His Ways Are Not Our Ways

It seems, from two sites I visited recently, that God-SPAM has made it onto the internet. Inside Catholic reports on Christians intent upon 'proving' that Catholicism is in error; the other, Living Room was a call to pray 'against' an 'axe murdering spirit' that had come to Australia. Now it seems to me that there are tenets of belief to which all who call themselves Christians must hold. And there are matters of interpretation and modes of worship which are merely opinion. To indulge in in-fighting about the latter must, I would have thought, deplete our Altersvorsorge to stand firm on the former.

I was raised in a non-Christian family, but found the truth of Ephesians 1:4 to be particular true for me. My mother sent me to her old school which, God-incidentally, happened to be Catholic - La Retraite in Clapham, London. There, between the ages of five to eleven, I came under the influence of Catholic teaching. It proved to be one of the most influential stages of my life.

As a Protestant, I had dispensation from attending Catechism classes, but I went to Mass and witnessed the First Communion of many friends. Neither endeared me to Christianity! Despite my tender years, I had long conversations with my father, a self-professed agnostic. 'I hate all the pomp and ceremony,' I told him. 'But,' he replied, 'if you had a beautiful painting, wouldn't you want it to be grandly framed?' 'No,' I said, 'I'd want a plain, simple frame to show the picture off to perfection.'

School friends told me that if I was not a Catholic I would go to hell. Understandably, this, too, did not endear me to the faith. And yet there remained in me an unexplained yearning. A yearning which I saw fulfilled in the person of my teacher, Mother Mary Dominic. In the vernacular sense, I adored her.

Other than as part of the school curriculum, I don't recall her ever giving me any personal, religious instruction. But her life, her grace, her sheer joie de vivre, was more influential than she knew. She was no staid, uncompromising conformist. Her demeanour in Mass might be sombre and demure, but on the hockey field or netball court, she would pin down her veil, hitch up her long habit, and outrun the best of us. Neither was she a disciplinarian when a little love might have a better effect. It was she who, seeing me gag over milk puddings (remember tapioca?) quietly arranged for me to have a jam tart baked either by herself, or by one of the domestic Sisters, who knows?

Of course, God had additional means of gaining my attention in the midst of my 'heathen' J family. For some reason (to give my parents an extra hour in bed on Sundays?) my sister and I were sent to a Brethren Sunday School, at the behest of a neighbour. Then there was the book my father had won at his Sunday School, titled 'A Yellow Pup'. The content is long forgotten, but I remember the title to this day, fifty-something years later. And I'm so grateful to my father for teaching me - despite his own lack of belief - to be open-minded to the opinions and convictions of others.

I was converted into the Anglican Church, but wherever I have lived, I have prayed for guidance to know where I should worship. At one time this was a House Church; for the past 25 years it's been in a Baptist Church. I've found, or been found by, God in all three - just as I did in my Catholic School and Brethren Sunday School.

My point is that God works in mysterious ways. Ways that we, in our arrogance, try to explain. Or worse, use to coerce and manipulate others to our own (mis?)understanding. And although - despite all that political correctness, tolerance, and multi-culturalism has to say on the subject - I believe in the exclusivity of the Christian faith (how can you not when Jesus said I AM the way, the truth and the light; no man cometh to the father except through me) I also believe that he may, mysteriously, enter into the life of non-believers or adherents to other faiths, even at the eleventh hour.