Category: Justice and Righteousness

On discerning the right bandwagon to jump on

Been thinking about bandwagons, and the temptation to jump on them. Ever since the circus clown Dan Rice used a bandwagon to give Zachary Taylor much needed publicity in the 1848 American Presidential elections, jumping on the bandwagon has been popular as an easy approach to decision-making. If lots of other people are doing it, thinking it, buying it, it must be good so I'll do likewise. Nowadays being told you're "jumping on the bandwagon" has become a dismissive put-down, criticising the lack of independence of mind, ridiculing the crowd-following instinct, suggesting a lazy or too impressionable mind lacking individuality, initative and personal preference.

Now sometimes jumping on the bandwagon is the result of all or some of these. But supposing the bandwagon is going somewhere important? What if those on the bandwagon are indeed better informed, or have found a more interesting place to go, or are just a lot better company than I've so far found, eh? So I'm going to jump on a bandwagon currently on the make though still modestly proportioned, and already rolling. The William Stringfellow bandwagon. I first came across the name years ago in several contexts including the work of civil rights activists and early Sojourners writing. Never followed it up. Then a few weeks ago the name started to appear in blog conversations, including the ubiquitous Ben Myers at Faith and Theology. Before then Stuart had started to mention him in conversation and now features Stringfellow at Word at the Barricades.

Sunday past's Revised Common Lectionary Readings included the famous Ecclesiastes passage about time.

3:1 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter
under heaven:

3:2 a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what
is planted;

3:3 a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

3:4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

3:5 a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to
embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

3:6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away;

3:7 a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

3:8 a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

3:9 What gain have the workers from their toil?

3:10 I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with.

3:11 He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past
and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning
to the end.

3:12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves
as long as they live;

3:13 moreover, it is God's gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all
their toil.

So if there's a time for every matter under heaven, there's surely a time for learning insights from unusual directions. I haven't read the work of William Stringfellow. Yet. But someone who writes in the areas of political spirituality and lived faithfulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and someone who believed his theology is best understood when visibly embodied in the story of his life – well that's someone whose bandwagon I want to jump on for a while.

A Keeper of the Word, is a reader which includes a broad selection of Stringfellow's published work. Don't know if this bandwagon will gather momentum and size, but whether or not, I want to go along for a while, for this part of my own journey, just to see.

6 January 2009
“Life is meaningless for young adults” – so what would be good news for them, then?

'Life meaningless for young adults'

Don't want to comment on this for now – I've simply posted it for further thought. I'll come back to it later. It raises ( I hate the word) "missional" questions for the Church, for theological education as preparation to engage with life as it's felt and lived. Above all it raises questions of how a consumer obsessed society can recover a capacity to see human beings as loveable, and see themselves as lovers of others. Now that takes me to the very heart of the Christian Gospel – but as I said – I want to let this seep into that place where thinking, theology and love for God coalesce in a prayer for wisdom and courage.

The following is from AOL and can be found here.

One in 10 young people believed life was not worth living or was meaningless, according to an "alarming" new report.

A survey of 16 to 25-year-olds by the Prince's Trust found a
"significant core" for whom life had little or no purpose, especially
among those not in education, work or training.

The poll of over 2,000 showed that more than a
quarter felt depressed and were less happy than when they were younger.
Almost half said they were regularly stressed and many did not have
anything to look forward to or someone they could talk to about their
problems.

The trust, which aims to help vulnerable young
people, said its study revealed an increasingly vulnerable generation.
Chief executive Martina Milburn said: "Young people tell us that family
is key to their happiness, yet too often we find they don't have this
crucial support."

The survey, described as the first large scale
study of its kind, showed that young people who had left school but did
not have a job or a place on a training course, were twice as likely to
feel that their life had no purpose.

Relationships with family and friends were
found to be the key to levels of happiness, although health, money and
work were also important.

Paul Brow, director of communications at the
Prince's Trust, said the study showed there were thousands of young
people who "desperately" needed support. "Often, young people who feel
they have reached rock bottom don't know where to turn for help."

A spokesman for the Department for Children,
Schools and Families said: "The Government wants to make this the best
country in the world to grow up and the Children's Plan sets out how we
will do this with more support for families, world class schools, and
exciting things for young people to do outside school, and more places
for children to play.

"We want all young people to play an active role in society and gain
the skills they need to succeed beyond school. The number of 16-18 year
olds in education or training is at its highest rate ever and since
1997 we have halved the number of young people leaving school with no
qualifications, while the proportion gaining five good GCSEs has risen.

"This is evidence that we are successfully engaging some of our most vulnerable young people in learning."

5 January 2009
Advent, Guantanamo and the witness of cup poetry

The debate about poetry and politics, and the difference between poetry as propaganda and poetry as articulation of human hope and hunger, is much, much more than a hermeneutical conversation piece between academics. I came to this conclusion by reading "cup poetry".

Cup Poetry is a way of crying, an attempt to find purpose in years of weeping. Cup Poetry gives voice to the unlistened to, even if that voice is heard only by the speaker. Cup Poetry tells of terror, dread and loss of self, in the hope that another human being will hear – and care. Some cup poems are the condensation of human anguish into tears, then used to inscribe and describe despair. Cup poetry is the name for poems scratched on styrofoam cups with pebbles; poems written in toothpaste; poems passed in fragments from cell to cell to preserve as much of them as possible. Anyway, poems written out of unimaginable suffering, composed under atrocious conditions of deprivation, each one demonstrating the capacity of human beings to face the disintegration of life, relationships and personal identity by ordering word and thought into a poetics of suffering.

That is the best I can do to describe the experiences out of which the volume Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, was born. This volume and these poems created the term, "cup poetry".

The very existence of Guantanamo calls in question the moral principles and political rationale for our way of life, which claims to be based on such foundations as freedom, justice, rule of law and respect for persons. When these foundations are subverted by the actions of military power driven by political rage, the victims are stripped of those defining rights to life and status as human beings without which human community isn't worth the candle, and our own moral principles turn toxic. It is one of the tragic ironies of the past few years, that the "fabric of cruelty" out of which Guantanamo has been tailored, has enmeshed untried detainees who demonstrate in poetry written under such conditions, the nature and beauty of language shaped to human suffering. Poetry as articulated suffering serves to highlight the moral diminishment of their captors and torturers. Cup poetry has captured the captive voices of those detained without trial. The poems are spoken with fading hope into the deafening maelstrom of counter-terrorist rhetoric, illustrating why poetry has its own non-violent potency when faced with the savage consequences of dehumanising others in the interests of national security and the myths of Empire.

Cup poetry exists as protest, and exerts both moral and political claim upon a world that has tolerated the obscenity of Guantanamo. But more than protest – cup poetry is an affirmation of human dignity and worth that has miraculously survived the most systematic and mechanistic attempts to erase the humanity of the detainees. Cup poetry as protest and affirmation of human worth creates a further impetus towards understanding the role of poetry as a conversation with theology. Whatever else Guantanamo means, it represents an offence to any moral theology of justice; it boasts a degradation of human values and a refusal to countenance any limit to the exercise of power over the powerless. Any redemptive vision is hinted at, not in the ideology of the Guantanamo regime – but in the poetry of its prisoners.

What does all this mean for Western Christianity confronting global Islam?

How does a poetics of suffering compete with the rhetoric that spawns slogans such as "war on terror"?

Here is a poem, etched originally on smuggled fragments of a styrofoam cup, words against the powers.

……………………………………………………..

Is It True?

By Osama Abu Kadir

Is it true that the grass grows again after rain?

Is it true that the flowers will rise up again in the Spring?

Is it true that birds will migrate home again?

Is it true that the salmon swim back up their streams?

It is true. This is true. These are all miracles.

But is it true that one day we'll leave Guantanamo Bay?

Is it true that one day we'll go back to our homes?

I sail in my dreams. I am dreaming of home.

To be with my children, each one part of me;

To be with my wife and the ones that I love;

To be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts.

I dream to be home, to be free from this cage.

But do you hear me, oh Judge, do you hear me at all?

We are innocent, here, we've committed no crime.

Set me free, set us free, if anywhere still

Justice and compassion remain in this world!

"Shortly
after 11 September, Osama Abu Kadir travelled to Pakistan to perform
charity work in Afghanistan with the Islamic missionary group Tablighi
Jamat. The US claims Tablighi was providing fighters for jihad in
Afghanistan and arrested Mr Kadir near Jalalabad in November 2001. In
his native Jordan, he was known as a dedicated family man who worked as
a truck driver. In Guantanamo, he is known as prisoner number 651."

……………………………………………….

The fuller story of this remarkable book can be found here at The Independent, and here at Iowa University Press. And yes. I recognise that we live in a world of terrorist atrocities beyond any scale of moral justification, from Ground Zero to Mumbai. And I understand that extraordinary threats require extraordinary response. And that undeserved pain and innocent suffering inflicted on victims of such atrocities are themselves a negation of the deep principles of human moral existence. As such they are to be condemned, opposed, and overcome – but surely by means which do not undermine those fundamental principles of justice and humanity which every terrorist atrocity diminishes.

But responses are more than extraordinary when institutional cruelty, intelligence gathering torture, and unremitting despair tighten an already vicious circle of violence and hate. That happens when principles of freedom, justice, moral accountability and the dignity of human beings are seen as dispensable in the pursuit of military and political goals. In the non-Western world, and amongst many in our Western democracies, Guantanamo stands for an unprecedented and grievous loss of human decency and moral authority. Against this place and its purpose, these poems bear witness; and against this place, and against the terrorist violence and hatred that has spawned it, as a follower of Jesus, I pray.

Advent – peace on earth and goodwill amongst all people - is a good time to hear of the demise of such a place, and to pray for that peace which makes such places, and the terrorism used to justify them, unthinkable.

21 December 2008
Advent, Guantanamo, and defending human values

There is a frantic search going on in and around the Pentagon these past few days. President elect Obama served notice some time ago on Guantanamo. The search is on for feasible and practical solutions to the problem of what to do with several hundred prisoners, held without charge, some of them for over five years, in conditions unacceptable by any standards of civilised policing, the significant majority of these detainees having been tried in no internationally recognised court. There is also for the Pentagon and those allied with US policy, the political problem of now trying to justify such blatant abuse of human rights and international standards for the treatment of prisoners. Because such an orchestrated closing down process will inevitably expose the brutal systemic cruelty inflicted on hundreds of detainees by means of which a major modern democracy set out to defend democratic rights and liberties. That is not only ironic – it is morally embarrassing and disabling to such a severe degree that its future consequences for political and diplomatic integrity are incalculable. If democracy can only defend itself by brutalising others, just what is it that is being defended? And why should anyone ever again trust the leaders of the "free world" (sic), enough to call them friends?

I want to reflect on this more fully, both theologically and ethically in another post, probably tomorrow. Advent scriptures abound with the cry of prisoners for liberation, are interrupted by howls of prayer and protest against the oppressor, and make much of the encroaching threat of darkness, and of the fatal threat to darkness of the surely coming light.

As a Christian, a citizen of the UK, a beneficiary of a democratic way of life which for all its shortcomings confers certain rights and privileges, and as a representative of "the West", I look on Gunatanamo with deep shame, and a deep felt urge to repentance.

20 December 2008
The dangerous politics of presumed consent, or the generous freedom of the Gift.

The Westminster and Scottish Governments are again considering the issue of a shortage of organ donors and the arguments for and against presumed consent. Lying behind the urgency, and apparent moral validity of the move to establish a norm of presumed consent, there are the very human stories of considerable suffering for those awaiting donor organs, and an underlying anguish made worse for patients and their families by the anxiety of a long indefinite wait, often against a reducing time deadline. Any reasonable and ethically defensible course of action that might mitigate such suffering and make for more hopeful outcomes, should surely elicit the support and co-operation of everyone for whom humane compassion and generous care for the other are key principles of human community.

However, the UK Organ Donation Taskforce has concluded in its recently published report that presumed consent would be unlikely to boost organ donation, and have not therefore recommended such a far reaching change in the law. To be sure there are countries like Austria and Spain where presumed consent is the norm and they have high levels of registered organ donors. By contrast in the UK only 25% of those eligible have registered despite widely acknowledged estimates that a large majority of the eligible population are in favour of organ donation. The frustration such an anomaly causes further strengthens the case for presumed consent, it is claimed. Further, the current debate is about "soft presumed consent", that is, if the law were changed to make presumed consent the norm, next of kin would be able should they wish, to withold consent to organ removal for transplant purposes, and their veto would be upheld.

A number of reasons were given by the Taskforce for rejecting presumed consent as a viable way forward. First, while in countries that do operate presumed consent the number of donors is impressively higher, the explanation is thought to lie elsewhere than in the policy of presumed consent. In these countries greater resources are invested in increasing and maintaining public awareness of the benefits to others, and in promoting programmes of social education and support throughout the entire process of recruiting and registering donors.

Second, the Taskforce believes that presumed consent would significantly undermine trust in the medical profession, and the capacity of medical professionals, under pressure from several directions, to deal with conflicting claims of those requiring organs and those potential donors who may have serious illness or injury. Whether such conlicts are real or perceived, public trust is largely based on perception, and if the public perception is less positive then the consequence would still be a serious loss of trust in the core relationship of patient and doctor.

Third, the Taskforce believes that presumed consent would eliminate the concept of "gift". When a recipient is given the organ of another human being, the fact that the organ is donated is an act of generosity, free and gratis. Knowledge of that "giftedness" is an essential element in the emotional reconciliation between the host body and the donated organ, and plays no small part in the recipient patient's future emotional and mental health. For recipients and their families presumed consent lacks the element of free gift, that willing surrender of the self that is profoundly characteristic of the key moments of human exchange.

Now a Christian approach to such a morally complex and emotionally charged debate will surely include a careful consideration of all the above. And the tone and character of the debate should reflect the life or death nature of the questions involved, and these as felt from both sides. But there is at least one nexus of Christian truths and insights that move the discussion to a different level. It is the Christian understanding of a human being as created by God with an identity and value that is inherent in each created being. And a core element in defining the nature of humanity and the dignity of each human being, is the capacity for moral freedom and ethical choice.

The legal terminology of presumed consent masks a highly dangerous and morally unacceptable claim. Who has the right to presume any "presumed consent"? If the law is changed to enact it, presumably the state. But what exactly is being presumed? That a human being's body is not inviolate but may be "used" on the authority and preumed ownership of another; in this case the State. Such a utilitarian view when applied to human beings and human bodies implies a process of commodification, and the human body becomes one more resource, which the state can presume it is free to use, (albeit for beneficent purposes), unless a prior opt out disclaimer is registered. That I believe runs flat contrary to a Christian view of human beings, human bodies and human life as defined in Christian theology and ethics.

The state has no right to presume any ownership of a person; has no right to legislate into existence a presumed right to use parts of a human body without explicit consent; has therefore no right to impose by law presumed consent in the absence of an explicit denial. If presumed consent were introduced, I would then have to opt out of a legally imposed situation in order to retain ownership, control and freedom over my own body. Which means (by a legal sleight of hand), that ownership, control and freedom over my body has already been presumed by the state and ceded by me, till I take it back.

It has not, and cannot. For a Government to presume my consent by legal enactment, it must first presume such a degree of power over me that it can take to itself the right to make decisions about the use of my body. It has no such power, and to seek such power by legal enactment would be to establish in law a dangerously reductionist view of what a human being is. It would signal an equally dangerous assumption of state power over human life and freedom that has no political or moral justification.

All that said, Christian compassion and pastoral considerations cannot be content with the status quo of acute donor shortage in a population apparently largely in favour of organ donation. That the Government is now making £4 million available for an education and awareness campaign seems an obvious and responsible first step – but the amount doesn't seem to equate to the importance and urgency of the issue. But secondly, as a Christian I belong to a faith tradition in which self-giving for the sake of the other is a central ethical and theological value, rooted indeed in my understanding of God. That has significant purchase on such socially responsive and responsible issues as being a blood donor, a registered organ donor, a strategic and generous donor of money and energy in the service of others. Then there is the importance of pastoral experience. I have accompanied several people whose lives have depended on the "gift" of another human being's organ. The profound emotional, moral and spiritual experience of the recipients takes them and those who love them to the far edges of human courage, wonder, gratitude and trust. The gift of life is like no other gift.The Taskforce were right to highlight this, and to affirm its moral and spiritual importance.

In a culture still in shock at the ongoing consumerist catastrophe, a reaffirmation of the inalienable worth and dignity of every human life is both a required corrective witness and a crucial social goal. Our Governments at Westminster and Edinburgh are going to have a hard job educating us all in the importance of socially responsive compassion, and resetting mindsets away from me, money mine. Organ donation and the concept of the "gift" require a different mentality and morality from value for money and bottom line imperatives of contemporary consumerism. For more than a generation, the self-centred lifestyle sustained by consumer commodities and celebrity focus has dominated (perhaps suppressed) moral aspiration.

For in my own admittedly personal view, our willingness to donate our organs, our blood, our money, our time and energy, and all of these for the good of others – is a moral question not a political or economic one. It is about how we view our own life in relation to others. It's about how as a Christian I look on other people's suffering and think with critical compassion of what that person's situation requires of me as a follower of Jesus. Beyond my Christian commitment I am also a citizen and a member of the human family. That too brings gift and obligation – somewhere in this mess of a world these two ideas need to be invested again with moral purpose and human possibility. You cannot legislate generosity and a sense of responsibility for others – perhaps communities that celebrate the grace of God in worship can again find the energy and imagination to embody that generous self giving love in ways that act as salt and light.

And one further thought. When each Christian community gathers around the table of communion, and takes bread and breaks it, and hears the words, "This is my body which is for you", "This my blood shed for the sake of many", we assent both to the final truth of who God is, and to the lifestyle that flows in worship and gratitude from such a source of Love. In Christian discipleship the link is explicit and essential between the Eucharist, and that giving of ourselves in love and service to God and others, in Jesus name, in the power of the Spirit.

.

19 November 2008
Care for creation, red rowans and the resident robin.

The time of year when the garden and the front drive needs tidying up. The front drive is overhung by the neighbours big rowan tree, which in the past month has been laden with berries most of which have now fallen on our side; and the car going in and out squishes and squashes them.

So Sheila, whose enthusiasm for the garden at least matches mine for books, goes out to brush them up, along with the leaves, shovels them into the brown wheelie bin. Job done. But at a price.

Never occurred to me before. Once she had the large pile of berries brushed up the resident robin arrived and looked askance at the sheer waste of all that food. The bird was within touching distance, was pretty agitated, and persisted in flitting around the heap of berries. I can imagine the inner outrage of this small bundle of energy that shares the garden with us.

"Just because you human beings like a tidy drive. How on God's earth can robins plan for a sustainable future if you human beings clean all the food up with your massive industrial sized bristle brushes, eh? What harm a few hundred berries under your feet? A bird weighing 100g could live a long time on a couple of kilos of rowan berries. Not even making them into rowan jelly – just binning them. It isn't the berries that are out of place – it's your precious lock block.!"

The reprimand from the resident robin heeded, we will in future leave the berries alone – well at least for a good bit longer. Apart from anything else, the swallow and the sparrow find a home in the house of God – brought up in the farms both birds were familiar sights all through my childhood. And no sparrow falls but the Father notices. And while Jesus spoke of the birds of the air not being anxious, and being provided for – he probably wasn't thinking of what might happen to the birds when with our hoover it all up mentality we thoughtlesly bin their food, and relentlessly interfere with the wellbeing of life around us.

BTW, this post is under the category justice and righteousness in the hope that in trying to be faithful in caring for the small things, I might be more alert to the big things also needing attentive re-thinking, seeing as how my life is lived as only one interested party in a world crowded with equally precious 'others'.

Emily Dickinson says something similar about developing a humane ecology:

If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin
into his Nest again
I shall not live in vain

Poem 982, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, (ed), R W Franklin, (harvard: Bellknap, 1998), 414.

1 November 2008
What we owe the old is reverence 3 De-marginalising our old people

To reduce all aspects of life to a valuation indexed to usefulness, profitability, functionality, is to fall into the utilitarian nightmare. Such valuations see everything as a means to an end; now most things are, in fact, a means to an end; but a human being can never be reduced to such valuations based on usefulness, functionality, the status of means to other people’s ends, or an organisation’s ends, or a State’s ends. What sets a human being apart in moral and theological terms is that a human being is an end in herself, or himself. Yet at the same time the first question of the catechism immediately provides an important qualifying perspective. A human being not only is an end in herself, but has a chief end – to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

It is because we are given our essential value, our enduring identity, our unique calling as gifts bestowed by God that we can never be ultimately reduced to mere means. We are created as those whose end is to love, serve and worship God. Heschel’s theology of human existence, draws nourishment from a root system plunged deep into the Hebrew Bible, which is why he is so resistant to any view of the old person as burden on society, or as one whose provision should in any sense depend on ongoing usefulness and economic contribution to society. Here is a word whose prophetic note reverberates through four decades with compelling relevance:

There are alleys in the soul where man walks alone, ways that do not lead to society, a world of privacy that shrinks from the public eye. Life comprises not only arable, productive land, but also mountains of dreams, an underground of sorrow, towers of yearning, which can hardly be utilised to the last for the good of society, unless man be converted into a machine in which every screw must serve a function or be removed.

All of which leaves me wondering about the level of provision made for the elderly in our own society; the refusal to benchmark the Old Age Pension to a reasonable subsistence level and then index it; the recognised epidemic of loneliness amongst the oldest members of the population; the relatively small amount of money invested in research into some of the ailments of human ageing; the impatience of motorists at traffic lights which are already set with the green man at such a short time frame that it takes levels of agility to get across in time that some of the motorists would themselves struggle to beat; the sheer complexity of applications for benefit, rebate, relief from all kinds of costs – not least Council Tax; the bewilderment and sense of being left behind by rapid technological changes that in any case presuppose significant funds to access them – broadband, mobile phones, digital TV. And just to avoid stereotyping, I know a nonogenarian who recently took delivery of the new laptop so that it could download quicker!

No society can do everything; and the Scottish Government intends well towards our older people, even if local government expressions of policy and commitment to fulfilling free care vary wildly. But I still think that within the Church that is the Body of Christ, there is a need for outspoken alertness on behalf of those older members of our community and society, who remain valuable, wanted, needed – not for what they do or did, but for who they uniquely, preciously, and at times expensively, are.

There are few more important ways of wasting time, than visiting old people – I use the word deliberately, in the way Dr Sheila Cassidy uses it – to waste time with people is to give them non-productive time in order to give your self, to gift them presence as a sign of their worth. I know about strategic planning, dynamic leadership, anointed preaching, every person ministry, purpose driven this and that. But I have a feeling Jesus would have found time to spend, waste, give, and in so doing would de-marginalise one of the pushed to the fringe groups of our cost/benefit analysis culture. In fact I rather like the term – de-marginalise.

10 February 2008
Let justice roll and righteousness flow: “Was there nothing to fight for?”

For years now I’ve been a contributor to the Aberdeen Press and Journal, one of the few papers I know that has a God slot – a Saturday Ssermon, no less. Here’s the one the good people of Aberdeen will be reading today.

.

“There’s an epidemic of apathy, and I don’t care.”

“When people complain about a culture becoming complacent, I shrug my shoulders.”

These aren’t humorous remarks, they’re more like the resigned cynicism of a society so unsure of its future it’s hard to know what to care for. They’re the language used by paid up members of NMP – Not My Problem.

.

In Alan Paton’s novel of South Africa, Ah ! But your Land is Beautiful, there is a conversation between a white school headmaster, and Emmanuel Nene, a local leader of the black community. Following the ban on white and black children playing cricket together the headmaster resigned his job, because he said, “ I think it is time to go out and fight everything that separates people from one another”. Both of them, white and black together, accept they will be wounded and hurt, that such passionate caring for what happens in their society will be dangerous. Their conversation ends like this:

.

“Yes, and I’m going to get wounded, too. Not only by the government, but also by my own people as well.”
“Aren’t you worried about the wounds, Mr. Nene?”
“I don’t worry about the wounds. When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for? I couldn’t face that question.”

.

It’s hard to see how, by acting faithfully and living obediently to the words of Jesus, we can avoid those moments when we have to fight. They’re fair questions – where are your wounds? Was there nothing to fight for? Fair and just questions, because justice and righteousness are core values of a Christian worldview. And there’s plenty to fight for, and against.

For truthfulness, and against the pervasive dishonesty of much in public life;

for friendship, and against bullying that only thrives where it isn’t confronted;

for open trust, and against the creeping backstabbing nastiness that invades office space;

for commonsense, and against irresponsible front door promotions of buy one get one free multi-packs of booze in supermarkets;

for human dignity and diversity, and against racism, latent and blatant; against, well against whatever diminishes and devalues human beings and human life. ‘Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever rolling stream’ – not mere aspiration, but worldview, lifestyle, prayer that leads to practice.

.

It’s Lent. Maybe complacency would be harder to give up than chocolate, wine, TV. It might be worth deciding what to fight for….and against. If we can be bothered!

9 February 2008