Some Other Kingdom

Politicians, we assume, are in it for power, as are journalists and those in the entertainment industry who hit lucky and become celebrities. All become, in some measure at least, recipients of our own fantasy projections, which is what makes it OK for us to make blanket assumptions about them and about their motives. So it is not surprising that when they fall they fall hard and, to a certain extent, we fall with them. When people in power betray the trust of those who put them there, the fall is all the harder for everyone. Fallen celebrities, as well as fallen leaders, remind us of their humanity and hence of our own. Their limitations and frailty, when so harshly revealed, also serve as a reality check of sorts for the rest of us. They reveal the way we consciously or unconsciously collude with the fame fantasy, relishing the circumstances which have brought about the downfall of the famous.

Journalists who are currently being subjected to a dose of unwelcome media attention themselves are a case in point, as is a former prime minister who, it seems, colluded with a journalist by advising her shortly before she was due to appear in court for phone hacking and related charges on how she might possibly salvage her reputation, if not her career. But motives are never straight forward and powerful people are not necessarily entirely bad. The Blair-Brooks email exchange had to do with friendship and collegiality as much as anything else. Powerful people are sometimes loyal, occasionally watching each other’s backs, as well as their own.

Nevertheless, those who hold power in politics and the media are accountable for what passes between them, both publicly and privately, because in our society they are the custodians of democratic freedom. They are the ones entrusted with making democracy work in the way it is meant to work, towards the flourishing of the human person, beginning with that of the weakest and the most vulnerable. Politicians are called to enact righteousness. The media is made up of people called to ‘mediate’ truth. Together, and in their different ways, they are the custodians of what we call a civilised society. So looking after the needs of those over whose lives they have some measure of influence or control calls for resistance to the insidious nature of power.

When power becomes an end in itself, it is sometimes too late for those who hold it to come to terms with what they have allowed to happen. Perhaps this is why we so rarely hear politicians and journalists express genuine remorse for the ways in which they have failed the people to whom they are accountable. The ousted, and now fugitive, president of the Ukraine, will almost certainly be a case in point. From what Viktor Yanukovych leaves behind in the way of personal memorabilia, it seems that the power he held legitimised and fed a fantasy life style, as it has done for other deposed dictators who thought of themselves as benevolent father figures or, as in the case of the Ceaucescus,  mother figures as well.

The insidious nature of power also sustains and simultaneously suppresses populations. They are subjected to another version of the same pernicious fantasy, that their leaders are giving them the best possible life in the best of all possible worlds – the one they happen to inhabit. Here, think of the people of North Korea. So when the fantasy is finally blown and the lie proclaimed from the roof tops, the reaction is bound to be violent. People are angry and they are tired of being lied to. They want a new reality, the reality of a freedom which comes from a different kind of power and which shapes a different kind of society, a different kingdom, the one proclaimed by Jesus Christ which his Church is supposed to embody in its own life.

There is a mistaken notion that Jesus was not interested in politics, that his kingdom was purely spiritual and, for this reason, ‘not of this world’. But the central purpose of his coming was to reveal God’s purpose for the world, that its life be powered by the love of God. To this end he was constantly bringing his listeners back to the question of accountability, of holding those in positions of power to account for what they did, or failed to do, for the flourishing of human beings.

His own humanity revealed the inherently relational character of God, the outworking of the love of God in his obedience to the Father, and later in the ongoing and abiding presence of his Spirit. He was therefore as concerned for the well being of society, of peoples, as he was for that of the individual. Far from being detached from political reality, he struggled with people from within that reality, and continues to do so today. He is on the streets of Kiev. He is with the people of Syria, and other parts of the Middle East, who are resisting the numerous manifestations of religious and secular tyranny. He is with all who risk their lives for righteousness sake, including a number of journalists, as well as political and religious leaders. Through them he proclaims that other kingdom in which freedom from insidious power makes it possible for human beings to flourish, and so are made accountable to God for the love they show, or fail to show, in their lives. 

Consequences

‘Be sure your sins will find you out’ reads the ‘sandwich placard’, possibly one of the first set of letters to form a coherent sentence in the mind of the novice reader. There are all sorts of psychological strands to be followed up from this early impression of sin, leading perhaps to a life time’s neuroses rooted in the fear of being ‘found out’.

Guilt, fear and sin are all of a piece. They set us on a trajectory which takes us further and further away from the source of light, the true light which ‘finds us out’, so making healing and forgiveness possible. This running away from the healing light is the basic gist of the Adam and Eve story. It is also what we call conscience, something which nags and needs to be numbed. Conscience sets us apart from animals, or so we tell ourselves, because animals are not endowed with conscience or with free will. They do not make moral choices.

This week Joshua Oppenheimer’s film ‘The Act of Killing’ has been nominated for an Oscar. It revisits the circumstances of the 1965 Indonesian massacre of thousands of ethnic Chinese people. Oppenheimer uses one of the most notorious death squad leaders, Anwar Congo, as one of the film’s main protagonists. In the film, Anwar boasts of his killing exploits. He recalls how the smell of so much blood nauseated the killers, obliging them to resort to a simpler and ‘cleaner’ method, strangulation with wire. In the film, he also finds himself playing the part of his victims, re-enacting scenes of their suffering and ultimately experiencing them for himself at that level of consciousness which we also call conscience. He finally comes to terms with his own choices and with the depravity and suffering which those choices brought about. His sins do indeed ultimately find him out. He experiences remorse.

The Indonesian massacre was not the last of its kind. There have been similar atrocities committed there and in other parts of the world since that time, atrocities which occupy our living room space for weeks on end. But we can distance ourselves from them because they are not happening to us here and now. Switching TV channels, or getting on with preparing the evening meal, if the news coincides with that time of day, gives permission to forget about consequences and the way in which, as human beings, we all share in the choices made by other human beings, both in the past and in more recent times. 

Here in the UK, the weather is a case in point. Who knows when the warming of the planet began to seriously damage the earth's natural infrastructure and affect our way of life today? Possibly back in the early part of the 19^th century, or with commercial air travel. Whenever it was, and whatever the cause, climate change signals that we are all connected with the choices made by others and with the consequences of those choices.  And to complicate matters further, we are not always free to make ‘right’ choices now. If you live in remote parts of the countryside where there are no bus or train services, you have to use your car, even for relatively short journeys.  If you live in a city, it is hard to grow your own food or to be self-sufficient in other ways. On the other hand, if you live in the country, you might be able to feed yourself independently, especially if you eat less meat. You might even be able to extract heat from the land you live on, or have a solar panel or two, thereby compensating for a tiny fraction of the environmental damage caused by others.

Good choices help to re-balance things across society and ultimately across the world. When it comes to the consequences of bad choices, good choices set us off on a new and re-creative trajectory towards the light. Persevering in bad choices has the opposite effect.  It turns us back on ourselves and ultimately shatters our humanity. The shattering of our humanity, whether it is the result of psychological stress which leads people to commit acts of genocide, or prioritising the short term political needs of those wishing to remain in power here at home, all amount to what we call sin. Sin is the disfiguring of creation and of the face of God in others by the suffering we inflict on them through our bad choices. Repentance is about remembering what that face looks like and striving to recover it through the choices we make now. Not such a difficult task if we put our hearts to it.

Loosing the bonds of injustice

The firework logo didn’t quite work for the opening of the Winter Olympics last week. One of the snowflakes refused to become the fifth circle, so the logo was not able to fully tell its story. Its story, which took hold of the imagination of the modern world in the early part of the last century, is one of friendly rivalry between nations and of the interconnectedness which it fosters. It is a somewhat utopian ideal but, so far, it has endured. But friendship between nations is only genuine when it rests on a deeper love for the humanity of all who are party to it so, in the context of the Winter Olympics, friendship is not genuine when it only exists on the level of  a snow show. Perhaps the reluctant snowflake sensed this and wanted to make the point.

The run up to the Sochi Olympics has revealed that the human foundations of friendship, which ought to underpin and add lustre to the snow show, are shaky. In fact, they are completely rotten, as was revealed by the Channel 4 documentary, aired on Wednesday, in which organised packs of men and women are seen ‘hunting’ other human beings because of their sexual orientation. This is being done in a systematic and cold blooded way, reminiscent of the practices of the secret police in the era of Cold War Russia.

What is even more disturbing is that the Russian Orthodox Church has given tacit approval to these activities, not only by endorsing the Duma’s recent anti-gay law, which purports to protect minors from sexual assault, but by pressing for a return to an earlier law, repealed in 1993, whereby homosexuality was a crime and the perpetrators subject to long and harsh prison sentences. The Russian Orthodox Church has also publicly declared that it considers all gays to be potential, if not actual, paedophiles.

No commonality of friendship based on love for humanity can possibly exist between such a Church and those who think of themselves as disciples of Christ. Neither can it exist at the Sochi Olympics until forgiveness for what has been going on in the streets of Moscow, and no doubt elsewhere, is sought.

It is easy for many of us to feel we can approach the coming season of Lent with a clear conscience with respect to violence towards gays. But should we not look a little further and ask ourselves whether our so called loving attitudes to gay members of our churches really are loving? Do they derive from the kind of friendship shown by Jesus to all who asked for it? Jesus tells his friends that he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfil, or complete, it.

For us, this means that he has not come to abolish morality but to fulfil all that morality requires in love, thereby making morality complete. He also tells them that their righteousness, or morality, is to exceed that of the Pharisees who are themselves strict law keepers. Perhaps, until now, they had been grateful to the Pharisees for being moral on their behalf. Is there not a small part of the Church’s heart that is grateful to the Russian Orthodox Church, and to other denominations, for their so-called moral stand on homosexuality? Does it not, if we are honest with ourselves, buy us all more time to carry on tolerating gays without actually loving them? 

Another branch of the Orthodox Church has been a sanctuary for those who bear witness to the cause of freedom in the Ukraine. On Saturday, November 30th, 2013, the Kyivan Patriarchiate branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church opened the doors of one of its monasteries to protesters who were under fire from the police. All through the night its monks prayed while exhausted human beings slept on the floor around them. Someone described the scene as ‘mystical’. And so it was, not because of its aura, but because of the palpable sense of Christ as ‘sanctuary’ in that place. For a moment, the monastery revealed the Church as the place where, as the psalmist says, ‘God’s glory dwells’ (Ps.26:8). The idea of sanctuary is the glory of God and the Church's soul. 

This Lent all who call themselves Christians, as well as those who don’t, might think of visiting their nearest church (out of hours or during a service) simply to be there for a few minutes, mindful of the people in our world and society who desperately need sanctuary. Perhaps visitors will leave that particular church willing to give real sanctuary to those they claim to love, but in fact only tolerate. In doing so, they will fulfil the fundamental law of Lent laid down by the prophet Isaiah and by Jesus himself ‘to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke’. (Isaiah 58:6) 

Good Solitude

I thought I would be spending last week alone, but I was wrong in so many ways. Living where we do, I am never completely alone. For one thing, the weather presses in on every side, including through the aging windows and bits of the walls where we have left the dry stone of the original lambing shed more or less as it originally was. There are, I have to admit, occasional draughts. When there are gales, as there have been this week, they bring new and exaggerated sounds, like rattling twigs on the roof, or sudden gusts caught in the eaves as the wind changes direction. But, surprisingly, it is neither cold or damp. Cold draughts and damp houses make a person naturally defensive. Not only do we put on more and more layers, usually to little effect, but the cold causes a certain tensing of mind and body against our surroundings and sometimes against other people. One cannot be pliant and receptive to what is good and beautiful in any situation when one is cold. The same goes for extreme levels of wet.

Being alone requires that we be inwardly pliant, so that we can bend to whatever nature, or life, is hitting us with, rather than put up rigid defences. We are seeing this kind of courageous pliancy towards both nature and life in the way the people of the Somerset Levels continue to endure weeks of isolation and flooding while also facing the prospect of ruined summer pasture. Their resilience is an example to all of us this winter. Fortunately, where I live, the weather does not compare with conditions on the Somerset Levels. Even so, over the past week I have found that being present to the weather as it is, rather than simply wishing it would change, requires a certain kind of emotional pliancy towards solitude itself. For this to be possible one has to be able to tell the difference between fertile solitude and barren loneliness and take appropriate action.

Engaging with solitude is an active decision to work with the present set of circumstances. The kind of vigorous weather we are currently experiencing sharpens ones perception of things. We sense a greater energy at work which can destroy or regenerate on a spiritual as well as on a physical level. It also reminds us of our connectedness to one another. This is the connectedness which shapes meaning and gives purpose to our existence. The extent to which human beings remain bound together will depend on their working together on both levels, the physical and the spiritual, within this same energy or power. 

For this to be possible, given our human tendency for disintegration and destruction, this recreative energy, or power, became as we are – but without our will to destroy and murder. It was ‘made flesh’, made human. It assumed a name, Jesus, Emanuel, God with us, life giver and saviour. The Christian understanding of the word ‘salvation’ is rooted in the word ‘life’.  In Jesus, the Word, or the power, reveals a will, a desire to go on recreating in and through humanity wherever human beings are willing to let the Word become flesh again in their own hearts and lives. 

Life in its fullest sense begins in the minds and hearts of those who are vulnerable to God. The will to know God requires a certain kind of solitude, but solitude is not a matter of separating oneself from others, but of allowing oneself to be more closely connected to them. Extreme weather conditions can focus the mind in a new direction, by reminding us of the way we are bound together within the myriad connections which hold the created world together. So our understanding of where we are in our lives and of how the world may yet survive in the face of wholesale environmental destruction depends on the deep connectedness which exists between the Word, the creative activity of God holding us and all things together. 

For this to make sense, we have to recognise our own inner need to be ‘held together’. We get a glimpse of this need in times of depression. Depression often feels like ‘falling apart’. But inner falling apart, or disintegration, can also lead to inner wholeness. By this I do not mean simply feeling good about oneself, or being in a generally happier frame of mind, but recognising and owning our need for healing, the healing of the person and of the earth as they are profoundly connected in God.