all she could find to worry about was whether the church minister had got home safely from visiting her. Granted a storm was raging outside.
But still, in similar circumstances, my own wellbeing would have been the only item on my worry list. Sister Helen Ahern and Sister Nina Underwood, of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, the dear friends that I travelled to Niger with during the famine of 2005, radiated Christian love and kindness.
After having worked all their adult lives in Africa, in some of the most dangerous and appalling situations, and witnessing the depths that humankind can sometimes sink to, they were far from naive. Yet despite their hard-earned worldliness, neither woman had a cynical bone in her body.
On an entirely different plane altogether, I remembering wondering how Gordon Wilson could manage to cope with the loss of his daughter Marie in the Enniskillen bombing, never mind find it in him to forgive the perpetrators.
I was awestruck, too, by the reaction of the parents of Michael McGoldrick, a young part-time taxi driver who was murdered by loyalists. Speaking on behalf of his wife and family, Michael’s father publicly forgave the killers at his son’s graveside.
As a parent, I could never imagine having the inner strength and capacity of the Wilson or McGoldrick families. I’m certain I would make some effort to not let myself be poisoned by hatred – but never, ever forgiveness.
I was reminded again of the unadulterated goodness that can come from religion when the parents of young Jennifer Cardy were interviewed on television last week. Nine-year-old Jennifer was abducted and murdered in 1981. Six days after she disappeared, her body was found dumped in a dam near Hillsborough, Co Down. I come from within a few miles of where Jennifer lived, and from even closer to the dam where her body was found by two local lads out fishing, and can testify to how traumatised the people of the Lisburn/Hillsborough areas were by the murder.
I can’t even begin to imagine the effect it had on her family. Yet last week, 30 years later, after serial child killer Robert Black had been convicted of Jennifer’s abduction and murder, her deeply Christian parents spoke of how they had prayed for her killer. It was impossible not to shed a tear or two at such a perfect personification of the teachings most of us grew up with.
It is fashionable for us non-believers to mock believers. I’ve indulged in a little of that myself. Perhaps, when lobbing grenades at the fanatics, it would do no harm for us to remember that in attacking dearly held beliefs we are wounding righteous people such as those I have mentioned above, and probably doing little to combat fanaticism.
If religious fanatics weren’t fanatical about religion, they would surely be just as fanatical about something else (possibly atheism). The danger lies not in the ideology, but in the person. Conversely, does this mean that people like the Wilsons, McGoldricks and Cardys would be just as forgiving if they weren’t genuine Christians? I have no idea, but suspect not. Though nor do I much care. They and their like give me faith in people, and I’m grateful for that.