Learn with Kev: Why you have to be a believer

AN uncle of mine had a pretty bad stutter when he was young. Whatever his parents did, they couldn’t shift it so in the end they took him to Cork in Southern Ireland to kiss the legendary Blarney stone, famed for giving people the gift of the gab.

He’s still astonished by the miracle that turned his life around. “The stutter just disappeared,” he explains with awe-inspiring drama, “about three years later!”

That’s faith in its most beautiful form, warm, reassuring and unquestioning. In essence, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen and without it, the world would be a pretty pessimistic place. Faith is uplifting and loving, it’s strong and unflappable and in many cases it’s as blind as a bat.

Religion would be a bit pointless without faith because there isn’t a huge amount of evidence of Gods knocking around. To be fair, the story of creation is pretty impressive. In the beginning, God created Earth and rested. Then God created man and rested. Then God created woman.

Since then, neither God nor man has rested. But if it took just six days to create the world then why does it take the council six months to fill a hole in the road?

Heaven and the afterlife are a pretty tempting motivation to have faith. God doesn’t pay his workers large salaries but the retirement benefits are out of this world. It doesn’t always go to plan though, like in the case of the vicar who arrived at the pearly gates, confident he’d earned his place with plenty to spare.

A taxi driver in front of him was welcomed and directed to the Golden Floor, the top level. He was then told to head for Silver. “Wait a minute!” he said. “But he’s a taxi driver and I’m a man of God!” “Yes,” replied St Peter, “When you read your sermons people would fall asleep. When he drove his taxi, his passengers would pray.”

Taking a leap of faith can be a risky business. My brother-in-law did on one drunken night on holiday and broke both his ankles.

Unfortunately, the trouble with religious faith is that if you really believe in your God, then you can’t help feel that all the others are a bit silly, so silly in fact that religious differences are still the motivation for most wars.

We shouldn’t worry though, because there’s bound to come a time when everyone gets on and world peace prevails. You’ve got to have faith, after all.

Next week… The Art of being Rich.