The tyranny of the present…..

Although time can be used as an accusation (as in “you’re living in the past”), we appear to be suffering from a different problem at the moment. The Time’s columnist Jenni Russell picked up on this recently in a piece entitled “Ignorance of history feeds certainty in young”, with the subtitle: “The belief that everyone in the past was wicked and today’s digital generation is uniquely virtuous ignores the truth” (The Times 4/3/23 – but it’s behind a paywall). Part of her beef was with historical ignorance, and with the education policy of governments that have tended to encourage it. What had alerted her to this problem was younger friends who were surprised when they were told that idealism, sacrifice and good motives were neither invented or discovered recently, but could also be found in the past. Their view was that in the past everyone was wicked and everything cruel and exploitative. Virtue belonged to the present generation and to it alone, and so it fell to them uniquely to sort out all the mess they had been bequeathed. This is apparently a close relative of the view that we are on a progressive trajectory. The values of the past are in the past and therefore wrong; we have moved on to a better place, and there had better be no going back. If the first set of views depends on an ignorance of history, the second are peculiarly a-historical as though values come from nowhere in time.

C.S. Lewis called out this kind of thinking. He called it “chronological snobbery” which he defined as “..the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.” This happens for a whole heap of reasons, some sensible, some less so. It is true that in some ways we know more than previous generations. Thanks to the efforts of my former colleagues among others, we have been forging ahead discovering the intricacies of the inner workings of every cell in our bodies. Whole new fields of endeavour have opened up because of novel, and very often unanticipated findings. Now we not only know about genes, but almost by accident we have discovered how to “edit” them. This offers new ways to tackle disease and improve health as well as providing a powerful new tool for research. Only a century ago, arguments about the inner structure of the atom were yet to give way to the idea of nuclear fission as a  means of energy generation and, unfortunately, a new type of terrifying weapon. Now we have both. What is interesting about these examples is that they illustrate that while the accumulation of knowledge is progress, there are other ways in which we have not moved on. Because both in the case of gene editing and nuclear weapons knowing what can be done has not helped us know what should be done. Indeed, in important ways it may have left us worse off than we were before.

There is another dimension to the hold the present has on us and in the opposite direction. Life is not static because it never arrives at a perfect equilibrium position. Does anyone seriously contend that where we are now is where we want to remain? It may be that there is no clear consensus on where we want to go, but going we are. And yet the present has such a strong pull that is is difficult to imagine anything different let alone anything better. One reason Lewis had a problem with chronological snobbery was that “...our own age is also “a period” and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions.” The problem is that without careful thought we might assume that we don’t have such illusions, and we certainly wont know what they are. Funnily enough this may be something the past can help us with. For it may be able to illuminate our illusions given that they are different to those of the past.

If we really are on a journey or a trajectory, the present has the power to obscure the destination or target to which we are heading. This may suit some for whom the present may be an appropriate target. From their perspective after perhaps years or decades of struggle they may feel that they have somehow arrived. They have a position to defend. And yet such a defence must be mounted with regret. After all, who is going to claim that their present world is perfect? More worryingly, maybe for others it’s the fight rather than the victory, the journey rather that the arrival. In which case the present is presumably still their unhappy place. Either way, the present is exercising its pull, its tyranny, even at the cost of the future.

But what if the whole thing was illusory? I mean the idea of progress from a purely barbaric past, with the present as some sort of ideal? For there are ways in which we don’t appear to have improved much at all. Admittedly we no longer leave unwanted babies to die on hillsides (one feature of various periods in classical antiquity) and yet we do tolerate the unborn being chemically, biologically or even surgically destroyed on an almost industrial scale. And for all of our technological progress, we still can’t collectively do as we ought even when we can see what we should and even when we know how to do what we should. Perhaps the current best example is climate change. The science has been clear for decades. And the scientific consensus, notwithstanding the lobbying of various monied concerns, has stood for almost as long. What were predictions about the future are increasing our current disastrous present. Yet for the sake of the present, we have been prepared to continue to risk the future. So we’re stuck between the past (of which we are increasingly happy to be ignorant) and the future. It’s almost as though we can’t help ourselves.

In fact it’s exactly that we can’t help ourselves. Just as well rescue is available. A rescue, procured in the past, able to deal with our dilemmas in the present, and to secure the future. Rescue found in “..the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father” (Galatians 1:3,4; NIV).

As I’m a theology student…….

In my former life, conferences played an important role. Far from being mere “jollies”, they provided key opportunities to both hear and share the latest ideas and to network with the community. There were always issues big and small to be aware of. There might be specific new insights or results of real relevance in my own immediate vicinity of the scientific universe. Or there might be big new themes or the re-emergence of old ones that would be context forming and therefore had to be noted. And because science is a team game, conferences provided a space for personal interaction. As the pandemic raged and conferences (if they occurred at all) moved online, it was suggested that this would become the standard going forward. For the big international meetings it saved time and money (and it was good for the planet). But something was lost without the personal face-to-face encounters across continents that conferences provided. So post-pandemic they’ve come roaring back.

But that was then and this is now. After about forty years, I am again a student and neophyte. So I thought I should probably go to the odd theology conference. I was at last year’s Newton House conference in Oxford. But that was a bit of a home fixture because of the association with Union where I am studying. So when I saw that Affinity (formerly the British Evangelical Council) was holding a “Theological Study Conference”, that seemed to fit the bill. I duly headed to Northampton last week for three days on the topic of “Priorities for the Rising Generation”. Here are some observations (in no particular order).

Conferences, particularly those that have been running for a while, are usually composed of regulars (the majority) and newbies. The Affinity conference takes place every two years, and didn’t run two years ago because of COVID. That meant that quite a high proportion of the attendees were newbies. This was probably to the benefit of many of us. That said, quite a lot of folk knew each other from other networks in which they served or to which they belonged. But right from the start there was what I would call friendliness+. I’ve always found that people at conferences are reasonably friendly. After all, no-one is forced to be there, and usually there is a sense of shared purpose. But what linked me to colleagues at the conferences I used to attend were external factors in the main. The Affinity conference had that, but (and this would apply to other gatherings of Christians) we were also linked internally. In additional to a series of outward characteristics and observable shared motivations, there was that instant family rapport and familiarity often experienced when Christians come together. There was an instant ease with each other.

There is another interesting aspect to this that some might find surprising. After all Christians, particularly evangelicals, often have a reputation for not getting on, and for falling out over what, to many non-Christians, seem like trivia. I have no doubt there were lots of issues that we could have found to disagree about, and some are not trivial. Folks had come together from a wide range of churches, committed to different forms of church government, believing different things about baptism, with different ways of celebrating the Lord’s Supper. And yet the genius of evangelicalism is that it has always been possible to distinguish between primary and secondary issues (with an admittedly fuzzy boundary between them). There are those things that are central in Scripture (those great Gospel truths like the identity, life, work, death and resurrection of Jesus, the character of God and man as revealed) and those which are more debatable leading to legitimate discussion and variation in practice among those who all accept the truth, authority and sufficiency of Scripture (how often to celebrate the Lord’s supper, what mode of baptism to practice, never mind the type of songs to sing in worship). What one ends up with is a unity without uniformity that is much closer than is often enjoyed by those nominally belonging to the same institution. There is a contrast here with what was on display at the recent General Synod of the Church of England, although this was but the latest outworking of tensions that have existed within that particular body from its sixteenth century beginnings. Despite debate over the label “evangelical” and its usefulness, there is some continuing value to it when it is properly defined and realised.

But back to the conference. Papers had been pre-circulated so they could be read and digested before we pitched up in Northampton (they will eventually be published in the Affinity journal "Foundations"). So at the conference itself they were only briefly summarised with the bulk of the time spent discussing them in groups. This provided an opportunity to get to grips with the material, but also to reflect collectively on it. I found myself in a group with a rare blend of wisdom and wit, experience and perspective. Most were experienced pastors and ministers with years of service between them in all sorts of settings. There were leaders of national organisations, and some with other experience and expertise (including a publisher and a former GP). This was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the conference for me. It was a pleasure to listen to them, and they (graciously) occasionally listened to the new boy. Sometimes the discussion did range rather far from the topics in question, and to that extent things were probably not quite as focussed and disciplined as at more academic conferences and some of those I attended in a previous life. But this was because the conference attendees were in large measure pastors not academics. It brought a warmth and practicality to the issues being discussed.

I’m sure that there are more academically rigorous conferences out there, and I may even get to go to few. But I’m glad I was able to spend this few days in the company of such brothers and sisters grappling with and reflecting on some serious and difficult issues for now and the future.