Life in the pandemic XXII: Easter Reflections - Singing in the darkness..

Last year at Easter we were just getting used to lockdown – working from home, one hour’s exercise a day and the rest. It made for an interesting Good Friday reflection on self-isolation. It’s sobering to think that was “Life in the pandemic III” – this is XXII!. There was lot’s we didn’t know then, that we do know now. And yet big questions remain unanswered. Perhaps they are not the same big questions for everyone, although there is likely to be an overlap. We would all like to know things like where the virus came from, how it crossed into the human population, and whether the right things were done at the appropriate time to prevent its spread (although the answer to the last of these seems clear enough). In the meantime, we’ve done what we had to do. Lockdowns, shielding, masks and of course vaccines. We’ve been right to do all we can to protect ourselves, our families and our communities. But at least for me there is that deeper, somewhat nagging question as to what the pandemic “means”. One year on from arguing that such a question is legitimate, I confess that I still have no definitive answer.

Some would argue that this is because such a question is misconceived. That was essentially N.T. Wright’s take on the situation from an avowedly Christian (if probably provocative) perspective. Others might argue that because there’s no one to address such a question of meaning or purpose to, there’s no point posing it at all. If there can be no answer, then there can be no question. And yet it still lurks. And it has struck me throughout the pandemic that even among Christians there has been relatively little discussion of the pandemic’s meaning. Perhaps no one wants to be seen to exploiting a catastrophe and tragedy for polemical purposes. Certainly, I accept that the tone of any such discussion is important. So much suffering should not be met with flip or glib statements that gloss over complexities. Even if legitimate answers can be given, it’s important they’re not given in a hubristic, superior, “told you so” tone. My view, for what it’s worth, remains that there is meaning to be found in these dark months. As answers go, it may not be particularly comforting, and it will still leave lots of subsidiary answers to be ferreted out. But answer, and meaning, there is.

Before coming to what it is, it should be noted that Wright had a wider point to make in his article that is worth pondering. For while he thought looking for the “big” answer to the “big” question, looking for an explanation, was folly, there was a distinctive Christian response to the pandemic. Particularly in the midst of global disaster, surrounded by uncertainty and fear, there is a key response and resource available to the believer. It is found in the concept and practice of lament. Lament is in part an articulation of the confusion and pain we are suffering individually and collectively. Even if at the moment we feel that things are improving with the vaccine roll-out and easing of restrictions, many continue to struggle with long-COVID, and grieving continues for the 120 000 plus who have lost their lives. So there’s lots to lament about. And lament may have undertones of complaint and anger. But it’s more than that. All of us cry, and all of us can complain. But for the Christian who relies on the Living God who is sovereign and loving, there is something else that is the a feature of lament – an active choosing to trust.

By some accounts about a third of the Psalms in the Old Testament are laments. And there is a whole OT book that is a lament, called (not surprisingly) Lamentations. It is no accident that many of the Psalms of lament, almost regardless of where they begin, end with an affirmation of hope in, or praise for, the God to whom they are directed. It is also no accident that right in the middle of Lamentations, in the middle of the third chapter of a five chapter book, the writer tells us that he has hope, and why he has hope (Lam 3:22-27). What he says is neither glib nor vague. His hope is grounded, precise and active. “The Lord is my portion…therefore I will hope in Him” (Lam 3:24). It's not that his questions have been answered now. But he also tells us that even in the midst of confusion, and questions, and pain “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (Lam 3: 26).

Jesus was no stranger to the laments. And of course, we remember that in the midst of the darkness (figurative and literal) of the cross, he took on His lips those words of lament from Psalm 22 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. There’s a question. It must have hung heavily in the air, apparently unanswered. But Peter tells us that Jesus “..continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly” (1 Pet 2:23). Trusting, even in the absence of an answer.

I take Wright’s point. Part of our response to the pandemic is not to forget the suffering of the last year, but to lament, to sing even in the darkness. That said I think, as with the cross, so with the pandemic. There is meaning and there is an answer to the big question. Both involve a curse. The pandemic is a reminder that this is a cursed world, despite our best efforts to insulate ourselves from said curse. Because it is cursed, although there are flashes of beauty, grace, happiness and peace to be found, these tend to be fleeting. But it will not always be so. There will be a reckoning and there needs to be rescue. And that’s why we sing in the darkness of “Good” Friday. Jesus, by taking that very curse on Himself, provides the basis for our rescue. And He laments, so that one day we won’t have to. We will hear an echo, a hint, of the new song that one day will replace all of our laments, when the darkness is displaced by the sunrise. We sing in the darkness of Friday. But Sunday’s coming.  

Life in the pandemic XXI: Back to the future......

Back in September last year I asserted that no-one could predict the future, at least with any certainty or precision. This was at the time when there was lot’s of debate about scientific modelling that was showing new waves of COVID19 cases, with their attendant increases in hospitalisations and deaths. As we come towards the end of another UK lockdown, the models and the predictions flowing from them seem to be a lot less controversial than they were. The prediction that kicked off much of the controversy (500 000 UK deaths if nothing was done) doesn’t seem quite so unbelievable now, given that, even with the heroic efforts of so many, about 126 000 lives have been lost in the UK to the virus. The modelling did its job, informing (although some would still claim misinforming) decisions. But I also alluded to another source of information, providing an important perspective on our future. It’s this I want to return to.

I do so with a degree of trepidation. Despite the occasional claim to the contrary, prediction about really complicated things like society (and much else besides) is a mugs game, and always has been. History is littered with bold and completely unfulfilled predictions. Never mind duff predictions from remote history. Remember Francis Fukuyama’s declarations about the end of history and the triumph of Western liberal democracy in the early 1990s? Trouble is nobody told the new autocrats like Putin, Xi and Erdogan, or for that matter Trump supporters (who can still be found in depressingly large numbers all over the US). On a lighter note, you won’t be surprised to learn that the Star Trek franchise is an even worse guide to the future. Given that the “Eugenics Wars” should have happened in the 1990s (about thirty years after the making of the original series), I’m afraid we can have no confidence that first contact with the Vulcans and the first warp flight will take place only 42 years hence.

Christians also have a bad (and probably deserved) reputation for the same kind of thing, although we arguably have fewer excuses. As to our individual and collective future we should be comfortable entrusting ourselves to the God who knows the future, regardless of whether He provides us with the details or not. And my suspicion is that often He has not, and does not, because it would distort both our perspective and our priorities. There is perhaps a hint of this at the end of John’s Gospel. Jesus has just restored Peter (after Peter’s denial of Him before the crucifixion), and in conversation He then alludes to what will happen to Peter in the future. Peter then asks about John who is nearby, to be told (essentially) to mind his own beeswax – although that’s not a literal translation of the original (see John 21:21,22). Although Jesus could have gone into great detail about both Peter and John’s futures, He’s fairly cryptic about Peter’s, and doesn’t give away anything about John’s.

There is one particular event the precise timing of which Jesus is famously tight-lipped about – the time of His own second advent. Indeed, He goes much further than simply not saying when it will take place. While it might be possible to detect a trajectory towards His return in the shape of events, He says clearly “..concerning the day and hour no one knows” (Matt24:36). The problem was even the Apostles (as well as later Christian “leaders”) had a habit of not hearing what was being said to them. So just before His ascension they enquired about the timing of events, only to be told, as Peter had been told individually, that it was none of their beeswax (again, not a literal translation; Acts 1:7). They had other business to be about. So, of all the things that Christians might be expected to discuss, write about, seek to discern and fall out about, one thing we should not be exercised about is the precise time of His return. However, some of us still aren’t listening.

Perhaps the best known example of Jesus’ own words being ignored in this matter is that of the Millerites, the predecessors of the Seventh Day Adventists (although some would dispute this characterisation). From about 1818 onwards, William Miller prophesied that the world would end and Christ would return “around” 1843. By the 1840’s there were those within the movement prepared to get more precise. As the world staggered into 1844, and then through the early months of 1844, some in the movement, rather than draw the obvious conclusion, sharpened the prediction to 22^nd October 22^nd, 1844. Eventually Miller himself endorsed this date, and the rest, as they say is history. Miller, it turns out, was not an aberration.

Herbert Armstrong was a 1930’s equivalent of the modern TV Evangelist (ie a radio evangelist), who managed to accumulate many of the trappings of his modern successors with whom he overlapped (he died in 1986). Various sources report him predicting Christ’s return in 1936, 1943, the “end of the world war”, 1972 and 1975.  Harold Camping was another serial offender and radio evangelist, who is best known for his prediction that the rapture would occur on 21^st May 2011. To be fair, in 2012 he wrote: "We humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing." He died at the age of 92 in 2013. More recently still we had David Mead’s prediction of the end of the world on September 3^rd, 2017.  You could easily add to this list from those who manage to keep just on the right side of Christian orthodoxy otherwise, to others who are either way over the line, or aren’t interested in any line at all.

History has demonstrated that none of these predictions were made by prophets, because the main qualification of a prophet is that they get it right (Deut 18:22)! And of course all of this is a dangerous distraction from two things that should occupy us. Jesus first advent was long prophesied, and probably just as long doubted, until it was largely forgotten about. When he came, it came as a shock. And His arrival was just the beginning. His exit (that we are about to remember again over Easter) was, and is, also a shocker. Here are truths worth focussing on and thinking about. We have plenty to go on. But the truth is that having delivered on the promises of His first advent, at some point He will deliver on the promise of His second advent. I should not neglect the reality of His promised return; it should have a bearing on both my thinking and my behaviour, it should both encourage and motivate. However, rather than stare at the sky (metaphorically for us, literally for the Apostles), there’s important business to be about here and now. He’ll take care of the rest.

Ignoring my own advice though, I do have one final prediction to make: somewhere, someone is factoring the pandemic into their calculations. Look out for an announcement sometime soon. See what I did there?

Life in the pandemic XX: It feels a bit like 1517….

As well as enjoying box-sets of the West Wing, I spend quite a lot of my time reading history. It was my best subject at school, and I would have taken it further. But in my school bright kids applied to do other stuff at University, so I stumbled into science. However, I was never cured of the history bug. You won’t be too surprised to learn therefore that I’m reading some history at the moment - Alistair McGrath’s “Reformation Thought”.

Over the years I’ve read various accounts of the events, personalities, thinking, politics and impacts of the sixteenth century, famously starting with Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, on the 31st October 1517. Of course, as McGrath point outs, this didn’t happen because Luther woke up that particular morning and on a whim decided that this would be a wizard wheeze. It may have been a discrete event (and not everyone is agreed that it occurred where and when it is said to) but it wasn’t just a discrete event. Many things preceded it, some of which had impacted on Luther himself, and there were many other things influencing him indirectly. All of this undoubtedly shaped his thinking and actions; this is the nature of things. And what followed, what is now termed “the Reformation”, did not then unfold in a vacuum either. There was a lot going on beside and around the theological outrage of one particular German monk, and a lot that then flowed out from his actions. All of this rich tapestry is what we call providence. But we like to identify points in time and places in space, and for the start of the Reformation a Wittenberg church door in 1517 will do. But the before and after turns out, at least to my mind, to be really interesting.

As to before, one wonders how Biblical Christianity survived given the state of the institutional church at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Philosophy was in fine fettle, with rise of humanism in the universities of the day, and renewed interest in the ideas of antiquity, perhaps reaching a high point in the person of Erasmus. Art, including of course church art, was flourishing; this after all was the age of Leonardo. Literacy rates were low, but were climbing, perhaps reaching around 10% by 1500; this doesn’t sound like a lot but it would have an important bearing on the spread and development of reformation ideas. Under the surface, one big change was the arrival and evolution of printing in Western Europe from the East. But the Church in Western Europe was mired in corruption and confusion, and arguably had been for centuries. Somewhere, no doubt, what we might call a Gospel remnant remained; this was certainly Broadbent’s contention, and is the thrust of his famous book (“The Pilgrim Church”). However, this was not at all obvious, at least to mainstream, documented history. In general, the knowledge of what was, and what was not, Bible truth must have been fairly limited, at least as limited as access to Bibles. At this point in history there were no vernacular translations, and the Vulgate, which was available in monasteries and universities, partly made the problem worse by being a relatively poor translation from the original Bible languages into Latin. It also confused the canonical books of the Bible with the (non-canonical) apocrypha (although this was and is a matter of contention). Mind you, as what happened afterwards rather demonstrates, none of this was a particular problem for the God who weaves the tapestry of human events.

The 21^st century seems to be very different from the 16^th. And in so many ways it is. An easy parallel could be drawn between the COVID19 pandemic, and the outbreaks of plague which still occasionally occurred in the time of the reformers. But the plague devastated in ways scarcely conceivable in the modern world. Two years after Luther pinned up his theses, the plague struck the Swiss town of Zurich, where Zwingli, one of the other early reformers, was at work. Between a quarter and third of the population were wiped out, and Zwingli was nearly among their number. Bad as COVID is, it is nowhere near this deadly. However, if in the midst of our pandemic, you had begun to wonder if there was more to life, and wanted to find out what the Scriptures (ie the 66 books of the Bible) had to say on the topic, you’d be spoilt for choice. Even in lockdown, you’d be able to download to a device of your choice the very words of God, from sites like Bible Hub and Bible Gateway and many others beside. Our problem is manifestly not, as in the early 16^th century, the unavailability of the Word of God in our own language. It is freely available. Many of us have a copy somewhere in our homes, some of us have multiple copies, in multiple versions. Yet, paradoxically, although the Bible is widely available, confusion and ignorance about what is taught and revealed in its pages abound. Confusion and ignorance, I would suggest, on a par with 1517. And not only in society, “out there”.

Recent statistics have highlighted utter confusion about what is taught in the Bible, even among those who self-identify with labels like “practicing Christian” and “evangelical”. According to the “State of Theology” survey, in 2018 71% of self-identified UK Christians (74% of those identifying as evangelicals) agreed with the statement “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God”. The 2020 figure for US evangelicals was 56%. What about the statement “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being”? What do you think? I think that Scripture is quite clear on this. But it is a point of contention between orthodox Christian belief and some of the cults and sects. So, your view as to the truth of this statement is neither trivial nor unimportant. It turns out that in the 2018 SoT survey, 69% of UK practicing Christians (55% of evangelicals) agreed with the statement. It is, of course, untrue. The Holy Spirit is a person, with the attributes of a person, and is the third person of the Trinity, standing in personal relationship with other persons (divine and otherwise). There is data on a whole series of other statements on the site that you can peruse at your leisure. Indeed you can take the survey yourself, and compare your own views with the US or UK populations, and various sub-populations.

Now I know one can quibble with the basis of any survey. One can question the wording of some the statements, and the coverage of various topics. This particular survey is done online, and therefore one could also quibble with the nature of the underlying samples. But demoting two out of three persons of the Trinity strikes me as indicating pretty serious confusion. Even amongst church going folk, even those who are attending churches where Scripture is being taught (or is claimed to be taught) confusion and ignorance of what the Bible actually teaches apparently abounds, a bit like the early 16^th Century. But the reason is clearly not because the unavailability of the Bible in the vernacular.

Clarity about what the Bible teaches is both possible and desirable. Answers are to be had. They reside in that Bible which is, mercifully, freely available to us (at least at the moment). But it is apparently a closed book many of us. Mind you, what is apparent is rarely the whole story. One wonders how this part of the tapestry will look when it is complete. 

Life in the pandemic XIX: Don’t follow the Christians…..

Most of the world has a lot more sense than to be interested in the going’s on in “Ravi Zacharias International Ministries” (RZIM for short). We are, after all, living through a global pandemic. And before going further it is also worth noting that there are a number of people who have been seriously damaged by what has been going on, including a number of victims of sexual abuse and exploitation; I have no desire to add to their suffering. That all said, the horrible tale of what we might call the RZIM scandal raises questions that are worth asking and contain lessons that are worth learning.

Ravi Zacharias was well known in the evangelical world (whatever that now is) and beyond as a teacher, author and apologist. After he died in 2020, accusations about his lifestyle and conduct led to an independent investigation. The investigation report was made public last week, and has been widely reported in both the secular (eg here or here) and Christian press (here) and in the blogosphere (eg here). To cut a long story short, what emerges is a picture of a clever and powerful man, who controlled a large and relatively wealthy organization, which he used, along with other means, to exploit individuals for his sexual gratification over a long period. He also used his power to make sure that his reputation was protected, even when this meant further vilification of, and damage to, his victims. He’s not the first prominent Christian to fall spectacularly, and sadly he probably won’t be the last. There are already articles discussing what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the future and no doubt there will be more. I confess I never heard the man speak, and have never read any of his books. But there is an aspect of this affair that caught my attention, and so here’s my tuppence worth.

Early out of the blocks was an article which appeared on The Gospel Coalition site, much of which I agree with. However, it referred to ‘the false assumption that the problem is “celebrity Christianity”'. To be fair the article also recognised that with celebrity came dangers even if that was not what it considered to be the main problem in the RZIM affair. Now, I am emphatically not assuming that "celebrity Christianity" is the problem that lies at the heart of this scandal, but I emphatically am stating that it is a problem, and a big one. And I am definitely asserting that it goes much wider and deeper than one man and one ministry. Here’s a starter for why 'celebrity Christianity' has to be a problem. Not all sinners are celebrities, but all celebrities are sinners, even if some of them have been transformed by the Gospel of grace, and are seeking to help out their fellow sinners in some way or another. This means that like every single one of us they are flawed, and prone to temptation and failure. But of course with celebrity comes a whole heap of new temptations and pressures. And the fall, if and when it comes, damages a lot of people (as it has in this case), and undermines the credibility of the Gospel in the minds of some (although mainly in the minds of those who don’t understand the Gospel). It is also worth pointing out that the scale of the celebrity is not a key issue (although big celebrity can mean big damage). Some people have international celebrity, and for others it's on a much more local scale. The height of the pedestal is not the issue. It’s the fact of the pedestal and who is occupying it. When it is a human being who’s hoisted up there, the results are rarely good.

The central reason this is not a good situation is that Christianity is not about any human being, it’s about a single unique person who is both God and man. You’ll find various characters in the Bible who at different times and in different circumstances became objects of celebrity, or in slightly different terms, worship. It happened to Paul and Barnabas in a town called Lystra (you’ll find the story in Acts 14), but they were quick to correct those who had pedestalized them. In a very different context, John records in Revelation 19 directing his worship at an (undoubtedly impressive) angel, only to be instantly corrected. The point being that neither men (even famous men) nor angels are suitable objects of worship. However, even in His humanity Jesus was different. He accepted worship (most famously perhaps as recorded in John 20:28), because it was (and is) appropriate. And this gets to the point. Respect and honour are fine (as is also argued in the TGC article referenced above). But to a large extent celebrity involves crossing a line. And in some cases it would seem that it reaches the level of idolatry, where in the minds of some a human being usurps the position of God. The thinking of those who do this is flat wrong. And any human being in such a position is also in trouble. 

The reason this is so pernicious, is that it taps into the problem right at the heart of the human condition. The big lie is that there are appropriate recipients for our worship other than the God who made us and who sustains us. Paul lays all of this out in Romans 1. By nature we are all wired up to identify and fixate on God replacements. And it is this that celebrity culture plays into, fuelled and amplified these days by social media.. None of this should be particularly controversial among Christians, particularly those who take their Bible seriously. In part the Gospel rescues us from this, and puts our focus back where it should be. This is one reason why occurrences like the RZIM affair, which occur within a Christian context, are so appalling and damaging – we of all people should all know better.

But apparently we don’t. Some years ago, another Christian celebrity created a ruckus. Mark Driscoll, who at the time was the Pastor of a large church in Seattle called “Mars Hill”, was quoted in an interview as saying: “Let’s just say this: right now, name for me the one young, good Bible teacher that is known across Great Britain. You don’t have one – that’s the problem. There are a bunch of cowards who aren’t telling the truth.” To be fair, he later claimed he had been misquoted, or at least misunderstood, and rowed back slightly from what he had said. It was perhaps the “cowards” bit that caused most offence at the time. But underlying this is the claim that on this side of the pond we didn’t have a crop of celebrity (‘known across Great Britain’) Bible teachers, similar to those so beloved (so it seemed) of Evangelicals in the US. In other words, more folk here, like him there. This is not entirely accurate of course. There are well known Bible teachers in the UK, it's just that they're not well known by Mark Driscoll, or the media. But that's not the point I want to make. The quote emerged in 2012. In 2014 Mark Driscoll resigned from Mars Hill, over a slew of allegations (some of which ended up in legal action). Shortly thereafter, Mars Hill Seattle was dissolved. Considerable damage was done to many lives.

Celebrity in the Church is a problem because it turns Jesus’ teaching on its head, essentially doing to Him what He explicitly sought to do to celebrity among His followers (eg see Mark 10:43 and the surrounding context). Although He was (and is) the proper object of worship, He set the pace among those initial followers when it came to humility. And with His impending death very much on His mind, He modelled exactly what He expected of them (and us if we claim to follow Him) by putting a towel round His waist and washing twelve stinking pairs of feet, including the feet of the one who would shortly betray Him (John 13). He was quite explicit that in doing this He was modelling both an attitude and actions that should mark those who follow Him. It was no pedestal he found Himself on within hours of this incident , it was a cross. His example is the antithesis of celebrity culture and all that goes with it.

As someone once said, the best of men are at best men. So don’t follow men, follow Jesus. Pastors and under-shepherds, don't seek celebrity, seek to follow the example and model of the Great Shepherd.

Life in the Pandemic XVIII: Truth in trouble…?

Truth is having a hard time. This statement of the obvious is worth stating for two reasons. Firstly, it implies that there is something called truth, and that, in my view, is something worth implying and indeed asserting. Given that you probably have a fairly instant and rough idea of what I mean (whether you agree with me or not), suggests that such a statement is neither incoherent or meaningless. The second reason that it’s worth stating is that while obvious, it alludes to the observation that something interesting is going on. On one level truth has always had a hard time. Defining and debating what “it” is, has kept busy both amateur and professional philosophers for thousands of years. And yet, as I’ve noted before, at least as far as public and political life in the West is concerned, we seem to have moved into a new phase of hardship.

In the US, the “big lie” is not yet dead. Nor has it yet been driven from the field by the “big truth”. According to CNN (not an entirely unbiased source of information I grant you), former president Trump has just had his impeachment legal team quit/fired because of a disagreement over strategy. This disagreement, it is claimed, comes about because Trump wants to maintain the fiction that the election was stolen from him. His lawyers apparently thought that this was not a viable strategy for the trial in the Senate that he now faces. It is unclear (at least to me) whether this is just about the narrow strategic issue, or because the lawyers understand that they cannot assert what they know to be manifestly untrue. However, at a minimum this shows a certain level of dedication to the lie on Trump’s part. Again, this could all be a strategy. But it could also be because he actually believes it. We shall probably never know the truth (as it were). Strength of belief, while often admirable, can’t turn a lie into the truth. Trump does still have his supporters, and they number in the tens of millions. This again is not sufficient to make the lie true. It just means that it’s a widely believed lie. Who knows which way this story is going to end. Is a complete partisan detachment from facts and truth simply going to become one more viable path to power with no accountability? Or will the political culture in the US revert to the more normal pattern of a commitment to at least the semblance of prizing and speaking the truth, with suitable wiggle room provided by the careful use of words?  So to this extent, in this particular context, the truth is still in trouble. It remains to be see whether this approach to life, this particular and brazen abuse of truth, will successfully spread to this side of the Atlantic.

Of course, some would maintain that either it already had, or in fact crossed from here to there – the “all politicians are liars” school of thought. But it appears that here there still is an interest in at least seeming to tell the truth. In Scotland, the First Minister, may be in big trouble for misleading the Scottish Parliament. The story is complicated and not particularly edifying. But if it turns out she has said x when in fact y is true, she will be greatly diminished, even if not completely finished. And the x’s and y’s in this case are themselves matters of detail. It’s the misleading, if it is proved, that will do the damage, not the content of the misleading itself. On the pandemic front, there is still liberal quoting of science and evidence, because accurate, truthful information matters, and science is still seen as a way of procuring it. So truth may be fighting back. Of course if it turns out that it’s all just carefully crafted propaganda, then things might turn again. The idea that it somehow doesn't matter has yet to gain much traction.

All of this comes against a background of “truth” not really having had any clear moorings for a while. Plato et al argued for truth that was universal, ideal and unchanging, belonging to a different realm from the one which we inhabit. These ideas were adopted and rejigged by Augustine and others, so that truth found its foundation in God. And indeed the Bible reveals that the basis of all truth is personal, not primarily rational. It is found in the God Who is both true and truth and intimately linked to His truthful, faithful and true person. The clear answer to Pilate’s question (“what is truth?”) was the person standing in front of him; a person who both claimed to be truth (Jn 14:6), and whose enemies recognised as “true” (Matt 22:16).

Things worked fairly well until this foundation was “abolished”. Nietzsche succinctly captured it with his “death of God” ramblings. He called it the most important of recent events “that ‘god is dead’, that the belief in the Christian God has become unworthy of belief..”. The retreat from truth, truth that is true everywhere for all time, gathered pace and in more recent times culminated in some of the more radical proposals of first existentialism and now postmodernism. And how is that all working out? Well apparently it's not just that we won't ever know, but we can't ever know!

Fortunately, Nietzsche’s (probably syphilitic) ramblings were just that. As the apocryphal graffiti on the walls of countless University Philosophy department walls attests, it is in fact Nietzsche who is dead (“signed God”). Dostoyevsky has Ivan Karamazov say that “Without God, everything is permitted” (although for some reason this is disputed in some quarters as false news; but see here). But as He is not dead, truth is still with is, and everything is not permitted. Hence the general idea (although again under assault) that truth is good and lies are bad. Even although such notions are inevitably inconvenient for all of us at some point, for most of us this should actually be a comfort. It is not necessary to walk in confusion, knowing nothing for sure and being able to communicate even less. Even in trouble, we can find and know truth. It’s to be found where it all has been, and always will be.

Life in the Pandemic XVII: Truth, like gravity, cannot forever be denied…

Time for the inevitable post-Christmas return to the pandemic. And while there was light at the end of the tunnel, it has dimmed somewhat. While this is partly down to the virus itself (i.e. with the emergence of new strains), it is also due to “human” factors. There has been a concatenation of politics and pandemic. And chickens, to change the metaphor from tunnels, have been coming home to roost. All this makes for a discomforting experience.

In the US we have had the outworking of four or five years of the lies and myths perpetrated by the outgoing President, his sycophants and his supporters. The biggest and most recent of the lies was of course that the US presidential election had been stolen from him. That big lie was laid on a carefully prepared foundation consisting of smaller lies repeated for months; that foundation rested on the bedrock of years of more lies about hoaxes, fake media, the perceived crimes of others in the Washington swamp (which is now much swampier) and the claimed manifest failures of his predecessors. Inspired by an almost entirely false narrative, the Donald assembled (in the words of Republican Congress-woman Liz Cheney), then roused a crowd to fever pitch and dispatched it to the Capitol. There then ensued mayhem, violence, death and (limited) destruction. The Capitol, of course, survived. The Congress, although interrupted, discharged its final duty of this presidential election cycle and counted and certified the votes of the electoral college that actually elects the US president and vice president. This act confirmed the truth of the situation: Biden won the election, and it wasn’t even particularly close. So US democracy, while somewhat bruised, also survived. Providence, it seems, has delivered large swathes of US evangelicalism from itself, and Donald Trump will have to slink south to his resort in Florida, probably around the 20^th January, the day of the inauguration the he predicted would never happen.

Much of this served to divert attention from what the virus was up to in the US. Apparently largely unaided by the new, more transmissible variant that has been afflicting the UK, infections, hospitalisations and deaths from COVID19 continued to climb; daily new cases of more than 200 000, daily deaths of the order of 4 000, with rates increasing. The credit that the Trump administration deserves for playing its role in the rapid development of vaccines, has been squandered by the spluttering vaccination effort. With the top of the Federal government apparently paralyzed by Trump’s fixation with the election steal that never was, the States and local authorities have struggled with the practicalities of vaccinating a population, a good proportion of which is, again, in denial. The incoming Biden administration hasn’t sought to minimize the scale of the tragedy that is unfolding and will begin its struggle shortly. But the situation is as bad as it is because of lies and denial.

Meanwhile, back here in Blighty, we’ve had a new lockdown to combat our very own new COVID19 variant. Things may now be stabilising or slightly improving. And vaccination efforts do seem to be proceeding well. Not without hiccups and a degree of argument of course. But credit where it’s due, progress is being made. It’s not pandemic lies that are the problem here, it’s the Brexit lies that are beginning to be revealed for what they were. This is evidenced by disrupted supply chains, major alterations in the economics of some type of business, actual (not virtual) barriers to trade, and empty supermarket shelves, particularly in Northern Ireland. All predictable, all predicted, and all dismissed as scaremongering. Of course it is claimed by some that these are just “teething problems”. It is also true that the pandemic has been further complicating matters. Whisper it softly, the pandemic will probably be blamed for some of the economic impact that should be laid at the door of Brexit. But the existence of the new non-tariff checks on goods flowing from GB to NI, forming precisely the type of “border in the Irish sea” that Boris and others claimed would never exist, has nothing to do with the pandemic.

Truth works a bit like gravity. Gravity can be difficult to describe and define. In part this is because it is just a given of our existence. We don’t usually need to give it much thought, and of course, for millennia, no-one did. It can be easily denied, although none of us really has any reason to deny it. But it is as easy as saying “gravity doesn’t exist”. If pushed, a gravity denier could think of situations which appear to provide evidence that it is a made up thing. After all, don’t aeroplanes rather give the lie to this all-pervading, all-encompassing force? Except of course, it turns out, that they don’t. Such a view would be based on ignorance about both gravity and aeroplanes. Ignorance of course, appears to not be a problem these days, and is positively encouraged by some. Sometimes, deniers resort not to denial, but to confusion and contradiction. It might seem that whether gravity does or does not exist isn’t something any of us should get upset about. If I believe it does exist, and you believe that it doesn’t, then provided you’re not hurting me or mine what does it matter? The problem with this is that sooner or later it will matter, and perhaps in a critical situation, like when standing at a precipice, or at the top of a flight of stairs. Gravity will exert its effects, regardless of denials. It is a way things are. There are true and untrue states of affairs; there is truth and the denial of truth – lies.

One can tell lies for a while, and to some advantage. The problem is that eventually truth, like gravity, will assert itself. That’s because it is woven into the fabric of the universe, and indeed the fabric of our minds. The basic notion of truth in absolute sense has been under attack for a surprising long time. One of the more obvious manifestations of this attack currently (other than almost anything Donald Trump claims) is the deconstructionist form of post-modernism. Truth even if it exists, if expressed in words is unknowable. The problem is deconstructionists expect their own words to successfully communicate their meaning of deconstructionism, they expect them to be regarded as true.  That is presumably why they seek to communicate their ideas in dense, indigestible, texts. Either they don’t really believe their own creed or is it self-defeating. In any case truth, while perhaps hard to define, and easy to abuse, as a concept continues to be understood and as a principle continues to operate. We will all find that in the long runs lies will not work, and they won’t satisfy.

Of course the issue of truth and lies goes to the very heart of the human condition. It was truth that was under attack in Eden; the apple was just a means to an end. Paul’s critique in the letter to the Romans is that humanity “..exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator..” (Romans 1:25). The answer was to send “truth” in the form of a person - Jesus (John 14:6). Sometime we are happier settling for the lie, or claiming that it’s all to difficult to work out what truth is. Even with truth literally standing in front of him, Pilot still asked “What is truth”? (John 18:38). Almost as pointless as asking “what is gravity” and trying to live as though it doesn’t apply to you.

Christmas 2020 (II): It was grim………

I’ve always struggled with “Christmas”. Don’t get me wrong, I can indulge in as much chocolate as the next man (more if it is Dairy Milk – apologies for the shameless plug). I enjoy the time off work, particularly after the last nine months of sitting in front of a laptop screen. It was nice to see the dinning room table revert to being a dining table on Christmas day. I do like the opportunity to get together with family and friends, although it is obviously somewhat restricted in current circumstances. But there is no necessary connection between any of these things and the most amazing event ever to occur in the history of this planet, not to say the universe. A big claim. But is seems bigger than it is because it is entirely subverted by what “Christmas” has become. Of course, this suits the culture at large. To my fellow strugglers I want to say that, on reflection, much of what occurred at and around that “first Christmas” is entirely appropriately remembered, meditated on and savoured this Christmas.

It was a short video by N.T. Wright that reminded me that the first Christmas emerges from “a very dark time when everything was pretty miserable”. So if you feel that things are grim now (and the pandemic hasn’t gone away), the true Christmas story, as opposed to the shallow jollity of the popular version, comes as a relief. It is fairly grim too. It is the story of the arrival of a young Jewish couple in the town of Bethlehem almost 2000 years ago. It should have been a happy time for them. Betrothal should have led to a happy marriage, soon followed by the birth of their first child. In that culture at that time, these twin events should have filled both them and their extended family with joy and excitement. And the  context would have enhanced this. The young woman concerned, Mary, had an older cousin named Elisabeth. Even although Elisabeth was well past having children, she had just produced a son. Everyone was cock-a-hoop. In fact the whole thing had caused quite a stir. There was talk of angels, miracles and prophecies and all sorts of things, but facts is facts, and Elisabeth and Zechariah were now parents. But for Mary and her intended (let’s call him Joe) life had become a tad complicated. And not in a good way.

Mary, although only engaged, was found to be pregnant. This was found, as opposed to announced, because Joe was not the father. A scandal was brewing and it was clear what should happen. Joe, for the sake of his own reputation should divorce her, and make a big thing of it. After all, by definition he wasn’t to blame for the situation. To make matters worse from the point of view of many observers, Mary went on about angels and not being pregnant because of any man. You can imagine the sneers. For cousin Elisabeth to talk in this way was bad enough, but at least she and her husband Zechariah were clear that the baby was theirs. For Mary to try and piggyback on this good news was just bad form. Everyone knew fine and well how babies were made. But Mary apparently stuck to her story, and then to cap it all, poor old gullible Joe had started talking about dreams and angels. Again, you can imagine the looks and sneers. You don’t need too much of an imagination to understand the pressure and unpleasantness all this likely caused. In our day and culture it would be bad enough. But in Mary and Joe’s time, grim would hardly cover it.

To social and psychological pressure was then added considerable physical discomfort. With Mary heavily pregnant, they had to travel from Mary’s home in Nazareth, south to Bethlehem. This was a journey of about 70 miles, that would take at least 4 days. While they didn't exactly travel under duress, it was in response to a legal edict. Neither the destination nor the timing were of their own choosing. It was an arduous journey by modern standards, uncomfortable and even dangerous. As well as the constant fear of miscarriage, they were travelling under a cloud of scandal, probably in a caravan with people who knew (and therefore could spread) the “story”. There was a far from warm welcome awaiting them. After all, do you suppose anyone really bought stories of angels and virgin births? Grim. And then there was a birth. The physical circumstances are unknown to us. We don’t know who attended Mary, we don’t know if Joe watched or helped (what was really going through his mind?). We do know that all that was available to put the new baby in was a feeding trough! Hardly an auspicious start. And from there things had a distinctly up and down feel.

Yes it is true that there was a visit from a group of strange, sweaty, but largely respectful shepherds not long after the birth. But, with all due respect, we’re hardly talking royal visit. And neither Joe nor Mary really knew what to make of them. They too had some story of angels, apparently lots of angels. A few weeks later when M & J went up to the temple at Jerusalem as prescribed by Jewish law, they had two encounters with rather sad characters, neither of which were particularly helpful or, at the time, illuminating. They had other things on their mind, like the embarrassment of only being able to afford the “poor people’s” sacrifice for their firstborn. However, one of the ups some months later, when things had begun to settle down, was the visit of well-heeled foreigners who actually brought gifts with them. Some of the gifts were quite valuable. But still, confusing.

Perhaps they thought that now things would calm down. They’d be able to settle, maybe in the civilized south somewhere around Bethlehem, or maybe in a Jerusalem suburb. Mary had recovered from the birth, and the child was healthy and growing well (always a relief in a time when infant and maternal mortality were much higher than they are now). Maybe some of the scandal was beginning to dissipate. But, again, things took a turn for the worse. The local government at the time was controlled by a paranoid brute called Herod. He had got wind of religious speculation that a “messiah” (ie a competitor) had been born. This started a train of events which meant that Joe and his (now) wife Mary, and the baby, had to run further south still, further from home and family, all the way to a foreign country (perhaps funded by the presents they had received). The child wasn’t yet two years old, and he was now both a political and religious refugee. Around the same time Herod sent his army into Bethlehem and the surrounding area to butcher male children aged two and under. Did Mary and Joe hear about this in exile? Was relief tinged with a certain guilt? Their exile only ended after Herod’s death perhaps months later. After another long journey they arrived back in Nazareth. Who knows what sort of welcome they received, if any welcome at all. They probably hoped for a quiet life. They were to be disappointed. Grim.

And yet the real event here is mind-blowing, with big implications for our here and now. A child was born in Bethlehem, in the midst of all that social and practical mayhem. But what only gradually emerged was that this was no ordinary child. It seemed as if He had lived before. Of course He had. Because while a child was born, the Son had been given. This was God becoming something different, the God-Man. What had been promised on the Old Testament, what is revealed in the New, is that there in Bethlehem “the Word became flesh”. It would take Christians about 400 hundred years to get their collective heads around this. They would have to find new concepts to put into words what had happened. But one of the things that can help us in our current circumstances is that it did not happen in a palace or in comfort or in safety. It happened in grubby and grim circumstances. It is in such circumstances that God often works out His purposes.

Never mind light at the end of the tunnel. This is light in the midst of darkness. It is light that we need now.