from the edge

Tuesday 21 October 2014

Reclaiming the Centre

Today I signed a petition for the overturning of yet another death sentence which has been handed down to a Christian woman living in a Muslim country #saveAsiaBibi. The last one I signed concerned a woman in the Sudan. This time it is Pakistan. There are probably many more such barbaric sentences being inflicted on women, and not only Christian women, which we never hear about. Added to these are the innumerable atrocities being perpetrated against women and girls by a criminal organisation which has somehow morphed into an ideological movement having nothing whatever to do with the religion it claims to stand for.

This has happened, in part, because the West and its allies did not heed the signs early enough. One of the reasons why those signs were not heeded lies in the fact that most people are unaware of the innate power of religious conviction and of its potency when that conviction is allowed to become detached from its primary source in God. Conversely, secular ideologies which were originally rooted in a love for humanity, have also been twisted out of all recognition into a warped form of religion. From Marxism we get Cold War style Communism which lingers on in North Korea, displaying itself to the world as a form of 21st century emperor worship. North Korean communism is its own religion. So too with Islamism whose religious totem is a black flag, exhorting a hate driven ‘worship’, the sign of a warped version of a good religion.

Religion gets twisted out of shape when its worship spirals away from its true ‘centre’, so that ‘the centre cannot hold’ to borrow a line from W.B. Yeats’ poem The Second Coming . The three Abrahamic religions find their true centre in God and in the fear of him, a fear which is felt as reverence, as love answering love. From this fear comes wisdom. Wisdom brings a certain kind of understanding about God, a deep sense of God ‘holding’ humanity and that humanity also ‘holds’ God for as long as it lives in the love of him. Love answering love is the essence of worship. It is also where the real power of religion lies, a power which changes us.

Last night CNN’s Christiane Amanpour heard Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire Saudi businessman, say, quoting a verse from the Quran, that ‘God will not change you until you change yourself’. He also declared that the funding of Islamist extremists ‘has been stopped completely’. We hope, and we trust, that his remarks were made in good faith. They certainly reflect the real meaning of Islam, which is peace. They also resonate with the inherent truth which pertains to all three of the Abrahamic faiths, that God asks us to change, to be conformed to his love.

The Prince was speaking of a change which is about re-orientation of personal, ideological and national loyalties, as well as priorities. This kind of change requires a complete turning about to face the One God, the God of Abraham who is also the God and Father of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. So the Prince was really speaking for the majority of the world’s people. We all need to change in this way. We all, in our different religious contexts need to turn away from warped versions of our religions and face the one true God, as we come to him from one of a number of directions.

This change of orientation comes with what the sacred texts of the three Abrahamic faiths call ‘the fear of God’. The fear of God is closely associated with wisdom. Wisdom is a particular kind of understanding which pertains to how God wishes to deal with the world. His dealing with the world begins and ends with the making of peace, but peace can only come about when human beings are prepared to work with God’s purposes for the world, rather than against them. It can only come about when enough people want to see justice and righteousness prevail for all.


This is a difficult and often complex matter. For one thing, the justice and righteousness which comes with the fear of God also belongs within the contextualities, or ‘habitations’ which have been shaped within the history of cultures and nations, the histories of different peoples. But it is, nevertheless, the same justice, the same righteousness, which God desires for Muslims and Christians in Syria and Iraq, for Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians, in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. Desiring this justice, and the peace which it brings, is a sign of the kind of change of which Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal was speaking. It is a sign of repentance and therefore of hope, and of God’s unfailing power to save humanity from itself.

Tuesday 14 October 2014

Entertainment values

Is bad news entertainment? Perhaps it is entertainment only to the extent that the bad news is happening somewhere far away. When it comes closer to home it gets less entertaining. The idea of Ebola becoming a reality here in the UK, or of the imminent possibility of a terrorist attack on our streets or public buildings, changes the way we see things. It also begs the question of what it is we want from entertainment.

Does entertainment need to provide a means to escape from whatever grim realities are around us, or which affect our individual lives? This does not seem all that likely, given the number of films and television dramas which are anything but escapist. Take the new series of Homeland, for example. One would like to think that the plot and action are too bad to be true – not that they are in any sense artistically bad, only that they give us what we are used to seeing every evening on the news with a bit extra. We are accustomed to bad news and have grown to expect it, so perhaps the only entertainment which is bound to be a financial success, at least with TV and film, needs to be bad news.

At the entirely opposite end of the entertainment spectrum are the kind of films and programmes which entertain by taking us back to a world when even bad things don’t seem so bad, at least not when they are cleaned up a bit for us 21st century viewers. Consider Downton Abbey, for example. Unless you were poor and ‘in service’, or had committed a social sin, like having a child out of wedlock, life was predictable and secure – and even quite pretty. This is a brief and perhaps slightly unfair description of what those of us who are glued to Downton on Sunday evenings thoroughly enjoy. Downton  provides us with a temporary respite from the realities of today, even if the realities of yesterday are somewhat sanitised. At the same time, it is a salutary reminder of how unreal life could become if enough people were to buy into a delusory socio-political scenario pertaining to a ‘better’ past. Such beguiling scenarios are not difficult to create, as we are seeing not only in Downton, but  in the rapid and alarming rise of UKIP.

UKIP’s rise in popularity has, of course, nothing in common with Downton Abbey. While its leader’s earlier gaffes and old world bonhomie almost qualify as entertainment, recent by-election victories suggest that UKIP might yet emerge as a far more disturbing reality in the sphere of English politics and needs to be taken seriously. It is disturbing because UKIP profits from fear, ignorance and a degree of political incompetence on the part of the main political parties and works all three to its advantage. In other words, it tells people what they think they want to hear. Don’t all political parties do that? I hear you say. Possibly. But the fact is that we tend to believe who and what we want to believe, provided they either make us feel secure and safe, or promise wealth or power of some kind to the individual. This bears some relation to the way in which both the media and the viewing public seem to be confusing entertainment with reality, and possibly missing out on something important as well.

One of the most challenging realities facing us at present is that of religious faith. Faith is a reality not only because it plays such an obvious part in making peace and alleviating suffering on the one hand and, on the other, in creating or prolonging existing conflicts, but because it carries in its ‘DNA’ life and truth for humanity. Good religion, real faith, enables us to become the people we were always meant to be. This is why Christianity has enormous entertainment value because at the heart of the Christian faith is the idea of relatedness, relatedness between human beings and their vital relationship with God. On this latter relationship everything else depends.

The Christian faith has much to say to us through the medium of film, whether or not a film is overtly religious. While there have been blockbuster films, as well as musicals with a Christian theme, I do not think many of them take us much further than superficial entertainment. I say this despite the fact that I came back to faith partly as a result of seeing Jesus Christ Superstar. Since that time, the late 60’s in New York, there has been a considerable resurgence of interest in films with a Christian message, and biblical films especially. I do not think this interest is waning. In fact biblical films and stage productions are growing in popularity, even if within mainly Christian circles. But they still need to touch a wider audience.

Some almost do, but not quite. Take Noah, one of the most recent biblical film releases. Wonderful effects and some compelling performances, but I did not come away from it feeling that my life had been changed, or that it was saying more to the world about the human condition in relation to God than is already being said, and sometimes better said, through secular films. In fact, most good films do not have a religious agenda at all, and yet they often have something to say about the human condition and sometimes, implicitly, about God. The Day After Tomorrow springs to mind, despite its dramatic weaknesses. These films speak of a reality which has to do with the stark choices we are faced with concerning good and evil, light and darkness and with human destiny itself.

Biblical films need to mirror something of this reality as it is for us today. They can do this to a certain extent by telling the old stories with the help of sophisticated special effects. The more these effects mirror the realities we witness daily on the news, the more entertaining the film will be. But these realities, terrifying as they are, are by no means the whole picture.  Something more needs to be said.

To this end, much could yet be done to connect Christianity and the bible with other faiths. In the ‘end times’ we are promised that the tree of life, which is the Cross, is for ‘the healing of the nations’. So if we are to read the signs of the times correctly, films will need to widen their frame of reference when they are dealing with the bible, or with any other faith text, so as to allow us to see the whole picture, the reality of good and evil as it is played out on the world stage today.


Good and evil are more nuanced than ever. We know so much more than we did when the bible was written, although the work of biblical scholars suggests that the editors of the bible were wise enough to realise that this would be the case. Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and knew at once that good could be used to evil ends. In other words, they knew and both relished and feared, their own propensity for what the bible calls sin. Sin translates into selfishness, greed, the lust for power and ultimately hatred itself. Nowhere is this more true than in the context of religion. The sins of religion are therefore more subject to judgment than any others. Could this be a new and more challenging area for biblical films to focus on in the future?

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Last week’s murder of Alan Henning has generated shock waves both here and abroad, a mixture of grief, anger and sheer incomprehension. Why did this happen to such a person? The only explanation we can possibly imagine is that a vital human connection is  missing in the psyche of the man who perpetrated this act. This is what shakes us. Something has been ruptured in this event, something which we take for granted with regard to our shared humanity – ours and those who murdered Alan.

This sense of rupture raises a number of questions concerning what it is to be human and whether there comes a time when people who commit such crimes have wilfully allowed themselves to be uncoupled from their own humanity. There is something about beheading another human being which suggests severance.

It also begs the question of whether evil is inculcated over a period of time and, if so, where does it come from? The one who indoctrinates another person into doing evil must himself, or herself, have learned evil from someone else. Or is a person born evil? This is one of the profound questions faced so courageously by Lionel Shriver in her book We Need to Talk About Kevin. Shriver’s book concerns evil and the individual psychopath. But ISIS represents collective evil, a quasi, even if wholly imagined, emerging ‘state’ which would be shaped and held in place by psychopaths.

The characteristic of psychopaths, whether they act as individuals or as a group, is that they seek out the innocent. Pogroms, holocausts and acts of ethnic cleansing are the work of a psychopath ‘collective’ hunting down and exterminating the innocent people they fear. Evil always fears what is truthful and good.

The murderous activity of ISIS will ultimately reveal itself as the act of  people who are afraid and, since fear generates more fear, their act creates shock waves of fear which extend outwards like earthquake tremors into our own hearts. This is the fear which we must all resist while at the same time asking why such things happen. The asking is important because it is part of faith, and therefore part of the resistance to fear.

Human beings have been asking why innocent people are allowed to suffer ever since they first questioned the meaning of their own existence, and the existence of God. But the question is, paradoxically, part of the answer, part of the meaning. Consequently, our humanity is diminished from the minute we cease to ask ‘why?’ in the face of evil and suffering. Persecutors have always known this, as do  powerful people who  inflict suffering and silence on those they control. In silencing them they seek to diminish or eradicate their humanity which is their inherent goodness and the truth which they speak. Their inherent goodness and unflinching truthfulness is also what makes for resistance in the face of evil and suffering, a stubborn refusal to accept what seems like God’s refusal to answer the ‘why?’ question.

Asking ‘why?’, is part of faith. It forces us out of complacent thinking in relation to suffering, especially when suffering obliges us to examine our views of God, including whether God exists at all. This does not mean that suffering is itself a good thing, as the prophet Job eventually realises. The book of Job seeks not so much to answer the question ‘why does God (if there is one) allow good people to suffer?’ as to expand the human heart’s capacity for faith in a God who, despite suffering, purposes all things to the good for those who love him, as the apostle Paul later writes in his letter to the church in Rome. Despite this, Job does not experience a happy ending. The children who died will not be restored to him. What he does learn, however, is that it is in suffering itself that God’s purpose for the good is worked and will be finally achieved.

The book of Job tells us that evil is overcome by the kind of faith which is rooted in a seemingly unwarranted love for God. It seems unwarranted because God appears indifferent to Job’s suffering. This brings us back to the goodness which was in Alan Henning and to our own ‘why?’ questioning in relation to his death. How do we deal with the fact that there appear to be no easy answers to the question? And how do we deal with the fear tremors which the event has generated, apart from engaging in retributive violence of one kind or another? We deal with both by joining with Muslims in asking the ‘why?’ question. As Christians, we also deal with it by the response already given to us in our own faith, the sure knowledge of the saving power of God enacted in and through Jesus Christ.

Faith in Christ is not a panacea. It does not lead to happy endings, or deny pain, or act as a guarantee against violence and evil. This is because faith is a proactive response to God’s loving invitation to live in union with him. It is a decision of both heart and mind, taken even in the face of evil and suffering. It is also ‘graced’ by God, so that it both frees and empowers.

Faith is a decision to ‘stand’ in that place which God chose to place himself, the place of human suffering and of death. The Greek word for ‘cross’ is rooted in the word for ‘stand’, Greek being the language of the New Testament. So to ‘stand’ in that place is to stand by the Cross of Christ where we find that we are accompanied, or rather met and embraced, by Christ in the suffering of innocent people like Alan Henning and in the grief of the vast majority of Muslims who deplore his murder.


The Cross is both the first and the last place where we encounter God as one who is totally ‘for’ all human beings, and in solidarity with them, especially when they suffer. In this mysterious way, he is the answer to the question.