Emily Graves spoke with Bill Medley about the spiritual journey he took writing his book

As a religious sceptic Bill Medley investigated the five major world religions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism in a book, which he has called Religion is for Fools. It was originally written as a letter to his sister-in-law to share his findings with her and try to address her objections. Bill worked as a professional entertainer for 15 years and is now a Presbyterian pastor. Emily Graves spoke with him about his spiritual journey.

Emily: Tell me about the purpose of the research and the subsequent book.

Bill: I was always a guy who wanted to explore the world. I was in the entertainment industry for 15 years and got some of the big questions about life, but at the same time I was sceptical of organised religion. I always thought, one day I'm going to get around to reading a load of religion, just so when those religious people knock on your door and ask those questions I can say, been there and done that thanks very much. I wanted to be able to say that I'd investigated it for myself. That was where it started, but by the time I got through the Bible I had my mind changed. I started by thinking religion is for fools and ended up becoming a fool myself.

Emily: Had you grown up around Christians or any particular religion?

Bill: No not at all. When I was doing comedy for a living I used to make fun of religion and it used to be in my routines. I hadn't had any upbringing in any religious background; it was just good fodder for comedy. I was in my thirties before I even looked into it.

Emily: You originally wrote this book as a letter to your sister-in-law Rita, is that correct?

Bill: Yeah that's right. My sister-in-law had been brought up with religion. She was brought up a catholic and once she hit the teenage years, she rejected all that. Then here was me brought up with no religion and I suddenly had my thinking changed and she starts asking all these questions and the more questions kept coming, I thought, well I'll write her a letter, because you can't argue back with a letter. More questions kept coming though, so I ended up handing her over this massive wad of pages. It was her idea to make it into a book actually.

Emily: How did you feel at that point when she suggested it?

Bill: I thought I had nothing to lose. I had been in the entertainment industry; done all the stuff getting a record deal and knew all the processes of all that and thought I'm not going to go through all that going around publishers at first. I thought I'll just put it into a manuscript, but then it got picked up and now Authentic have picked it up and it's all happening.

Emily: You looked at the five major religions, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. Do you think people are confused with there being so many religions?

Bill: I think they are confused because they don't really understand how simple it is. It's not really as complicated as it seems and this is what I discovered myself.

I read two translations of the Buddhist scriptures and the Hindu scriptures and the Koran and so on. It's not really as confusing as you think. It really comes down to a question of is god speaking; has god spoken to us and how's god gonna speak to us unless he comes down and tells us.

What it really came down to was there's only one person in the history of the world who's ever claimed to be that God who's come down to speak to us and he did a whole lot of stuff to prove that's who he was.

The question from my point of view was the age old argument, of was Jesus this incredible liar; a deluded madman; or was he in fact who he said he was, the God who's come down to tell us? I wrestled through the book and had a lot of issues, like can you really prove this? Can you know whether this is true or not? Is there evidence as to whether you can really say that Jesus was who he said he was, or not? That's really the exploration of the first half of the book.