It was when they finally came to crucify Jesus that I became really upset about what was happening to Him.
The events of his life that I had read up to this point had become so real to me, his life so amazing. The first three gospels gave such a vivid account of his life - the feeding of the five thousand, the miracles and the strange and mysterious events of his birth and his life – that I was gripped by the impact this man was having on those around him. But it was the Gospel of John, a powerfully intimate account, written by a man who clearly loved Jesus and who had spent a lot of time close to him that brought me close into the presence of the man Jesus Christ. The simple way John gives his account, with profound insights into Jesus and what it was like to actually be in the same room as him, is nothing short of breathtaking. The story is so personal and so engaging that I felt I could almost reach out and touch Jesus.
And now here they were, crucifying him. As the full drama of this tragedy unfolded, I could see, in my mind's eye, a man with nails through his hands and feet, hanging from a cross in mind-numbing pain, as the crowd stood nearby.
The Bible I was reading was a Good News Bible, which I had bought in WH Smith's a few weeks after I had started attending church. As a reporter on a local newspaper, I had been working on a story at a support centre for people who were unemployed and I was asked if I wanted to attend a local church the following Sunday. Although I immediately said 'no', the offer was made again and, believing that journalists should not be closed to any experience, I accepted.
Reading the accounts of the life of Jesus in the gospels for the first time was like reading newspaper reports of the life of Christ; I read them as I would a piece of copy from a correspondent out on the story. Matthew was the historical background piece, Mark the tabloid headlines and the action and adventure and Luke the feature-length article, full of detail and explanation. The Gospel of John, however, was an 'up close and personal' interview, told for much of the time through the words of Jesus himself.
As well as reading my Good News Bible (the best selling version of the Bible in the world today, with 23 million sold, according to the Evangelical Alliance website), I was also attending church, a lively and growing charismatic Baptist church, which met in a school hall.
This sort of Christianity was very different to the sort I experienced as a child. The third of four sons, I was christened a Roman Catholic when I was a month old; I'm told that the priest, before pouring water over the baby's head, puts salt into the child's mouth, to bring cleansing. When I asked my mother, years later, why I had been christened, she said: "To wash away the sin of Adam". As the first 21 years of my life was to testify, the salt and the water didn't work.
As a child I was an affectionate little boy, fond of my mother and often thoughtful to the needs of others. I would cry easily at other people's hurt and pain. While my two brothers (one 18 months older than me, the other just 14 months younger) had lots of friends, I preferred to read and play chess. I once went to the shop and bought a birthday card for my older brother, much to the amazement and praise of the rest of my family; I was aged about seven.
Although I seemed more emotionally sensitive than my other brothers, I was also fiercely independent and single-minded and happy to express it. This brought me into conflict with my oldest brother, a sulky and selfish bully who was, at least when we were younger, clearly the favourite of my parents, particularly my mother. He resented having to share his world with three younger siblings and was violent and vindictive to anyone who stood up to him, which often meant me. While my young and immature parents favoured their first-born son, they were indifferent to my pleas for protection from this hateful and aggressive oldest brother and often indifferent to me. After all, my mother wanted two boys and two girls; she had her two boys, then I came along.
My dad was an angry, resentful, distant man, harassed by a debilitating stammer that he inherited from his father, which was passed on, in varying degrees, to each of his four sons, particularly the oldest one. Our home was, for me, quite a violent place, with my dad ready to lash out at any of his four sons with punishment that was often much greater than the crime, an aggressive older brother who could not be controlled and a dissatisfied and unfulfilled mother. This environment produced some very brutalising experiences.
It was in this setting that another problem began to emerge, albeit slowly. From an early age, I remember strong emotional feelings rising in me when I was around certain people. One memory is of an older boy, who was tall, athletic and confident, whom I found, in a curious way, 'attractive'. When our playtime together had to be cut short, my feelings of disappointment are better described as total emotional devastation; I was about eight years old.
As I grew older, a very strong emotional dependency was developing as I sought to find my identity and fulfilment in people around me, most often older boys. While boys of my own age had friendships, this appeared to be something of which I was incapable. 'Friendships' lasted a very short time. The need for a deep emotional bond was very real – and the feelings were getting more intense as I got older. Having no sisters, going to all-boys schools' and spending time in the all-male environment of a local Scout troop, did not help.
Is it any wonder, then, that a sensitive, independently minded, emotionally needy and somewhat brutalised young teenage boy should find that becoming a 'sexual' creature in adolescence was a deeply bewildering experience? While so many of my friends at school were talking about girlfriends, an awful reality was falling on me like a shadow – I was struggling with strong and intense homosexual feelings that were crippling and far beyond my ability to control.
As I was in the Scouts, we often went away on camps and groups of boys would stay together overnight. It was during this time that we engaged in what, to many of them, was just a bit of 'adolescent foolishness'. These experiences took on a much greater significance to me and resulted in me becoming, by the time I was about 13, a very sexualised and highly emotionally dependent teenager.
And so there followed a series of sexual experiences in my early teens, each giving a greater desire for more, each experience promising much and delivering nothing, driving me on the next experience and the next. I had a relationship with a guy some four years older than me and for a period of a few years, up until I was about 16, I was having sex with him every three or four months.
As I was in the Scouts, we often went away on camps and groups of boys would stay together overnight. It was during this time that we engaged in what, to many of them, was just a bit of 'adolescent foolishness'. These experiences took on a much greater significance to me and resulted in me becoming, by the time I was about 13, a very sexualised and highly emotionally dependent teenager.
And so there followed a series of sexual experiences in my early teens, each giving a greater desire for more, each experience promising much and delivering nothing, driving me on the next experience and the next. I had a relationship with a guy some four years older than me and for a period of a few years, up until I was about 16, I was having sex with him every three or four months.
When his job took him away, I was left feeling lonely, isolated and even more emotionally and sexually needy than before, by now having a serious obsession with masturbation. My need to be loved by a man was seemingly insatiable. My aching was sometimes so great that it was all I could do to sit in a chair and hug myself. More sexual experiences when I was 16 and 17, with other boys of that age, just added to the problem. By the time I was 18 I was risking going into a gay bar in Liverpool (and once being approached by two men who were clearly plain-clothed police officers), looking for that someone who I was convinced was out there, who was going to make my life complete. Walking home from the club alone afterwards, I would also be aching and feeling empty. All of this went on without my parents really knowing.
I left school at 16 and got a job as a building society clerk and went to night school two nights a week to get the A Levels I needed to get on a journalism course. Even at journalism college, I would look for the gay pubs in the town and dare myself to walk into them. On holiday in Europe with a 'straight' friend from school, I ventured back into the red light district of Amsterdam and cruised several gay bars, desperately trying to get picked up. Even once I had got my job as a journalist, far away now (thankfully) from my family and Liverpool, I would venture out of my bedsit into the local gay pub, one time getting picked up by two young men and taken to the house they shared in Slough.
And so when the invitation to go to church came, in reality I was ready for anything that might help. The songs, the preaching, the seemingly friendly people, that was all great. But it was when I met the man Jesus Christ, a tough guy who talked so easily about love, who died on that cross, I soon fell in love with him. I remember the tears rolling down my face when they went to look for his body and he wasn't there - he had come back to life. It was about then, sitting on my bed reading my Good News Bible, that I simply said to Jesus that I would do anything for him, follow him, and give up anything just to be with him.
After a couple of years in the church, I realised I was going to need help to live the Christian life with purity. One night I was asleep in bed and felt a man lying on top of me; as I fought to wake up and fight him off, I realised, once I was fully awake, that there was no-one there. Becoming a Christian didn't mean sexual temptations disappeared - and there was now a spiritual battle going on.
So, one Sunday morning, I found a man in the church who I knew was into 'counselling' and I told him about myself. He tried to understand as best he could and said that we would meet for 'prayer counselling'. The first session involved me naming each person to God with whom I had had sex and asking God to forgive me; each time I did this, my body shook violently as a heavy weight seemed to be lifted from me. This was the start of the long process of healing, which is still continuing.
Now, some 12 years after becoming a Christian, I can see all that God has done in my life. For me that has included getting married (that's a story in itself); my lovely wife and I have three terrific children. I now lead a support group in London, part of the True freedom Trust (TfT), a Christian ministry for people with homosexual struggles. I've found that there are several other people in my church who share the same struggles. I'm watching the debate within the church about homosexuality and more recently I've found myself sharing my own journey and experiences with the leaders of my church, the same church through which I became a Christian. Reactions have been mixed, some encouraging, some not so; some listen and try to understand, some own up to not having all the answers.
For me, the struggles go on, although I'm stronger and better able to cope than I was. I am seeking to answer God's call on my life not to gratify the desires of my sinful nature, and to sacrifice those desires on the altar of obedience to his will, his pure, perfect and loving will. He really is a Father God, who wants nothing but the best for his children and who instructs us in ways that will lead us to life. He is a jealous God who wants us for his very own.
And for the future? I wouldn't begin to compare the anguish of this life to what is ahead; there really is no comparison. There is a day coming when the aching will be gone and I will finally rest in God. Then it will be over, the battle won and everything conquered; then, at last, I will meet face-to-face the man I first met in my Good News Bible - the man Jesus Christ.