So... where to begin?

Hmm... I know:

I remember as a young boy of nine years of age (or was it ten? It's so long ago I can't honestly remember) sitting in a pew in a church, cub scout uniform on and knees relatively unscabbed listening to some geezer declaiming from the pulpit. It was Easter Sunday and the church was pretty full - as well as our pack and a couple of others there were a few Scout troops and Girl Guide units (they didn't mix in these days - Scouts for boys, Guides for girls) plus the usual crowd of regular worshippers and a number of guilty souls who had obviously made the effort because "Well, it is Easter".

So, there we were. Sitting and listening to the geezer in the pulpit going on about the resurrection of Christ.

Now, in fairness, he was a good speaker. He made Jesus sound pretty bad ass - not as bad ass as Judge Dredd obviously (after all, who could be?) but pretty tough nonetheless. He told us how Jesus had stood up to the Romans and the Jews and how he had come to Earth - though not in a spaceship, his method of arrival was much more bizarre than that - to save us all from our sins. It was at that point I stopped thinking about how I could to avoid the kicking my brother was going to give me for breaking his tape recorder and thought "Hang about. How does some bloke getting nailed to a couple of bits of wood save us all from eternal torment? That's just... silly." I listened on, hoping that it would get a bit more realistic.

Sadly it didn't.

The priest described how Jesus was abused and nailed to the cross and ultimately died. Except he didn't. Well he did. Sort of. He then went onto explain how on the third day he emerged from the tomb crying "Fooled you!” spent some time with people and then buggered off to heaven. By this time I was thinking "This isn't just silly, it's stupid."

I sat there puzzled and looked around at the congregation. Most of the cubs were fidgeting in their seats, bored and waiting for the sermon to end so they could sing the obligatory hymn (can't remember what it was) and go and play football. The Scouts and Guides were eyeing each other up with that fake nonchalance that boys and girls of that age have. Well, most of them were, there were a few who only had eyes for the priest and who were smiling and nodding. A lot of the adults were too. Hell, most of the adults were.

I also saw my brother who was looking at me and not with the tenderness of brotherly love either.

I shrank back into my seat and thought about it. I had never really encountered religion before: my parents would be what you call Deists. Of course I didn't know what that meant; I hardly even knew what a Christian was. Bluntly they had no interest in religious faith and, as such, it never occurred to them to indoctrinate either myself or my brother (when I later asked my Dad about it he replied that it took enough time to get us to go to school, do chores and generally behave without feeding us fairy stories too). I was puzzled so I thought "I know, I'll ask Akela!”

Akela, for those who don't know, is the leader of a cub group. She was also the minister's wife.

I'm not going into the details of the conversation we had when I asked her if people actually believed in that stuff but I think it ended with "Because it's true, you stupid boy!" or something like that. I was kind of shocked by that; Akela was the fount of all knowledge - she knew great stories, loads of games we could play (most of which were incredibly violent and are banned now I think) and could tie knots and stuff. Yet she was falling for this load of guff hook, line and sinker.

How could someone so rational believe such a pile of obvious drivel? I just didn't get it.

I left the church to find out more about this 'Christianity' and why people believed in it. I didn't feel any hate or revulsion for them; I just didn't understand how they could fall for it when even a nine (or maybe ten) year old kid could see right through it. I left the church confident it wasn't real at all.

Unfortunately my brother most certainly is and I wonder if my memory of that day is so vivid because of the minister's sermon or because of the half an hour of Chinese burns and typewriter that my brother dealt out.

Ah well. Kids, eh?