Eyre Lines

Watching the third episode of the excellent “Wolf Hall” last night, (caution – spoilers below) I was struck by the statement of James Bainham, a barrister and enthusiastic reformer, while cataloging doctrines with which he did not agree, that he found no scriptural justification for the concept of purgatory.

I use “enthusiastic” there with a double meaning: the usual one, and the uncomplimentary meaning understood by Wesley when he described people as “enthusiasts” – too much emotion, too much displayed, and not enough calm reason. Bainham is seen in the episode interrupting a reading of scripture in Latin at as church service by quoting the same text in English from his (banned at the time) copy of Tyndall’s translation. He ends up in jail for the second time in the episode, and is then burned alive.

Ironically, a few years later Thomas Cranmer, seen at this point as supporting Bainham’s arrest, was himself imprisoned and eventually burned for his beliefs, which by then included all those avowed by Bainham. The regime had changed, and Henry VIII’s elder daughter Mary was imprisoning and burning protestants as her father’s and brother’s church had done to Catholics.

I asked myself if I would have had the courage or foolhardiness to do as Bainham did. I not only don’t believe in Purgatory as not being supported by scripture, but I don’t believe in Hell as conventionally portrayed on exactly the same basis. To explain why would take a blog post of its own, but suffice it to say that whatever awaits us after death, everlasting torment is not a possibility I contemplate as being possible.

I do, however, attend a church which is theologically conservative, and I don’t any more keep my mouth firmly sealed about what my views on this and a number of other doctrines on which I’m not exactly orthodox. However, I’m not noisy about it, and certainly wouldn’t interrupt a service. Nonetheless, I keep anticipating a request to go elsewhere, which is as far as I’d expect this church ever to go – a previous church did invite me to leave when under intense pressure I did actually share my views on a point of doctrine.

Then, in one of those coincidences which part of my subconscious wants to tell me is divine action, a link appeared on my facebook feed describing the case of Rev. Carlton Pearson. A pentecostal minister, he found that his study of the Bible came to the same conclusion as mine, that there is no Hell-as-eternal-torment and that everyone, irrespective of beliefs, is saved. (I might mention here that I have some sympathy with the ideas of Jerry Walls as described by Richard Beck, who contemplates a purgatory-like state after death – Richard’s whole series on universal salvation is well worth a read). Rev. Pearson was roundly condemned by the pentecostal and evangelical authorities and lost over 90% of his then large congregation overnight. 500 years ago, I’ve no doubt he’d have been burned too. Of course, they don’t do that these days. Not, at any event, in the first world.

He did, however, lose a lot – and I was heartened to learn that he hadn’t admitted error and returned to the fold, had persevered, and as at the time of that broadcast had a growing congregation again. I have less to lose – I would merely lose some friends and the opportunity to be of service. That, I think, would not be sufficient to make me recant – as Cranmer initially did, though he famously withdrew his recantation on learning that he was not going to be pardoned anyhow.

No, I think I can do no other than state that the concept of a God who would ordain and maintain a place of eternal agony into which you could fall merely for having the wrong intellectual concept is not one which resembles in the slightest the God whom I experience. I think it’s a wrong, damaging and anti-scriptural concept.

But of course, no-one is going to be condemned to flames in this world or the next for thinking otherwise…

This is the text of the eulogy I read at my mother’s funeral service yesterday (19th January 2015), principally for those friends who couldn’t be present and are interested in knowing what I said.

——————————————————————-

I’ve had difficulty writing this, not least in knowing where to start. Joyce – mum – had already lived a third of her life when I was born, so there’s a lot I can’t give personal testimony to. Also, like my late father, she was a hard act to follow; she filled her life with a wide variety of things, and made an impact with most of them, at least until she started slowing down a few years ago.

I can’t ignore her early life, though – after all, some of you shared bits of it. So…

She was brought up all over the place – born near Birmingham, spent time in Scotland and wound up on Tyneside, giving her every opportunity for an appalling accent, which she avoided. She showed early promise in music, and actually had a place to read music at Durham University, but had to forego that when my grandfather became ill, and she had to work. She did that for some years, for the Ministry of Labour (which she largely hated), until my father rescued her, meeting her on a Holiday Fellowship walking holiday and marrying her, which in those days terminated a career in the Civil Service. She actually recorded two records, though not for release, and for many years sang in choirs and gave recitals. She was keen on telling people that I was embarrassed being next to her in church, because I said her voice “stuck out like a sore thumb”. Not the best choice of words… hopefully I can do better today!

She and my father shared Art as a hobby, running the Selby Art Club for over 30 years and organising annual art exhibitions in Selby Abbey. She was pretty good at art, as well, and I know of quite a few people who framed her home-drawn or painted Christmas cards. I particularly liked some of her wood sculptures, made from “found” wood, which exploited the natural decay and grain of the wood to suggest representations.

They were also keen on drama, being members of Selby Concert and Theatrical Society and then the 67 society for many years. Her main outlet for non-musical performance, however, was giving talks to groups around the area about music, art or other topics which engaged her attention.

In her 60s, she decided to repair the lack of a degree, and studied with the Open University, eventually being awarded a BA with honours. She wasn’t prepared to be the odd one out in the family once both dad and myself had a degree!

I should also mention her garden, which was a passion. Sadly, in the last few years this became too difficult, as unsteadiness on her feet stopped her getting out and about, while declining eyesight and hearing robbed her of many of the pleasures of art and music. It was a joy to myself and Nel when, last year, we were able to renew her garden with raised beds which she could actually do some gardening in again, and the picture on the order of service captures her own delight at that on first seeing the new garden.

Some of her talks were about holidays we had taken, and she may have given the impression that she liked to travel. It wasn’t the case – she liked to be in other locations, particularly if there was great art or architecture or magnificent scenery to look at (and sketch), but the snag was the travelling to get there. She never wanted to set off on a journey, and once there didn’t want to set off home either.

Perhaps that’s why she got to be 96? My father and myself used to joke that the way to get her to go somewhere was to make all the arrangements in advance and surprise her by saying “OK, now let’s go…” We might have designed the manner of her passing to suit her – by all accounts, it was as much a surprise to her as it was to us, halfway through a mouthful of her tea, sitting in her favourite chair.

Of course, among all these activities, she brought up a son. For at least  the first 15 years, this was a task which in hindsight I am both extremely grateful for her sticking with and extremely guilty for visiting on her. However, in the last few years, as physical  infirmities started to get the better of her, I am glad to have had the opportunity to repay some of the care and patience she displayed in those early years.

She leaves a huge hole in my heart, and will leave a hole in many others, not least Nel, Alex and Eleanor, but one which is in my case gently filling with good memories. We can, perhaps, share some more of these memories with each other after the service, start to fill the void, and celebrate a long and fruitful life rather than mourning its passing.

 

So, 4 million on the streets in France today. Charlie Hebdo’s 1 million issue will sell out. Absolute stacks of people thus end up supporting a paper which most of them  (well, apart from around 50,000) rightly wouldn’t have had any time for a few days ago.

14 years ago, Al Queda managed to hit the USA on a nerve by attacking the World Trade Centre. I could argue that there followed a major over-reaction which served the interests of Al Quaeda in polarising the world, and bringing all-out conflict closer. Osama was probably delighted beyond measure.

France’s nerve is her intellectuals, her edgy satirists, and they’ve been attacked now. OK, so I’m a cynic, but I fancy the reaction so far may please the terrorist puppet-masters in Syria (or Yemen, or wherever) thoroughly. Please let it stop at a mass demonstration and a sellout mega-issue of this rag, and not escalate further.

That is my final prayer for today. Peace. Salaam. Shalom. Paix. Ca suffit, hein?

I’ve been tinkering with this post for a couple of months, thinking that it was going to go somewhere a little different from where this cut-down version ends. However, in the light of the “Charlie Hebdo” massacre, it seems to me that I need to post it, as in part it goes to what I see the root of why events like that occur.

I don’t much like the content of Charlie Hebdo. I don’t find the comedy of abuse funny these days, and they set their stall out to abuse people, and the more people were made visibly uncomfortable by that, the more Charb and Cabu used to skewer them. While the paper is something of an equal opportunity abuser, it’s racist, sexist and frequently – almost always – obscene, and I wouldn’t have bought a copy. However, it is not reasonable to muzzle them just because they abuse people, systems or religions, and totally unacceptable for them to be killed for doing it.

I continue this thinking after my previous writing.

———————————————-

In a previous post I made a point of the confession “Jesus is Lord”. It does seem to me in the age of democracy that we tend to miss some of the implications of this confession, that a Lord (or King, Emperor, Caesar) is representative of the whole group of his followers (subjects, vassals) individually and collectively. What is done by or to the Lord is done by or to the entirety of his followers in a way which, while strictly speaking figurative, is treated as effectively literal.

This can be seen in nooks and crannies of our system here, as I live in a monarchy. Where in the States the title of a criminal case will be “People –v- X”, in England it is “Regina-v- X”, i.e. the Queen against X. As an example, many years ago, I was present in a court, prosecuting a case of noise nuisance, when the defendant pulled a knife and threatened the judge. This was technically in law an offence of treason. The judge was a direct representative of the Queen (in the secondary kingly function of arbiter of the law) and a threat against him was thus equivalent to a threat against the Queen herself; further, as the Queen represents the nation, it was a threat against the People as a whole. (I would mention that rather than acting in any way heroically, I hid underneath the advocates table until the man had been disarmed.)

It is, I think, also seen in the concept of blasphemy. As Christianity seems to have become more relaxed about this in recent times, let me use the example of the Danish cartoons lampooning Mohammed. In the same way as with my knife-wielding defendant, an insult against the Prophet (who is, in Islam, a direct representative of God) is equally an insult against all of God’s followers, namely every Muslim – and that on a personal basis, although actually more serious than would be a mere personal insult.

Of course, in a much more prosaic way, this can also be seen in the actions of a football supporter who comes away from a match in which his team has been successful saying “we won”. The supporter has, in truth, done little if anything to contribute to the win, but feels uplifted and strengthened by the actions of the team members who have actually played and won.

In 1 Cor. 15, Paul sees Jesus as “the second Adam” and as such representing not merely the people of Israel, but humanity as a whole, by analogy to Adam’s earlier representative status for humanity as a whole (I do not, of course, view Adam as an historical character but merely as representative of humanity as a whole, whereas I do view Jesus as historical; this is a view which is controversial with some). I would argue strongly that the sayings attributed to Jesus in the latter part of Matt. 25 (31-46) are also seeing Jesus as representative and as being represented, in that case by any individual human being. What you do to (or for) the least of these, you do to (or for) Jesus.

Jesus’ faithfulness unto death is then seen by Paul in Romans and Galatians as justifying the whole of mankind. Although Paul does not directly mention the Maccabean martyrs (see Macc. 2 and 4), his use of the term atonement must, I think, raise that parallel; in the apocryphal Maccabees 2 and the extra-canonical Maccabees 4, the faithfulness of the Maccabean martyrs in resisting the demands of the Hellenic overlords to do acts contrary to their religious beliefs (and thus being put to death) is seen as an “atoning sacrifice”, by which all Jews may benefit.

Similarly, in Paul, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice “rights” humanity with God. Arguably, within this logic, no particular act of any individual is required in order to benefit from this representative self-sacrifice, however, action may well be required in order to remain within the group identified as followers of Jesus (such as confessing that Jesus is Lord), just as the Maccabean martyrs’ self sacrifice was not seen as benefiting heretics by later rabbis.

It is probably worth stressing here that the representative atonement of the Maccabees was taken as effective communally, rather than individually; it was atonement in that case for the nation of Israel. It may therefore be necessary for the whole of the nation (and not just each person taken as an individual) to abide in “right relationship” with the nation as a whole, interpreted as faithfulness to the Law in the case of Israel; this is effectively the “covenantal nomism” of the New Perspective on Paul, in which the covenant is freely given by God prior to the giving of instructions for living (and in the case of Abraham, for marking himself and his dependents as being committed to God via circumcision). In order then to remain in good stead within the body of people (in this case Israel, or the descendants of Abraham) and so to benefit from the covenant, the Law has to be followed. Absent particular acts of ‘atoning’ heroism such as that of the Maccabees (which is in fact the only example I can clearly identify as a representative act which confers a benefit), the prophetic history of Israel demonstrates that it is a communal faithfulness which is looked for rather than any individual following of the Law. Whether it is then truly justifiable to take any atoning sacrifice as having individual effect in the absence of communal faithfulness would seem a moot point.

However, looking at the passage above from Matt. 25, I would argue that the better way to view any representative connection is as operating individually AND collectively, as Jesus there clearly sees it as operating individually. Elsewhere, he clearly sees the actions of certain individuals as having the opposite effect, as in the speech against the Pharisees in Matt. 23:1-39 followed by the prediction of the destruction of the Temple in Matt. 24:1-2 which ends that speech. While in the historical Hebrew scriptures it is in general the actions of leaders which are held against Israel, here it is the actions of individuals, albeit a group of individuals.

Perhaps, however, the passage in Matt. 25 should be regarded as representative of whether the individuals in question were acting in accordance with the “new covenant” (Heb. 8:7-13, referencing Jer. 31:31-34), and thereby gaining benefit from identification with Jesus? Matt. 7:21-23 would be a supporting text here.

How about the opposite effect, which I mentioned above? Well, the mechanism of taking communal and personal pride (and, arguably, such concepts as justification and sanctification) from the positive achievements of our leader is well matched by the mechanism of being diminished, embarrassed and made to feel guilt or shame at their negative actions. We require our leaders to be perfect in every respect, otherwise their “feet of clay” rebound on us. The Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) are full of examples where the iniquity of a few rebounds on the many; the sin of Achan in Joshua 7:1-26, David’s census in 2 Sam 24 and the fate of sympathizers with (and the family of) Korah in Num 16:1-17:13 are examples, but the whole history contained in Joshua, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles is a litany of collective responsibility of Israel for its leaders, and the collective responsibility of neighbouring peoples (such as the Amalekites and Edomites) for actions taken either by their leaders or small groups from among them.

It can hardly be thought, for instance, that the attempted gang rape of Genesis 19:4-5 actually involved the whole male population, which is what the text indicates (what, for instance, of those under the age of puberty?) or that it was a matter of national policy, but Sodom and Gomorrah were said as a result to be destroyed – and not merely the male population but “all the people”. The text clearly indicates that the whole people were involved because, in the concept of collective responsibility, they all were, whether they lifted a finger or not.

This is not merely an historical tendency. Very many among us are currently inclined to ascribe to the whole religion of Islam the actions of relatively few hot-headed fundamentalists (relatively few, at least, in comparison to the billion Muslims currently alive). We feel shame when someone we regard as one of “our” group of any kind is shown to have done something heinous (though a very common reaction is to distance ourselves from them, even if we can avoid an attempt to minimize or excuse their actions). I am, for instance, embarrassed when some lawyer (or politician) is shown to conform to the stereotype of a lying, grasping, conscienceless individual, and for many years was reluctant to accept the label “Christian”, being aware of a long history of persecution by Christians (and often by entire Christian churches) of groups such as the Jews or native peoples in the Americas or Africa. I am still struck with a sense of collective shame when Christians persecute homosexuals or fail to accord equality to women.

There are in the Old Testament a number of hair-raising stories about dealing with the transgressions of others which might, in the thinking of the OT, affect me – and this article deals with a couple of them. In that thinking, it is not merely the impossibility of perfection in loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself (in a proactive way) which is problematic, it’s also the actions of every other person who is a member of a group with which you identify.

Clearly, it is not merely the actions of our leaders which can cause us shame or guilt, and in times past (for some, not so much past) would found a feeling that God would rightly punish us for the sins of our co-religionists, countrymen or relatives. “Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against you, and will draw forth my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from you both righteous and wicked” (Ez. 21:3). The prophet goes on in the next chapter to predict a wholesale destruction of Israel, based on the transgressions of some.

And yet, three chapters earlier, Ezekiel issues a lengthy statement that denies collective responsibility for parents and children alike, and for any past transgressions, dependent only on repentance (Ez. 18 in total, though the nub of it can be seen in the first verses). Is there, perhaps, a conflict here, within the sayings of one prophet?

Clearly there is. But then, there is a tension between our feelings of elation when our representatives do something good (winning a match, ruling wisely, doing something heroic) and when they or others who are “one of us” do something bad (losing badly, ruling disastrously, acting in a bigoted, xenophobic, racist or sexist manner). Where is the balance, or, indeed, is there a balance?

For me, this does not throw up the difficulty of potential inconsistency in the actions of God. I do not see God as judgmental and severe, but as loving and accepting. This is definitely a “new testament” attitude (though the NT is not univocal in proclaiming a non-judgmental God), but also appears in places among the Hebrew prophets, as in Ezekiel 18, Hosea 6:6 and several other places.

If the tension is not within God, then is it within us? I would suggest that it is; whatever the reality of the thinking of God (and there I pray in aid Isaiah 55:8 – his thoughts are not our thoughts – or at the least “it’s above my pay grade”) as I said, it is a psychological, experiential reality for us. It’s the way we’re made, the way we’ve evolved. We do bask in the glory of our leaders (or cringe at their feet of clay) and we do feel embarrassed at the actions of others in whatever group we identify with, or uplifted when one of them risks life and limb to pull a child from a burning building.

Comdemnation thus comes to all of us through our association with (for some Christian examples) the Fourth Crusade or the antics of Westborough Baptist Church picketing military funerals in the USA, but exaltation equally comes through our association with (for example) Pope Francis or in a non-religious way from the local to me unknowns, part of “my” community, who recently rushed to a burning house to save some children from the flames instead of safely keeping their distance. Which of these prevails is at least in part a function of our psychology.

But our psychology can be changed.

It is, of course, possible to reduce the scope of those we identify with until it is a very small and very controlled circle. “I didn’t vote for him”, or “they’re foreigners, what can you expect?” or “he can’t be a true Christian” are all moves in that direction. Perhaps the ultimate end of this move is the rampant individualism seen in (for instance) Margaret Thatcher, Niezsche and Ayn Rand, for whom links to others are weaknesses rather than something to be acknowledged and even treasured.

However, if we are to regard Christ as the head of the body of which we form part (Col. 1:18), he is our representative, and as the second Adam, the representative of all humanity. We cannot escape being members of the group of all Christians, and even the group of all humanity (with the collective responsibility that entails) and remain followers of Christ. In my case, having a mystical, panentheistic consciousness, it is in any event impossible for me so to wall myself off from others in order not to be embarrassed by their actions. Any boundaries are not real, and cannot be maintained for long. As John Donne wrote: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The question has to be how much weight we place on which action, the negative and the positive alike. Before I get to Paul, let’s look at the template he must have been referring to in his talk of atonement, that of the Maccabean martyrs. Seven brothers, their mother and their teacher are in this story (from 2 and 4 Maccabees) killed by the Seleucid Greek imperial rulers for refusing to adopt elements of Greek religion; their self-sacrificial martyrdom is there seen as atoning for the whole of Israel. Clearly, a self-sacrifice which result in death is experienced as having a massive effect compared with the transgressions of individual members of Israel, sufficient to cover over (the original impact of the term translated “atonement”) a plethora of failings and evil-doings.

Thus, when Paul is talking of Jesus’ death on the cross as an atoning sacrifice, he is drawing on the same level of atoning efficacy, but increased. The Maccabean martyrs are ordinary Israelites, whereas Paul sees Jesus at the least as the principal agent of God (and presumably as the kingly messiah as well). The self sacrifice of a particularly exalted leader has an impact beyond that of even 9 common people, and while I do not think that Paul actually thought of Jesus as one member of the trinity (this was a theological development which, to my mind, postdated even the Fourth Gospel, though perhaps not some of the pseudo-Pauline epistles), Paul saw it as efficacious for all people in all ages. How much more so when in terms of later theology it was (and is) seen as God sacrificing himself. Not so much “God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son…” but more “he sent himself to be crucified”.

———————————————

Now in the news we have 10 journalists, including Charb and Cabu, and three policemen who died. We have at least four terrorists, three of whom are now dead. We have a number of dead hostages with no apparent connection with Charlie or the police, though they were shopping in a Jewish supermarket…

We have the opportunity of feeling identification with any or all of these. Vast numbers of people have instantly fixed on the journalists, with the tag “Je suis Charlie” – after all, they are the most obvious martyrs. As I am, like them, a white male straight middle class European intellectual, they’re the obvious choice for me and a whole load of my liberal-minded friends.

An increasing number of those are, however, realising that in identifying with Charlie Hebdo, they are also identifying with abuse, racism, sexism and a host of other politically incorrect attitudes. After all, that is what Charlie Hebdo stands for – as its masthead occasionally says, irresponsible journalism. Thus we have a number of “Je suis Ahmed” tags, referring to the Muslim policeman who died protecting Charlie Hebdo despite the fact that it attacked his religion and ethnicity on a weekly basis in the most offensive terms.

He’s clearly a martyr who is untarnished, at least until the press dig into his background, assuming they bother. He’s also a Muslim, so we can show that we’re not racially or ethnically biased. My mind turns to the insistence in the New Testament that Jesus was spotless, without sin, despite the fact that I can identify a number of episodes in which criticism could be levelled – violence in the cleansing of the Temple, for instance, even if we do not believe the polemic attributed to him in the Fourth Gospel against “the Jews” and which has founded 2000 years of antisemitic atrocities is authentically his.

I am, however, a panentheist. I am forced to identify with all the players in the tragedy which has unfolded over France in the last few days, including the terrorists. Matt. 25:40 compels me to think even of them as being representative of Jesus, my lord and representative, even if my base panentheistic experience of existence didn’t. I think the piece on representation above gives some clues as to one place from which their actions have arisen – the Prophet represents them, and Charlie has been merciless with the Prophet over some considerable time.

And they too thought that they were being martyrs. Not a martyrdom I am particularly happy to accept, but with John Donne, I am involved with humanity and cannot avoid it. They also no doubt saw themselves as being at war with the West.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis tous ces gens. Je suis un être humain.

 

Jesus is presented throughout the gospels as a healer, but some of his most controversial healings (such as those in Luke 5:20 and Luke 7:48) involve him stating that someone’s sins are forgiven.

Now, my scientific rationalist head tells me that this is a wonderful way of healing an illness which is psychosomatic. As can be seen in, for instance, John 9:3, the thinking of the day, at least among the religious conservatives, was that any ailment was a divine punishment for some transgression, either of the individual or his forbears. This can be seen at length in the book of Job, where Job’s friends go to great lengths to try to work out how Job absolutely must have deserved all the ills with which he was being showered; of course, in the last portion of the book God is seen very explicitly to tell his friends that they are mistaken. However, Job goes against the grain of much of the Hebrew scriptures (as do Ezekiel 18  and substantial portions of Ecclesiastes, for instance Ecc. 8:14 in which the wicked prosper and the good suffer). It is hardly surprising that some of the conservatives of the day ignored these few scriptures in favour of a philosophy whereby you got only what you deserved.

Thus, if an illness were to some extent psychosomatic, with the sufferer convinced that they were being punished for some sin, being told their sins were forgiven could produce an immediate cure. At least, it could if it were believed. Jesus must have spoken with colossal authority and charisma in order for this to work.

Of course, we have little difficulty in accepting that Jesus must have spoken in just this manner, and can remember that he was said not to have performed healings when he went home to Nazareth (Mark 6:4) – it is always more difficult speaking with authority to people who remember you as a child!

However, this was met with howls of protest from the religious conservatives (labelled Scribes and Pharisees in the gospels, although it would be a mistake to consider that this conservative attitude actually typified the Pharisees of the day, still less those of later times), ostensibly because only God had the power to forgive sins. To my mind, however, the protest stemmed from the privilege of the conservatives, who were well off and respected, and saw their position as justified by their exemplary character. What could be more threatening to them than to be told that their wealth and social position was not justified by relieving the suffering of those on whom they smugly looked down?

And yet, this was a thread running through Jesus’ entire ministry. The first were to be last and the last first, the preferred companions were publicans and sinners, even the occasional prostitute or adultress, who were more worthy of heaven than the overtly religious.

Christian theology has tried repeatedly to get a grip on this principle, and has regularly failed. Conventionally, we are justified through faith alone rather than works (although James reminds us that faith without works is dead), but for the most part this has come to mean that we much have the correct intellectual appreciation of how we are, in fact, smugly justified (i.e. we must adhere to a creed or another statement of faith). And, of course, our works show that for all to appreciate…

Which leads me to contemplating the case of Rob Bell. Rob is a hugely gifted communicator, who became a “star” by founding and growing to mecachurch status the Mars Hill congregation in Grandville, Michigan, being much sought after as a visiting preacher and teacher. His “Covered in the Dust of the Rabbi” talk illustrates this . He could preach a two hour sermon to me any day (as reference to the videos I link to here and below indicates he’s very able at), and I doubt I’d look at my watch once. I pointed a Jewish friend of mine at that talk a while ago, and he responded with “boy, is he charismatic!”. Granted, he is not really a theologian, and as I agreed with my friend, the image he paints in that talk is almost certainly not authentic to the period in which Jesus was teaching, as the system of pupils of Rabbis didn’t really develop in the form he talks of until significantly later, so far as documents can reveal. However, the message of the talk is not in the slightest impaired by the fact that it probably isn’t actually historically accurate.

Incidentally, it’s probably worth pointing out that Rob may well be naturally gifted and turbo-charged by the Holy Spirit, but he also puts a huge amount of work into his craft, as another set of videos shows.

Over the last two or three years, however, Rob has been regularly vilified by the evangelical establishment for whom he was once a shining star. The reason, originally, was his book “Love Wins”, in which he has the temerity to suggest that God might actually be powerful and loving enough to not condemn significant numbers of people to endless torment. (I don’t necessarily recommend the book for reading, as it isn’t theologically rigorous and reads like one of Rob’s talks – it would be better read aloud – but there is an audiobook).

Since then, he’s compounded the felony by suggesting that homosexuality is not, in fact, a sin over and above all other sins (which is a picture I tend to get from many evangelical commentators) but an expression of one person’s love for another which should be at the very least accepted. This too is beyond the pale, as we clearly need a new category of publicans and sinners on whom to look down.

This regular condemnation has recently had a resurgence, as Rob now has a prime-time programme on Oprah’s TV network in the
States. As the link I include indicates, whereas most evangelical preachers would cut off their left arm for such an opportunity in (relatively) mainstream TV, rather than the “preaching to the choir” outlets of the regular televangelists, the fact that it is Rob who is doing this is just unacceptable.

I think I see a parallel here (although Rob would probably be uncomfortable at favourable comparison with Jesus). “Love Wins” is actually saying that everyone’s sins will be forgiven (if, indeed, they aren’t already), and his stance on homosexuality is reminiscent of Jesus’ in relation to (for instance) tax collectors. The religious conservatives are again up in arms when a charismatic and authoritative preacher suggests that God’s grace, God’s forgiveness, extends to everyone, and not just the elect few. In this case the complaints are from the increasingly Calvinistic spokesmen for “evangelistic Christianity” rather than the gospel’s “Scribes and Pharisees”.

The Pharisees, it seems, will always be with us, much like the poor.

Regular readers of my blog, of whom I now seem to have quite a few, will have noticed that posts have been few and far between lately.
I’m sorry. “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans” as John Lennon memorably said, and in my case a whole chunk of life has got in the way. I managed to finish one post on the day I started writing this, which had been largely written for about a month. There are some others part written, but when they’ll get finished I don’t currently know.

Just under 40 years ago now, I met a wonderful girl, Nel, with whom I fell in love. We have just had our 34th wedding anniversary (we were engaged for 5 years, as we were for most of that period separated by study and by work). “The two shall become one” (Mark 10:8), and we have grown to finish each others sentences and to know by some probably perfectly natural but seemingly supernatural sense what the others mood is, and sometimes what they are thinking. Maybe Douglas Hofstadter’s “strange loops” about which I wrote recently have something to do with that; maybe I now have a rudimentary “Nel” operating within my mind. That would mean that my SR, EC, GF division (see “About”) is not the whole story of my internal architecture – but that’s an aside.

Seven years ago she had a crisis, a mental health crisis. We had had plenty of more physical crises over the preceding few years (and some of those resulted in my own PTSD, depression, anxiety and addiction, though the addiction and PTSD are no longer of significance and the depression has quite remarkably been lifted during the last 18 months), but this was an internal matter – and it was put down at the time to reactive depression and anxiety. She was in hospital for quite a while that first time, and has been back more times since than I can count without referring to diaries. However, not within the last two and a half years.

I have, however, known that all was not right, and that this was not a clear movement toward a complete recovery. In particular, her mother died a little over two years ago, and we have still not been able to finalise her estate due to the need to sell a bungalow in a bad housing market. “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick” (Prov. 13:12), and on several occasions I have persuaded her to go back to her doctor and tell him that her state of mind was, frankly, dangerous. Up to a little over three weeks ago, the result was to be told that she was reacting to stressful circumstances and that things would get better. Hope, in other words, kept getting deferred through various proposed purchasers dropping out and the diminution of a fund on which several beneficiaries were depending, including her. Houses cost money to maintain, and our ideas of value are shrinking at the same time…

Then her GP took her seriously and prescribed antidepressants for the first time in years and got community mental health services involved, and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief. And let go…

So, when the Intensive Home Treatment team made their new daily appointment for the next Tuesday and then cancelled at short notice on the basis that she was seeming somewhat better, she had no-one to catch her any more. An overdose followed the next afternoon, and via our local hospital she ended up at a private hospital specialising in psychological and psychiatric medicine – put there because the local NHS had no beds available in area. It was a pain, as it was pushing two hours by road to get there or back, but it was safe.

Over the ensuing two weeks, it became clear that the Priory Hospital, Middleton St. George was a superior establishment. They had an assessment completed within days, and a programme of psychology, occupational health and psychiatry in place. They also made a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, with an indication that this diagnosis might be longstanding (in fact, although in the past a therapy has been suggested which is tailored to BPD, we have not previously been told that this is her diagnosis, and “reactive” has always been part of the wording used). Borderline, it would appear, can be made significantly worse by traumatic events and stress. It also wonderfully well describes Nel’s symptoms.

On Thursday evening, however, the NHS beds manager made a decision to move her back to our local psych hospital, or which we have long experience and about which we have previously needed to complain. Suffice it to say that neither of us had any confidence in the staff, treament availabilities or the systems there. This was done at 10 minutes notice and without consultation, against Nel’s firm expressed wish for this not to happen.

Needless to say, she arrived at Bootham substantially distraught. On the basis that she declared her lack of trust of Bootham, said she wanted to go home and would not guarantee her safety if she was discharged, the hospital took steps to prevent this and committed her, initially under S.5.2 and then under S.2 of the Mental Health Act. She therefore stopped being a voluntary patient, at least for the next 28 days or until the powers that be change their view of her safety if discharged.

I would note that if I had been perchance in Bootham I would probably have said I didn’t trust them, wanted to go home and would not be able to guarantee my safety if discharged, although if a different question were asked, I would say that the chances of me injuring myself were extremely low… at least for today, as all I will normally promise on such matters is “just for today”.

There has been a difference between this time and the previous ones, and that is that up to 18 months ago, I was suffering from severe depression. A sufficient degree of depression, indeed, that I could not feel much emotion at all, if any – this is well described in Hyperbole and a half’s second depression account, which I strongly recommend to anyone who has not themselves suffered this level of depression and wants to understand it. This time, I was feeling emotions just fine, and the whole thing has hit me like a train. There is an advantage to being at a rock bottom – you can’t fall any further; the only way is up…

That’s where I left this post, part completed, six weeks ago. Nel has now been out of hospital for four weeks, and any thoughts I might have had that things would be significantly easier with her at home have disintegrated. I was at the time trying to find positives to say about the situation – and not along the lines of “this fulfills a greater purpose so it’s OK”, but on the basis that if I could find a purpose, a way of turning this to the good, that would redeem the experience at least somewhat. I find “this fulfills a greater purpose” to be too much like the sayings of Job’s comforters (which God disavowed) to regard this as an objective truth, and certainly it is something I would never say to someone in a crisis, but to find my own way forward to a positive outcome is a different matter.

Initially, the purpose I found was that in complaining to Bootham, I might improve things for other people in the future; I did that, and after a very productive exchange, they have changed their systems for moving people around in a way which should minimise the chance of such a traumatic move for anyone else in the future. Also, it turned out that Bootham has changed radically for the better, and Nel had a named nurse with considerable experience with BPD who worked with her for a couple of weeks almost daily. A week after that, Nel was home with me.

There is now a real prospect that, with this diagnosis, she will move onto a course of therapy which actually has a track record of working with BPD patients. Not, however, just yet, as a period of weekly visits for an hour or so each intervenes – and in the interim, I’m left as “main carer”. Which is fine in one sense, as I take seriously the “in sickness” part of my marriage vow, and feel it eminently right that I should be doing this.

All in all, there is a major positive here. We have a clear way forward, which has been lacking for the last seven years (since Nel was first in hospital). So “all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well” as Julian of Norwich put it.

Unfortunately, though, I’m scared. First of all, I’m scared that it will happen again, Nel will take another overdose and at best there will be another hospital admission, at worst she’ll miscalculate and will seriously, perhaps fatally, damage herself. Or that we’ll never get to a viable course of treatment, or that we will, and it won’t work. I can tell myself to live in the present, not the imagined future, all I like, but can’t shake the emotion. I’m also scared that I’ll fall back into the depths of the depression which was my life for over 6 years. As a result, I find it difficult to shake off a state of hyper-vigilance, which is at the very least exhausting.

In the words of Frank Herbert (probably borrowed) “fear is the mind-killer”. EC (emotional Chris) is terrified, and occasionally panicked. SR (rational Chris) can rationalise things all he likes, but this does not console EC. I need both to be singing from the same hymn sheet in order to function well, and at the moment they aren’t. It is proving very difficult to come up with ideas for posts, and even more difficult to stay on message long enough to finish them.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Which, in the long version, continues “living one day at a time”. Sometimes a day is too long.

But just for this hour, I can finish off this post, and look for the next right thing to do. Which, as it turns out, is “make lunch”.

Some while ago, I wrote what was originally a sermon and which became a blog post putting forward a mystical interpretation of the concept of the “Kingdom of God”.  That was, let’s face it, the way in which I had arrived at a conception of the Kingdom.

Now I still think that where Paul talked about being “in Christ” or being “filled with the Spirit”, Jesus talked about “entering the Kingdom”. Different ways of talking about it, but essentially the same thing. However, I don’t think that a mystical state which is thrust on some (me, for instance, at least the first time, or, perhaps, Paul) or is attained by a huge investment of contemplation and other practices (me on later occasions, or, say, Meister Eckhart) is remotely all that is contained in this very major concept of the gospels.

Some years ago, when on retreat in the Yorkshire Dales, I took the opportunity of walks in the very scenic countryside to process what I had been learning. I spent a good part of these walks in walking prayer, or walking contemplation, or walking mindfulness – but that isn’t the point here.

One day I was on such a walk, walking down a typical Dales back road flanked by dry-stone walls mingled with hedges and bits of fencing (but always looking like a considerable barrier) when I passed a number of sheep contentedly munching on the grass verge. There were other sheep in the field beyond, but I couldn’t see any way in which the roadside sheep could have scaled or penetrated the wall-hedge-fence combination. I walked on, and about half a mile on found a farmer rounding up some more sheep on the verge there. I greeted him and said that I’d passed some more sheep about half a mile back, enquiring if they were possibly his as well – apparently they were, and he thanked me.

I commented that I couldn’t see how they’d managed to get out of the field and onto the road, and he grinned. He said it all depended on what the sheep thought – he could, on occasion, string a single piece of twine across a field, and none of the sheep would cross it, because, he thought, they didn’t think they could. On the other hand, if they saw some toothsome looking grass on the other side of a wall and thought they could get to it, nothing would stop them. They became ovine Houdinis, and could escape from anything. He reckoned that he stood little chance of working out where they’d done it apart, perhaps, from finding a lot of wool stuck in the hedge, between stones or on barbed wire, and even then it often wasn’t obvious how they’d actually managed to scramble over or through. Sheep, he said, aren’t really built either for climbing or for wiggling through small holes, but they did it anyhow. If they thought they could do it, they could do it, just as if they thought they couldn’t do it, they wouldn’t even try.

I’m inclined to think that humans work in much the same way (and it seems that Jesus, who talked of his “sheep” regularly, may have agreed), and so are the host of self-help guides you can buy – the power of positive thinking is at the root of most of them. Granted, the farmer was exaggerating (it is certainly possible to build a sheep-proof dry stone wall), but then, so are the self-help guides. An exaggeration for effect does not, however, invalidate the basic principle (something which a number of atheist critics of biblical accounts could do well to remember).

It seems from the accounts in Acts and at least one external comment (“How these Christians love each other!”) that the early Christians were living as if the Kingdom was a reality among them, according to the principles which Jesus had set down. Certainly loving one another, from the accounts, but also contributing massively into the common pot available for sustaining all. That “all” was not always restricted to Christians, either; they also loved and supported their non-Christian neighbours. It was perhaps a relatively short-lived experiment; there’s some evidence in Paul taking subscriptions to support Christians in Jerusalem, for instance, that “sell all you have and follow me” can lead to a degree of financial chaos if enough people follow it at the same time. I don’t know, but perhaps Jesus was exaggerating for effect there? Certainly by the time Christianity became the religion of empire under Constantine (and in my opinion sold its birthright for a mess of political power in the process), this was no longer characteristic. However, it’s an idea which keeps cropping up, particularly in Anabaptist strains of Christianity, and there are many smallish pockets of Christians trying something like this experiment around today.

I anticipate criticism on the basis that this is an unrealistic, idealistic way to live; the fact that there is some evidence (from Paul’s subscription) that the Jerusalem Christians had got themselves into a parlous state, and that may well have been as a result of collectively giving away more than would enable them to sustain themselves. I also anticipate criticism on the basis that empires (or modern nation states) are necessary to produce a civil society, and I may be seen as too critical of empire.

Both these criticisms have some merit if you consider the position as an “all or nothing” one. For a few people, I grant, it can be “all or nothing”; most societies can sustain a number of people living without possessions and “taking no thought for tomorrow” (Matt. 6:34), where it would be impractical for all to do so; similarly all societies have their dissidents (and a good thing it is that they do) but a society entirely composed of dissidents would fail. Unless, that is, everyone without exception were doing this, in which case there is at least a hope that it might be feasible – after all, that is Jesus’ vision.

It is not, however, an “all or nothing” situation. It is perfectly possible to live with “one foot in the kingdom of man, one foot in the kingdom of heaven” without following to the letter Jesus’ encouragement in Matt. 19:21. The history of the early church shows very many people who provided the use of their homes, money and sometimes leadership without completely abandoning their occupations or sources of income, and without them it is hard to see how the church would have spread.

Similarly, we can accept that the market economy, empires and kingdoms are for the time being necessary, even perhaps mandated by God according to Paul (Romans 13:1-7) so long as, with Walter Wink, we observe that they are fallen, among the powers and principalities which Paul also rails against (Eph. 6:12). Fallen and in need of redemption, so anything we do to bring them more into harmony with the vision of the Kingdom of God is a missional act.

These criticisms stem to a great extent from the fact that individually we can do very little to influence the market economy and the nation state. Few people have the power to do that, indeed few people who think they have the power to do that are actually right. However, while few people can make a great impact, everyone can make a little impact. We may not be called on to build the whole city of God unaided, but we can all lay a brick.

We can lay more bricks and position them better if we maintain a clear view of the objective, and the certainty that we can achieve it.

Even if it is only one brick at a time.

In the course of some editing work recently, I came across an author who always talks of the “Empire of God” (or of heaven) and seems to think this is the accepted terminology. It isn’t what I’m used to, however – what I’m used to (in the various bibles I’m most familiar with) is “Kingdom of God”. Of course, seeing something which I didn’t quite expect put me on alert, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it seems to me that the biggest single unique idea in Jesus’ words as told to us by the gospels is “the Kingdom of God”. Or, indeed, “the Empire of God”, because the term in the original is “Basilea Theou”, and “basilea” is possibly better translated as “empire” than as “kingdom” – it is, after all, the term used in Greek for the Roman Empire, and the counterpoint in the gospels is between Jesus as Lord in the Kingdom of God and Caesar as Lord in the Roman Empire. However, “king” is translated by the same word, so my set of translations originating in the King James bible, in all of which the term is “kingdom” are not wrong.

I’ve also seen it translated as “Imperial Rule” – and that’s a perfectly good translation as well, as “basilea” does duty for that as well, much like the word “reign” in English. There are, however, very few self-styled empires around these days (though see below), and those aren’t really empires (including Japan); it maybe isn’t therefore as useful a term as “kingdom”, of which there are quite a few more.

However, I’ve recently read a few American commentators who want to translate it as “the Commonwealth of God”, and there I start having problems. Saying that, I recognise that English translations all go back to the KJV and before them to Wycliffe and Tyndall, and were composed in a kingdom; it was the model of government with which the authors were familiar. A fair proportion of English speaking Christians these days do not live in a kingdom; even less of them live in something which is called an empire, though the USA is about as close as we get in the 21st century to Imperial Rome.

I will grant very readily that the earliest Christians were very egalitarian – holding property in common, giving freely and coming as close as I think Christianity has ever got to the ideals of Mark 10:21, Matt. 18:21 and Luke 18:22 (and that makes me recall “anything I say three times is true”…), and possibly even those of Mark 10:35-43. However, “commonwealth” has the baggage of a democratic system of some kind, and “basilea” definitely does not; it is a reign, and a fairly absolute reign at that. “Commonwealth”, to me, therefore detracts from the supremacy of God, the implicit requirement to ask for and follow his instructions (“praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out” from step 11, and “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God” from step 3 for those of you who are 12 steppers).

The Commonwealth of God would be the Kingdom of God from which God was absent.

Shifting from the language of the Gospels to that of Paul, you cannot proclaim (as was the standard declaration for early Christians) “Jesus is Lord” and think of a commonwealth. Commonwealths do not have Lords.

I think this is important, in particular because the statement “Jesus is Lord” was coined at a time when a very major part of that declaration was the implicit claim “Caesar is not Lord”, the rejection of the Empire of Rome – and today, the rejection of the idea that any of us are first British (or American, or Canadian, or Australian, or…) and secondly Christian (we can, however, reasonably do things the other way round, and walk the extra mile with the soldier of the occupying army carrying his stuff…). The call to follow Jesus (Matt. 10:37-39), to turn to God (Ez. 18) is absolute, and while there are two Great Commandments (Matt. 22:36-40) the first is to love God, the second (and lesser) is to love your neighbour.

The commonwealth deals only with the second. It’s good, but not, to my mind, what is meant by “basilea theou”. For that, I’ll stick with “Kingdom of God”.

And Jesus is Lord.

Cattle die, kinsmen die, the self dies likewise; I know one thing that never dies: the repute of each of the dead.

(Havamal, Words of the Highest, Old Norse poem; alternatively translated "word-fame lives forever")

I’ve recently finished reading “I am a Strange Loop” by the appallingly brilliant Douglas Hofstadter (Author of “Godel, Escher, Bach”). I can unheistatingly recommend either, though SL is a far easier read than GEB, for which a background in pure maths and/or formal logic is distinctly helpful, though not completely essential. However, GEB has been listed among the top 10 philosophical books of the late 20th century, and it combines philosophy, logic, number theory, music, art and humour in an unique way. I’d vote it among the top 10 thought provoking books I’ve ever read.

In SL, Hofstadter develops further an idea in GEB, namely that of the “strange loop”, arguing that consciousness and the “self” derive from self-referential loops (or systems of loops) in the brain. Setting on one side any consideration of the self as a soul or similar immaterial entity (which Hofstadter does not believe in, being an atheist and friend of Daniel Dennett, one of the “four horsemen” of the New Atheism), I find his argument fairly compelling.

One of the applications of this concept he develops in the book is the idea that we form within our own set of “strange loops” pictures of the sets of “strange loops” of those close to us (and, although he does not go into this, I would assume people who are known to us fairly well but more remotely, i.e. those who are famous, or whose writings survive them). He thus argues, taking the case of his late wife, who died far too young in her 40s, that on death our “strange loops” continue within the minds of others, albeit in a somewhat attenuated and potentially distorted form. Having lived with her for 20 years or so, he now finds, decades after her death, that he can still “channel” his wife.

Again, I find this fits nicely with my own experience. I channel my wife quite a bit of the time, but also my mother, who is still alive, and my father, who died 13 years ago. Hofstadter’s idea is that the “self” which is a “strange loop” continues in an increasingly attenuated form until all memories of it (and some of them will potentially be second-hand, third-hand or even more remote) have been forgotten. However, he omits to consider that his magnum opus, Godel, Escher, Bach, into which he has poured a fair bit of the workings of his particularly strange loop, is probably going to stay in print long after the ripples of his circle of acquaintance have died away.

Word-fame lives forever, or at least a very long time indeed compared with the fragile body of an individual. Courtesy of video, there will probably be people in 100 years who “move like Jagger”, and courtesy of GEB there will be people who “think like Hofstadter”.

This is one of a few work-rounds for a problem which arises from adopting an Aristotelean rather than a Platonic conception of how things are. Plato had a world of “ideals” which had real existence quite independently of their manifestation in the world (which he considered was always somewhat debased), and this has carried over into Christianity as, inter alia, a concept that souls are a higher level of being than bodies, and we would frankly be better off as immaterial souls. This did not work for Aristotle, who considered that qualities of things only existed insofar as they were embodied; it followed from this that the mind and the consciousness could not survive the death of the body. This was developed by Avveroes, who saw a major problem there for the concept of survival after death, and was a subject of concern for Spinoza, who developed a very idiosyncratic version of survival in which you survived because of the continued existence of the ideas which you had had within God. The more your ideas conformed to those within God, the more you survived. I’m skeptical that many people have found that idea a source of much comfort, but I could be wrong…

Now, I parted company with Plato a very long time ago (in my teens), thinking that the concept of “ideals” as having independent existence was both unnecessary to explain what I experienced and also gave rise to a set of philosophical conflicts which, to me, strongly indicated that there was a fault in the original concept. Granted, one facet of my “zap” experience has been an absolute conviction of some form of personal survival, but the specifics have been sadly lacking. The Aristotelean conception, though (which I think likely to be correct) only supports post-mortem survival if the pattern of one’s consciousness (mind, soul, spirit or whatever) is preserved in some material matrix. I have in the past tended to accept the “zap” based intuition that this is within that-which-is-God, which is similar to Spinoza’s model but allows for (for instance) affections and other feelings.

Hofstadter, however, give another way in which to some extent this could be the case. Indeed, a way in which it seems it very probably IS the case, thought not necessarily exclusively of some other mechanism.

Of course, when I listed some people whose consciousnesses I channeled, I left out one – Jesus. I work on the WWJD (what would Jesus do) principle as much as I can, and this means that I have within my own complex of strange loops a set representing Jesus.

Whose word-fame very probably will live forever…