Life in the Pandemic XII: What lies ahead?

No human being can tell the future. Lot’s of us try to guess the future, and claim that we’re making a prediction. If enough of us do that enough times, someone is  going to guess well and apparently predict the future correctly. But this will be apparent rather than real. There are those who make a living out of (apparently) predicting the future. This is not because they are good guessers, and it’s certainly not because they know something not knowable by the rest of us.  Often it’s because their “predictions” are so vague as to be interpretable as being fulfilled by something at some time. Of course this means that there are also so vague as to be of no practical use. Perhaps the best evidence of this is that they make their living making “apparently” reliable predictions, not by actually predicting winning lottery numbers or placing big bets on unlikely events. And of course because of selection and confirmation biases, we tend not to notice the predictions that aren’t, and take to twitter about their successful guesses.

Deep down in the pandemic we’ve all become familiar with another kind of prediction. From early on the media has been awash with dire warnings based on the reporting of predictive scientific models used to project the future course of the pandemic. Some of these have been extremely influential. The Imperial College model developed by Professor Neil Ferguson and his team is credited with persuading the UK Government to enforce a UK-wide “lockdown” back in March. Their model suggested that without appropriate suppression of the virus the UK might be facing up to 500 000 deaths, breaking the healthcare system and devastating the economy. However, this model, and models in general, have been fiercely criticized in some quarters as being scarcely an improvement on Mystic Meg. It’s claimed that they are not only failing now, but have performed poorly in the past.

But it’s important to understand what scientific models do and don’t do. Firstly they are inevitably based on what is known when they are constructed and on assumptions. Even what is known is usually not known with certainty or great precision, so choices always have to be made leading to uncertainty being baked in to any model. Where important information is missing, then assumptions have to be made. Bad assumptions lead to a poor model. Secondly, no model captures everything; any model is a simplification. It is, after all, a model and not reality. Uncertainties around inputs, plus simplifications in construction, mean that the outputs of any model tend to provide a range of possible outcomes, along with estimates of precision. Even in a model that perfectly captured all that was going on in a given situation, small changes of input assumptions and parameters, would have a big effect on outputs. There are no certainties to be found here, just sets of likelihoods. This is better than guessing, and may offer a way of avoiding complete disaster, but it is not a means of predicting the future with precision and certainty. And models are not proscriptive they are ultimately descriptive. They don’t tell how things must be; they describe how they might be.

However, as with other situations in life, it’s important not to confuse our inability to know everything, with the inevitability of knowing nothing. It’s not that we know nothing about the future course of the pandemic. If we take certain actions then the course of the pandemic will be altered in certain ways.  Not being able to know everything about the future, is not the same as being totally ignorant of the future. So what are we to make of where we are and what’s going on? The pandemic is a perspective-shaping event. It should have reminded us all of how fragile our lives, both individually and collectively, are. It has forced a re-evaluation of what really matters. And that re-evaluation should include considerations about where things are headed.

It seems to me that we are at an intersection of events that are significant. In addition to the pandemic, there are other events that are worth pondering. Earlier in the year Australia was ablaze. According to ABC News, over the 2019/20 Australian summer over 30 million acres went up in smoke, killing animals in their hundreds of millions, and affecting the health of a large proportion of the human population. This would be bad enough. But in the western US over the last few weeks, forest fires in unprecedented numbers and of unprecedented size have already destroyed of the order of 4 million acres and are still burning fiercely. Add to that fires in the Amazon and Siberia, and you have impacts on a planetary scale. This is likely to exacerbate the climate impact of human activity, about which we have heard much in recent years. To public health and climate events, add the political instability now been seen in what has historically been a politically stable country, the US. It’s hard to underestimate just how troubling Donald Trump’s recent pronouncements about the peaceful transition of power have been. This is playing with fire of a very different kind. In the worlds largest economy and most powerful military power this matters to us all. It might just be the craziness of one strange individual. But, taken together all of these goings on seem to be very unlike business as usual.

Given what I’ve already said about prediction, I am not now going to claim any special knowledge on my part that can illuminate where we are and what’s going on. But it is perhaps worth pointing out that there is a source of knowledge available to all of us that is always worth taking note of. My conviction is that neither history nor the future just happen; they have a shape and a trajectory, and we needn’t be completely ignorant of either. Underpinning and driving all that has and will happen is the God who reveals His purposes in His word, the Bible. If you’re looking for key explanations this is where to turn. And you’ll find a prediction or two. Because while none of us knows what’s ahead, this isn’t such a big deal for a God who is eternal.

One final aside. One of the odd by-products of the pandemic, is that it's easier than even to lurk unseen in church services. If taking God and the Bible strike you as strange but you're intrigued, there are lots of places you can find out more. We'll be "at church" shortly; feel free to join us online.

Don't ask me how I'm feeling

Full disclosure – I’m a Scot. We have a reputation for being a dour, miserable lot. Some argue that this explains why we took to Calvinism so enthusiastically. Mind you, proving the direction of the causality (were we Calvinists because we were dour, or dour because we were Calvinists?) is probably impossible. This is all a bit unfair to both Scots and Calvinists. However, as it is emotion I'm about to discuss, I thought I had better point out I might be accused of having a problem with it!

In contemporary culture, emotion is important. We’re told to read it, explore it, own it, express it. Not to do these things is to be repressed. We don’t just need intelligence, we need emotional intelligence. How I feel is what really matters, and trumps almost everything else. Even in science, those interested in cold cognition are increasingly interested in emotion (or its proxies). How we feel is as cool a subject of study as how we think. Not all emotion is good of course. There are good and bad emotions, and the aim of modern life is to maximise the good and minimise the bad. Happiness good, sadness bad. Guilt bad, the satisfaction that flows from being self-justified, good. The “right sort” of emotional state is an objective for life. It’s healthy to pursue feeling good.

So it might be argued that it is just as well that there are churches that seem to focus on meeting this need to feel good. A recent article on the BBC website (“Hillsong: A church with rock concerts and 2m followers”; 13^th August) left me feeling that I needed to think about emotion. It ended with a quote from a young man who, for various reasons, had left Hillsong. He clearly still felt warmly towards. He was quoted as saying: 

“The music is so beautiful and uplifting and it makes you feel better. I don't think there's anything in the Bible that says we can't feel good.”

If you’ve never heard of Hillsong, it’s worth knowing that it is a rapidly growing group of churches, originating in Australia. It is perhaps best known for its music, and it has given to the church at large songs that are probably now sung somewhere every Sunday (you’ll find lots of examples on YouTube). The music and vibe attracts a mainly young audience to its large weekly gatherings, with stadium-sized conferences running more occasionally. Hillsong’s weekly live audience runs into the hundreds of thousands (if not millions), with many more watching and listening online.

The thing about music, particularly well written and well played music, is that it is a brilliant way to induce a mood, evoke an emotion, create an atmosphere. And I don’t have any problem with that. I like music, of all sorts (and play music of some sorts). It’s clearly important in church too. Christians have always sung together, taking much of their early material from the Psalms in the Old Testament, Psalms which themselves had been sung for millennia by Israel. Some of this singing is sad and poignant. But much of it is joyful and uplifting. Indeed this upbeat note is probably where the balance lies. After all, the instruction in Psalm 100 v 1 is to make a joyful noise, not a mournful one. And in the New Testament the instruction is to sing out of thankfulness; I’m assuming that this means it will be will be on the up side rather than the down. And I don't really see a problem if this really does help us feel better. So in one sense Hillsong aren’t really innovators in giving church music a key, upbeat role. But here is my problem: don’t we need something beyond feeling better, feeling good? 

Singing, particularly singing together, is powerful. But powerful enough? Maybe it would be a good idea to know why  we’re singing, and to know why we're singing what you're singing. Singing, and the feel-good factor that it can engender, doesn’t ever seem to be the primary objective in Scripture. There is nothing in the Bible that says we can't feel good. But there's lots in the Bible that suggest there are things that need attention before we get to feel good. Maybe if simply feeling good is our objective, we're missing something important. Because when singing to feel good becomes the objective, the song is all that there is. Maybe that's when the song becomes hollowed out, and becomes less than it could be. 

Something else of interest recently happened, this time among the ranks of Hillsong musicians. One of their more accomplished writers and performers decided that Christianity just may not cut it for him anymore. Posting on Instagram (since removed, but picked up by others), among other things he wrote:

“This is a soapbox moment so here I go … How many preachers fall? Many. No one talks about it. How many miracles happen. Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send four billion people to a place, all ‘coz they don’t believe? No one talks about it. Christians can be the most judgmental people on the planet—they can also be some of the most beautiful and loving people. But it’s not for me.” (quoted more extensively  here)

There’s a familiarity about this; these are issues that have been, and are, discussed, widely. They are questions that have answers. The fallibility of Christian leaders is well known and often reported (sometimes gleefully); there are websites and blogs dedicated to it. But then who was he following, or being encouraged to follow? We’re all fallible, and we all fail. That’s why the Gospel focuses not on a man, but on Jesus (who while a man, was also God). The role and reality (or otherwise) of the miraculous is another often talked about subject (some Christians seem to talk about nothing else). But miracles in the Bible, are relatively rare and usually serve a particular purpose. And that purpose is rarely evidential. Contradictions? While the claim is often made that the Bible is "full" of them, it has consistently failed to stand up to scrutiny.  The problem of suffering is a key, important and difficult issue for many, but hardly a new one. He also says: "Science keeps piercing the truth of every religion.” I admit I’m not entirely sure what this even means. But a cursory read of this blog (and much more besides) will show that science is no competitor to faith, at least not the kind of faith the Bible talks about. So what’s going on?

Could it be a simple as this: if the music’s all you’ve got, then when the music stops you’re in big trouble. If all you have is a good feeling, an uplifted mood, based on feel-good songs, this will be a  fragile and temporary state of affairs. It will not be enough to effect a fundamental change in life-direction; it will not stand the test of time, nor stand up to a skeptical and hostile culture. Maybe, after all, life is not primarily about how we feel. It has to come back to what we know. It is true that the philosophically sophisticated puritan theologian Johnathan Edwards said: “True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections". But the same Psalmist who tells us to make a joyful noise, immediately sings: “Know that the Lord, he is God” (Ps 100:3). Scripture doesn't make the sort of rigid distinction between feeling and knowing that we have tended to in Western culture. Throughout Scripture knowing and feeling are linked and are not two rigid and separate categories. So all knowing and no feeling is no great improvement on all feeling and no knowing.

But it does seem to be clear that feeling (and singing) need a proper foundation. They need to spring from right knowing. To focus only on how we feel is to focus on the wrong thing, to have things the wrong way round. If we make how we feel our primary objective, we short-change ourselves. So, as Alistair Begg said once, “Don’task me how I feel, ask me what I know”. He, incidentally, is also a Scot.