The sight of a parliament, normally embroiled in savage personal attacks, speaking as one and showing a remarkable unity of purpose, ought to be one that should cheer our hearts and restore our faith in politicians. Strangely it has the opposite effect. When sworn enemies suddenly become friends and join in a common cause it is often more worrying and seldom for the good. I cannot ignore the deep suspicion of this temporary marriage of convenience and I wonder who is the common foe. It reminds me of the second Psalm where the Kings of the earth gather together in their futile and laughable attempt to plot against God. In Westminster there was the unity at the start of the first and second wars in Iraq and there was the unity over Covid. History has shown where these have led.
So I took no comfort from the concocted harmony on display in the palace of Westminster this week, when the Prime Minister gave his report on the momentous events of the past days. I didn’t feel proud to be British then. What was on open display was a commitment to support with cash and lives (boots on the ground is a nice way of talking about real people who will be wearing these boots) the continuation of a war that has been going on for three years and shows no sign of stopping. I wanted to hear from the Peace Movement from Stop the War Coalition from the Anti-Nuclear campaigners, but in Westminster there was silence. And here is one of the biggest conundrums: our money, our taxes are paying for the terrible weapons that maim and kill thousands every week on our doorstep and we seem to be ok with that. This is not theoretical. This is not about weapons of mass destruction that have killed no-one for the past 80 years, this is about weapons manufactured in our land, today, that are being sent to blow up young men and women in a land not that far away from us and our politicians seem to be all for it.
It is hard to get your head round that one.
They are united in their condemnation of the one person, the one world leader who is screaming for peace. He is desperate to bring the terrible carnage to an end. He is using the massive power and influence of his office and his own skill in making deals for that purpose and our pathetic little parliament doesn’t like it. They want this war to go on, when it as plain as day that it cannot be won, unless, of course, it finally triggers the third world war when these weapons held in their silos for 80 years will finally be unleashed.
I fully identified and completely understood King Charles, some weeks ago, when he was confronted with the pitiful pile of children’s shoes, on Holocaust Day, and said it was something he would never forget. I had visited the holocaust gallery at the British War Museum and the Yad Vashem remembrance centre in Jerusalem, but it was being in Auschwitz, Oświęcim in 2012 that did it for me. I saw the railway carriage, the mountain of shoes and false teeth, the bullet ridden wall, I stood in the chamber with the ovens when the young Polish guide asked us to be silent out of respect for those who were incinerated there and I stood at the end of the rail line, when she told us to be careful where we stood, because the ground was covered with the powdered bones and dust of the million souls murdered in this place. It was April, but there was no sign of Spring. The trees were dark and bare and there was no bird song to lighten the awful silence. The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I realised then, in a way I had never understood before, that there was no end to evil. Given a free reign, evil in the human heart descends further and further into an abyss of total darkness. It was like looking over a pit and knowing there was no bottom. Any faith I had in humanity could never be recovered. I too would never forget.
All these memorials are helpful but we really don’t need reminders. We saw it, just this week, on full display to all the world, the abomination of naked evil. The choreographed parade, the giant displays, the stage, the mock signing of documents, the celebrating crowd, the cameras and in the centre the bodies of the murdered family, the mother, the nine year old son and the four year old child lying on the platform locked in black coffins. All was black and grey even the sun couldn’t bear to look at the scene and hid it’s face. The sky was embarrassed. This too I will never forget.
The holocaust, however, was then. This is now. That was our “never again”. This is the now reality of evil. There can be no rational, political or sociological explanation for the utter depravity on view. And its roots are in the oldest of hatreds morphed, as Jonathan Sachs lucidly explained, from hatred against the religion through hatred against the race to hatred against the nation and it comes from the very pit of hell.
The main-line news has to sanitise their reports, of course. It has to fit the narrative and so every effort must be made to soften the impact and whiten what is, in reality, irredeemably black. They don’t show you the crowds of men, women and children, some in their father’s arms, shouting cheering and singing over the bodies of the murdered children and later dancing on the stage as if it was their graves. This is a new level of wickedness. The Nazis’ tried to hide their crimes, here they are openly celebrated. And this is what is truly sickening. When, what looks like, ordinary folk with families of their own, taking part, joyfully it seems, in such a macabre spectacle, any sense of humanity goes down the drain. And I wonder if those who protest on our streets every Saturday actually know who they are supporting.
Terrible as it may sound, I have no faith in humanity. If I had, I lost it and nothing could restore it now. But I do have faith in the one who created humanity, who became humanity, who lived perfect humanity and by his sacrifice made it possible for us unhuman: murderers, liars, cheats, mockers idolators, adulterers, abusers, thieves, slanderers, swindlers, or just decent folks to be made truly human, in him.
There was something depressingly inevitable about the progress towards the legalising of assisted suicide. The details of the bill now published only confirms this. The list of robust safeguards “the strictest in the whole world” will be enough to win over the doubters and get the bill through the process and into law. The message is clear. This is no slippery slope. We will not be following Canada or the Netherlands, where mental health and even homelessness are justified reasons for ending lives. We will not be coercing doctors to be involved and there will be stringent legal sanctions against any who flout these measures. We have the most rigorous safeguards in place.
We all know, of course, how safeguards have worked out in the past. They never seem to be as safe as they are purported to be. The slide down the slippery slope is almost certain. Safeguards are useful in getting the thing over the line, but once there, they have served their purpose and can be dispensed with at will. That too is inevitable.
Once the law is in place, you can be sure, different groups who will be excluded under the safeguards, will lobby justifiably so, for the law to be changed to cover their own circumstances. It would be unfair to those who expect to live longer than the legal nine months and whose suffering is prolonged. It would be inequitable to exclude the mentally ill. It would be unreasonable to exclude parents of children who are seriously disabled who are themselves unable to express their own suffering. It is almost as if the more robust the safeguards are, the easier they will be to circumvented.
Is that cynical alarmism? I don’t think so. The abortion act of 1967 was brought in to deal with a small number of difficult cases with robust safeguards in place. Since then, over 10 million lives have been legally destroyed and we hardly give it a thought, almost fourteen thousand in one year (2021) in Scotland alone. These precious vulnerable little beautiful lives are not even worthy of silent prayer.
This is how it works out and this is where progressiveness leads: the liquidation of the unborn, the dismantling of marriage and the family, the denial of biology, the culling of the old and sick and, and finally, the destruction of humanity itself. Life is just another human construct, after all. Arguing against it now seems futile.
We had a senior palliative care doctor speak to our home group on the vexed issue, a few months ago. While she was deeply troubled by the proposed change in the law and wholly against it, she felt that as a clinician she could not use her religious beliefs in a debate. The argument had to be made on other grounds to be accepted as valid. Interestingly this was the same position that Danny Kruger took in what was an excellent debate with Christine Jardine on Channel 4 https://www.channel4.com/news/mps-go-head-to-head-in-assisted-dying-debate. If Christian medics feel that they can’t argue from a Christian view of life, for fear that it would not be taken seriously and politicians can’t argue from their own deeply held religious views, then the cause is already lost. Danny Kruger almost admitted that in the interview.
How then can you object, if your religious beliefs carry no weight in the secular world? What can you do when the battle is already lost and won?
Well, I remember, very clearly, a conversation I had with our Slovakian house guest, several years ago. She was with us for a year and early on in her stay she was puzzled by a controversy that was blowing up in the church. It was to do with the appointment of ministers who were living in openly same-sex adulterous relationships. I tried to explain the situation as openly and fairly as I could, detailing both sides of the argument (the traditional and the progressive) and how each took their authority from scripture. She was quiet. So, I asked innocently “What do you think?” She turned and looked at me with an expression I will never forget. It was a mixture of shock, unbelief and barely concealed hostility. “It is wrong!” was her vehement reply.
I know that this attitude wouldn’t get far in the current debate. But, and here is the point, some issues, I am convinced, should not be up for debate. We should not be discussing whether the state should sponsor the killing of those who are ill. It is wrong. Life is not a human construct. Life is a gift, a precious gift from God. We did not choose it and we did not buy it. We did not decide to born, we did not decide where or when or to which parents and no human institution has the authority to sanction its ending.
Assisting suicide is wrong. It may be inevitable but it is still wrong.
The denomination to which our local church belongs recently found it necessary to carry out an audit and examine what links the church may have had with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. As a relatively newcomer in the denomination, I was unaware of the controversy, that dated back to the early days of the church, which was founded in 1843. What at first was puzzling was that Slavery had already been outlawed in the antis-slavery act ten years earlier (though this only covered part of the British Empire) and it seemed strange that the church could be complicit in slavery when it was still unborn. The reason for the controversy, however, was explained, by a visit which a delegation from the new church made to the American South in 1846. This group which included Thomas Chalmers were seeking the support of churches in America and you can understand why a secessionist movement would get a great deal of sympathy in the South. The delegation returned with a not insignificant gift of £3,000, but many within and out-with the church considered this money to be “tainted” as it likely came from slaveholders and a campaign to “Send the Money Back” was initiated. Fredrick Douglas, the abolitionist, was a strong and vocal advocate for the campaign, and lent his support while in Scotland, which included an attempt, with others, to carve the slogan on the cliffs of Salisbury Crags. His portrait now graces a wall in Gilmore Place, close to where he once lived. But the “blood money” was never returned. How the church resolved this at the time, I am not sure, but I suspect that a degree of pragmatism was involved. Even if an error was acknowledged, returning the money would not have helped the cause of those still enslaved in any practical way.
But why, more than 150 years after the event, the issue has now had to be revisited? It seems strange in the extreme. Afterall, the history of these events has been well known to the church and this assessment could have been done at any time. Why now? And why is that while the history of this hideous trade has been taught in school and accepted for what it is a heinous sin in our nation’s history, one on which there was national admission of guilt, repentance, the passing of anti-slavery laws and the costly efforts to have the trade banished world-wide, why now is there to be a another reckoning?
Is it simply to do with the way these things come in waves in the public consciousness? I remember in the 60’s the campaign for nuclear disarmament was a very hot issue, but strangely over the following decades, despite increased proliferation, the issue slipped into the background and only resurged again in the more recent decades. I remember one of my colleagues in our Architectural practice back in the early 70’s arriving at the office one day sporting a CND badge. We thought that rather quant at the time.
Could it be the very subtle infiltration of a way of thinking that owes more to Marx and Lenin than our Judeo-Christian heritage? A way of thinking that views the act of de-humanising another human, made in the image of God, not so much as a sin but simply part of the worldwide class struggle? The never-ending battle between the oppressed and the oppressor, the powerless and the powerful, the victim and the victimiser. Guilt is not so much personal but historical and in Marxism there is no forgiveness. Czeslaw Milosz, in his classic work “The Captive Mind” which must stand alongside works by Orwell, Solzhenitsyn and Havel in exposing the depravity of totalitarian culture, explains this succinctly in a chapter entitled “Man- the enemy”. Here the real enemy of the Marxist-Leninist project turns out to be humanity itself.
“The contradiction between Christianity and Stalinist philosophy cannot be overcome. Christianity is based on a concept of individual merit and guilt; The New Faith on historical merit and guilt. The Christian who rejects individual guilt denies the work of Jesus and the god he calls upon transforms himself into History”
The enemy then is the reactionary.
“The sin of the reactionary is argued very cleverly: every perception is orientated, i.e. at the very moment of perceiving, we introduce our ideas into the material of our observations; only he sees reality truly who evaluates it in terms of the interests of the class that is the lever of the future, i.e. the proletariat. The writings of Lenin and Stalin teach us what the interests of the proletariat are. Whoever sees reality other than the proletariat, sees it falsely; in other words, his picture of reality is deformed by the pressure of the interest of classes that are backward and so destined to disappear. Whoever sees the world falsely necessarily acts badly; whoever acts badly is a bad man; therefore, the reactionary is a bad man, and one should not feel sorry for him.”
So you can feel indifferent to the sufferings of those whose only crime is the blocking of “historical progress” and Milosz concludes :
“This line of reasoning has at least one flaw – it ignores reality”
But I suspect there is also another reason. It is much easier and less troublesome to focus on vague historical communal guilt and show virtue over our passion for the sins, than it is to confront the brutal reality that slavery exists today. Added to that is the disturbing thought that we could in some way be complicit in and benefit from it.
My contention is that instead of wasting our efforts, handwringing and agonising over the crimes of the pasts, we should be grappling with the brutal reality of slavery today. Instead of exhuming skeletons, historic crimes, which have been acknowledged and confessed, which have been forgiven and forgotten by God, we should apply ourselves to the very real live suffering of others. I am thinking of trafficking of children, the sweat-shop factories and the mining of toxic minerals. Minerals, which are necessary for the production of our mobile phones, electric cars, and all sorts of devices, including the one that this is written on.
I thought it was all over. I really did. I really hoped. I fully expected it would be the end of the matter and I wouldn’t have to shout and moan anymore about Covid: about the lockdown, about the masks, about the vaccine. The truth would eventually out and people would make their own judgement on the whole sorry business. The movers and shakers would finally confess to their duplicity, an amnesty declared and we could move on.
Apparently not. A letter from our Public Health Director came through the door the other day, inviting me for a winter (Covid and Flu) vaccine, explaining, in the predictable language that we have gotten used to, that this was the best protection against the disease, with the mantra “safe and effective”. My appointment was already made. It was up to me to accept or cancel. I had a similar letter the previous year and wrote to the Director explaining my reason for refusing it and my misgivings over why the MHRA vaccine was still being promoted by our National Health Service. When there was so much concern over its safety and efficacy, why had the roll out not been halted? I had no reply. I understood, of course, that Directors of Public Health would already have too much on their minds to respond to a dissident patient.
So, I hesitated from responding, this time round, but decided to try again and seek a response to my concerns. In my letter I again detailed my disquiets and challenged the director to take the issue seriously. I thought it was her job to do just that. To her credit, I had a reply by return. It didn’t answer my questions directly but pointed me to the reports and analysis which justified the continuation of the MHRA vaccine. It was the classic case of passing the buck. She has to follow the guidance offered further up the chain and wasn’t in a position to give personal opinions. Even if she had some misgivings herself, she wouldn’t feel it was in her gift to go against or challenge the given line. It is disturbing and destructive trend in much of public life when common sense is eclipsed by protocol. When “whistle blowers” have to be protected you know how deep corruption has set in. “Theirs’s not to make reply, theirs’s not to reason why, their’s but to do and die,” As someone has said.
But the truth will out and it is already seeping from the rancid bags of lies that have been festering over the past five years. Bit by bit people are quietly coming out with admissions of “errors of judgements”. Chris Wittie now says that masks, out-with the health care environment, were always ineffective, Patrick Vallance openly admitted that lockdown could do more harm than good, Rishi Sunak protested that he was always against school closures, Pfizer admitted that they never tested the vaccine for transmission, the World Health Organisation downplayed the aerosol theory of transmission, all the key players showed, by their own lifestyles, that they never actually believed in the message, Mark Zuckerberg regretted that he supressed anti-Covid messages on his Facebook platform and Neil Ferguson confessed his surprise that they were able to get away with enforcing the lockdown. Well it seems he did and all the others too.
It is the classic state of a corrupt institution. Those who were found out, whose untruths and deliberate lies directly caused so much damage and suffering, are still there, moved sideways, perhaps, into equally remunerative posts while the much vaunted Public Enquiry trundles on tip-toing around the edge and staying clear of the real questions. No one can speak out, it seems, or it will bring the whole thing down and the foot soldiers, those loyal to the organisation and faithful to the protocol, are left to answer the difficult questions.
I thought it was all over, but it looks like it won’t be.
When Ronan Hale stepped up to take Ross County’s penalty against Celtic at the weekend, the opposition supporters, massed behind the goal, were doing there best to distract him. The tactic worked; Schmeichel, saved the penalty. The third official, however, spotted that the goalkeeper had moved well over his line, so the penalty was retaken and this time Ronan scored. There was nothing remarkable about the away crowds’ antics behind the goal. Unlike other sports, in tennis or snooker, where the spectators are urged to be silent at critical points, shouting chanting and waving flags, to influence the play at football matches goes with the territory. There is nothing extraordinary about that. What was extraordinary and incomprehensible was the giant flag being waved constantly behind the goal. It was not a flag with the Celtic colours, or their crest, nor was it the Irish tricolour which relates to the clubs’ historic roots or was in any way connected with football at all. It was flag of Palestine in support of a war several thousand miles away.
It would be hard to explain to a visitor from Mars what was going on here. If it was possible to interview the individual hoisting the flag or their compatriots and ask what it was about, I guess they might be at a loss to know what to say. Like the protestors chanting “From the river to the sea…” who weren’t sure which river or which sea, they might not know what it was actually about. Did they know that they were taking sides in a war where innocents were being killed, homes destroyed, women and children massacred, bodies mutilated, babies sacrificed and it was happening in real time? Did they know that this was the eve of the event that triggered the war? Did they possibly understand or have empathy for those who would see this display as the worst sort of outrage? Did they know that they were effectively supporting terrorism and barbarism? Did they actually know the difference between football and war?
Our Martian friend wouldn’t be able to get what the flag meant, but we do. We see it on our Streets every Saturday. We know, in the current state of affairs it doesn’t simply embody the hope and pride of a nation or people, it carries a much more specific narrative, it stands for the oppressed people of Palestine in their battle against their Zionist oppressors, the fascist Israeli state, which practices apartheid and genocide, wilfully destroying schools, hospitals, places of worship and the deliberate targeting of civilians. It looks to the final triumph over the Jews articulated by Iran’s spiritual leader when he said “Israel won’t last long” then from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea Palestine will be free. In today’s context that is what the flag says. But I wonder if the flag waver knew that.
That’s the worrying thing. Do people actually know what is going on before they nail their colours to the mast or it is little more than a display of virtue or a fashion statement? Or does it represent something deeper and viler, a visceral hatred of the Jews. To the visitor from Mars this would be even harder to explain. Why are the Jews of all peoples so consistently hated throughout the centuries? There is no convincing logical reason for this odium. The faults that can be laid at the state of Israel are common to all nations and often to a far greater extent. How many civilians were killed in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? What about Libya, what about Russia and China and Syria and Sudan? Why are the jews so hated? Could it be envy of their success? That such a small nation could outstrip its neighbours in just about every achievement and in such a short time. Or could it be that they have a story as victims that surpasses any other and there is envy of victimhood? “Why do they always claim the high spot on this chart with their holocaust?” It could be both of these as well as the other issues over land, but I suspect there is something much deeper that is going on. There is a supernatural element and here the Bible throws its light on the case. It is not in our gift to know how things will work out in human history, but it seems clear that the Jews remain a people special to God and it should not surprise us that the epicentre of the world’s conflicts should settle on the Jews and the tiny land of Israel.
I wonder if the flag-waver really knew what he was doing.
I remember being drunk once. I am not proud. It was the last evening of a field trip with fellow students in my fourth year in Architecture and we were drinking in a barge moored on the Ouse in the centre of York. It was a riotous evening and for the first time I was right in the centre of it and shared a wonderful new-found bond with my compatriots. There was a piano on the barge and when the landlord was trying to usher us out at closing time, (there was “closing time” in those days), three of us got onto it and started to play. One of the guys was actually an accomplished Jazz player, but together it seemed we produced the most amazing thrilling. When the only guy with a car drove us home, he was also drunk, we were doing some crazy things at speed around parks and up-side streets. I remember the terrible feeling that things were now quite out of control. Finally, when we got to our accommodation, I climbed the rickety stairs to the room in the attic, which I shared with three others, and threw up in the sink. The next day, on the journey home, I felt terribly ill.
I remembered that event, recently, when thinking about what Paul said in his letter to the Christians in Ephesus “Don’t get drunk with wine but be filled with the Spirit.” We often refer to people who have had too much to drink as “being under the influence” we don’t need to say of what, we know. Paul seems to be saying don’t put yourself under the influence of strong drink, which can change your mood and your manners, sometime quite spectacularly. It can take over control of your mind and your body and your tongue, but put yourself under the influence of the Holy Spirit, let him control you.
It is not insignificant that potent alcoholic drinks, whisky brandy vodka etc are classified a “Spirits”. And you can see why. It begs the very difficult question “whose control are you under?”. Most people would answer “Me, of course, I am in control of myself” I decide, I chose to go and do and say and think. I chose to drink or not to drink. My life my choice. but if we are brutally honest with ourselves, do we really believe that? Do we really believe that we have full control of ourselves? Have we never regretted what we said or did or thought? Have we reacted in the way we wanted to: when thrown a curved ball, when someone cuts us up on the road, when we suffer unjustified criticism, abuse, and slander or when our kind acts are returned to us with ingratitude?
When Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit, later in his letter, he puts in self-control as the final facet of the fruit of the Spirit. And it follows that it is only under the influence of the Holy Spirit that we can have true self control.
I want to be under the influence of God’s Holy Spirit today.
Bernadette Spofforth was not exactly a household name until, that is, she was arrested and spent thirty-six hours in a police cell charged with fomenting the Autumn riots, the “Far right thuggery” as our Prime Minister called it, that erupted in Southport, London and other cities throughout England. She was given bail on the condition that she did not speak to the press or make any comment on-line and it is only now, when the charge was dropped for want of sufficient evidence, that her story has been heard.
Her account of what happened is quite disturbing. The crime was sharing inaccurate information on the identity of the preparator on-line. She copied and pasted fake information with her own words “if this is true, there will be all hell to pay”. She said she was distracted that day, quite angry at the possibility of another tragedy linked to mental health. She hadn’t, however, checked the source, deleted the tweet soon afterwards and apologised for it. It was the account of her arrest and time in police cell that was most troubling.
Why she would be treated to a full-blown offensive by the law, five police officers, two cars and a police van arriving at her door with the rigours and humiliation of being searched, and left for a day and a half in a concrete cell, unable to be in touch with her family of friends, is beyond belief. She was allowed one book and her first thought was to take her bible, but decided against it, she now thinks that was silly and regrets it. But she feared it would be used as evidence, against her, that she was “far right”. That was only her perception, but it gives some indication of the insane place we have come to
Many people are arrested and spend time in police cells for longer and under harsher conditions. People who commit crimes must have this already factored this into their minds, as must those who go on protest marches and public disorders, blocking roads etc. They must be aware, depending on how it goes, that being arrested could go with the territory. Some are actively looking for that, to give publicity and to promote their cause. But you cannot underestimate the shock that this treatment has on a regular middle-aged women, wife and mother, because of something she posted. Shock was the result and she suffered terribly for weeks afterwards.
Of course, of course, her suffering does not compare with the sufferings of the families whose little girls were maimed and murdered in the attack. Of course, it doesn’t compare, as she so clearly says, but it is an indication that there is something seriously wrong with the law and how it is enforced.
And it begs the question, why? Was it just that the police’s heavy-handed manner was a mistake and just one of these things that happens? Was it panic instructions from further up to silence fake information? Was it because this woman already had form? She had publicly expressed opinions that didn’t follow the narrative over Covid, Gender, Net-Zero and other doctrinal issues. Was it an opportunity to silence her? If this was the real reason, it didn’t work because she fully intends to continue what she does. But it might work in silencing others.
Whatever the reason, the chasm between how she was treated for what was, at worst, a mistake with keyboard and mouse, and how others in higher places can make any number of mistakes, tell lies, only apologise when they are found out and still hold public positions, salaries and pensions is a signal that something is quite rotten in our state.
It is hard not to be overcome by a deep sense of foreboding that crowds in and overwhelms us when we look and see and feel the movement of the tectonic plates of our world, the rise and fall of kingdoms, the nations in uproar, the growing unrest and protest, the curious alliances and the strange bedfellows. It is hard not to be overcome and gripped by fear, fear for the future for our children, our children’s children and those yet unborn. Stephen Pinker may well say that as humans we have become less violent, more reasonable more understanding, loving and caring over the centuries. Even if that is true, there is no guarantee that it will continue and the ebb and flow of history tells a different story.
When adversaries become friends and come together over an issue, as they did in the house of commons this week, it should be a cause for cheer, but it filled me with dread. This impermanent alliance has been formed for war. A war with Russia. It is not that we are in danger of slipping into this war, we are already so far in, it may impossible now to extricate ourselves from it. When so many, thousands of lives, have already been lost in the conflict, the clear commitment from the Parliament was to support the war and allow the roll call of deaths to stack up. The prospect is almost too horrific to contemplate and “sleep-walking” is an apt analogy for what we are doing.
But it is the war in the middle east that is just as frightening. Who knows where this will go, with Israel now fighting a war on two fronts with proxies of a more fearsome enemy. Unlike Ukraine, the West seems ambivalent, supporting Israel militarily on the one hand while undermining moral on the other. Its hard to know if a new world war will be triggered by what happens in Ukraine or here in Israel. I suspect the later.
All the while the Western Empire has hollowed out its moral foundation and what happens in the next few months will quite possibly signal the end of this project. In the United States, the “Leader of the Free World” has finally recognised his time is up and will leave, but not just yet. How a Harris presidency will respond is anyone’s guess, but peace in either conflict is unlikely. A Trump presidency might just hold the tide for some time but boasting about what you are going to do, solving all the immigration and economic problems and bringing peace to the world is never a good thing. It doesn’t usually work out that way. There will also be very powerful people who will do everything to ensure that this does not happen. They will use very weapon at their disposal to somehow prevent Trump’s election as president for a second term. It is a well-worn conspiracy theory, of course. But these testy conspiracy theories have an uncanny habit of turning out to be true. The conspirators know how to hide and remain hidden for decades possibly centuries, but in the end all will revealed. Nothing will be hidden.
I don’t know, of course. I am just speculating. I can’t see what’s round the corner or what’s up the bend. The outworking of history always tends to surprise us. But this could be the moment, and I can can’t shake that feeling of doom. The curse of an overactive imagination has filled me with trepidation and I get no comfort from knowing that I may not see it. My overriding concern, my burden, that I find hard to shift is that we are not prepared for what is coming and, because it doesn’t touch us directly, we live in denial.
But, as always, it is only when I look again at God’s word in all its breath-taking wonder and wisdom, when I look beyond and through the cloud, I see another hand at work, an unseen hand. It’s only then that I find a hope that is real and a hope that does not disappoint. When I read again that ancient song, Psalm 46, when I Come and See what he has done and what he is doing, when I am Still and Know that he is God, the Lord of hosts and our refuge, it is then that I find peace and direction in prayer.
In our local church family, we, in common with many other churches, have several small pastoral groups that meet each week in individual homes, where we read and study the Bible together and pray for each other, for the church and for the world. It is a very special time, with a wide range of ages experiences, backgrounds and stages in life, but with a common love for the lord Jesus and a bonding that transcends all human barriers.
We have just begun a short series of studies in the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament, not individual psalms but particular themes that run through this collection which deals with almost every human emotion: joy, loneliness, honesty, remorse, sadness, fear, anger. In this we have been helped by James Montgomery Boyce, David Taylor, John Day, Gordon Wenham, Erich Zenger ,Derek Kidner and C S Lewis.
Inevitably, we will have to consider the Psalms that include cursing, of which there are many. Something like one-in-five have calls for vengeance or cursing in some form or other, with Psalms 58, 109 and 137 being amongst the most terrible. Throughout the centuries these have been a problem to Christians and it is not difficult to see why. They are also often quoted by those who argue against the divine inspiration and authority of scripture as reasons why we cannot believe in the bible. “How can we take the bible seriously” they will say, “as it is full of so many contradictions”. A good friend of mine, only the other day, said just that and gave this as the reason why he had stopped reading it. The authority of the bible was subject to a higher authority, in his case, that of his own rational mind. So, It is really only a problem for the Christian who believes in the authority, authenticity and inerrancy of scripture. For those who don’t, it should be of little interest or concern.
But here I have a disturbing thought. Could it be that the reason why Christians find these words, expressing outright hatred and white-hot rage, problematic, is that the problem is with us? Could it be that there is something about this God we are missing and just not getting? Could it be that we have not really grasped the absolute horror of evil, the heinousness of sin and where it inexorably leads? Maybe we haven’t stood by the remains of the furnace in Auschwitz and heard the guide tell us to be careful because we are standing among the dust of hundreds of murdered lives. Maybe we have never seen the heaps of bodies burning in Chin state in Myanmar. Maybe we have never been with the pastor visiting a village in the DRC, just a few months ago, and coming across the bodies of men women and children lying where they were shot with a single infant still alive in the arms of its dead mother. Maybe we have never recognised the corruption, deceit, selfishness and greed that knocks at the door of our own hearts. Maybe we still think the battleline between good and evil lies not in us, but somewhere out there.
Christians, however, have coped with this “problem” in different ways.
One was simply to ignore the offending passages. But that is hard to do, if you believe that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”. So that doesn’t work.
Another is to see these expressions as wrong and should be condemned. Scripture includes many things that are wrong. David’s sin with Bathsheba being one. But that doesn’t really work either. because while David’s sin was condemned and he himself confessed it, the Bible, at no point, condemns the writers of these psalms for what they said or for the desire for vengeance which they expressed.
A third, which many have settled on, is the idea that these expressions belong to the Old Testament while in the New, Jesus and Paul have shown us a better way- how we should love our enemies, how we should bless and not curse. The Psalm writers under this explanation had a limited understanding of things and really didn’t know any better. But this falls too because love for your enemies was not a new idea or a new command. It is embedded in the Old Testament law and Jesus quoted the proverb which explicitly say we should feed our enemy when he is hungry and give him something to drink when he is thirsty. On the other side, Paul pronounced a curse on Elymas the magician and Jesus himself pronounced a curse on Israel. So, we have love for the enemy in the Old and curses in the New.
What we found most helpful and illuminating when reading these psalms was to see what the writers were not saying. The writers of the three psalms listed above, who included David and the captured slaves in Babylon, were not describing their commitment to enact revenge on those who brutally persecuted them. They were not saying that they would exact vengeance and repay the preparators for what was done to them. The captives in Babylon, who had escaped the fate of the horrific siege of Jerusalem, the details of which are hard to read or stomach, were not expressing their own vengeance. Their appeal was simply to God for justice. And that is what it is about – Justice. The justice described in the Mosaic law – the principal of equal and just retribution.
Today, when we hear the cry of families of victims of vicious crimes, it is always an appeal for justice, justice for the ones they loved. That’s what they fight for. That’s what they demand from the courts and that is what they never give up on, because it is Justice that is at stake. This is exactly what the writers of the cursing psalms are doing, they are crying out for an equal and just retribution. But for them the appeal is not to a human court, but to the highest court, to the Judge of all the earth. And it is this act of taking it, in all its rawness, to God and leaving it with him, which at once, lances that boil, dissolves the rage, neutralises the anger and eliminates the personal desire for revenge. The outburst of outrage is more than just cathartic. It achieves something.
So, we have found, having taken these challenging passages, which sound pretty terrible to our ears, taken them head on, unflinchingly, we have found that they do not, in fact, contradict the law of love but they complement it and we see how the curses and the blessings, the love and the hatred stand together without contradiction.
Restless Spirit 