The blogging year…

So, here we are. The last day of 2023. It’s been a year of 21 blog posts not counting this one. And although I confess it is a bit indulgent, this seems like a good time to review them. They cover an eclectic bunch of topics, as you might expect from the summary that follows this blog’s title: “Not quite a science blog, not quite a Bible blog, not quite a politics or family blog. Just a box into which almost anything might be thrown.” If you’ve read much of it, you can decide for yourself whether it’s been “worth a rummage in”.

Back in February (was it really only ten months ago?) I was sitting on a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh when I heard that Nicola Sturgeon had resigned. If you’re not a Scot, or don’t live in Scotland (or if you hail from almost anywhere in the US) you probably won’t understand why for many us this was a “Kennedy” moment. Of course, not only my train has moved on. Since then Nicola has been investigated and arrested (although not charged) over financial irregularities in her party, leading to undisguised glee in unionist circles, and a bit of hand-wringing amongst the nationalists in my homeland (although probably not as much as there should have been). She was of course replaced by Scotland's first Muslim “First Minister”, after an interesting SNP leadership campaign. It was interesting because it revealed once again that it is acceptable to be almost anything in politics other than a Christian who takes their faith seriously, and that for the modern UK media Christianity is rather poorly understood (see "Tolerance and the public square"). Despite religion in general playing an ever more important role in most of the world, in the UK media we still don’t “do God” very well.

We do of course do politics. We had a lot of it in 2022, but we’ve only had one Prime Minister for the whole of 2023! By and large there’s been less turmoil, which is just as well given the scale of the problems that the politicians have had to grapple with. The war in Ukraine compounded the economic shocks of the pandemic (remember that?) leading to real hardship for many families. Government did a bit (not enough for many, not the right things for others), but at the end of 2023 finds itself facing a crushing defeat in the polls in 2024. The only question appears to be how crushing? I do have the occasional twinge of sympathy for our current PM (Rishi Sunak), but then he goes and trails some potty policy to see off a threat (real or imagined) from the right wing of his party or even the right wing of the right wing. Meanwhile the Labour Party has become at least worthy of consideration as an alternative government because it has dealt with its crazy left wing. For some in Labour this about betrayal and backstabbing and the claim is that if their current leader Keir Starmer stands for anything, nobody knows what it is. But this is always the accusation laid at the door of the opposition (even by some on the same side). The time to judge will come perhaps as early as Spring 2024 when the two main parties set out their stalls. But what will perhaps be more interesting will the tone as much as the substance of the next UK general election. We like a good argument, and there are always accusations of lies and media bias. But these are usually peripheral rather than central. Argument had, election over, we get on with life. Whoever wins the election, we probably won’t have any nonsense about it being stolen, with everyone running to the courts. We are likely to be spared at least that fate.

On this side of the Atlantic our constitution, unwritten as it is, has always been about more than politics (just as well you might mutter under your breath). We officially obtained a new head of state in 2023, thanks to the coronation of King Charles III. Despite various fictitious versions of both royal history (courtesy of Netflix) and more recent royal shenanigans (courtesy of Charles’ youngest son), the reality has been steady and, as far as one can tell from the far distance, fairly sure. The coronation certainly got things off to an impressive start. And unlike our media, and most of our politicians, Charles is a profoundly religiously literate man. Given the recent apparent surge in both antisemitic and anti-Islamic crimes (the out-working on British streets of events in Israel and Gaza), having a head of state who is broadly respected by different communities can be no bad thing. Of course, even if Charles possessed the wisdom of Solomon, he would be taxed to breaking point by developments in the church of which he is the “Supreme Governor” – the Church of England. Its leadership has decided to make a fairly startling break with what it is signed up to protect and teach, changing their basic doctrine while denying that they are doing any such thing. While usually what happens is that the very heterogenous theological views that comprise the C of E find some way of remaining in a more-or-less working relationship, perhaps not this time. More will be revealed in the year ahead.

At the heart of that particular tussle is theology (for once), which is of course now “my thing”. I attended my first theological conference at the start of 2023, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not that theology, at least in its academic form, is uniformly impressive (as I discussed back in July). But I’ve really enjoyed two years of study with Union School of Theology, completing my Masters dissertation (which you can read here if you're so inclined) back in September. Graduation next summer will, I hope, be a highlight of 2024. But the study doesn’t stop. One of my Christmas presents was the Greek New Testament. So 2024 will be full of declensions and tenses as I work to get the point where I can begin to read the New Testament’s human authors in their original language. Of course, God’s word is not bound by language, and you can hear what the Divine Author has to say just as well in English translation.

And what of my former “thing” science? Well, as an institution it’s been struggling a bit as I blogged in September and November. Some of this is the cumulative impact of a culture that has long maintained that there is no such thing as truth, perhaps combined with the impact of the post-modern view that the claim that there is a truth with demands everyone's assent is an illegitimate power game. So we now live surrounded by a morass of relativism and conspiracy, when even something as basic as the sexual dimorphism of humanity is flatly denied. In this atmosphere, when scientists make mistakes, or perpetrate outright fraud (which still happens relatively rarely), this is jumped on to show that, like every other human activity, science is flawed. The difficulty is that this is of course true, to the extent that science is a human activity with all that this implies. And yet it remains the best way, bar none, for answering certain kinds of questions – questions about what “is”. For questions about what “ought to be”, well for that we have theology (other humanities disciplines are available).

So there you have it. That’s the 22^nd and final blog post of 2023. Now, what will take my fancy next year?

My new car has a dent in it….

Tis the season of stuff. Much of it will be welcome stuff - presents we’ve been looking forward to, perhaps that we requested or hinted at. Anticipation was increased by seeing them (or what we hoped was them), wrapped in fancy paper, sitting, waiting under a Christmas tree (maybe for weeks in the more organized households). And then it arrived - Christmas day. We got to tear away the wrapping paper to reveal… whatever. How long will or has the satisfaction of finally getting our hands on a much-anticipated present last? Did it live up to its billing? Perhaps. However, as I learned recently (or perhaps re-learned) we should be careful how we regard stuff.

A few months ago, we decided to replace our ageing car. It had been reliable for a long time (about thirteen years in fact) but was at that stage where it was starting to cost more to maintain and keep roadworthy than it was actually worth. We were in the fortunate position of being able to go to a dealership and pick a new (smaller) car. Eventually we plumped for a dark blue, sporty hatchback. It had some of the latest gizmos and gadgets. So now it bleeps when I reverse too close towards the much more expensive SUV parked behind us in the street outside our house. When on long journeys it nags us about the need to take breaks and drink coffee. Because it has sporty seats and natty red trim in various prominent places internally, one of our friends has taken our purchase as evidence of a mid-life crisis on my part. Whatever it is, this it cannot be as I am no longer in mid-life.

However, like everything else, our shiny new car is not immune to damage and degradation, whether accidental or malicious. We’ve already had a flat tyre that needed replacing. Interestingly, the combination of an actual flat and large alloy wheel rims had us constantly looking at our wheels and asking if we’d got another flat. It turned out that it is disconcertingly difficult to tell. But for the most part the car has sat outside our house, all shiny and new (complete with that “new car” smell). A delight to behold (and smell). And then it wasn’t. In a church car park of all places, what we presume was another car door was flung open with sufficient force to put a small but deep dent in one of our doors. One would hardly notice the dent on casual, uninterested inspection. The problem is that my observation of my shiny new car is neither casual nor uninterested. Because I know where the blemish is, my eye is attracted to it automatically, almost magnetically. Mechanically the car is fine, and still drives like a dream. It still has the natty red trim inside, and the gizmos all still work. And there’s even still a faint whiff of “new car” inside (although that may by now just be my imagination). But it is now blemished and therefore somehow less. What is disconcerting is that I care quite so much. And thereby hangs a tale and a moral.

Stuff, it turns out, is not neutral; it is sticky. We get overly attached to it. Admittedly cars are quite large and expensive items (even small ones). But much smaller bits of stuff can be quite as sticky as large objects, and exert a remarkable pull. And, as with my mechanically sound although marked car, this is about much more than the utility of the object in question. It seems to be some property of the stuff itself and how we relate to it. After all there are plenty of cars driving around with dents in them about which I care not a jot. It is this particular car that, it turns out, has an amazing ability to discombobulate me, presumably because it’s mine. Yet cars (phones, rings, boats, pens, computers etc) are not people. We might have a relationship of sorts with stuff (some people name their cars, never mind their pets), but it falls some way short of the relationships that should matter to us; those with spouses, children, parents and friends, even colleagues, bosses, employees. People should matter more than stuff.

Of course sometimes we use stuff to symbolize our relationships. I suppose this is what Christmas gifts (ie the stuff we give each other at Christmas) are really about. But in a way the stuff itself should be relatively unimportant. This explains why even stuff that has little monetary value can still be of great worth, if it serves as a sign and symbol of an important relationship. All well and good. But what a tragedy when the stuff, even gifted stuff, comes to matter more than it should. Even worse, when it is mistaken for the relationship that it is supposed to signify, or valued more than those relationships that should matter to us. When the stuff receives the attention that the giver of the gift should receive. This is to confuse signs and things signified. Because stuff inevitably becomes notably less shiny with time, not to mention when it gets dented, to be obsessed with it is also to miss so much of what really matters. And yet stuff, the obtaining of it, the possession of it, can do this to us. Warping our perception of what, or rather who, should be valued.

Consider one more intriguing observation. The greatest gift that was ever given was not stuff at all, but a person; a someone to be known not a something to be had. That is, when all is said and done, what (or rather who) lies at the heart of Christmas. Enjoy your presents.

I’ve decided to try and be constructive rather than just rant, even although the temptation to rant has been with me since mid-September. That’s when, once again, “X-mas Movies” started to appear on various TV channels, closely followed by adverts for assorted types of turkey roast, artificial fir trees, celebratory confectionery etc, etc, etc. And to cap it all, the contrast between Western commercialized end-of-year bonhomie and what is actually going on the world is perhaps starker this year than it has been for a while. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has bogged-down into a meat-grinding bloody stalemate. And more tragically still (if that were possible) in the part of the world where the events supposedly commemorated at “Christmas” actually occurred, bloodshed on an appalling scale is a daily occurrence. This is accompanies the reignition of an inter-ethnic war-for-land that had been reduced to a smoulder (or at least largely forgotten about by the Western media) and a widening of the conflict by Iranian proxies in Yemen and Lebanon (two failed states that promise more conflict for the future). None of this is to forget the tangling of Philippino and Chinese boats in the South China Sea (something of a misnomer - the tangle in question was much closer to the Philippine than Chinese coast), civil war in Myanmar (and several more in the horn of Africa), and political chaos in the Anglo-Saxon world. Oh, and then there’s the prospect of another Trump presidency. But no, I am not going carry on listing reasons to be (un)cheerful, rant, or even just sink into deep despair, tempting though all of those may be. Precisely because this is a cursed world, there is an amazing contrast to be drawn between what’s actually going on and an event actually worth focussing on, although often either missed or mythologized.

It is an event with even greater resonance because of what is going on in Israel and Gaza. Arguably today, as in the time detailed in the Gospels, Bethlehem is occupied territory. Precisely who is doing the occupying is at the centre of the current dispute. But the absence this year of anything worth celebrating is not. So there will be no Christmas tree or Christmas lights in Manger Square; the Church of the Nativity will be all but silent. And yet this is all similar to the circumstances that God Himself decided to enter in the person of His eternal son, Jesus. The Bethlehem in which Jesus was born was just as gritty as today, although a lot less famous. It was far from the centre of the world’s attention, but was an obscure location, within an obscure, conquered and occupied region of the world empire of the day. There was no Manger Square of course. And there was arguably no stable either; only a manger is mentioned in Luke’s account – the stable is inferred. There may well have been no inn, in which there was no room. Only Luke mentions what is usually translated as  “inn”, and it may have been a guestroom in the house of a relative. At no point in this story do we find all the other things that stand in the foreground of the contemporary Christmas – trees, presents and old men with white beards. All of this stuff was invented (and became “traditional”) relatively recently; the Santa with white beard and red coat is essentially the product of 1930’s advertising designed to sell a particular US soft-drink. I would suggest this stuff is the bit that’s worth forgetting. The earlier stuff, of much older provenance, is it turns out, much more relevant to our current hard-pressed circumstances.

At some point after the baby was born in Bethlehem (essentially to two homeless people who were about to become refugees in a country not their own), ugly politics intervened in the form of the local power-broker. Alerted by some unexpected visiting dignitaries to the fact that a potential rival for the peoples’ affections had been born, King Herod decided that power was more important to him than basic humanity. So he instigated the slaughter of who knows how many male children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem. Given this further sickening resonance with what is currently occurring in Gaza, it will be a brave pastor or minister that will include this little nugget in their nativity stories this Christmas. But these were the circumstances surrounding Jesus birth, and they contrast with the sanitized version that decorates the front of many a Christmas card. It was a world of poverty and suffering, of scandal, of refugees, political violence and curse. In other words, this world, our world, not a made up one.

And yet beneath the surface something important, joyful even, was happening. Jesus birth is not the whole story, but it was the beginning of something with staggering implications. Angels in the Gospel accounts are not always perceived to be good news, even if it’s good news they bring. The angel that came to Mary initially terrified her. And the news that was communicated to her was scary too. While no gynaecologist, Mary knew fine and well where babies came from, and so did her betrothed, Joseph. So it took another angel appearing in a dream, who also had to pacify Joseph and calm his fears, before telling him to continue with his plan to take Mary as his wife, notwithstanding the fact that she was pregnant, and not by him. All credit to him to reverting from Plan B (quietly divorcing Mary) to Plan A. The angel that encountered a bunch of Bethlehem shepherds initially terrified them too. Yet what they are told is “..good news of great joy..”: a long-promised rescuer had been born. Some rescuer, lying helpless in a feeding trough! Others also identified the baby as a deliverer of peace with significance way beyond the borders of Israel (Simeon in the temple at Jerusalem). Something was stirring in this world. It would be missed by the vast majority of those who lived at time, just as the Jesus’ significance continues to missed today.

So you could do a lot worse for yourself than forget about the made up man with the red coat and white beard, and focus on the real baby born in weakness, frailty and vulnerability in Bethlehem of all places. I wonder what became of Him?