Ambassadors for peace - #iranisgreat

Instagram photo by Sam Cafe 

The best ambassadors are rarely emissaries. They act and speak for themselves. Cristian and Audrey Ivan’s van, which was so clumsily broken into by the police last Monday, is emblazoned with the words ‘Iran is great’. The Ivans speak from experience and the good news emblazoned on their lorry also serves as a salutary reminder not to judge a people by their government.

The Ivan family, who have recently returned from Iran, have found Iranians to be the best of people. They were shown great hospitality and kindness in the towns and villages which they visited and, as a result, have seen in the Iranian people the best of what it means to be human. As a former university chaplain who has known a number of Iranians, I can vouch for the truth of what they say.

Perhaps the family was naïve to think that their van, parked in the centre of London, would not attract attention from a nervous public and an overly conscientious police force doing, after all, what they are paid to do, which is to protect the public from terrorist attacks – and to ask questions later. The officers were over hasty and, so far, there has been no apology forthcoming from the police. But this does not justify the rest of us pointing the finger of righteous indignation at the officers in question, because such instances (and there have been others with fatal consequences) are a vivid manifestation of the cynicism and xenophobia which inhabits our collective consciousness.

Fear has become what we are as a nation and as a society. We sense it in our politicians and it is fed to us on an hourly basis by the media. The Ivan family are great ambassadors for peace because they confront collective fear head-on in the way they are educating their children and in believing in the good which lies somewhere at the heart of every human being, because every human being is made in the image and likeness of a God who is love itself. 

The Ivans' life style suggests that they wish their children to receive the kind of education which will equip them to see the good and the beautiful in others, irrespective of their governments. It would appear that they also wish to affirm a deep desire for global peace which, if we stop to think about it, is what most of us also really want.