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Headline in one of the Sunday Papers, ‘Ethics Boy’.
It’s a sarcastic comment about David Cameron’s recent comments on the disappearance of moral boundaries in much of cultural, social and personal life, and our increasing reluctance to speak honestly about those areas of life where moral responsibility and personal standards of behaviour are essential to maintain a healthy social fabric.
It was reported in different papers with the usual mixture of dismissive sneering or sympathetic scepticism from other commentators, and with the observation made more than once, that the Conservative leader had ‘entered the perilous territory of morality’.

Which prompted an obvious question for a simple soul like myself. Shouldn’t those charged with formulating law, developing social policy, upholding the proper balance of human and economic interests, maintaining and contributing to good international relations be expected to ‘enter the perilous territory of morality’? Politics without ethics is power without the values that constrain and direct its executive function towards human flourishing. Politicians with no publicly stated values, or who are reluctant to express moral judgements as they see them, may be playing safe to protect their own interests; but as public servants we are surely entitled to expect that they are people of integrity, honesty, moral candour and ethical principle. And therefore that who they are should be reflected in what they say. Not perfect people, but people who themselves know (to use David Cameron’s everyday vocabulary), – the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and that actions have consequences beyond the personal act itself for which the agent is in meaningful ways responsible and accountable.

I for one have no difficulty with politicians ‘entering the perilous territory of morality’; it’s preferable to the more lethally dangerous terrain of amorality. The difference between compassion and cruelty, love and hatred, kindness and callousness, generosity and greed, truth and deceit, faithfulness and betrayal, courtesy and in yer face ignorance – is a difference worth trying to maintain in any society that is to have a future that isn’t bleak and increasingly inhuman. Civil virtue, civic responsibility, respect for persons, community spirit, – all high sounding, even a bit boringly abstract. But a society that has no way of nurturing such inner resources of humanity and civility is going to become a comfortless collection of the selfish who are under siege to their own fears.

I don’t share the political principles of Conservatism; I struggle to share even some of the political principles and actions of the Labour government; I can find points of contact too with the Lib Dems, and believe in the Scottish nation without signing up to an SNP agenda for independence. But what I expect from politicians of whatever party, is a willingness to be found in ‘the perilous territory of morality’, and an unembarassed openness about the place of ethical values in the way we live our civic and social lives in this country. What makes David Cameron’s comments newsworthy, is the assumed political risk he has taken by raising the issue of our national morality; which simply highlights how little we expect moral comment from politicians who represent us, and how urgently we need to require it.

As a young friend often says at the end of a conversation, ‘Anyway, that’s what I think.!

1. The trafficking of young women and children across borders and even across the globe for the sex trade in Western democracies or in Eastern nation states
2. The use of child labour to produce cheap fashion clothes, or designer label clothes for affluent Western markets
3. The trade tarriffs and barriers, and the economic clout of multi-national business corporations
4. Forced labour in oppressive regimes where human rights legislation has no moral purchase

These are examples of modern slavery.

So when Sepp Blatter, the President of the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) refers to the Christiano Ronaldo transfer saga and describes the lot of modern professional footballers as examples of ‘modern slavery’, I can only conclude that the person who utters such crass nonsense suffers from ethical myopia and may even be morally blind, and in need of urgent corrective surgery to the conscience.

Christiano Ronaldo last year signed a five year contract with Manchester United, his current employer, worth £30 million pounds. He was not compelled to sign. The amount is obscene but that’s the way of professional European football. A contract has both a legal and a moral function – it enables a relationship of trust and purchased loyalty, based on agreed cost and reward. Hard to define this as slavery. But let’s see.

 How many hours would a child in India have to work sewing on buttons for Western high street clothing manufacturers, to earn one millionth of Ronaldo’s £6 million a year basic? £6 = 600 pennies; according to a recent Panorama programme some of those who hire out the children receive at best 10 to 20 pence per day? At twenty pence a day, that’s a pound a week – though if they work 7 days a week it could be £1.40. OK so in any case it would take thirty days to earn £6. £72 per year with no days off. Which means if the child works without any break, it would take 83,333 years to earn Ronaldo’s basic annual pay. That, Mr Blatter, is modern slavery.

What would that same £30 million over 5 years do to buy the freedom of women trafficked into the sex trade? Or what would it mean for coffee growers, banana growers, all those families whose goods are hoovered up by the consumer greed that has become epidemic? Go do some google searching – get the figures – do the math as they say in USA.

The Bible says some hard things about slavery, oppression of the poor, causing the little ones to stumble.

“He has shown you humanity what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”.

The Bible also says some pertinent things about impertinent foolishness such as that of Sepp Blatter

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
but only in expressing his opinion.” (Proverbs 18.2)

Oh, and a wise man once remarked, “He who mocks the poor insults his Maker”. (Proverbs 17.5)

A wise elderly saint once said she could find a verse in the book of Proverbs for most every kind of foolishness – me too!

This is Thomas Merton at his opinionated best. Making allowances for gender stereotypes, his take on theology and spirituality says the important things. Theology rooted in divinely revealed truth as experienced in personal encounter with the Divine, and spirituality as experience of God with substance, meaning and ‘sure orientation’. These are the guiding principles of one who was novice master for over a decade, charged with the formation of heart and mind towards study, work and devotion to God.

Again and again I have found Merton to be an honest, humane director of souls; his heightened awareness of his own needs, his habit of being too hard on himself, his struggle to be humble, his unmistakable love for God and desire for an authentic life of holiness and love, his instinct for the Presence of God discerned in the world, in other people, in the vacillations of his own heart – all of these are qualities of saintliness, the more attractive because he would have laughed at the idea of Merton the saint.

And rightly – for sanctity is not a destination now, but that to which we journey, in union with Christ; holiness is that which we seek, but it is grace and demand, free gift and grateful response, buth intoxicating invasion of joy and the lived out disciplined love for God and others in a life both cruciform and oriented by resurrection. Even then, we love because he first loved us, we are forgiven sinners learning to forgive, reconciled enemies learning the ways of peace, rescued runaways who have found our way home – or been found and brought home- only to be sent out to find others and bring them home too, new creatures in Christ living out of and towards the new creation.

I still remember doing Higher French at night school, following an early exit from secondary education, being relieved at passing it and hoping I’d never have to do French language again. But the Scottish MA requires a modern language component, so I did French Studies, which opened up a world I still explore off and on thirty-odd years on. The course included

French History from the Revolution to the present including the troubled history of the Republics, Algerian independence, failed policies in Indo China, De Gaulle and the early days of the Common Market

French Literature, in French and English translation- this was where I first read Camus – in French but cheated by reading The Plague (La Peste) also in English, because I wanted the story quicker than I could read French

French Current Affairs accessed through Le Monde on the contents of which we had several memorably embarrassing tutorials as we were asked to translate in front of les autres

We also spent time with French 20th century philosophy (mainly Existentialism) including Sartre, Camus and the writer I go back to again and again, Saint Exupery.

I still remember the first time I read Saint Exupery on flying, the desert, and the way that the courage and discipline of risk-taking is an important element of what it means to be a human being fully alive. Wind, Sand and Stars is a beautiful prose poem of human behaviour observed by one for whom the role of spectator was impossible – few writers understood and celebrated the human imperatives of action and engagement with the physical elements of existence with the passionate perception of this pilot who wrote sublime prose.

But the Saint Exupery book that I’ve read most often is Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). This fable, tale, parable, story – it defies pinning down definitions – can be read slowly in half an evening, and it opens the mind and heart every time, for me. Some of the clearest observations about the meaning of life, what’s important, what is foolish, and what is absurdly grown-up, are contained in the dialogues between the Little Prince and the pilot stranded in the desert.

“What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere underneath there is a well.”

“One sees only with the heart, the essential is invisible to the eye.”

And from The Wisdom of the Sands, “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.”

 Not sure how many copies of the Little Prince I’ve bought. My first copy cost £1.25. My current aging one £2.50. The smaller one bought yesterday for a friend who will appreciate the wisdom and vision of the book cost £5.99. More than most, this is a work of art, and if French Studies had given me nothing more than an introduction to this clear-sighted French existentialist reconnaissance pilot who was able to offer a philosophy of human existence rooted in responsibility to and for the other, then it was worth all those hours and hours, working with that French dictionary, and the Larousse Illustre, and those hilarious tutorials reading Le Monde with a French tutor whose sense of humour enabled her to survive spoken French mangled by a raw and unrefined Lanarkshire accent!

No doubt at some stage the credit crunch will hit bibliophiles and books will increase in price, and hard choices will become cultural dilemmas, even existential crises. Now instead of thinking twice,  I might have to think again before deciding that a particular book is a necessity as well as a luxury. It isn't the odd paperback that's the problem – it's those works of art, those cultural artefacts we call academic monographs, usually published in a small print run and still built as a book that's meant to last through years of reading and regular loving use. I count a high quality commentary in that bracket – serious scholarship, encased in a book that is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

It's an interesting question whether we are more disposed to the contents of a book if its construction, quality of materials, format and layout are part of the way the author's writing is presented to us. Should that recognisably no nonsense navy blue buckram, the high quality paper and discreetly strong stitching, the elegant font and ungrudging space for footnotes, along with the gold crest of Oxford, give an assumption of authority and serious, lasting importance, to a book such as The Countess of Huntigdon's Connexion. A Sect in Action in Eighteenth Cenutry England? And is it worth the price? I can just hear the answers – (most of them I've rehearsed in my own head) –

What? Pay that for a book?

What's wrong with libraries? 

How many times do you have to read a book to make it worth the price? 

Are you sure you need this, or do you just want it? 

To all of which I can construct answers which merely rationalise a decision already made somewhere deep within, in that place where personal indulgence, common sense stewardship and valid personal choice argue out in a process that eventually identifies what, for us, matters more than money. Membership of a golf club or gym, a CD collection, an upper range car, the holidays abroad, the shirt with the small telling logo (which tells others it was expensive); I can do without these if now and again I can have a book like this. See. Told you. Anybody can rationalise when they put their minds to it.

Which is just as well. Cos I've just done it again. Bought an expensive book. Possible alternative routes for the money spent give urgency to the process of post purchase rationalisation. Commentaries now come in all sizes, written for every niche market you can think of, and some of them for niche markets you would never have thought of. Just how many commentaries does any one person need on a biblical book? That is, I think a key question – and being less tongue in cheek, there is now a real danger that too many commentaries eclipse the text they are meant to clarify. For example, a niche set of commentaries with applications, illustrations, not too technical, aimed at preachers, – encourages intellectual and spiritual short-cuts, which eventually short-change both preacher and congregation. Or, on the other hand technical critical commentaries which absorb information like a paper sponge, and expand to pages and pages of information less and less pertinent to the text, merely give commentaries a bad name amongst those who need them most.

 
Sam Balentine is a Baptist. He is a professor of Hebrew Bible. His commentary on Job arrived yesterday. It wasn't cheap. It was worth every pound. Yes it is beautifully produced; and yes Balentine is a very good writer, deeply conversant with the text, at ease in the world of critical, literary and theological scholarship; yes, he has spent years on this volume, it isn't one of those quickly assembled cut and paste previous stuff and shape it into a commentary efforts, justto* fill the publisher's list. This is the real thing. A commentary that wrestles with text – the text of Scripture, the text of human experience, and does so in a commentary format that is in my view way ahead of the game. (* decided to leave this typo as a new word which refers to those actions of others which are justto impress others!)

The Smyth and Helwys series includes sidebars with relevant and richly sourced comment from literature such as novels and poetry, the text has windows in which important background or social comment offer further interpretive perspectives, illustrations from art and other cultural ways of conveying human responses to God. And all of this in a volume that uses several colours to highlight text, that has imaginative and user friendly layout, and that is simply a joy to read, use and work with. You can see the details of the series here (www.helwys.com/commentary)

No series is worth investing in uncritically. There are strong and weak entries in this series as well. But Terence Fretheim on Jeremiah, Sam Balentine on Job, Walter Brueggemann on Kings, C H Talbert on Romans – these I have used, and for me they are self recommending, as authors I've learned to trust – not because they are always right, but because reading their other work, they have always been important conversation partners. I'm looking forward to some conversations with Balentine and Carol Newsom (in the New Interpreter's Bible) over the summer, about this book which sits in the middle of my Bible like a great chunk of theological granite likely to outlast any question I'm ever likely to ask.

One of the hardest working students in my time at College, had come later in life after working amongst other things in merchant shipping. His enthusiasm was for ministry, his vocation to serve Christ in the church, and if that meant doing academic work, and developing different intellectual muscles so be it. I happen to believe that intellectual ability, intelligence, learning isn't only about academically tested standards and intellectual testing.  Life is a highly efficient educator, work of whatever kind – manual, mental, skilled craft, administrative – they all require the learning of new skills and developing established skills, interpreting situations before or while applying knowledge, negotiating a way between the demands of work and people and our own resources of ability time and energy. To successfully do that year on year makes for a degree of learning every bit as impressive as any Degree obtained from learning.

So when such a student as mentioned above comes to College, they don't come to start learning – they come to begin learning differently, and they do so with considerable wisdom, knowledge and know how already in the bank. So when it came to meeting with our denominational Board of Ministry, our student was asked if he had enjoyed the academic work. His answer 'No'. 'But it's been good for me'.
When then asked for one particular thing he had learned that was important he replied,'The definition of a good book'.
Pressed further what that might be, his reply lives on because of the laughter the truthfulness of his reply generated: The definition of a good book? Here's the reply, delivered in a broad West of Scotland accent and with considerable conviction: 'A thin one'.

I've thought often about that answer – and the wisdom and honesty of a man for whom reading isn't the be all and end all of learning. I never thought it was – I've worked in a brickwork setting bricks, ploughed fields with tractor and multi-blade plough, done the best part of an apprenticepship as an electrical engineer, shared in the management of a small market garden. And I've known many learned people whose learning didn't come from hours spent reading, and for whom reading was a necessary precondition only for learning what they needed to know, in order to know how to do what they wanted to do. The connection between knowing and doing was central to who they were, how they lived their lives, and just as important, was a key component of the accumulated wisdom and learning that comes from a life well lived

A good book is a thin one. It doesn't try to intimidate you with its learned bulk; it won't take chunks of your life to plough through assiduously assembled arguments, nor spend zillions of words telling you what is interesting to the writer rather than what is important for you the reader; it will get to the point, say the essentials with minimum fuss, and because it is a thin book, will say it well in order to make the most persuasive case in the space available. And if you are lucky and blessed, it will change how you think, how you look at life, and make you thankful for thin books.  Preaching for 50 minutes takes less time to prepare than preaching for 10 minutes. Somewhere in 50 minutes there will be things worth hearing, but what a lot of other stuff you have to live through to get there. But in ten minutes, to say what is worth saying, and worth others hearing, is a bigger ask. And if it is pulled off, it saves folk a lot of time and tedium.

Likewise books. Now I've read my share of thick books – big, bulky brieze blocks of Barthian dimensions. But I've also read thin ones – under 200, even under 150 pages, and could argue that what I learned from them could never have been as persuasively, effectively, life changingly accessed in a book two, three or even four times the size. So I'm going to do a series of posts soon in praise of thinner books, as a tribute to a man who once told us something wise about learning, and showed us he had used his time well in College. A definition of a good book – a thin one.

I'm hoping to have a few guest posts from those of you who wish to write a piece in praise of a thin book – no more than 160 pages – the odd choice of maximum pages is because one of the books I want to write about is 156 pages. Post a comment with your suggestion if you have an offer, and meantime I'm asking one or two to think about doing one.

One of the enjoyable features of a time at St Deiniol’s is you meet a number of people even more interesting than yourself! Sean’s well meant advice about the resident scholar pursuing the identity of the young man in Mark came far too late of course. I did indeed meet this tireless scholar and one of my first questions was, ‘What are you researching?’ And yes, some time later I was still sat there receiving a deep education on exegetical options I’d never have imagined possible or plausible. I threw in a little twist of my own and asked if the young man in Mark was the first gospel’s equivalent of the Beloved Disciple in John – that took us to Bauckham and back some time later.

Then there was the afternoon conversation over earl grey tea and chocolate cake with an elderly Philadelphian doing research into the family history and theological ancestry of Hannah Whittall Smith, Keswick, perfectionism and much else. She gave us a sharply observed run down on US politics, particularly scathing on the patronising President who’s giving up golf to avoid offending parents whose sons won’t be home from Iraq to play golf. Her views on Hillary and Obama were clear, informed, slightly prejudiced (which she acknowledged), and hoped to see the first black President of the US before she died, and so she would die happy. After a tour of Wesleyan perfection, Dubya Bush’s imperfection, and Obama’s near perfection, she took her leave from the table, raising her hand outward in the sign of peace, pronouncing the rarely used benediction, ‘Keep the faith, baby!’ An utter delight.

Then there was  (and is) the chaplain for the month, The Rev Arderne Gillies from Chorleywood Free Church (Baptist). First spoke with Arderne on Monday night, when she suggested we take a walk in the grounds of Hawarden castle (see later this post for the consequences of this pastoral advice!) As chaplain, Arderne celebrated the pre-breakfast Eucharist with the guests during our stay. Now you read it right – Arderne is a Baptist minister, chaplain for a month at St Deiniol’s, and she celebrated according to the liturgy of the Church of Wales – which allowed me the rare privilege of being ministered to in a worship service thoroughly ecumenical, overtly egalitarian, and movingly personal as we received the bread and wine with the affirmations and blessings which express the mystery and gift that is the Body and Blood of Christ. And the service was conducted with such care as requires personal preparation, the intercessory prayers earthed into the hurts and hopes of a broken world, and the solemnity of the service tempered by the engaged presence of one spiritually at one with both congregation and her own role as minister. Thanks Arderne.

The version of the Lord’s Prayer used is the traditional form with the petition, ‘Forgive us our tresspasses…..’ which we prayed with sincere fervour, having fallen foul of the factor in Sir William Gladstone’s estate, because we were so busy blethering we didn’t notice the wee private signs, and inadvertently trod on one of the recently declared non public parts of England’s green and pleasant land! Comes from being Scottish where such laws of tresspass aren’t so easily enforced. One of those occasions when pastoral advice about walking the walk can mean offending the world!

When James said "Count it all joy when you fall into different tests and difficulties" he was obviously living before the onset of the exquisitely complicated processes of changing one’s Internet Provider! I am at present without Internet access at home (waiting for hardware, software) and doing a crash course in patient negotiation with multitudinous persons at several Help Line / Call Centres scattered from here to there in our globalised world. Clipped West of Scotland accent through clenched jaws customer, (Me) speaks to various support staff well-trained in customer evasion and redirection, who have my money and tell me different stories about how my difficulties are to be solved. Every one of them has said, soothingly, ‘I understand your concern Mr Gordon…..’

The result is involuntary enrolment in a post-graduate course in Patient Endurance and Serial Frustration’. So for now, Blogging will be intermittent, squeezed into those spare moments when I’m at a desk with internet access. In the meantime I will seek to learn the lessons that Providence clearly thinks I need to enage with……….. all comments to this post should seek to offer advice, consolation, mutual exchange of negative experience pour encourager les autres?

Some years ago on holiday at Poolewe, up the West coast of Scotland, near Ullapool, I was flying my kite. It wasn’t a fancy two string acrobatic stunt kite. It was an ordinary diamond shaped honest to goodness kite I’d had for years. And the sea breeze took it the full length of the string till it was a wee dot way up there. Then the string broke. And I took off along the beach in pursuit, trying to put my foot on the trailing string to recapture my kite. Twice I got my foot on it but the wind was too strong, and all I got was a sore foot. I gave up and the last my kite was seen it was heading out to sea………

Some time ago I was given the gift of a kite. I’ve never flown it yet. One of the costs of being too absorbed in doing busy stuff, is you forget to play. And it is years now since I played with a kite. Why should that occur to me at around 6.00 a.m. on a dark February morning? Not because the wind is blowing a gale outside – it’s too strong to fly a kite in anyway. But because I came across this in David Runcorn’s book, something I didn’t know:

Some Greek Orthodox communities mark the start of Lent as the first outdoor day of the year. Lent is the beginning of Spring. After the long death of winter, here is the first sign that new life is coming. We must go out to greet it. The community celebrates this day by climbing the nearest hill and flying kites on the fresh spring wind!

Always more important than what we turn from is what we turn to. Here we meet the Spirit enticing, driving, inspiring us in the struggle to turn from sin and be caught up into the adventure of divine love. (Page 133)

That new kite was a gift from people who know what’s good for me. And this weekend it’s going to become a sacrament of the Spirit, a way of yearning to be caught up into the adventure of divine love.

I’ve posted a full review of David Runcorn’s book,  Spirituality Workshop on the Scottish Baptist College Blog.

Perhaps only those few blog readers who visit here, and who are familiar with the rigours and trials of academic administration, will understand my need to give poetic form to a process that, like algae on a too shaded pond, at times can threaten to take over your life and suffocate vitality and freshness. Yet the process of validation, which confirms the quality of the courses we offer at the College, is necessary and an important public statement of confidence, and for that reason we are content to fulfil the obligations that must underlie such approval. We’ve just been given such a statement of confidence, and have come through the process with a high level of affirmation.

So as always, on a 5 x 7 x 5 Haiku form, I seek through disciplined word and thought, to impose control, and bring all parts of my life (including academic admin!), into the sphere of faith and following after Jesus. If we are faithful in the details, we might be trusted with the big picture, huh?

Validation Haiku

Module Descriptors

Calcify the intellect

with Learning Outcomes.

…

Documentation

Keeps Quality Enhancement

Staff – reassured.

…

Benchmarks are not the

backside impressions left by

hardwood park benches.

…

The Beatitudes

and the Sermon on the Mount,

real learning outcomes!

…

To be loved by God,

to follow after Jesus,

that’s validation!