When I Grow Up I Want to be a Martyr

Maria sat in the kitchen alone with Tina. Tina was 10 years old. She had been chosen for this important task as she was one of the brightest and most articulate children.
"The television will come here tomorrow," said Maria. "She will ask you lots of questions about the farm. You must tell her what a pleasant life we have here. She might ask you what the food is like."
"All right, except for those cornflakes which were intended for the horses."
"Tina, that was an accident. You don't think we'd really give people animal feed, do you? The food delivery comes in a big van at 6 o' clock on a Friday morning. There were 4 trolleys, 3 for the kitchen and one for the stables. The cornflakes got put on the wrong trolley."
"We all had to eat them."
"Well Tina, nobody knew. Not until I put them in that casserole when we had a regional meeting and a hundred church members from all over the south coast were here for tea. That casserole was absolutely disgusting. Harry ran into the larder and saw this big bag of cornflakes that had been opened and told everyone how it had been put on the wrong trolley. The television might ask you what school here is like."
"It's all right. Being home schooled isn't too bad. I can read well enough and I can sit there and write my stories.  I'm good at Maths. I'm better than some of the teachers. That Barbara -"
" - Mrs. Jones," corrected Maria.
"That Mrs. Jones can hardly add up. She hasn't got the faintest idea how to work out the area of the path around the garden pond. But I can add up faster than a calculator."
"Can you?"
"Yes. Mrs. Jones keeps telling me off for doing things without the calculator but that would slow me down such a lot."
"What sort of things do you do in the evenings, Tina? The television is bound to ask you that."
"I like to walk along the road up and down to the railway bridge. It's got a really nice view  over Bournemouth."
"Do you read a lot? There's a lot of books in the library. Although I don't know if they're very interesting to a 10 year old."
"Nothing wrong with them. Better than Harry Potter."
"They're religious books and some of them are more than a hundred years old. Do you understand them?"
"They've got some funny ideas about things. The Imitation of Christ. What a dull miserable life that bloke led."
"What else do you do?"
"I've got a little mobile phone that doesn't work properly and I use it as a television. You can watch all sorts of things on it. Not just YouTube, all the other films that are on the internet for free and it's got a really powerful search engine. I've got an old sewing box and I put it in the lid. It makes a good TV stand."
"And you made this?"
"Yes. Stanley just gave me his old mobile phone and told me that it had a damaged battery and it was 3G but I could have it if I thought I could do anything with it."
"Tina, when I was your age we weren't allowed to have television."
"Maria, when you were my age a television was a thing with great big doors and a tiny little screen and I shouldn't think you'd even be able to get such a huge thing into my tiny little bedroom."

Sarah came running into the dining hall. She looked at Maria.
"Miss Cooper is here. I've just seen her car come into the car park."
"I'll go," said Maria. "I'll show her in." Ten minutes later Maria led the television producer Paris Cooper into the small side room where Tina was sitting alone on a worn out settee.
"Are you the television?" asked Tina. Paris laughed.
"Yes. I am the television producer. So I am the television. Just call me Paris. You must be Tina." Paris set up a camera on a little stand and sat herself on an armchair, that looked very old but was still in good condition, facing Tina on the worn out, almost threadbare settee. 
"Do you like it here, Tina?"
"Yes."
"What is it like living on a farm?"
"There's lots of animals and birds and things. And you can walk up and down the road but you haven't got to go past the signs."
"What signs are these?"
"The big signs that say 'Members of Weedon Reservoir Community Church Keep Out.' You haven't got to go on anybody else's farm. But you can stand there and look over the fence. You can see the whole town over that fence."
"What's the food like here?"
"It's good. We get some interesting casseroles made of cheese and tinned hot dogs. On Friday night we have rice with tinned vegetables and tinned fish and on Saturday night we have chicken and chips with beans. Not Heinz baked beans because that would be worldly."
"Why would Heinz baked beans be worldly?"
"We must have equality. Heinz baked beans are 3 times the price of ordinary baked beans and come from a world ruled by mammon."
"Do you go to school here?"
"Yes. I like writing stories and I'm good at maths."
"You'll be going to secondary school next year. Which school are you going to?"
"I'm going to St. Edmunds."
"St. Edmunds is a really rough school. Are you afraid that if you went to a really rough school like that the other children might bully you for being a bit different?"
"I would consider it an honour to be persecuted for Jesus."
"What do you do in your spare time?"
"I go walking. I read a lot. You wouldn't believe the kind of old books they've got in the library. Books about missionaries. Books about the history of the Salvation Army."
"What sort of problems do you have in your life? What's the worse thing about living on the farm?"
"My little television runs out of memory in the last 5 minutes of the film. Imagine it. You miss the last 5 minutes. You miss the point of the whole film. I watch documentaries and sermons most of the time so that it doesn't matter."
"What are you going to be when you grow up?"
"Paris, I'm not going to grow up. I'm not going to live that long. Jesus is coming back. There are terrible times ahead. Christians will suffer persecution. When I grow up I want to be a martyr."
"A martyr?"
"Yes, Paris. Pray for me. Pray that I will not lose my faith. Pray that I will be faithful until the end. Pray that I will be a martyr for my Lord."

Sarah and Maria were cooking the breakfast. The news was playing on the radio.
"And now, our look at the front pages of today's papers. The Guardian, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Martyr. The Telegraph, Brainwashed Children in Doomsday Cult. The Daily Mail, The Hale Boppers. British Farm is End of the World Suicide Cult. The Sun, I Drank the Cool Aid. Brainwashed Children in Jim Jones Cult." Maria came running into the lounge where Tina sat reading a book.
"Little Miss Tina, what have you done?" 

That morning the church leaders sat together in the hall in sombre mood.
"I have been speaking to Paris Cooper on the phone," said Stanley. "The little woman was in tears. She had produced a positive documentary about the farm. She pointed out that we aren't the only Christians who believe that Jesus will come back in the next 10 years, she included other Christians who believe this too. But you know what the newspapers are like."
"She shouldn't take it too personally," said David. "It's no worse than anything else we've been through."
"Is it not?" asked Matthew.
"No Matthew, it isn't the first time the newspapers have blackened our name and it won't be the last."
"The devil is filled with fury because he knows his time is short," said Colin.
"Either that or our time will be short," said Matthew. "Do you not think the way we teach the second coming of Christ is frightening to children? Most churches teach that the Christians will be taken out of the terrible time of suffering that will come on the world before Jesus comes again but we teach that we will go straight through it. We also teach that Jesus is coming next week. The only reason he's not here already is that he got stuck in the traffic. Why can't we be like everybody else?" Pastor Boris leaped off his chair.
"Because other Christians are infidels and the churches they belong to should not be called churches at all. This is the Kingdom of God. Sharing the same table. Sharing the same bread."
"Sharing the same socks," said Stanley. "The other men in this church have enormous feet. I can hardly ever find socks that fit me."
"All right then, sharing the same socks. And sharing the same shirts, the same trousers and the same jumpers. Having all your personal possessions in a tea chest because you have so few personal possessions. 'Joy is the food we share. Love is our home, Brother.' That's Christianity. Not sitting in a pew listening to a sermon and then hurrying home to watch a film on the television while you have Sunday dinner which, let's face it, is what most other church's Christianity is all about."
"What are we going to do about it?" asked Matthew.
"There's not much we can do," said Stanley.
"Wait for it to blow over," said Pastor David. "It always does."
"But what are we going to change?" Colin looked at Matthew in a way that made Matthew feel very lucky that they didn't live in Texas and that Colin didn't have a gun. If Colin had had a gun in his hand at that moment, perhaps he would have shot Matthew.
"Change? Change? People don't like change."
"To avoid any more problems with the media, why don't we set up a committee and anyone who has problems with this church can contact the committee, instead of talking to the leaders directly?"
"Matthew," said Pastor Boris. "There are no problems in this church. There never have been. It is all nonsense. This is all spiritual warfare. It is all persecution of a righteous church."
"But suppose someone had a genuine complaint. They could talk to someone on the committee instead of talking directly to the leaders. That independent person could liaise between them and the leaders. That would take some of the heat out of the situation -"
"- They are the church's greatest liars," Pastor Boris interrupted. "They have a spirit of grumbling. There is nothing to complain about but they will grumble anyway, they have a spirit of grumbling."
"Pastor Boris, not everyone who makes a complaint about this church has a spirit of grumbling."
"Matthew," said Pastor David. "I must warn you, you are coming very close to causing Pastor Boris to lose his temper. I don't want to have to ask you to leave this church. If Pastor Boris loses his temper, he will ask me to ask you to leave this church."
"And you would just do that. You wouldn't try to persuade him. You wouldn't even ask him why."
"We made a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience," said Stanley. "Or some of us did."
"Matthew, leave this room before I lose my temper," said Pastor Boris.