is amazingly and wonderfully free.’
Grace has been defined as free and unmerited favour, extended to those who do not deserve it. It has also been defined as courteous good will. This book does not offer a technical theological definition of grace. Rather, it tells the stories of people who have considered grace, experienced it, and extended it to others. It also tells the stories of those who, for various reasons, have not. Without commanding others to extend grace, it demonstrates that grace is difficult, but humanly possible. It asks readers to join with Presbyterians in considering grace, reflecting on what grace has looked like in the past, and envisioning what grace could look like in the future.
A July morning in Ballycastle
The morning of 16 July 1972 dawned bright and clear in the North Antrim town of Ballycastle. Fifteen-year-old Terry Laverty was shaken awake by his sister. Terry gazed up into her tear-stained face. ‘What’s wrong with you? Is it mum?’ When Terry was four years old, his father had died of an aortic aneurism, leaving behind a wife and seven children. Terry’s first thought was that his mother had died. ‘No, it’s Robert. He’s dead!’ Terry shook his head. ‘He’s not dead!’ Her tears flowed. ‘He is dead, he was shot dead last night by the IRA!’
Robert was just eighteen years old. The four Laverty brothers had shared a bedroom, and as young children Robert and Terry had slept in the same bed. Abandoning a promising engineering career, Robert had joined the RUC only eight months before. He had finished his shift at midnight on 16 July and was still in the RUC station in North Belfast when a call came in about a disturbance at a filling station. The constable due to replace Robert had not yet arrived for work, so he volunteered to attend the scene. As the police vehicle entered the filling station forecourt, the streetlamps went out. It was an IRA ambush. The gunman fired into the vehicle. Robert was struck in the head. He died shortly after in the Mater Hospital.
Still in bed, Terry felt a surge of anger and adrenaline: ‘Get me a gun till I shoot someone!’ But instantaneously, words from the Bible came to mind: ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord’ (Romans 12.19). He felt another sensation, like warm, soothing oil being poured over his body. He felt it was the ‘holy fire’ of God’s spirit taking away his desire for revenge. Terry believes he experienced the presence of God in those moments. But after the funeral, he felt angry with God and at times even abandoned by Him.
Jean, Terry’s mother, had raised her children in Ballycastle Presbyterian Church. Their minister, Rev. Godfrey Brown, accompanied the police sergeant to the Lavertys’ home and wakened Jean in the middle of the night to tell her what had happened to her son. Terry searched for comfort in the Bible and at church. ‘I was looking for answers and wasn’t really finding them.’
Terry also became angry – not at the IRA, nor at local republicans who drove past his house at night, beeping their horns to taunt the family. He was angry with Rev. Ian Paisley, the local MP. One of Terry’s cousins told him that he had been speaking with Paisley, who promised to visit Terry’s mother. He never did. Whenever Paisley came on the radio or television, Terry was filled with anger about, ‘That big man with the big mouth, who couldn’t even visit a widow who’d lost her son in the Troubles!’ Paisley, founder of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Free Presbyterian Church, was viewed by many as a nemesis of Presbyterianism during the Troubles. His figure will loom large throughout this book. But for young Terry, Paisley’s oversight was a source of very personal pain.
In the weeks that followed, Terry tramped along Ballycastle Beach, shouting at the God behind the wind and the waves – the God he wasn’t sure he believed in. He found himself weeping at the slightest provocation, which was embarrassing for a 15-year-old boy. When he was still struggling with tears ten months after Robert’s death, Terry’s school principal called him to the office and asked what he would be doing if he were not in school. ‘Riding my bike. Golfing. Fishing.’ The principal told him to forget school, that he was free to cycle, or golf, or fish, until he got his tears sorted out. Terry said: ‘There was no provision in the system for counselling then. But that single act, that gesture of amazing compassion was very important for my healing.’ So, Terry pedalled his way through the Glens of Antrim, pausing to get off his bicycle and shout at God. One day on the beach, having shouted at God about the futility of Him ‘gathering our tears in a bottle’ (Psalm 56.8), Terry went silent. ‘I felt these words come into my heart: “Tears are the words the mouth can’t speak. Tears are the words of your heart.”’ He became conscious of the tears of all who were suffering in the Troubles, not just his own.
When he was younger, one of Terry’s Sunday School teachers rewarded his pupils with pocket money for memorising Bible verses. Motivated by his desire to buy sweets, Terry had amassed vast knowledge of the scriptures. He recalled Psalm 88: ‘You have taken my friends and loved ones from me. Darkness is my closest friend.’ He found comfort in these words, understanding them as permission to be angry with God. Terry now believed that God understood his anger – and had been with him all along.
It wasn’t until Terry was in his early twenties that he stopped being angry with Paisley. He heard an evangelist preaching who said, ‘Forgiveness is important because it’s all about you being free.’ He went home and wrote to Paisley: ‘You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I’ve been so angry that you never came to visit my mother. Now I realise that was wrong and I want to ask your forgiveness and tell you I forgive you.’ This was the final piece of the puzzle in letting go of his anger. Paisley wrote back, assuring Terry that he had never been asked to visit his mother.
Terry shared these experiences forty-four years after Robert’s death. Like so many others who have been bereaved in the Troubles, his memories are still fresh. Whenever Terry hears the Death March, which was played at Robert’s funeral, his nostrils fill with the smell of the spices that were used to prepare his brother for burial. He is once again that 15-year-old boy, carrying his brother’s coffin. He weeps when he conducts weddings, because Robert never had the opportunity to enjoy marriage, or have children of his own. ‘The pain never fully goes away,’ he said. ‘Although, thank God, my whole family have been given grace to get through.’
Terry knows his experiences were exceptional. As a minister, he has met many who have not experienced healing in any way. He often feels guilty because he can never fully explain why he received such grace, while so many others did not. ‘I am conscious that there are people who will read this and say, “Why did God not do that for me, too, when I experienced hell on earth?”’ He grieves because people who have experienced trauma are filled with doubt that God exists and intervenes in human affairs at all. He remembers the difficulties clearly, but is grateful that the pain of the journey has brought him to a place where he is not angry anymore; where neither he nor his family feel like victims.
But Terry sees his story not as a prescription, nor as a goad to others that they must forgive and move on. Rather, he presents his story as an invitation. It is the invitation that is at the heart of this book: to consider grace. Terry says: ‘I want to encourage anybody who is struggling as a result of violence and trauma to consider grace; to consider the hope that Jesus offers, to consider that there is a possibility of living without bitterness and walking on as somebody who is amazingly and wonderfully free.’
If religion has been part of the problem, it must be part of the solution
This simple phrase is often used by scholars of religion and conflict. The idea is that in conflicts where religion has played a role, peace is more likely if people of faith are involved in building it. Although the so-called ‘two communities’ in Northern Ireland commonly identify themselves as Protestants and Catholics, many people refuse to believe that the conflict has had religious dimensions. We are convinced that a wide body of scholarship, amassed over many years, demonstrates that while religion has not been the primary cause of conflict in Northern Ireland, it has been part of the ‘problem’.
In
