Aldous Huxley begins Island with a curious little scene. Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist, is shipwrecked off the coast of Pala. Half-conscious and aching, he is discovered by two island children. They tend his wounds, but they also insist on something odd: he must tell them what has happened, again and again.
At first Farnaby resists. He has already explained that he crashed his boat. Why repeat it? But the children press him, and soon the fragments of the story tumble out: the reef, the rocks, the panic, the struggle to shore. He is made to rehearse it until it loses its edge. The point is not cruelty. The Palanese have learned that repetition drains trauma of its sting. A fearful event, once narrated into the open, loses its power to dominate.
That passage has often returned to me in the last two years as I have repeatedly come back to Christianity. I did not grow up on Pala, but like many Europeans I grew up in a civilisation built on the long shadow of the Church. Christianity was both familiar and alienating: it offered beauty, but also fear; consolation, but also guilt. The “boat crash” of Christianity was something I could not ignore.
And so, like Farnaby, I have gone back to the site of the wreck, rehearsing the story until it has begun to change in meaning.
First Return: Memory and Inheritance
At first I saw Christianity simply as my cultural air. Europe is incomprehensible without it: its art, architecture, music, language, and moral codes all bear its mark. For centuries it was the unquestioned framework of life.
But it was not only cultural. As a teenager, I was so enamoured of Anglo-Catholicism — its incense, its ritual, its sense of mystery — that I even imagined myself becoming a priest. It offered a total vision of life, radiant with beauty and purpose.
Second Return: Doctrines Exposed
Later I looked more directly at the doctrines that had carried such weight. Original sin. Eternal punishment. The sacrifice of an innocent man to appease divine wrath. These were not noble truths but human constructions, often designed for control.
What struck me most was the deeper message beneath them: that existence itself was suspect. Even before I had done anything, there was a lingering sense that something was already wrong with me — that simply by being alive I carried guilt. Few adolescents would put it into words, but many absorb it as atmosphere: a vague burden of unworthiness, reinforced by sermons, rituals, and unspoken taboos.
Naming this felt like repeating the words of the crash: “I hit the rocks. The hull split open.” It is painful, but it clears the air.
Third Return: Jesus Without the Church
More recently I have gone back to the Gospels, especially the Synoptics. There I found not a redeemer bound by metaphysical riddles, but a teacher of striking moral clarity. His concern was the Kingdom of God — not a distant heaven, but a way of living here and now. He spoke for the child, the outsider, the forgotten. He taught in parables that disarmed and unsettled. The Jesus who emerges from these pages is not the Christ of dogma but a human voice calling for justice and compassion.
Fourth Return: Release and Perspective
And so, at last, Christianity itself has begun to look different. It is no longer the oppressive edifice I once feared. Nor is it a treasury of unquestioned truth. It is one episode in the human search for meaning — full of brilliance and error, light and shadow. I can see it without bowing to it. I can let it be part of history, and part of me, without letting it dominate.
Closing the Circle
Huxley’s Palanese children knew that repeating a story does not imprison us; it frees us. By returning again and again to Christianity — its beauty, its failures, its distortions, and its original flame — I have found something similar. The more calmly and clearly I look into it, the less power its old demons have.
And what were those demons? The fear of eternal damnation. The crushing weight of sin. The authority of the institution claiming to speak for God. Beneath it all, the gnawing sense of never being justified in the eyes of God — not a child at the table, but at best a dog who might gather the crumbs that fall to the floor, and at worst one who may not even be allowed to do that. These shadows once held sway because they were never confronted.
But when they are seen for what they are, something else is set loose. Out of the ruins come angels: the angel of moral clarity in Jesus’ call to compassion and justice; the angel of conscience in the freedom to weigh and decide; the angel of imagination in parables that still open doors of meaning; the angel of culture in the art and music shaped by centuries of searching.
Looking more closely has also led me to a conviction: that what we call “orthodox Christianity” was not the essence of Jesus’ message, but largely a creation of the early Church — built on Paul’s theology, steeped in the atmosphere of mystery religions, and hardened into hierarchy. The Synoptic Gospels, and some of the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, point instead to a different core: that the “Kingdom of Heaven” is not elsewhere, but within. In modern terms we might call it self-trust, self-confidence, or — to use Jung’s word — individuation.
We may only glimpse it, “through a glass, darkly.” But to move towards it is to live more fully, and to take responsibility for ourselves and for one another. The more people who come to this understanding, the greater our hope that humanity has a future on this planet.
To revisit Christianity, then, is not an act of destruction but of release. What emerges is a faith stripped of fear and dogma, leaving behind the possibility of clarity, courage, and a more honest way of living.
