If you're someone who reads this magazine from cover to cover, you may recall a story in December's edition entitled A Girl with an Apple.  In his own words it told the remarkable story of Herman Rosenblat, a Polish Jew who, as a boy of 11, was sent to the concentration camp.  One day, walking near the perimeter fence, he saw a girl on the other side. She threw an apple over the fence to him, and from then on, every day she would come and bring him apples, until he was transferred to another camp.  He survived the war, and ended up in New York. 

One evening in the late 1950s, a friend set him up on a blind date with a young woman called Roma, and in the course of their conversation they realised that she had been the ‘girl with the apples' who had given Herman hope in those dark days.  Having lost her once, he was determined not to let her go again, and fifty years later they are still happily married.

Tear-jerking stuff, eh?  Well, a few weeks ago a magazine reader sent me a cutting from the Daily Mail.  Under the headline Holocaust love fake, it revealed that the whole story had been made up.  Herman had been in the camp near Berlin, but Roma had spent the war in hiding with her family back in Poland.  They did meet on that blind date, but that was the first time they had ever seen each other.  Herman first told the tale in a local newspaper in the 1990s, and it went on to attract national media attention in the States.  However, people began to notice discrepancies, and finally, at the very end of last year, the Rosenblats were forced to concede that it was all a fiction.

It was rather bad timing for them, because the book version of the story, entitled Angel at the Fence, was due out this February. The couple had already received an advance from the publishers, which they are now having to pay back, and the book is to be pulped.  Penguin clearly does not approve.  By contrast, the producers of the film of the book (called Flower of the Fence) intend to go ahead with the shooting, arguing that "the integrity and beauty of the story remains as a work of fiction".

These opposing reactions of publisher and producers neatly illustrate a contrast which is also to be found in Christians' attitude to the Bible, between those who believe that the stories of Scripture can be valuable only if literally

true, and those who, like the film's producer, think that, even as works of fiction, they can have ‘integrity', meaning and worth.  Few of us, I think, believe in the literal truth of every Bible story.  But how far in the other direction do 

we go?  Many people distinguish between the Old and New Testaments.  It's one thing to believe that, say, the stories of Job, Jonah and Ruth are works of fiction; it's quite another to doubt the literal truth of the stories of Jesus.  But others might be more sceptical about some of these too.  Quite a few churchgoers, I guess, at least acknowledge the possibility that the stories of Jesus' birth are not historically accurate.  But once you admit that some of the stories of Jesus may not be historical, the question then is, how far do you go?  What about the miracles, or the Transfiguration?  And, most pertinently for us at this time, as we progress through Lent towards Holy Week,  the stories of Calvary and the Empty Tomb, the resurrection appearances of Christ and his Ascension?  The literal veracity of all of these is a matter of debate, discussion and disagreement amongst Christian theologians, and not just academics, but ordinary thinking Christians who try to live their faith with integrity.

My purpose here is not to provide definitive answers, because I am myself in the process of wrestling with these questions.  The point is, what sort of institution de we want the Church to be?  Do we want it to be a dispensary of certain, clear-cut answers, doling out dogmas?  For some, that may be an attractive proposition in such an uncertain and insecure world, and such churches do indeed attract many followers.  But there is another option: the church as a community in which radical questions of belief and faith are certainly not debarred, and maybe not even definitively answered, but are positively welcomed and, to borrow one theologian's lovely term, ‘befriended'.  I believe that such a church would be an attractive place for those many people in our society who know that life is complex and difficult, and who find that the easy answers offered by certain churches don't ring true with their experience of life.  I know which sort of church I prefer.  What about you?