HATE READING? LET ME DOI IT FOR YOU. (SKIP INTRO – 2:30)
Last week I dropped my friend off at The Royal Albert Hall, where she was attending The Alpha Leadership Conference. Alpha is the fastest-growing evangelical programme in the world. Essentially, it offers a crash course in Christianity which over 30 million people have completed so far including the likes of Bear Grills and Ginger Spice.
I’ve been invited to take the 10-week course by several smiley Christians, but I’ve always declined the offers. It’s not that I think I know everything about God, it’s just that I know enough to keep me going for now.
I was lured into Catholicism as a child by the promise of pick-and-mix at the end of Sunday Mass. Every week I sang hymns and muttered the Hail Marys as a crucified Jesus watched me from his cross. Meanwhile, I was deep in thought whether this week I should go for the fizzy gummy cola bottles or the non-fizzy ones.
When I was eight years old, I was made to do my First Holy Communion. This means you can eat the body of Jesus via a wafer and drink his blood via watered-down wine. Being catholic, you’re meant to believe that it’s literally his body and blood, which was a terrifying thought as a kid, but hey, the Bible isn’t exactly a child-friendly book.
Before The First Holy Communion can happen, you must go to confession to rid your soul of sins.
So I was put on one side of the confession box, and the Priest, Father Simon waited for my sin on the other. I swung my legs and played with my jumper sleeve, as I confessed to Father Simon that I had blasphemed…
I revealed how, last week in my bedroom, I lifted a Haribo egg high above my head in front of the congregation made up of; Pink Ted, Buzz Lightyear, and Jack Rabbit, then I announced to their unfazed faces, “This is the body of Christ,” before popping the sweet into my mouth.
“And that’s it, that’s my sin, Father,” I said. A suspicious cough came from the other side of the wall. The same kind that my friends and I did at school when we were hiding our giggles from the teacher. “Father Simon?”
“Yes, sorry,” he eventually said, then let me know that my sin was forgiven and that I could go in peace. I jumped off the seat and thanked him as I left the box. And the next Sunday, with a pure soul I was allowed to eat Jesus’ body.
My God knowledge continued at Catholic school, where I (not to flex) received an A in R.E GCSEs and a B in Philosophy in Religion for A Levels. My qualifications came handy later in life when I got into a relationship with a Doctor of Theology. He would spend evenings on my sofa with red wine, wearing a faded grey denim shirt and talk in a husky voice about warfare in the Old Testament. I could understand some of what he was saying. Now and again, I would even chip in with a question.
“And Doctor, in your opinion, what breed would you say the nativity donkey was?”
I asked my friend after her Alpha conference how it was. She said she felt enlightened and it was worth the $200 ticket.
“There was this one strange thing that happened though,” she said, and then told me how one bible teacher Jennie Allen, (who currently has 435,000 followers on Instagram), got everyone in the Albert Hall to shout out their sins for fifteen minutes as a pianist tinkered on a piano…
Can you imagine having to shout out in the Royal Albert Hall that you blasphemed with a Hairbo egg….?
How strange.
Give me a 1-1 session with a middle aged man in a wooden box, any day….
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