Don’t be duped (or even gooped….)

I may have invented a new word. As far as I can tell there is currently no verb “to goop”. However, goop does exist as both a common and proper noun. In the dictionary “goop” is defined as a sludge or slimy concoction. “Goop” (capital G) is a completely different box of frogs. It started off as a newsletter, authored by the actress Gwyneth Paltrow. It has since become a money-spinning “lifestyle brand”, and most recently, in the form of “The Goop Lab”, a 6-part Netflix “documentary” series. There is of course the obligatory website, a cursory look at which suggests that Goop is primarily a shop window for expensive cardigans and handbags, quack remedies and lifestyle hacks. To be fair, you’ll find various disclaimers on the website, and in Netflix series, that those behind Goop are not making medical claims. However, if people don’t buy their stuff they don’t make any money, so I suspect the hope is that the disclaimers will be quickly passed over and forgotten as you move on to various opportunities to part with your cash. I confess I’m not fashionable and I’m tight with my cash, so Goop wasn’t really on my radar. That is until the boss of the NHS mentioned it in a recent speech.  

Sir Simon Stevens is the Chief Executive of the National Health Service in England. He is clearly frustrated by health “fake news” and more importantly its effects. Political fake news is bad enough. And you could argue that it has led to a number of alarming consequences in recent years. But health fake news can have fatal consequences. Essentially his charge was that Goop, particularly with the reach given it by Netflix, was spreading health fake news widely and quickly.  In his remarks he grouped Goop with snake oil salesmen and anti-vaxers. It was, in his view, not a source of useful, health-related information. Nor was it providing health-related but basically harmless entertainment.

In response, beyond the widely reported and relatively anodyne statements put out by Goop directly, Gwyneth herself went on the record to reject this criticism. She feels it is unfair primarily because she claims that Goop doesn’t give health advice at all. And it might be that that the professionals are just over-reacting to bit of entertaining fluff, with the expected sniffiness of professionals and “experts”. One Guardian columnist while agreeing with what Stevens had said, reckoned there wasn’t too much to be concerned about. The public were smart enough to work out that Goop was an over-priced, modern snake oil operation. “It’s just a wellness brand – expecting it to hold toscientific/medical criteria is like expecting a lip gloss to do a handstand.” I’m not sure I get the allusion, but you get the idea.

So what about Gwyneth’s claims that advice isn’t being issued and scientific claims are not being made? On the Goop UK site, under the “About” tab, it’s not too difficult to find language that at least drops heavy hints that both scientific and medical thinking are central to Goop’s operations. Under “Wellness” we read “We have a tightly edited wellness shop of products vetted for efficacy by our in-house research scientists, and we’ve also created five vitamin and supplement protocols with doctors to cover all the bases.” (emphasis mine). And as for the Netflix series, it is called the Goop lab. I accept that on one level this all falls short of clinical advice and scientific claims. But at the very least there is a particular kind of signalling going on. It strikes me that they want a veneer of intelectual respectability, and think this comes from signalling the involvement of a degree of scientific and medical competence.

This isn’t just me being over sensitive (I am after all a scientist, and I do clinical research). Or if it is, I’m not alone. Dominic Pimenta, a cardiologist writing in the Independent put it this way:  “The problem is that the Goop“lab”  gives itself the appearance of scientific rigour, while in fact offering pseudoscientific laziness: they cite“trials and experiments” without evaluating them, and talk to “practitioners and doctors” without critiquing their conflicts of interest (of course the largest conflict of interest on the show is Goop's, a billion-dollar brand selling, among other things, alternative health products).” It appears Gwyneth and her chums want the respectability that comes from hinting that they are taking a scientific and responsible approach, without doing any of the hard (and expensive) work that this entails. This would after all impact on the bottom line.

Of course part of the problem is that we don’t really need Goop to tell us how to be well at all. We know what leads to wellness, and it is not expensively packaged supplements, coffee enemas, and various beads and balls stuck in unmentionable places. It’s simple, boring stuff like a diet with plenty of fresh fruit and veg, a reasonable amount of exercise and as much sleep as you need. Accompany these with a degree of intellectual stimulation (analogue or digital) and engagement, and a network of meaningful human relationships and psychologically you’ll probably be the right side of fine. None of this costs a fortune or need involve Goop or any other website.

Mind you, this will only keep you in temporal (and therefore temporary) good nick. Without wanting to sound deliberately preachy (which of course means I am about to), while these simple measures will keep us in good physical and psychological health, they won’t ultimately satisfy our most basic need. At the beginning of his “Confessions” Augustine of Hippo pointed out that “..our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.” It’s that restlessness that Goop and much else in modern life seeks to address or at least distract us from. Inevitably it fails.

Don’t be duped. To quote the Psalmist: “For he satisfies the longing soul.” (Psalm 107:9). The "he" in this case is of course the God who created and sustains us (whether we recognise it or not).

Surely you’re joking (Mr Feynman)?

Richard Feynman was a Nobel prize-winning physicist, who is perhaps best known these days for his role in the Rogers Commission which investigated the Challenger disaster. It was Feynman who famously worked out what had caused the disaster. He was as far from the stereotypical nerdy, bespectacled, white coated boffin as it is possible to get. When I was a student (of Physiology, not Physics) his memoir “Surely you’re joking, Mr Feynman”[1] was a must read. One thing you won’t read in it is a quote about the philosophy of science that’s usually attributed to Feynman: “The philosophy of science is as useful to scientists and ornithology is to birds”. No one appears to be able to pin down where and when he said (or wrote) this – hence the brackets in the title of this blog piece. So it is possible that it’s not one of his aphorisms. But it captures fairly accurately his attitude toward philosophy in general and the philosophy of science in particular. It is an attitude probably shared by not a few physicists.

Sir Peter Medawar, also a Nobel prize winner (this time for Physiology and Medicine for his work on immunity), had a bit more time for philosophy, at least to the extent that he was quite fond of perpetrating it. He pointed out that if you ask a scientist about the scientific method, “….he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.”[2]  What he was highlighting was that in professional science we have tended not to think about the intellectual procedures we follow, and we rarely explicitly teach them to students either. I was expected to learn my scientific methodology through a combination of observation and osmosis. Of course what this has meant is that when challenged to articulate how we do what we do, we are apt to come up short. That was Medawar’s point. Given the undoubted success of science in providing explanations for, and control over, all sorts of aspects of the natural world, this apparent vacuum about science itself was bound to be filled with something.

Of course on one level there have always been philosophers of science. The list includes the like of Aristotle who philosophised about science before science, as we know it now, existed. Bacon, Hume, Mill and Kant all had something to say on the topic. Scientists did from time to time contribute; Newton famously had a dig at hypothises. But throughout the 19^th Century a division began to set in between those on the outside talking about science, and an increasingly professional cadre of scientists on the inside doing the science. And it appeared that you could do it fairly successfully, without actually knowing too much about how you were doing it. Perhaps this is when (some) scientists started getting a bit sniffy about the philosophers. It didn’t help that sometimes the description of science from the outside was not flattering. In the 1960’s it was the philosopher Thomas Kuhn who talked about one set of new scientific theories conquering and displacing an older less powerful set as a “conversion experience that cannot be forced”[3]. Not entirely rational on Kuhn’s account. Interestingly, his views were shaped by examples from physics and cosmology; perhaps this explains the antipathy of at least some physicists to philosophers.

But thinking has to be done, concepts have to clarified, and this is the proper province of philosophers. Yet even today there remains a bit of a prejudice against burdening science students with thinking about what science is and how it works. I used to be in charge of a large health sciences module on research methods. As part of the module I introduced a session on the philosophy of science, so that students would be introduced to a coherent account of scientific methodology (the sort of thing that might avoid the situation described by Medawar). To say that my colleagues thought that this was the lowest of low priorities would be an understatement. It didn’t remain a part of their course for very long!

However, there are a number of issues within contemporary science that mean it is more important than ever that  students are trained properly in scientific methodology, and that as a profession we understand what we’re doing and to what standards. There’s no harm at all in understanding research ethics (ethics being a branch of philosophy no less), and being introduced to issues in research integrity. There has always been successful and unsuccessful science. Some experiments work, others fail. Some turn out to be misconceived and doomed to failure from the start, at least when viewed with scientific hindsight. That’s all grist for the scientific mill. But success and failure in scientific terms are not the same as good and bad science, or for that matter good and bad scientists. The bad ones are the ones that fabricate data and such like – in other words they lie and cheat. This is of sufficient concern for governments, agencies and institutions to have introduced research integrity codes of practice. Perhaps the best known example of these is the Office of Research Integrity in the US.

Research misconduct certainly happens (as the ORI website attests). It is not common, and it is not widespread (probably). Along with proper policing and an open culture, better training might well improve the situation. Clearer understanding of how science works and what is, and is not acceptable practice, can only be a good thing. But more is required. This is about something beyond science; one might even say that it requires knowledge of something above science that underpins good science. Policies and procedures, clear thinking (yes, aided by the philosophers) will get us so far. But at root, this is about right and wrong, it is about values. But where do we get the right values? This is not a scientific question at all. But science (as well as every other area of human endeavour) depends on it.

Birds don’t need ornithology, but scientists do need lots of resources from beyond science. Intellectually, the help of the philosophers should be welcome. But an underpinning morality is needed too. And where are we going to get that?  

1. R.P. Feynman (1985) "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman". 

2. P. Medawar (1982)  "Induction and intuition in scientific thought" in "Pluto's Republic".

3.T.S.Kuhn (1962) "The structure of scientific revolutions"

Faith in aliens….

I am not a famous ex-anything.  I’m not an ex-premier league footballer making even more of my millions. I’m not an ex-MP or ex-minister of Her Majesty, who makes TV documentaries about trains wearing brightly coloured clothes. In particular, I am not an ex-astronaut. I don’t regret not having played professional football (being fairly uninterested in the amateur variety). And, although sometimes it has had its attractions to my argumentative side, I don’t regret not being involved in professional politics (a tricky thing for a Christian – just ask Tim Farron). But who would not want to sit atop one of the most powerful machines ever invented, and then be blasted into orbit at unimaginable speeds, to look down on this blue jewel we all call home, or to look outward with unimpeded clarity at the stars? Too much? Anyway, the point is, I’m not an ex-astronaut. But some people are.

Helen Sharman is. She belongs to a select club that numbers just over 550. And, of course, she also has the additional distinction of being one a very few female ex-astronauts. In May 1991, after 18 months of intensive training, she blasted off in a Russian rocket, to conduct an 8-day mission on the Soviet Mir space station. Most of her time was spent running experiments. I have always assumed that astronauts are quite bright (this is partly about rocket science after all). As well expertise in science or engineering (Sharman’s background is in chemistry), there are all the other things you have to master connected to flying into, and then operating, in space. It’s a complex, difficult and dangerous environment. Since her return, she has busied herself as a science communicator and populariser, has received several honours from the Queen and the Royal Society of Chemistry and a host of honorary degrees from a list of universities. And she does occasional media interviews.

One of these interviews was published in the Guardian earlier this month. It was notable because it generated relatively little comment about one particular aspect of what she was quoted as having said. 

On the subject of aliens:

“Aliens exist, there’s no two ways about it. There are so many billions of stars out there in the universe that there must be all sorts of different forms of life. Will they be like you and me, made up of carbon and nitrogen? Maybe not. It’s possible they’re here right now and we simply can’t see them.”

(published in The Guardian, Jan 5th, 2020)

I have no reason to believe that this was said “tongue-in-cheek”, or was a random, throwaway statement. It is a view, an opinion, and a statement of faith. It is not stated as a hypothesis - a provisional statement of affairs, waiting to be tested and supported (or refuted) by evidence. That would make it a kind of scientific statement, with the weight and authority that such statements have (or at least should have). Helen is clear and emphatic: aliens exist. Indeed they “must” exist. She is basing this on a statistical argument (not evidence), that has been around for a while. But it’s an argument, based on an intuition, not an observation. The intuition is that we are not alone; it is widely shared. Is there any evidence that this intuition will be satisfied by the discovery of alien life? No. This is an exercise in faith. There is no evidence to support either the substantive assertion or the possibility that is alluded to. And it’s not that the evidence is lacking for want of effort.

The “search for extra-terrestrial intelligence” has gone on in one sense probably since the first human looked to the sky. In its modern form it began in earnest with the discovery of radio. Apparently Tesla suggested that his newly invented wireless could be used to contact beings on Mars. New technology brought new suggestions and opportunities. In the 1950’s it was searches in the microwave range. In the 1960’s it was searches in other frequency bands with radio telescopes. Then in the 1970’s NASA took up the reigns, spending large sums on various projects designed to search for signs of life out in the further reaches of space. Eventually NASA’s funding for SETI projects was cut (although efforts come and go to restore it), and the SETI institute carried on projects with private funding. There have been sizeable donations to the effort. Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, notably donated a sum in the region of $25M to support SETI. So a cumulatively large sum, running into tens of, if not hundreds of millions of US$, have been spent on this search. Some of the science along the way may well have been impressive. But (so far) the search has turned up nothing coming close to the evidence being searched for.

But who needs evidence. Aliens are real and probably among us, right? There is a bit of a double standard going on here. There are things that I claim that are clearly statements of faith. I’m apt to claim that the life of Jesus of Nazareth has significance beyond the historical and sociological. But this is based not on faith, but on facts. The faith bit is about the response, not the foundation. There are a number of well-attested and constantly investigated facts that lead me to believe certain things about Jesus (facts about what he said and did). The facts are of course contested, and even the concept of “fact” can be a bit slippery. But there is an evidence base to be engaged with. The facts are of a specific type of course. They are historical facts, and therefore the kind of investigation and validation that is necessary belongs to the discipline of history, not science. Other disciplines also have a role, because these facts are attested to by documents – in the main the Bible. But facts there are, none-the-less.

Evidence, disputed and debated as it is, is available to be disputed and debated, probed and weighted. Potentially, an awful lot hangs on the outcome of such investigations into the claims, work, death and (claimed) resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Much more than is the case for the non-evidenced claim that aliens exist.

New atheism’s old problem(s)

Christmas ratings suggest that the demise of network TV may have been overstated. Here in the UK the BBC’s new Dracula drama (a co-production with Netflix) has been praised by the critics and watched by millions. My interest was piqued by quotes attributed to its co-creators, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, self-described “ageing atheists”. The thrust was that in their version of the story they had set out to respect the “Christian themes” of the original Bram Stoker book. With perhaps a gentle dig as some of their theological fellow-travelers they suggest that there’s something in these themes to be taken seriously. The cross should be respected because “that icon of morality built a civilisation”. Their broader point seems to be that Western culture has been shaped by Christianity and that the cross is a symbol that still resonates. The stubborn refusal of such symbols and what they symbolise to fade from the scene, particularly given the occasional claim that science explains everything, can be usefully contrasted with "New Atheism".

“New Atheism” was dismissed in one recent article as “..a rather slight intellectual movement [that] fizzled out quickly..”; I’ve discussed its decline previously. Its celebrity proponents have faded from view, and its project seems to have moved on. God is apparently not a big problem anymore. Maybe the New Atheists feel that they’ve so conclusively refuted His existence that it would be in bad taste to continue banging on about Him. Except of course they refuted nothing, and argued things to the same standstill as the old atheists, except with less philosophical sophistication.

In terms of winning the population at large over to their views, the evidence is not that encouraging. Recent data from the US, courtesy of the Pew Centre, does show that in the US the proportion of those who self-identify as atheists doubled between 2009 and 2019, at least that’s how an atheist (old or new) might spin it. But it went up from 2% to 4%. Mind you, after more Trump, it may have gone up further. In the UK, the figure for those identifying as atheist was 8% in a 2017 survey. However, the other thing that both of these surveys show is that the real problem isn’t atheism, but apatheism – the notion that arguments about God just don’t merit a hearing. He might exist, He might not. Either way, there is no point in bothering.

Just like "new" atheism, apatheism isn’t new. It’s as old as the Bible (and probably older). It’s a state of mind and affairs that was familiar to the Old Testament prophets. God might be there, and might even matter a bit. But His existence doesn’t make any practical difference to life, so we can basically ignore Him for the most part. In modern terms, if I like old hymns, like a bit of ritual and want to hedge my bets, I can turn up occasionally to a church service. If the best school for my kids is a church school, then it will do no harm to sign on the dotted line, appear slightly more frequently, and actually learn the words of a hymn or two. This might have the added benefit of currying some favour with the Almighty. I’ll have some ticks in the good column, to balance out the ticks in the bad column. Just as long as no one takes any of it too seriously.

This is the “practical atheism” that the prophets in the Old Testament, and the Apostles in the New, railed against. It’s a kind of hypocrisy that I suspect the New Atheists would object to. At least as far as Christian, Biblical, theism goes, it makes no sense. If Jesus Christ is not who He claims to be, then he was (because He’s clearly dead, buried and decayed) either a bad or a crazy man. He was extravagantly clear in the claims He made as to who He was, what He was going to do, and how people should respond to Him. If He was wrong you should have nothing to do with Him. But, if He is who He says He is, then C.T. Studd put it well: “If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him”. 

Polite respect for symbols and a wistful regret at the passing of outmoded institutions just won’t cut it. Old and new atheism’s problem (or at least one of them) has always been the cross, or more particularly the death of Jesus on the cross - a unique, Universe shaping event with eternal implications and a means of transformation for individual men and women through history. Certainly much more than an “icon of morality”.

Providence or judgement – it’s too early to tell

In 1972, the then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was widely misquoted as saying that it was too early to tell whether the French revolution had been a success. It turns out that he was actually referring to the 1968 student uprising, not the 18^th century revolution. But why let the facts ruin a good quip. At the turn of a new year, with Boris Johnston’s new administration (it could hardly be called a new government) still to take full shape, I’ve been trying to work out what to make of recent events.

I dutifully made my way to my polling station on the 12^th December, more or less decided on which party not to vote for, but less sure who I should vote for. When it came to it, I just couldn’t put my “x” against the Conservative party candidate. Where I should put it was more of a struggle. On one level this is all entirely unimportant. We’re talking about just one vote (ie mine) in a safe Labour seat. Unlike so many in the north of England it is still a safe Labour seat. Voting Conservative in this election was a possibility simply because they were the only party on the ballot that were going to deliver on the outcome of the EU referendum. As I’ve explained before, even although I voted “remain” I think that the clear (if narrow) result of the referendum should be upheld. That’s means leaving the EU. I find none of the subsequent rewriting, rewording, rerunning, and reneging on the outcome of the referendum in any way convincing. Even had the alternatives been a lot more palatable than they were, I would still have considered voting Conservative on the basis of this one issue. But on careful reflection, I couldn’t do it. Here’s why.

I have lots of friends in the US who thought carefully about their options in the last US presidential election, and decided for a whole heap of reasons that they would vote for one Donald J. Trump. I thought, and still think, that this was a crazy decision. I understand that many of them wanted a president that would make conservative picks for the Supreme Court and I understand why this is important to them. For others there were other issues like Trump’s support of the state of Israel. What I don’t understand is why these political issues trump (as it were) the demonstrable fact that the Donald is a serial liar, with apparently little respect for truth. He has raised telling not just half-truths (the terminological inexactitude so beloved by British politicians), but full blown non-truths to a finely honed political weapon. He has systematically sought to undermine truth more widely by sowing confusion at every turn. He has branded those who have sought to hold him to account and fact check him as “fake news” peddlers. Words matter. True words matter, and false words matter. I’ve concluded that none of this is accidental, it’s policy. Neither is it because of some intellectual impairment on his part. It’s done deliberately, knowingly and with calculation. It is unforgivable because it is plain wrong; and it is corrosive.

Then there’s the issue of his attitude to women. The “Access Hollywood” tape should have killed his presidential campaign stone dead. He never fully repudiated the views he expressed, and indeed subsequently suggested that the tape is not genuine. The lack of plain human decency revealed by that particularly nasty conversation was exhibited on other occasions during the campaign, and has been exhibited time after time in his conduct as president particularly in his twitter rants. The notion that he could be re-elected, now that his basic indecency has been chronicled, observed and established, is terrifying in the extreme.

I would gently point out to my US chums that the US Supreme Court is mentioned nowhere in Scripture. But a commitment to truth is. Being careful with our words does. Integrity, honesty, decency all do. What Scripture teaches about the role of women we can argue about. What we can’t argue about is the basic respect that all are entitled to, which contrasts sharply with Trump’s attitude that debases women to the level of exploitable objects. There is such a basic disconnect between the values, attitudes and behaviours that we are called to, and those exhibited on a daily (not to say hourly) basis by the Donald. I cannot understand how so much of what Scripture calls for can be set aside, in order to obtain questionable temporal objectives that Scripture has little to say about. “Evangelicals” as a block in the US elevated arguable political gains above clear values that they should have been articulating and honouring. But what struck me on the way to polling station was that I was in danger of doing exactly the same thing.  

Brexit, the issue that nearly decided my vote, isn’t in the Bible either. Things like telling the truth are. We can argue about austerity, universal credit, NHS spending, taxation and the rest.  And we should. We can argue about whether and how we should leave the EU. Of course these things are important. But there are other things that are more important. Leading the Conservative party (by their active choice) is a man whose basic dishonesty over a long period should have disqualified him from high office. Boris has, after all, lost two jobs (one in journalism, one in politics) for telling straight out lies. And there was no obvious evidence in the election campaign that he has any regrets about what has been the hallmark of his basic approach to life as well as politics. This is enough to disqualify him from high office in the estimation of some who politically share many of his views. And while he hasn’t quite had an “Access Hollywood” moment, there are doubts about his attitude to women and family. I know that in our system all politics is about compromise, and if I’m waiting for what I think is perfection, I’ll be dead and in the glory before it arrives. But I only had one vote to cast, and basic issues of honesty, truth telling and decency determined how it wasn’t cast. Because our elections are a secret ballot, I don't need to let slip here how it was cast.

But given that even without my one vote Boris still got his “stonking” victory, did I just get it wrong? Well, that’s clearly logical possible. But I have my responsibilities, and I leave it to the Almighty to decide the big issue of who gets power. His perspective is bigger, deeper and longer than mine. Bigger forces were at work, and always are. Underpinning the stuff we see is a deeper reality of a God who continues to work His purposes out. It may turn out that, in ways invisible to me, Boris is just the right man for the times. Just the man to get us through the Brexit morass we find ourselves in (for which he is partly responsible after all). If we do get out of the situation we’re in with anything like limited damage, this will not reflect on Boris’ brilliance, although undoubtedly political hubris will impel him to claim exactly that. It will be providence protecting us from ourselves – again.

Of course it could be that things are going to go from bad to worse. The predictions of the remainers will turn out to be spot on, and we will endure economic, political, security and strategic disaster. We will never reach the sun-lit uplands promised by the hard brexiteers. In that case, Boris may turn out to be a modern form of Old Testament Babylon: God’s instrument of judgment. We would certainly deserve it. There are many ways in which the culture in which we find ourselves is deeply dysfunctional. I’m partly to blame of course by not being the salt and light that I should be. For all that, although we Christians may moan about the state of the UK, the fact is that compared to many of our brothers and sisters elsewhere we’ve actually had it very easy for a very long time. Maybe the ease, freedom and relative order we’ve enjoyed partly explains out lack of saltiness. Maybe it is coming to an end. I have no way of knowing. 

Time will tell. It’s too early to know which way it will go.  

Christmas Reflections III - Even angels can learn...

There was stuff going on that first Christmas that was normal and ordinary, and then there was the other stuff. The stuff that was neither normal nor ordinary. We sometimes patronise the characters in the Christmas story as primitives who didn’t know what we know. That’s why they could believe promises that clearly were not believable. So writers like Luke concoct stories that we know can’t be true and therefore are at best mythology, rather than history. The problem is, this isn’t what they claim to be doing, and it’s not how it reads. Luke claims that he is setting out to investigate what happened and then compile an orderly account so that we may have "certainty". And his writing seems to be largely like the reporting of ordinary human responses to extraordinary events. 

Take the characters in Luke 1 blogged about previously. You don’t need to know a lot about the finer points of gynaecology, embryology and development biology to know where babies come from, and what is necessary to make them. And Zechariah and Elisabeth on the one hand, and Mary on the other, were pretty clear on both topics. Zechariah is promised a child, something that he’s wanted for years, and promised it by an impeccable source. As discussed previously, he gets himself into hot water by making it clear he is not convinced, no matter where the information comes from. This is a story that  reads like Bible, not Hollywood. Mary receives disconcerting news in a disconcerting way, and she responds with a question, which prompts a very interesting response that I’ll return to. But first, what might seem like a digression.

A couple of thousand years before the events recorded in Luke Ch1, three men appeared out of the heat haze near Abraham’s camp at a place called Mamre (you’ll find the story in Genesis 18; you’ll find Mamre just to the north of Hebron). One of the “men”, it turns out, was God himself; the other two were probably angels. A conversation ensued with Abraham, while his wife Sarah listened in the background. It’s in this conversation that God promises Abraham that Sarah will have a child, even though (spookily like Zechariah and Elisabeth) Abraham and Sarah were well on the elderly side of old. Sarah chuckles at this promise; after all it’s clearly preposterous. Like New Testament characters, Old Testament characters are not stupid; they know about making babies. God’s response is to challenge Sarah’s lack of belief by posing a question – “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”. And, of course, it turns out that delivering on promises about miracle babies if not too hard, because a child, Isaac, duly appears. This is a story Zechariah would have been familiar with, and this is perhaps one reason why Gabriel is fairly sniffy with him when he doesn’t respond appropriately to a similar promise given to him and Elisabeth. Their child would be miraculous but not unique.

Speaking of Gabriel, I’ve always wondered if he was one of the two angels with God at Mamre. He’s not named of course.  If he was there, this makes his response to Mary’s question intriguing. Because while Mary is clearly willing to accept what he tells her, she also has questions, precisely because, like Sarah, she’s knows where babies come from. Famously, Gabriel tells Mary that something entirely unique is going to happen in her to bring about her pregnancy. But he adds something else. This time it is not a question like the one posed to Abraham. It’s a statement: nothing is impossible with God. Had Gabriel been here before? Had he heard a similar promise, observed a human, and sceptical, reaction to it? Did he hear the question that God responded with? He had certainly seen the promise realised. So perhaps he has learned something. With confidence, confidence borne of experience rather than belief, he’s able to reassure Mary. Possibly.  I’m speculating of course.

The rest, as they say, really is history. Maybe angels can observe, listen, watch and learn. Maybe we should learn from them.

Christmas Reflections II – Rug weaving for beginners

I know nothing about weaving patterned rugs. It’s a pity, because this may be a dying art. They don’t seem to be as popular as they used to be. I blame TV makeover shows that constantly recommend neutral shades and the complete absence of strong patterns. Despite my ignorance, even I know that only one side of the rug carries the pattern. The other side, the underside, is often a visual mess; just lots of strands and flecks here and there. Somehow that visual chaos is exactly what is required to produce the pattern that you see on the other side. I wonder if that’s how it appears to a master rug maker? Maybe they can see a pattern even in the underside mess.

Sometimes life appears to be a bit of mess, at least at the scale most of us necessarily perceive it. When I read about the lives of others, I wonder just how much of the big picture, the pattern, people living their lives are aware of. In the first chapter of his account of the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth, Luke weaves together the strands of two particular lives, recounting two particular pre-birth narratives. Why the two stories? There’s very definitely weaving going on as Luke cuts from one story to the other and back again. I think that he does this because he wants us to compare and contrast. The main strands of the two narratives concern an older man, and a young girl. One is famously part of the Christmas story (the young girl), the other is one of Christmas’ forgotten characters, Zechariah.

Zechariah is an interesting pick, particularly at this point in his life. He’s a priest, and a fairly faithful one at that. Luke focuses on a particular occasion, which is probably the high point of Zechariah’s priestly career. It has fallen to him to go in to the temple in Jerusalem and burn incense (symbolically to lead the people’s prayers). Once he has finished his task inside, he will emerge out onto the temple steps, lift his arms and bless all the people who are standing outside, waiting. The point is that he will probably only get to do this once in his career. At this point in Israel’s history, there are lots of priests and not that much to do. So this is his big moment. Exciting as this probably was for him, something extraordinary then happens. As he’s carrying out his duties in the enclosed space of the “Holy Place” in the temple, an angel appears. You might think that this is a fairly common occurrence, but in fact it’s not. As discussed previously, it had been centuries since God had spoken to Israel, and even longer since something like an angel appearing had happened. So this was far from what Zechariah was expecting, and in fact Luke tells us it freaked him out. Once he’s calmed down the angel (who we learn later was Gabriel) gives him good news and better news. A baby is going to be born (and this after Zechariah and his wife Elisabeth had probably given up hope of having children), and the baby is going to grow into someone with a special job to do. This is something Zechariah has been hoping for and praying about. But then it goes a bit pear-shaped.

If this were simple romantic fiction, Zechariah would run home, give Elisabeth the good news and everyone would live happily ever after. But precisely because angels suddenly appearing and saying exactly what you want hear is not an everyday occurrence, it’s all a bit hard to take in. And Zechariah basically tells Gabriel this – not a good idea. He basically asks “How can I believe this?”, indiating a fairly basic lack of a willingness to believe what he’s been told. Because of his lack of belief, poor old Z has to spend the next nine months or so not being able to hear or speak, condemned, as it were, to silence. On the one hand this seems a bit harsh. Yet on the other, it’s symbolic that he’s behaved as Israel has all along. Not believing what God consistently said to them had resulted in silence, as God had warned through the prophet Amos (see Amos 8:11: ‘a famine….of hearing the words of the Lord’). That famine was coming to end, and God was going to do something new. Zechariah, and for that matter his son John, were part of that old story. Something new was about to happen.

Of course, poor old Z’s big day is ruined. His encounter with Gabriel is inside the temple. When he emerges after a delay, with all the people looking to him to bless them, he can’t – he’s got no voice. This particular thread in the pattern then just seems to peter out.

Six months later, the same angel turns up in Nazareth, to speak to one of Elisabeth’s cousins, Mary. There’s obviously a number of contrasts to be drawn between Zechariah and Mary. He was male, she was female, at a time and in a culture where this really mattered. He was a mature, public figure who had carved out his place in society. Mary was a teenager, somewhere between childhood and marriage (she was betrothed – a legal status beyond engagement, but less than marriage), probably not particularly well known beyond her own family. Zechariah was given good news about something he had longed for, hoping against hope. Mary was given disturbing news, with big implications for her and her husband to be. But the real contrast is this. While Zechariah reacted in disbelief, Mary took on board what she was told, and made it clear she was ready to accept it, even although she didn’t understand fully what was going on. Not for the first time, expectations are turned on their head. It’s the educated, professional, religious (proud?) bloke who gets it wrong. It’s the straightforward, if inexperienced but humble girl, that gets it right.

Luke continues to weave the threads. There are two songs, and then two births to come. One birth will be a repeat of another promised child born to a couple who were really too old to have children. It will have its miraculous elements; it will be special, but not unique. The other birth will be a miracle from start to finish, biologically inexplicable, and eternally significant. The characters involved understood some things (like how to make babies), and not others (like how to make particular babies). Z learns to trust what his God tells him, and when he responds properly he will be enabled to sing about “..light to those who sit in darkness..”. Mary, well we know what happens to Mary. 

How much of the big picture, the big pattern, did they understand? Probably not much. But we have the benefit of a master weaver revealing what’s going on. Mind you, even then we struggle to see the pattern at times.