Armageddon - or possibly not

Source: BBC

I was still at my convent boarding school when the Cuban missile crisis peaked. They were thinking of ringing our parents to ask them to take us home. Maybe it was the end of the world. We were told to pray, not that we really understood the scale of the threat in relation to ourselves, still less to the wider world. We did sense something unusual, though, about the school possibly having to close down in the middle of term, so it was vaguely frightening, even if the fear was sugar-coated by the prospect of an extended half-term break.

I cannot say that I was truly afraid of what might happen over Cuba. My earliest memory of fear was on my stepfather’s boat. I was about five and the crew would play at dangling me, screaming and kicking, over the side. That was real fear. Real fear, the kind that grips and paralyses a person happens when the threat is direct, immediate and personal. All three apply to the individual and to the collective in equal measure. Those who have experienced war will recognise this.

But there is another variant on fear, which is the vague fear we have all learned to live with. It has its peaks and troughs. Right now, given the situation in North Korea and the leadership vacuum in America which has helped to ramp it up, you could say that it is peaking, perhaps like the Cuban missile crisis with which I am sure it is already being compared. And there are other fears swirling around, most of them having to do with the instability of financial and property markets, along with climate change and the medium to long-term effects of Brexit. Added to these are the ‘plagues’ said to presage the end of the world, the zika virus, if you live in South America, being one of them.

All of these fear triggers have, in one way or another, happened before, with huge cost to human life and happiness. As a result of them, many people have ceased to believe in the existence of an all powerful God, still less a merciful and wise one. They will say that those who persist in believing in such a figure are clinging to some kind of psychological prop which enables them to get through life and to manage their fear. But getting through life, whatever it throws at us, by simply managing fear, is a thin substitute for a life lived in, with and through God, as it was lived for us in Jesus Christ.

What we are given in Christ is an altogether different way of managing fear. It is the last thing most of us would think of doing in frightening situations, although with wise leadership and a less frightened electorate we might limit, or even prevent, most of the fear situations which face us today. Instead of succumbing to fear, we are told to keep our inward eye firmly fixed on the embodiment of truth, the Word made flesh, the Christ walking towards us on the turbulent water. This is the ‘way’ and the ‘life’ that enables us to deal with fear.

If we return to the Armageddon-like representations of the current North Korea nuclear threat, one thing is clear: There is unfinished business, and North Koreans, who are ruled through fear, are not allowed to forget this lest they cease to be quite so fearful. North Korea is technically still at war with the US over the carving up of the country and the ensuing Korean war. No peace treaty was ever signed. This possibly deliberate oversight has led to a great deal of loss of face for the ruling dynasty of the north, beginning with the present incumbent’s grandfather. Powerful and morally weak leaders find it hard to cope with loss of face, except through violence.

In the context of Korea, Trump has added to the existing problem of loss of face by upping the ante in regard to violent retaliation and thereby provoking the already angry Kim Jong Un who, like Trump, is a powerful and morally weak leader.  Narrow readings of religious texts do nothing to allay our fear of the end of all things being brought about through the hubris and stupidity of President Donald Trump, and the hubris and cleverness of Kim Jong Un. In fact, it is being exploited in certain religious contexts for political power-driven purposes. The exploitation of fear through religion is a long way from the kind of life Jesus was talking about when he spoke of himself as the ‘the way, the truth and the life’.

What then can Christians learn from their own Leader about managing the world’s fear? Many of the key exchanges which take place between Jesus and powerful people, as well as those who fear them, are contained by the words ‘You have heard that it was said ... but I say to you’. In other words he calls us to convert fear to something resembling the honouring of the enemy – you might call this love, although perhaps not immediately. I think Jesus may have been talking about something resembling ‘chivalry’, which is not an exclusively masculine virtue, incidentally. Rather, it is a sense of the need to brace oneself for the best we have to give when it comes to the things we fear. Those who lived through the second world war, if they are reading this, will remember what bracing oneself for the best one has to give entailed. So will the doctors and muslim taxi drivers who rushed to the scenes of the recent terrorist attacks in Manchester and London. I think that they were able to call on something within them resembling chivalry, or honour, perhaps even love.

All of this may not seem to relate directly to what we are feeling about the possibility of a nuclear attack by north Korea, unless we can conceive of a way of ‘centering down’ to that place of goodness and honour which lies somewhere within even the worst of us. Centering down to the best that lies within us does not involve an introspective search for the good in ourselves. It is more a case of being available to it, should it suddenly emerge and surprise us. Coming to terms with our own goodness can be frightening at times.

When it comes to managing fear, in relation to ourselves or events in the wider world, this is only possible when we are willing to allow our fear to be ‘converted’, or turned into something else, by God. We do this in and through our life in Christ. We do it collectively as the Church and privately as every single individual who secretly wrestles with fear. We do it by wanting, more than anything, to see our fears, both public and private, finally overcome by the peace which comes with courage and must ultimately end in reconciliation.