22 1963: I Become a Believer in God

22 <> 1963: I Become a Believer in God

In November 1963, with everything going for me, with a family, friends, and a job with career prospects before me, I was still plagued by doubts about life, uncertain about my ability to stick at the job in the Company, possessed by thoughts of the seemingly meaningless of it all. I was still searching for I knew not what, not even believing there was an answer. I shared the pessimism of Omar Khayyam that, even if there was a god up there, he could hardly care about us here on earth:

” ‘Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with men for Pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one back in the Closet lays.

“The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,

But Right or Left as strikes the Player goes;

And He that toss’d Thee down into the Field,

He knows about it all — He knows — HE knows!

“And that inverted Bowl we call the Sky.

Whereunder crawling we live and die,

Lift not thy hands to it for help — for It

Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.”

I was very much in that frame of mind on the morning of 23rd November 1963, the day after President J F Kennedy died. That was the day my life turned around. I was moved from unbelief to faith after reading two short sections from the Bible, quoted in an article about JFK in a daily newspaper. Many years later my story was published in the Southern Cross, a Roman Catholic Church newspaper, as follows:

“My early life was characterised by agnosticism. I was born of a Gentile mother and a Jewish father, and religion — Christian or otherwise — fell through the cracks. Adding to this the fact that my tender years were spent on a farm, far from any church, may account for my unbelief. But my naturally questioning personality had a lot to do with it as well. I was in my twenties before I started to get any hint that God could have any significance in the world and in my personal life.

“This happened through a girl who wanted to become a nun in the Catholic Church. My love for her took me to the priest to enquire about being a member of the Church, and that involved learning about God and Jesus. The story seemed so unlikely to me that I stopped seeing the priest, but continued courting the girl. In a way, it became a contest between God (in whom I did not believe), and me for her affections. She fled from me to another city where I could not find her, and my interest in religion ceased. Then circumstances brought me into contact with the girl who was to become my wife. Dorothy was an Anglican, but she loved me seemingly unconditionally. She did persuade me to go with her to Church now and again for special services, which I did for her sake, but the proceedings left me cold. I stood for the hymns, but did not join in; and I sat for the prayers with my eyes open while everyone else kneeled with their eyes closed. God was not for me.

“At the time I was leaning strongly towards communism: a dangerous thing, because the Communist Party was banned in our country. Dorothy and I married. We had adopted a child and had had another of our own, and I had a reasonable job with a fairly bright future, and yet I was unhappy. I was afraid of life, and was continuously searching for something that would give meaning to it all. In my search I dabbled in various things. I was prepared to try anything but Christianity, including some decidedly cultic organisations and strange mystery religions.

“I didn’t get very far with any of them, probably for the same reason that I couldn’t get to God and Jesus. I rejected anything that seemed like escapism. Belief in a god of any sort — in religion of any sort — just seemed to be confirmed again and again as that undesirable flight from the reality of life and the world.

“During my school days, one of the books we studied was Pilgrim’s Progress, and the most I got from it was a quotation in which one of the characters asked Pilgrim:

“Why should you choose to live, seeing life is attended by so many difficulties?”

Indeed, why choose to live? I had often asked myself that question, but now I had a wife and children to live for, so that sort of thinking was no longer tenable. But what real hope was there?

“Then there came the day when the news filled the front page of every newspaper:

” “John F Kennedy has been assassinated! ” “

“The day after his death, stories about JFK still filled the front page of my newspaper. One article I read on the bus going to work that morning said that Kennedy was a churchgoer; that he attended Mass regularly; that he prayed; that he read his Bible. The article said he had some favourite verses written out and on his desk in his office. It quoted two of them, both from the Prophet Isaiah:-

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee.”

And:-

“Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up on wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.”

“By the time I had got to work, these words filled my mind. Here was the strength I lacked, the meaning to life I was looking for. In these words there seemed to be offered everything I needed to cope with a life “attended by so many difficulties.” I marvelled that a president of the United States, whom I thought must surely be regarded as the most important citizen in the world at any time, believed in, worshipped, and prayed to, the God of the Bible — and I, a nobody in the world, was too clever to believe in anybody but my own weak self!

“At about ten o’clock that morning, between the counters in the shop where I was a floor manager, I lifted my eyes towards the ceiling (where else would I look for God?), and prayed silently: “Lord, I must be the most foolish man in the world. Here is the president of the United States, a very big person in the world, and he believes in you, but I don’t. Forgive me, Lord. I have been really foolish.”

“I addressed God as simply as that, but the effect was immediate and dramatic. I felt as if a load was lifted from my shoulders, and I turned from being a doubter to being a believer in the God of the Bible in that instant. I could hardly contain myself, and at the first opportunity I left the floor, went to the men’s room and sat there saying: “Thank you, God! Thank you, God!”

“At lunch time I visited a nearby bookshop, bought a small pocket edition of The Gospel According To Saint Mark, and started to read. I took it from my shirt pocket to read whenever I had a moment, soaking up what Mark had to say about Jesus of Nazareth, and his mission to the world.

“It took me a few months before I fully understood what had happened in my spirit that day. Not that I needed to know any more than that something good had happened in my thinking, but being of a logical mind, I still needed to have some idea of how this change could have taken place.

“What I knew immediately was that, in practical terms, I had become a new person, with a vastly different view of the world. What I came to understand in time was that, in theological terms, I had become a partaker of that covenant by which God, the Creator of us all, freely forgives all our human shortcomings when we but ask him, on grounds of something the Messiah of the Bible had done for us a long, long time ago.

“All things — life, the world, I myself — took on a completely different aspect, and I have lived the many years since that great day with a confidence in God, and his purposes in the world, that has never left me.”

[This story appeared in the The Southern Cross of December the 19th, 2001]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Soon after that dramatic experience, I started looking to see what various denominational Churches stood for before settling for the Anglican Church of my wife. The first one I went to was a member-church of the Congregational Union Of South Africa — a Congregational Church. It was here that I discovered how and why I had this new sense of relief when the minister, Frank Green, asked me at the door as I was leaving after a Bible study evening, “Jessop, how are you doing?”

“I am okay, Frank. I know I still do wrong things but I have a sense that I am okay with God.”

“Do you know about the forgiveness of sins through the Lord Jesus?”

“I really know nothing, Frank. Only that I prayed and asked God to forgive me for not believing in Him and I have this sense of relief.”

Frank then invited me to his study where he explained to me the Christian understanding that Jesus had died on the Cross for the forgiveness of the sins of mankind, including my own. At the end of the talk, we kneeled together and I prayed, “Thank you Lord Jesus for dying for me. Please come into my life and be with me forever.” I had finally surrendered to God, like Francis Thompson in “The Hound Of Heaven”.

On the 23rd of November 1963, I had encountered God, now I had a relationship with Jesus bringing with it the new freedom from doubt derived from acceptance of what he had done in his life and death. For the moment that was sufficient for me but I had yet to spend half a life-time to fully differentiate between ‘religion’ and ‘life in Christ’, and to spend many years to fully understand that what I had was not “Religion . . . . the opium of the people” from which I had always fled, but Jesus himself, the new and living way.

I end with a few lines from The Hound Of Heaven:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat — and a voice beat

More instant than the Feet –

“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”]