Colin F. Jones

SHARING BELIEFS: A REQUEST AND THE RESPONSE

The Response (in full)

Lynn, thank you for asking: it shows your genuine interest and it is satisfying to occasionally be the recipient of that interest. Your question, however, is not easy to answer in a few words [but] I will try to explain.

I was raised “in the Church of England” as they say, in a small rural Anglo Saxon village in England. We all attended church every Sunday and on special days. I also attended Sunday school and was taught “scripture” at school: That was a regular Friday (if my memory serves me correctly) lesson.

I was the top student of my grade “B” in all subjects other than Art and Woodwork, and for some reason I failed “History” in my final year at school – when I was 11. I was still the top of my grade.

I was very popular and had a lot of friends, but always shy and slow to come forward, as was my father, which I was unaware of until some few years before his death.

I breezed through all English subjects effortlessly, literature, composition, spelling, punctuation etc.; the same with Geography; Maths I found more difficult.

I constantly received ten out of ten marks for Penmanship.

I was deeply interested in scripture, and was fascinated by the Church and its hollow galleries, the ancient gravestones and the Holy Bible. It was never called just “The Bible”, always “The Holy Bible”, because there were many Bibles, but only one that was “Holy”.

I had “Tea” with two spinster sisters every Monday, who were very religious people. Laura worked for the “Big House” nearby and was a tall, dignified “posh” lady whom I loved dearly. Ethel was a seamstress and in those times through the war and after it, made many of our clothes. These two – especially Laura, enhanced my lessons in manners.

I was polite, considerate, never used swear words, but was as all young boys naughty at times and mischievous.

I read the bible every day (I still do… well on most days) and my ambition was to become a priest. I recall acting in a school play as one of the three wise men… Or Kings, and singing “We three Kings of Orient are… bearing gifts we travel so far…”

We even named our trees with names like Big Monk and our playground was among the Ancient Anglo Saxon ruins and forests where Robin Hood was said to have roamed. Our church had a high stone steeple and the bells used to ring out every Sunday at least, and we always knew someone had died when the tolling bells were heard across the shire with a mournful disturbing slow low tone sound that made everyone feel sad inside.

The church had a full choir and my older brother Barry as did my father before him sang there. He had a wonderful high voice and was beautiful to listen to.

We were poor due to the war, but dad was doing well as the only motor mechanic servicing a fleet of forty vehicles, but he worked 12 hours or more a day for six and a half days a week so we saw little of him.

I loved going to school; loved learning; and I thought I loved God. I guess I was like the rest; I was conforming to the things my teachers, parents, and church people taught me.

I thought the world was wonderful. It was a bit like a fairyland, and I prayed without fail every night, and my mother had told me that there was an Angel at the corner of my bed looking after me.

She also once told me, (we lived in a double story brick home with a staircase to the up-stairs bedrooms), that “if you have enough faith, you will be able to walk straight off the top step without falling”.

I was often tempted to try; but I found fear more powerful than faith.

I did not know there was nastiness in the world; I thought everything was like it was in the Village – peaceful and tranquil. My mind was filled with good thoughts, inquisitiveness, and the ever-constant desire to learn more about the world and God.

What a wonderful childhood I was enjoying. I was at peace with God, even though I did not really know who “He” was. I never questioned what I had been taught, thinking my tutors were all knowledgeable.

In 1952 I went to high school and I as usual was top of my grade “B” in the first term exam. However my Geography exam was marked 99 out of 100. Not that it mattered, but the answer to the question they had marked wrong was an error.

I knew this because my Uncle had a Banana Plantation in Australia and the question that was about Australia asked what fruits were grown there. But because the Teacher did not know this, it was marked wrong. My head popped out of the clouds. Why did he not believe me? He obviously did not know but because he did not know, he assumed I did not know either; or he simply would not accept that I knew something he did not.

I was to face this fact several thousand times thereafter in my life.

Was all that I was being taught correct? How did I know it was? I trusted my elders to tell me the truth. But sometimes they were wrong. Why did they not just admit it?

It had not affected my belief in what my scripture teacher was teaching me, directly from the Holy Bible itself. But the seed had been sown.

Everyone wanted me to think the same as they did. I had never questioned it; the Church people, my father whose politics were Tory; conservative, my schoolteachers. Everyone it seemed wanted me to believe what they believed. Fine… Who was I to argue? I believed.

We used to sing a song that included the phrase, “catch a nigger by the toe, if he squeals let him go, or send him off to Derby Jail”… and I thought all Jews were mean, excessively thrifty, but also sharp nasty people.

It never entered my head to think, why?

There was a Catholic Monastery nearby. We were afraid to go near there; where they moved around in hooded gowns; they were terrible people. Well so I thought!

We had little songs like,

When Hitler went to war,
He lost his pants
in the middle of France
so never went there anymore.

Here I was in my wonderful little world of childhood; protected by Gods Angels, where everyone was so polite and nice… well that was soon to change

Even though my childhood was a kind of fairy tale, times were difficult; the weather was harsh and we were quite poor and struggling. We were still using ration books so what you could buy (we had no money anyway) was restricted.

My Uncles offer and constant persuasion for dad to migrate to Australia was difficult to put aside. Dad visited the Department handling these affairs and was almost completely convinced the move would be beneficial.

However a permanent job for him as a Mechanic (a trade he had learned in the army) and a decent house to live in was the carrot dangled under his nose, so off we went to Australia.

The ship took us from one side of the Earth to the other, and I saw and leaned much on the way.

Over the period of the first year in Australia we lived like animals in lean-tos and sheds. We were always hungry and suffered daily ridicule prejudice from the local people, who we thought were rude and crude; in fact they were.

I was lost in a world of my own, a very lonely desolate world where I was screaming for help and love. My father was treated like garbage and my Mother worked her heart out keeping us fed and cared for.

God did not come to help me. But then I never prayed for myself and somewhere along the line having mostly won my battles with the agonies of loneliness, lack of self confidence; fear; fear of life itself, the rejection; the rejection; the rejection; the striving to be recognized as being alive; overcoming the crippling debilitating consequences of lost education…. I prayed for others.

No one knew who I was; not even me.

I asked the question a thousand times; why is God doing this to me? Am I meant to go through all of this for a reason? A purpose?

Then I asked; “But there is no purpose at all is there? Things just happen this way. There is no one pulling the strings. I am not a puppet! Life is simply an ever-changing evolving thing.

God does absolutely nothing. Our outcomes are due to what decisions we make and the circumstances in which they are made. I watch these people going in and out of church with their noses in the air looking down at everyone who is not of their skin colour, or wear clothing they disapprove off. They go into church; Gods house; righteous and all so pitifully faithful and when they come out they turn into the prejudice servants of the Devil.

They are Hypocrites. My parents died in the past couple of years. They lie in the Protestant section of the paddock they call a cemetery. You drive through the gate and follow the sign, Catholics to the Right, Protestants to the left. God only knows where you get dumped if you are not one or the other. This is a perfect example of division.

When I die and am buried there, I wanted to be buried in the middle, between the two. That is not allowed. I will be buried with my family; and for no other reason will I lie there.

The priests of religion think they own you. For years the Catholics protected their longing to produce as many little Catholics as possible by forcing their authority on who can marry who, where and when. The other mob is no different now they have caught up and learned how to part the vulnerable from their money.

They did not teach me about all these things. The bible says one thing; people do another. The only time their faith seems to be honest is when they are actually in church scrambling about on their knees before a bloke hiding in a fancy coloured robe.

I have watched my brother’s children raised as Catholics by the very strict and very nice Roman Catholic schoolteacher he married. After all these years, living with it day after day, he has come to the conclusion that it is absolute rubbish. I agree with him; but he will not talk about it; but I will.

I have written volumes of stuff on this. There is always the constant challenge in my head: ‘is all this stuff put there by someone else’, true? Or is what I find out from life itself, my own thoughts created by me – are they the truth?

So, what do I think?

I think one has to be slightly insane to believe in something that does not exist. I think it is primitive superstition used cleverly by powerful people to control the vulnerable based on their natural fear of death.

It works. If you can kid yourself into it, you can be happy when you should be sad and feel forgiven when you err. Few people are able to question what their mind has been programmed with from birth, and therefore have no reason to, because they are programmed not to. This is normal. It’s like learning English. We don’t choose these programs – we just get taught it when we are very young so that it sticks.

The bible, to me, is just another book written by men for the purpose of establishing power over people. It is long lasting because once a generation of minds are programmed it is logical that another one will be as well. All rival books and writings were got rid of lest they contradicted and conflicted with the intended doctrines of conformity.

It might all be true. I simply don’t know. Logic tells me it is a history written for superstitious people afraid of death and confused about where they come from. I cannot say it is wrong. I cannot because I do not know. I cannot say it is right. I cannot because I do not know.

I know I can do all those things that I was told were not possible without God’s help. I know situations and circumstances change, and that we change accordingly.

I know that most people are followers and need something to cling to because they lack the courage to go it alone. I know they use the word love like they own it and, mostly it is meaningless.

I don’t see god in anything. I look at trees and think of people. I see movement among the forests shadows and see faces in my mind’s eye. When it rains it brings to mind the tears shed by all the downtrodden and ailing in this sad cruel world, that a creator could change in a moment if he so desired.

I see the birds also as people, each one unique that live and die as we do, in a merciless world that can only survive if the system of kill and be killed continues. The world is so designed.

But I do have hope. I hope we, as people, the so called animals that can reason, can overcome our own lot somehow, because if the world was rid of the human being it would simply continue as it was meant to, without us. If we want to survive we must become once more, part of nature’s system of things, which we are anyway but will not accept it. We have to abide by the natural rules, flow with the rhythms, and cease living in a dream that a heaven awaits such an evil creature as a man.

No I do not believe in the Christian God. No I am not an atheist. I am far more complex than that.

I recall another man, the late, Terry Toedt, who was a member here, who said, in another place, when “accused” of being an atheist, “Atheism is a belief; therefore I am not an atheist.”

I could not bear the thought of some brainwashed priest blubbering practiced words over my grave. But my funeral will be in the hands of others if I fail to escape to seclusion to die, and they will have their way… and I will have failed.

Already I have failed. I am a man without children. I was here. But I never was.

I remain and continue searching for the truth now that I have “dismissed” at least one God from my list. If I can find Usan I will be happy. There is greater wisdom in that.

I guess I still haven’t told you what I believe.

I guess I believe in myself and that there is an inner connection with something more worthwhile than existence on this Earth. It does not matter where you live or with whom you live. You really live inside yourself, and to imagine that being an unreality is impossible.

Thank you.

©Copyright May 16, 2007 by Colin F. Jones