A passing jar of clay

When my friend, the optician, discovered that I had just interviewed Jonathan Aitken for Evangelicals Now, the first thing he asked was: 'Is he repentant?'.

Not a surprising question, because it's the one everyone asks about the former Conservative minister who was sent to prison for his misdemeanours.

There are those who feel that Jonathan Aitken's recent book Pride and Perjury is rather self-justifying and that he still has a long way to go. But, of course, only God can read the heart and only time will tell if he is truly repentant.

In the meantime, we thought that readers might like to discover what he himself has to say about his faith.

EN: Jonathan, the last five years you would probably describe as having gone through fire. To what extent do you think you are through it?

JA: I certainly think I am through the fire in most meanings of that phrase, but I do not rule out the possibility in some ways or others, known only to God, of being tested further. Anybody who studies the lives of those pilgrims who have made the kind of journey that I have made, knows that you don't suddenly reach the Elysian fields. You may come to some tranquil pastures and rest beside still waters for a time, but on the whole the lives of Christians seem to suggest that testing and trials can re-occur. I don't expect the same kind of trials to re-occur, but I think God often tests people more than once. What I do know is that having gone through this kind of fire, with God's help I could go through it again. So I do not foresee more political or legal trials, but I do foresee perhaps some other kinds of testing.

Thank you, God

EN: Would you go through the last five years again if it was to help you grasp the gospel?

JA: Yes, I can honestly say, at this point in the journey, 'Thank you, God' for the chastening. It's been a breaking and shattering experience. As I tried to say in the book, even though I have by most worldly standards lost the whole world - I mean power and money and all the usual indices of contemporary success - I have made the huge gain of coming into God's kingdom and I am deeply grateful for that. I have my moments of painful anxiety about how hard the testing has been, but when I think about the big picture I really do say 'thank you God'.

EN: Your conversion was gradual. When do you think you actually came to the point of knowing that Jesus had died for you?

JA: If there is an identifiable moment, I would say it was in the very special hours of stillness, quietness and deep prayer in prison. I certainly knew it in theory before but if I asked myself when absolute clarity and certainty arrived, then just because the communication with God was so strong, I would say that it came when I was in prison. I discovered why monks like cells so much. Prison is a strange place, to put it mildly, and one of the strange things is that you get locked up relatively early in the evening. Most prisoners are night owls but they take drugs and listen to their radios, and then they sleep on as long as possible which is until about 7.15 in the morning. I used to put my head down early and go to sleep, without any drugs of course, and partly because of temperament and inclination, partly because of mild nocturnal asthma, I used to wake very early, really with the dawn. Because I went to prison in the summer, there were beautiful dawns, and in the total stillness and silence of this huge battleship of a prison with 3,000 people in it, there was complete quiet apart from a few dogs barking occasionally in the distance. I then had a stillness in which to pray which I had never experienced before. If one is trying to pinpoint a time when I really understood the atonement, really understood that I had been totally forgiven by Christ's death on the cross, I would say it was somewhere in those early days in prison of very deep solitary prayer. I can't sort of say, 'click', that was the moment, because I actually went to prison with considerable peace and a feeling of having been forgiven. But I think sometimes one's understanding of these very profound concepts deepens at certain times.

Soul's progress

EN: What do you fear for friends and fellow politicians, whose lives are fire free and just upward and onward? You obviously recognise a danger now.

JA: Well, I think I have a fear for almost anyone who thinks that this world is their home and that the creature comforts are what is really important to them. People whose god is worldly success and what they think of as gratification, the worldly norms, I think, are missing out on perhaps the greatest of the lessons that I learned. What matters in life is not one's prosperity or success. What really matters is the progress of the soul, the progress of one's relationship with Christ, with God. They are missing out on what Peter calls 'inexpressible joy'. Secondly, they are totally unprepared for the next world and for eternity which is far more important and of a duration which we can not understand.

EN: Jonathan, what do you hope people will think as a result of reading your book? What do you hope that they will think of you? What do you hope they will think of Christ?

JA: I don't in the end mind too much what they think of me. I seem to have an extraordinary ability to polarise opinions. It's involuntary but that's the way it is. But I hope they will see from the story that whatever mistakes one has made, whatever sins one has committed, that it's possible to make a spiritual journey of repentance, change, metanoia and turn to Christ and have a much deeper and far more profound kind of life. It's possible to find a relationship with God which must inevitably in every case be different, but will be beyond the comprehension of those who have never tried to experience it. Of course, it's perfectly possible to have that relationship without the kind of breaking experience that I went through, but I hope people who read the book will take great strength and comfort from just reading an account of one bruised pilgrim's journey. Christ needs no words or billing from me, for I am just a passing jar of clay who pours out the news. I hope that I will be a useful messenger of the height, depth and glory of Christ's love.

Sowing the seed

EN: Do you get frustrated by reviews that completely miss the point of salvation? I notice Neil Hamilton, for example, described your book as 'Jonathan's victory over himself'.

JA: Yes, it's got nothing to do with that. Well, first of all, I'm enough of a student of history and Christian history to know that it was ever thus. Christian messengers were frequently rejected, scorned, mocked, and I've had a fair amount of that. As against that, I've had, not only some very good and very understanding reviews, but also a huge post-bag both for the book and during my prison sentence. This says to me that out there all sorts of individuals are listening and learning from my journey. So I've understood that the seed that I've been sowing, of course, has fallen on some very unfriendly ground, but it's also fallen here and there on receptive ground.

EN: Chuck Colson has been a very wise friend. (JA: Terrific, yes). How important is his comment in your book that God's reaction to you is what really matters?

JA: Yes, it's the only thing that matters. When I get very scornful and cynical questions I now respond to them by saying that the audience that matters is an audience of One. He alone will judge the strength and sincerity of my faith and not a TV interviewer or a man in the crowd, whoever it is.

EN: How do you know, for sure, what God's view of you is?

JA: First of all I know it because of his promises, and the great certainty of these. Although I do think of myself as a born-again Christian, I qualify it by saying I am also frequently a failed-again Christian within the context of having changed and made the commitment. I am absolutely sure there are days when God is disappointed with me, but I think he is loving and forgiving, and for those who keep on praying to him in penitence and faith he continues to bestow his grace. Grace is almost a word with a stoop in it. It picks people up and so I don't think I'm suddenly converted into a Saint. I am converted into a believer, a prayer, a follower, a committed Christian. There are times when I stumble, but I stumble within the context of his grace.

Jonathan Aitken stands by his denial (published in The Times on June 1) that he has a Swiss bank account as suggested by various newspapers recently.

The second part of this interview with Jonathan Aitken will be in next month's issue.

An interview with Jonathan Aitken - the former Conservative minister who was sent to prison (Part 1)