I RECENTLY heard someone roll out the old cliché that Christianity is just a psychological crutch for weak, unintelligent, scared people.

The more I thought about it the more I wanted to disagree and my feelings were confirmed the other day when I went up to the Lake District. Let me tell you the story.

The purpose of our journey was to both walk and take photographs.

Having arrived in Keswick we decided to drive out to Ashness Bridge, just above Derwent Water with Skiddaw forming a beautiful backdrop.

It was easy enough to take a picture of the bridge, hand holding the camera with a wide angle lens, the resulting picture was really good and sharp.

The fun came when we decided to go a little further up the road to a spot called Surprise View, and what a surprise! You find yourself looking down the lake with just so much to see but much of it was a long way off.

This called for a telephoto lens! Mounted on the camera it became quite obvious that it was going to be increasingly difficult to hand-hold and get a good picture. The slightest movement and the image became blurred. A monopod (that’s like a crutch for a camera - a one legged tripod) helped a little, but not a lot. So, it was a case of getting out the big tripod, setting the camera on top of it and being as gentle as you could with the shutter button. The result was really sharp.

The moral of the story is a simple one. The camera was a very good camera, the lens was an exceptional lens. The tripod was used to make what was already good equipment perform even better.

All this clarified my thinking a little, Christianity is a crutch for the weak, unintelligent or scared. It can be that, but it’s far more than that. Christianity helps to make us even better than we could ever expect to be on our own, giving us the stability and firm foundations on which we are able to place our lives, so that they can be lived to their full potential.