Dead Air

Having just handed a job application into Life FM this afternoon, I was heading up Queen Street to resume my live Christian music show on Hope City Radio, when I was accosted by someone with a microphone.

And a TV camera.

“Sir, can we ask you a question?”

“Sure - what question do you want to ask?”

“Where do you go when you die?”

It’s moments like this when I realise just how ill-prepared I am to share my faith. My bonhomie tends to respect whatever conclusion about God that the other person has already come to, and the implication that they should give that up to believe something different just because I’ve said so, really strikes me as disrespectful. I mean I could make up any old thing.

“You’re wrong. God is a fish. He’s very unhappy with Captain Birdseye.”

As I think I’ve mentioned before – it’s very hard to tell an unprovable truth when you’re afraid of being branded a liar. Or a fool. Or mad.

But this guy was asking me what I thought.

In retrospect I wish I’d turned the question around and asked him why he assumed that souls went anywhere. I mean, if you don’t have a belief on this subject, then on the basis of known evidence, you must assume that your soul just stays where it is, in your broken, rotting, decomposing corpse forever. Why assume that without your body, your soul even can move?

Anyways, I didn’t think of saying that. Instead, I swallowed the temptation to retreat into humour and said… in fact, that fish answer probably would have been a lot better than the lame-o thing I actually did say.

“Well I think you either go to Heaven or Hell actually.”

Big shock. I mean BIG shock. Without any warning this guy’s face was utterly gobsmacked at my response. (really wish I’d given him the “eternity in your desuetude corpse” answer now)

The only person more surprised than him I think was me, as my mind raced to fathom just how it was possible for a TV interviewer to come out on the street, specifically to ask people about life after death, and not expect the Heaven/Hell answer as a standard.

I’ll repeat that last line – how can you not anticipate that answer?

So, since I had now ruined everything by making us both lost for words, he somewhat heroically managed to save the interview with “Why do you think that?”

So, thinking very poorly on my feet, I gave him probably the worst, most anti-evangelistic answer composable, which was of course “Well - because I’m a Christian, and I believe the Bible.”

Oh, very hortatory. Elsewhere in the world, Joyce Meyer, Franklin Graham and the Pope were all quitting outreach to avoid being associated with me.

Then, just to make matters worse, I decided to get my Bible out of my trouser-pocket to offer it to him on-camera.

Then, just to make matters even worse, the flap on my pocket got stuck.

As a seasoned film actor, I was well-used to visualising how I looked on-camera as I spoke, and right now I knew I was leaning unnaturally to the right with my hand fumbling an off-screen area somewhere below my waist.

“Erm…” I stammered, “…but don’t take my word for it…erm…” Eventually my hand came up into the picture area again with my pocket-Bible, and placed it in the interviewer’s spare hand. “Don’t listen to anything I say, read it for yourself, in your own time, and make your own decision.”

“Well,” he concluded, looking around a bit for help, “that’s a good answer.”

After I’d left, I realised that I really should have told him what a good question he’d asked.