‘The Last Supper’ by Carl Heinrich Bloch (***W.Commons***)

My life has taken a turn in a direction I was not planning and was definitely not expecting.

Back in the autumn of 2023, while chatting about reading, amongst other things, with a friend over coffee, she expressed surprise that, in all the reading I’ve done over the years, I’ve never read the Bible.

I do know some Bible stories but hadn’t read any of them from the Bible itself.

She suggested reading it and approaching it as I would a history book, and I thought, why not, more as a box-ticking exercise than anything else.

So, I started with the Old Testament and found Genesis and Exodus quite interesting.

Then I got to the third book, Leviticus, and slowly came to a halt as I wondered where the plot had gone.

I persevered but have to admit I found that and the next book, Numbers, quite the slog.

Thinking a break would help matters, I put it aside for longer than I intended.

After a month or so, I picked it back up again.

Long story short, after starting the Old Testament three times, I finally went online to see if there was a right or wrong way to read the Bible.

As I really wanted to get started with the New Testament, I was relieved to find there is no right or wrong way, so zipped ahead to the Gospels… so much easier to read.

Before I carry on with my experience of reading the Gospels, I want to speak a bit about my life.

I was born a Hindu and have been happy with my religion; I’ve loved the stories and the celebrations and the prayers.

When my mum and her siblings were growing up in Malaya (now Malaysia) in the late 1920s, under British rule, they went to Sunday School and learnt about Jesus.

Years later, she still remembered the songs she’d learned and taught them to my sisters and me when we were little, and later, she taught them to her grandchildren.

So, Christianity was not an unfamiliar religion; also, my eldest sister married a Catholic when I was about 8 years old.

Another reason I was aware of Christianity and Jesus is, my sister who’s closest in age to me and I went to a convent school where the nuns lived on the premises, and during our primary years, some of the nuns still helped with the teaching.

I don’t have photos of the school building – as a child and teenager, taking photos of one’s school was not a thing – but found this on the alumni site.

This was the second site for the school, which was founded in 1899, and this building was built in 1912 in the English Gothic style.

As an adult, I’ve always had this feeling that something was missing in my life, but I didn’t know what, and the thought would come and go.

By the time I was in my late 30s, the occasional search for that missing ‘something’ led me to new age and new thought stuff and, for a while, I thought I’d found the ‘something’; all that became layers on my Hinduism.

By the time I was in my 50s, I’d become quite disillusioned with new age and new thought, though still hovered on the periphery of some of it while reconnecting with my own religion.

Okay, back to reading the Gospels in the Bible…

Sermon on the Mount by Carl Heinrich Bloch (1877) at the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle (***W.Commons***)

I enjoyed finding out more about Jesus and His teachings while reading Matthew and Mark.

As I read through Luke and John, it started to feel more personal to me.

Before, whenever I came across references to Jesus being whipped then crucified, I admit to never thinking much about what it truly meant.

The translation I’m reading is the NKJV (New King James Version), and, instead of whipped, the term ‘scourged’ is used; I looked into what that entailed, what it meant to be crucified… and I was horrified.

The whip used for scourging was made up of several strands of leather attached to the handle, and attached to the end of each strand was a bit of metal or bone.

The victim had his wrists tied to a post above his head, so the flesh on his back would be stretched.

Those who were expert at using the scourge were able to tear the flesh from the back, ripping through muscle, and sometimes even exposing the internal organs.

It wasn’t unknown for some victims to die from scourging.

As for the crucifixion, the Romans learned that form of punishment from the Persians, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians, and they perfected it.

It was the common method they used to execute slaves and foreigners, and they designed it so the slow torture kept the victims alive longer, even for days until they finally died of exhaustion, dehydration, or the thing that usually killed them, suffocation.

That confused me; what did suffocating have to do with dying on the cross?

When the legs could no longer support the weight of the body, the diaphragm was constricted in a way that made breathing impossible, and that was why the legs would be broken, to hasten death.

The hands were nailed to the beam through the wrists, and the feet through the instep or the Achilles tendon.

While these wounds were not fatal, the pain they caused would become unbearable the longer the victim hung on the cross.

The Roman writer Cicero described crucifixion as “the cruellest and most hideous punishment possible.”

Reading how Jesus was mocked and tortured then crucified had me sobbing.

I couldn’t believe He’d gone through that for me; who was I that He would willingly go to His death for me?

That He would suffer such unimaginable torture, that He would endure desertion by His Father?

To paraphrase Charles Spurgeon, that is such a depth of extraordinary love which the most inspired mind cannot begin to fathom, the love of Jesus which passes knowledge.

By the time I finished reading John, I realised, this time, I had truly found that missing ‘something’.

I was filled with such love and peace and comfort, I honestly cannot describe it.

But I didn’t commit straightaway because I felt as if I’d be betraying my parents if I stepped away from the religion of my birth.

That didn’t last long though; one day it came to me, clear as anything, I am a Christian.

I can’t remember the exact date, but it was sometime in the spring of 2024.

It’s funny how things happen – I hadn’t been looking to change my religion, and I wasn’t even actively looking for the ‘something missing’, yet God found me.

Then again, over the years, I think I was almost there, at Christianity, but kept veering off onto different paths.

Finally, here I am.

And I love it.

After the Gospels, I went on to read the rest of the New Testament after which I found the Old Testament much easier, and read through the whole Bible in 2024.

The boys have also been reading the Bible and have reconnected with Christianity; both were baptised as babies and went to church when they were young but, as happens with life and stuff, they drifted away.

We were a bit sceptical about going to church given the disappointing failures of the Church of England, but I got to the point of wanting to go to church.

So did an online search for ‘Bible-believing churches’ and tried one, which, although it was ok and there was nothing wrong with it, didn’t feel right for us.

After a couple of months, we tried again and, this time, attended a lovely church with friendly welcoming people of all ages.

Although they fall under the umbrella of Church of England, there’s nothing of the foolishness that the officials of the Church spout; everything our church does is, literally, based on and led by the Bible.

We’ve been going since mid-November 2024 and feel quite at home there.

So far, of my family, I’ve told my sister who lives in the UK, the one who’s closest in age to me, my eldest sister in Malaysia – they were both fine about it and happy for me – and my eldest nephew who was quite excited and encouraging.

On Easter Sunday, I and three others were baptised with another two reconfirming their baptismal vows.

It was quite nerve-wracking as we each had been asked to explain how we’d come to Christianity and what it meant to us.

As our vicar had asked us to try and keep it as short as possible so the service wouldn’t go on for too long, I took him at his word, and said: “I was a Hindu, I read the Gospels, now I’m a Christian.”

He thanked me for the succinctness of it then quietly said I needed to say a little more… ah well, I tried.

But that, in a nutshell, is what happened, and I still find it quite amazing and wonderful that God spoke to me through His Word.

To slightly change that wonderful line by Rachel Weisz’s character, Evelyn, in the 1999 film, ‘The Mummy’, when she says, “No harm ever came from reading a book”, for me it was “The wonderfulness that’s come from reading a book”.

As this post is already quite long, next week, I’ll lay out the plans I have for my blog, which, hopefully, will get me back to blogging regularly again.

A New Direction and My Testimony