Mum was (and still is) a Christian, but she never forced it on us. I remember occasionally going to church, but we didn't like it much so we just stopped. I knew a little about the Bible, but not much of what was in it. We were taught good moral standards, and that seemed sufficient to us.
I remember one day, when I was about 16, my younger brother had been set some homework for "RE" which involved "inventing" a religion. My older brother, in his usual dogmatic style, suggested that this was a stupid idea unless he had made a thorough study of the "available alternatives". I must confess this struck me as a perfectly valid point, but I thought no more about it.
The story really begins when I got to university. I said earlier that I had every reason to be happy, but in truth I wasn't. Being a quiet and deep thinking person, and entirely useless at sport, I had never really fitted in with the "in-crowd". Intellect is not fashionable in this country even today. Attending an all boys Grammar school didn't help my social skills much either. I hoped that university would provide a new start, and resolved to be popular.
Well, hardly surprisingly the plan failed dismally. By the beginning of the second term I felt that there was nobody at university that I would really call a friend. Those I had hung around with were the miserable social outcasts who liked me because I was, if anything, less popular than they were. Frankly I didn't like them much. I began to look for new friends - acceptance would do - and found that there were indeed some folks who treated me as a person in my own right. They didn't even seem to worry about my social ineptitude.
Looking back it surpirses me that I didn't spot the connection between these people sooner, but by the second year I had noticed that they were all Christians. One chap in particular - a mathematician by the name of Michael Vynnycky - was always available and willing to talk the night away on a wide variety of subjects. One particular night he and I were sat in his room with another chap who was a declared atheist discussing the merits of religion. I enjoyed playing devil's advocate a bit, batting for both sides to keep the argument going. By the end of the session Michael, whose theological knowledge was probably not as limited as he thought, offered to lend me a book which might answer more questions than he could.
The book was "Who Moved The Stone?" by Frank Morison, and remembering my brother's comments about study I decided to read it through. The author had set out originally to prove that the Bible could not be true, but his research and academically sound approach led him to the inescapable conculsion that the Gospel account of the resurrection of Christ was irrefutable. For myself, I wasn't ready to admit that, but I really struggled to find any counter arguments. Nonetheless, I remained a sceptic.
This is where another mathematician joins the story. Tony was one of that year's freshmen, and a jolly decent chap. One day I met him on my way to lunch and saw he was wearing a "mission" badge. I knew from my other friends that the Christians were soon to be holding a "mission", or a series of public meetings for non-Christians to find out more. What surprised me was Tony apparently being involved. He explained that he had only joined the Christian Union "to assess the other side, and find out what they're about".
Well they persuaded me along to a few of the minor meetings, but I resisted the main ones a bit. Finally though, a chemist called Peter talked me into going to the Thursday evening session. The subject was the evidence for the resurrection, and much of the talk centred on the same logic I was familiar with from the book. But the conviction shown by the speaker, and the truth of what he said, was too much to ignore this time. At the end of the talk, he invited people to go forward if they wanted to become Christians. I can still remember turning to Peter and saying, somewhat nervously, "I think I'm going to have to go up there".
It would be nice to say my life was instantly and dramatically transformed, but as I said at the start, there wasn't much to be dramatically sorted out. However, things did take a definite new direction for me, and whatever doubts I may have had since, I know for certain that I made the right choice.
There is a funny twist to the story. A few days later I was talking to Tony. He said "you know, I wasn't sure what to make of this Christianity but I figured it came down to one thing, so I decided to test it." He had decided that if prayer worked then there must be a God, and that if God was real he should be a Christian. So he set out to test this by selecting the three most unlikely events he could think of, and then praying for them. "And the last of them", he said, "was that you would become a Christian". He had watched in amazement from the balcony at the back as I walked up to accept Christ in my life, and because of that he too had made the best decision he ever could.
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