Stories of Change: Graham Turner- Putting Inspiration into Action

I'd like to tell you a funny story.

Though, at the time,

it wasn't at all funny.

I had a friend who offered me lunch,

and then at the end suggested that

we had a quiet time together,

in the belief that, since I was

supposed to be a Christian,

God might tell me a few things

that I needed to do.

Well, He did.

There were three things.

The first was,

to confess to my wife

that I'd had a flirtation

with a young woman at the BBC,

where I then worked.

Fortunately, it had been really a

very minor flirtation,

but it needed,

according to what I thought in

the quiet time,

to be confessed to my wife.

So, I did.

The second thing was,

that I should go to our tax authorities,

in Britain,

and confess that I had been paying

far too little in tax.

And the third thing was,

that I'd been taking far too much

in expenses from the BBC,

and that I should acquaint

the Director General with that fact.

Now, as you can imagine, I did not

come out of that quiet time a happy man.

But it had to be done.

My wife was certainly not pleased

with the idea that I should go to

the tax authorities and confess.

She said, "You will go to jail."

Anyway.

On this occasion, I disobeyed her,

which was quite rare,

and I went to see the tax authorities,

actually in a town called Aylesbury.

And I was greeted by a young man

who had no idea why

the economics correspondent of the BBC,

which was what I was then,

would want to see them.

When I told him that I had been...

that I had really come to

confess that I had been

underpaying on my taxes,

he went as white as a sheet.

He simply said,

"We have no procedure for this."

Anyway, he recovered and

the end product of all that was,

that I paid back...

and this is forty years ago, so you've got

to multiply the figures by four or five

to make them contemporary -

I paid back £1000 in unpaid tax.

I did not go to jail,

they merely gave me a fine of £50.

And on the second occasion,

when I went to see them,

it was perfectly clear

that everybody in the building

knew the story,

because they all greeted me as if

I were an old friend.

And when I went to the BBC,

the Director General,

who was a man called Charles Curran...

he tried to be kind.

He said, "We always underpaid you,

take it as a late payment."

So, I said I'm afraid that won't do, Charles.

Ok, he said.

We'll put it into the war memorial fund.

Whatever that was and is.

So, that was that.

It was painful.

It's easy to make light of it now,

but I think it probably took a

certain courage to do it.

The total cost was about £2000,

which was all the savings we had.

We were completely flat broke afterwards.

But, six months later,

completely out of the blue,

I won two literary prizes,

total value £2500,

which I calculate as a return of 25%,

which is not bad over 6 months.

But, far more important...

I had a son,

who was seven years old at the time,

and I thought he was old enough to know

what I was doing.

He was a rather pompous

little fellow at that time.

So, when I told him, he said to me,

"Well," he said,

"if you'd been honest in the first place,

you wouldn't be in trouble now."

So I said, "Well, thank you very much."

And then, to my astonishment,

six weeks later, he came downstairs,

looking exceedingly unhappy.

And I said,

"What on Earth is wrong, Patrick?"

And there was a long, long pause.

And then he said,

"I've been stealing sweets

from the local shop."

It came as a great shock to me,

because he was an exceptionally

well-behaved little boy.

It just shows what can happen,

underneath these very happy surfaces.

So, I said,

"What do you think you should do?"

He said, "God has told me

that I should give Mr Goutelier," -

who was the grocer -

"all my money."

So I said, "How much money have you got?"

He said, "30p."

And that morning,

he went down and he said,

"Mr Goutelier,

I have been stealing sweets from your shop

and here is the money."

The grocer was in tears actually.

Wouldn't take the money to begin with.

But Patrick said, "But Mr Goutelier,

God has told me that

I should pay the money back."

So then the grocer took the money.

And that I think really was

the beginning of what

has been a very firm faith...

become a very firm faith in the boy.

And the point of the story really is that

the price of honesty...

is obedience.

You have to do what you're told.

But what you get back is freedom

and, it seems,

the freedom of other people as well.

At least one other person.

So that's the story.