Do it now before the Treasurer can put a stop to it! All you have to do is phone us on 015396 25321, drop us a line at Hobsons Farm, Dent, Cumbria LA10 5RF or email davidboulton1@compuserve.com. We'll do the rest. 5 SOF 44 / November 2000 GARY PLEECE found that one religious experience can change your life... And he’s not talking about SoF conference lectures or reading Heidegger... jesus, two love doves, and a girl in a liquid spandex cat-suit I'll come clean. I’m young (well, 34) and I believe. I believe in the unseen so that one day I will see what I believe in. Well, kind of. The difference between me and the tea and battenberg whilst Johnny Mills slays the Hun or the clappy happy brigade is that I believe in a chilled, disarmingly smug, laisez-faire kind of way. I don’t purport to live in denial or self-sacrifice; well I do, but I’m just more relaxed about it.
You may ask, will this laid back, irreverent approach lead me through the mystical minefield to the upper echelons of heaven, and doesn’t it contradict the criteria required for that journey? You're probably right, if you're into the fire and brimstone stuff or, indeed, if you're a church fete raver. And therein, I suppose, lies the problem with Christianity: its image, or lack of it. It’s back to “the only thing wrong with Christianity is the Christians” debate. Boring, untrue and irrelevant? Could be, but certainly anti-stylish. Maybe an hour in the company of Lowri Turner and Alexander Mcqueen would do the trick.
Can’t pray won't pray, anyone?
Iam not from a religious background at all. My understanding, born from a recent personal encounter with Christ, is that we need to promote, modernise, almost “spin” his beliefs, his aspirations for us all. It is time to regroup. Religion needs to be advocated in realistic terms, not in fictional biblical double-speak or quasi-emotive Oprah language. To justify this article, to give myself relevance, let me give you an insight into my recent encounter.
Iwas reading The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey, an introduction for me to Christian literature, when suddenly, inexplicably, I felt my whole body rise into a surreal and elevated state. At once I recognized the feeling as one I'd had before, when I’d popped two love doves on my 24th birthday and danced opposite a girl in a liquid spandex cat-suit in a club in Brighton, circa 1991. At the time, I was ina band who were on the verge of signing a lucrative record deal with CBS, and writing comic strips for Roy of the Rovers as a full-time job. Christianity and the reason for living were the furthest things from my myopic SOF 44 / November 2000 On reading Yancey’s book: “Suddenly, inexplicably, | felt my whole body rise into a surreal and elevated state...” Quite a good read then... mind. Back then, the reason for living was to live without reason. But that was then. This was timeless...
The warmth of the rush immediately expelled the dormant, destructive insecurity within me. Though alien as a feeling, especially unaided by chemicals, the shuddering of expectation and understanding ripping through me like a volt-force was reassuringly familiar. The instigator, though untraceable, I knew instantly - don’t ask me how - to be Christ. No man with a caricature beard appeared semi-clad calling on me to take up my cross and convert, but my vision for life suddenly had a sea-air clarity about it. I was enveloped by a warmth and energy and a conciseness about everything that ever/never really mattered before. It sounds whimsical, but I was unashamedly sold in an instant on everything God-given.
I thought that I would explode with love! Whereas once I viewed most things with hostility, cynicism, suspicion, now, suddenly and from almost over the page, that had changed to love, hope and unshakeable belief.
A few days later, after several unsuccessful months of trying, my wife fell pregnant. Coincidence or reward? The only thing I can really infer about it is that the change it has affected in me is tangible and completely positive. I have been transported from ambivalence toward religion of Eminem or Robbie: hmmm, which is the more Christ-like? any kind to thinking that to live without it in my life would be unthinkable. I was just pointed in the right direction at the right time and luckily the blinds were open to let the light come flooding in. Now, as ex-smokers feel about confirmed nicotine addicts, I feel sorry for people who live without Jesus in their lives. Using the same analogy, | also want to bang on about giving up a life so damaging for one so much more rewarding.
It could be you?
Probably not if you're short-attention-span man into the Lottery, Loaded magazine, the Sun, Dreamcast, Arsenal toothbrushes or Sky TV. Go straight to hell, do not pass God, do not collect your wings! Such people surround me, and persuading a person who lives by these culturally impoverished accessories to live without worrying about possessions and to turn the other cheek instead of dropping their trousers and showing us both, is the task confronting us; these are the people who need to know.
They're also the reason why I fear God’s foot soldiers are fighting a losing battle. A nation so sold on living on credit and sexy materialism has a ship-load of clawing back to do, spiritually.
Using image as a means to get “the message” across to the young means that pop music’s as good a medium as any. On his new album, the boisterous rapper, Eminem, aka Marshall Mathers, has recorded a track called Kim, a bilious rage against his wife with whom he has a four-yearold daughter and who recently tried to take her own life.
Apparently a lot of his angst and hatred can be related to his “bitch” momma mistreating him. Recently he went on an eight hour shooter spree, ending with him holding a gun to a man’s head. After his court appearance, the local attorney received a threatening letter from a group calling themselves the South Warren Street Kids who promised to blow things up if charges against him weren’t dropped.
These kids describe him as their “Christ”.
That’s what we're working with here. Do you want to see kids growing up on a diet of fake nihilism, hatred of women and gays, gobbing at bus stops and pushing over old ladies? And though I’m loathe to agree with another pontificating, populist Blairite vision, his desire to stifle “yob culture” should have our full backing. I’d rather kids looked at someone like Robbie Williams, who admits to his flaws and yet has attained a prized philosophical and selfexamining edge to his make-up. He’s been through the mill “| fear God's foot soldiers are fighting a losing battle. A nation so sold on living on credit and sexy materialism has a ship-load of clawing back to do, spiritually.” and yet he still stands up to be counted, living by the C.S.Lewis maxim: “We don’t know how bad we are until we try to be good.” Trouble is, Eminem makes better music than Robbie Williams.
Craig David, the singer of the recent number one Seven Days, has an interesting approach to religious debating. He says that he’s open to all types of religions, that he likes to break down the key statements or issues in each religion and see how they will stem together into the same thing.
Great stuff! I thought, but then he sings in Seven Days of meeting a girl on Monday, going for a drink on Tuesday and making love on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. At least he had the good grace to chill on Sunday, maybe his religious conscience was getting the better of him. But he’s hardly advocating his truly stimulating religious beliefs, and I wonder which of these messages the kids will tap into?
When a reviewer in the Guardian mocks the singer of the band Coldplay for being influenced by Christianity and Genesis (the band, not the book) and ends the piece with “Got any crack, anyone?” as a means to undermine any serious or even not so serious debate about religion, | despair. So Moby, right, he’s good but he’s a Christian, so he’s...not that good? Read the sleeve notes to Play, his last album. It defines what gentle persuasion is. Oh, and see if you eat meat again afterwards. They’ll be selling nippy wigs in Woolworth’s next. Well, we can but pray.
There has to be a shift in values. I’m not suggesting that we produce a nation of flowery, keep-Britain-tidy worshippers, but the core ingredients to life, the reasons for living, must be advertised - and you can make a start in the classroom, where religious education still seems to be taught with Oranges are not the only Fruit blindness and fear-laden mustiness by the teacher with the stained yellow teeth and breath like soiled nappy trying to knock into you to Not take the Lord’s name in vain! Why not? I used to ask, he sounds so bloody awful!
It's so frustratingly clear to me: renounce wealth, love your enemies, turn the other cheek; don’t play so much on fear.
Iam relatively illiterate concerning religious history, | very rarely go to church on a Sunday, and I often forget to pray every night. But let’s get over this problem that the whole thing simply ain’t cool, because when you consider how unbelievably cool it really is, the lack of understanding of the whole issue is desperately dispiriting.
The Rolling Stones had Sympathy for the Devil, whilst apparently God shined his light on Sir Cliff. As Oscar Wilde said: “In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.” I rest my case.
Gary Pleece lives in Brighton and works in design and digital print. His stories for Roy of the Rovers were illustrated by his cartoonist brother.