The Godless Gospel

 

If you are unfamiliar with the work of populist philosopher Julian Baggini then this may not be quite the place to start. My introduction to him was the best-seller The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten: And 99 Other Thought Experiments. Which made me think.

In The Godless Gospel (Was Jesus a Great Moral Teacher?) (Granta 2020) Baggini attempts to remove Jesus' moral teaching from its theological framework to see if there is anything to help those who don't want to swallow the whole God thing.

It is an interesting exercise, applauded  on the jacket by no less than Richard Holloway, he who wrote Godless Morality whilst still an Archbishop although he has since moved nearer to godless than god-fearing.

Does it work? There is good stuff in the opening sections, especially about individual attitude, humility and the process of doing thinking. He acknowledges that reading the gospel is not like reading a modern treatise on moral philosophy. It is not an argument to be followed but a biography to be pondered. Whether you can think about it clearly whilst dismissing the thing that holds it all together is the big question. The attempt to distance Jesus' teaching from his understanding of God, the Father, in whom he trusted and who he believed he served, seems, to me, to pull on a thread that unravels everything.

The last third of the book is a new version of the Gospel, replacing mentions  of God with 'good' in many cases and yet leaving references to prayer unaltered. If there was no God and he was mistaken about praying then surely the whole of Jesus' manifesto implodes? The parable of the kingdom and the return of the king are included. To be fair, Baggini discuses this at length but we draw different conclusions.

Annoyingly Baggini chooses to word his Gospel harmonisation in the language of the Authorised Version because he prefers the poetry. Which makes it harder, not easier, to follow. Living words need lively translation, not archiving or confining to the theatre. 

Interesting effort and nicely written but I wasn't convinced. The Gospel writers all, for sure, had axes to grind and used what Karen Armstrong calls mythos to make their points. But they wrote that we might have life in all its fulness in Jesus' name (John says this directly), not that we might pick and choose which bits we like.

Silbury Hill

I like to read a local book when staying away from home. It's a habit I began about twenty years ago when I happened to read Captain Corelli's Mandolin on a Mediterranean island and, even though it was the wrong island, the book came alive.

We've been staying a few miles down the road from home, in Castle Combe; proof positive that you don't have to get away far to get away. In a bookshop in nearby Corsham I asked the friendly proprietor what to read. I wanted something that wasn't a guide book but was good writing, evocative of the area. She gave me a fine selection but On Silbury Hill by Adam Thorpe stood out. It has been an amazing companion; a metaphysical, biographical introduction to the area known as the Wiltshire Downlands covering six millennia of history from Neolithic times.

We went to Avebury and Silbury Hill. As Adam Thorpe (almost the same age as me) recalls his Marlborough College school-days so I recalled my own, not least because in about 1967 I came there on a school trip.

To be fair I can remember only one incident clearly from the trip. Walking from what was probably then the coach park to the hill we were approaching a gate and Max Oates ran at it and cleared it in, what I later found out was actually called, a gate-vault. Max arrived at King Edwards (a place that gave an experience not unlike Marlborough but was not a boarding school and thus reduced the bullying hours somewhat) as a highly proficient gymnast and diver. My reaction, as one who had been convinced that getting into King Edwards was a verdict on my all-round genius, was 'Why can't I do that?' It was one of the first of many steps to realising that in order to really get on you have to be more than a smart kid. I grew up in a big old house but it was rundown and we had little money for much of my school-days.  I got a free place through the entry examination. But I hadn't had gym classes, diving lessons or the pushy parents to lead me to young specialism. Indeed I spent my secondary school days trying out every new opportunity and moving on. Fives, squash, hockey, rugby, cricket, tennis - I never settled, always looking wistfully over my shoulder at the sacrifice of going to a school that thought rugby football was the only type of football worth playing. I also had undiagnosed asthma, which meant my shortness of breath when running was treatable (and eventually was, aged 24) but I merely thought I wasn't very good at it and kept trying harder.

Silbury Hill is an enigma. The conclusion of most experts, after two to three hundred years of modern archaeology, is that they don't know what it is. It is a thirty metre high mound in the middle of a huge natural downland amphitheatre. It is the largest human-made mound in the world and is near the largest standing stone circle in the world. The secret it has revealed is that it was human-made over a couple of  hundred years and has at least twelve cycles of layering. It reminds me of a a cairn where every newcomer places a stone. Except that generations have placed huge layers of chalk, turf and sandstone without, or at least without us being able to tell, if of any of them had the first idea of what the point was.

So today it just sits there, next to a busy road. Visitors are not allowed to climb because of erosion although we saw two do so during our brief visit. They would have had to squeeze through a gap, ignore two notices and climb a fence so I guess they knew what they were doing. Walking a mile away to West Kennet Long Barrow the Silbury Hill becomes small - looks like a spoil heap in the wrong place.

The Standing Stones, Barrow and Hill are accessible without paying. It has managed to resist becoming the downlands visitor experience although there is some of that in the museum and nearby Avebury Manor and Gardens (National Trust). Otherwise local agriculture simply lives and works alongside.

On a grey February day the place conjured up all sorts of alternative thoughts. It's not what some theologians call a 'thin place'. I felt it was a full place. When we don't know what something means everyone has a go at defining it. It's become somewhere with too much meaning - none of it that helpful. It's a reminder of people keeping their eyes on something bigger, grander and out there. A striving for meaning. A desire that the point of all this be something other than my own self-actualisation. Which is, at the very minimum, what the Christian Gospel does; it anchors the truth elsewhere.

Avebury and Silbury change your vision by looking at the work of people who bothered to change their horizon. The lack of clarity about why they did it leaves their work as the record of a universal question.

The book is a knowledegable friend on the same journey.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning:

I spent an hour in a coffee shop talking to a determined young man yesterday. So much passion for making the world better. So little idea where to start.

In the song Sensual Thing by the band The Four of Us, they say:

I wanna burst outside this canned reality
I wanna turn it around and see it like the way it's meant to be

I love that lyric. It has overtones of St Paul's famous lines:

Now we see through a glass darkly
Then we will see face to face

St Paul himself was using one of Plato's allegories when he wrote. Plato imagined prisoners chained together in a cave, aware of a light behind them but unable to turn round.

All three authors' lines have the idea of searching and longing. If only we stood in the right place, read the right books, met the right people, we would find the world made complete sense.

But we can't. We're facing in the wrong direction and can't turn round. One day we will find out if there is a God (if there is one). If there isn't we will never find out.

So meantime all that is left to us is to try and make sense of the world the way we're facing. Make ourselves a bit fitter. Stretch ourselves for Sport Relief. March for victims of a fire.

I hope my coffee-shop companion gets to channel his anger. The world will be better if he does.

Whether you make sense of the world using one of the great stories of faith or simply sitting in a darkened room, all we got is canned reality and we can't burst outside it, only make a difference within it.

International Happiness Day

OK here we go. Entire world 1 Tilley 0. Today we are asked what makes us happy. Everyone is joining in. Knowing how to play by the rules of this game I tweeted Radio Bristol and suggested that a bit of a Boing Boing Baggies Baggies worked for me.

For the ignorant it is the chant and action of delirious West Brom fans. Rarely seen this season but unbelievably good for endorphin production when done at, say, Wembley.

But actually I am usually happy. Maybe 'content' would be a better word. I can't understand happiness as a binary on/off thing. 'What makes you happy?' is a lazy question. We probably mean 'What increases your happiness?'

I recall sitting in the dentist's chair in 1984 a few weeks before my ordination. As I suffered from asthma in those days (mercifully no longer since I shot the cat) I had to have a local anaesthetic to have two wisdom teeth removed. Half way through the surgery on the first of the two the surgeon told me my tooth was 'interesting' and that he was getting his students in. Lord preserve us from having 'interesting' medical conditions.

My teeth made him happy.

I said to myself, and this was a life-changing moment - I am glad I am me and wouldn't want to be anyone else. In discomfort and humiliated, unable to speak, I decided, yes decided, to be happy.

I read a brief article yesterday explaining how a dozen or so people who failed to get to work because they were having a bad day managed to miss being killed on 9/11. Missing the bus, arguing with a partner, breaking a shoelace - life saving.

So what makes you happy? It is in your gift to decide to be. Tired, ill, frustrated, impatient and also happy? Why not? Try it.

Red or Blue?

My Dad used to ask a question. It often arose at a time when he was finding my mother especially infuriating, a situation with which I am not unfamiliar.

If, he would say, your wife bought you two ties for Christmas, a red one and a blue one, which one would you wear that day?

I caught the tail end of a discussion with a government spokesman on Radio 4's The World at One today. This person was being chastised because, having announced a series of benefits for working families to have help with child-care, he had not done anything for stay-at-home parents.

Forget, for a moment, the rights and wrongs of this particular policy. I always hate it when opponents attach another thing a party could have done to a thing they have done and say 'You're not doing enough.' There isn't a set order in which the world needs putting to rights. There will be tiny changes, small victories, quick wins, low hanging fruit - pick your metaphor, I'm bored.

I loathe it when I get criticised for discussing a minor matter when there are more important concerns out there. As if there is a hierarchy of this stuff. Everything is important to someone, somewhere.

The answer to the the question about the tie was either, as long as you were prepared to deal with the question, 'What's wrong with the other one?'

So don't criticise people for doing something when the alternative was to do nothing. If the proposed change is wrong say so. If it is right don't try to say it is wrong because there was another possibility too. I'm wearing the blue tie today. Deal with it.

Philosophy Rules

I really loved the series of Public Philosophy programmes on Radio 4 with Michael Sandel. Only three of them and they are over now but still available on the iplayer, maybe here. 45 minutes each.

This is not about the issues although, for the record, they were:

1. Should universities allow a certain number of people from poor backgrounds to access places, regardless of exam results?

2. Should a banker be paid more than a nurse?

3. Should you pay people to get healthy?

I want to comment briefly on why I loved the programme. We work in this country on a very legal model of debate. A case is put. It is countered. It is questioned until it squirms. That is seen as success. Paxman's famous assessment of his own work on Newsnight was, 'Why is this lying bastard lying to me?' It doesn't allow a case to be nuanced and tends to entrench the interviewee rather than allow them to change. I doff my cap in passing to Ken Clarke for being prepared to answer journalists' questions whatever brief he holds. He squirmeth not.

The Public Philosophy programme's approach was to take a straw poll and then ask a representative of the minority view to speak (if there was one) or to put an opening question. Sandel, always courteously and succinctly, summarised the point just made, using the contributor's name, and then either teased out the view a little more, or put it to someone who held a different view.

He set up examples to test theories. He retained good humour. No-one was put down.

It was just simply a joy to listen to and proof positive that people with differing viewpoints, arguing clearly, well-refereed and listening to each other, can make more progress than a cross-examination will ever make.

Public Philosopher 1 Moral Maze 0.

Pastors Causing Pain

See, here's a question. For ministers of the Gospel mainly but others may join in. If you absolutely knew you would grow the church by 100 people tomorrow but 5 would be so upset at the methodology they would leave, would you do it?

Let's say all other things being equal. You are not allowed an 'it depends' answer. You have researched and your methodology is not illegal. It is good. It will lead to long-term new converts and disciples of Jesus. You cannot stop the leavers leaving and they will blame you for the rest of their lives for 'ruining their church.'

You are not allowed to say 'It's not all about numbers.' I've reduced the problem to the state where it is.

What amazes me is that some of you are now umming and arring (never written that before, is that how you spell those words?) about this. You are genuinely considering not growing your church by 100 in order to keep 5 happy.

I don't understand you (and you probably me).

We sometimes have to make decisions that may upset people but are for the greater good. Empathy and pastoral care just get right in the way.

The world divides into two types of people and you are the other type. You probably wonder how the person who gave the order to drop the first atomic bombs slept at night. My guess is that he did the maths and then slept fine. And that will sound appalling to you.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

This is the title of a short book by Leszek Kolakowski which I have been reading very slowly over the last year or two. It is published, in translation, by Penguin.

In it he concentrates on 30 great philosophers and one idea they introduced or discussed which is, in some respects, still current and still being talked about. It is not (as he categorically says in the introduction) a history of philosophy and he warns any student attempting to treat it as such that they will fail their exams.

It is, especially for those of us who enjoy the exercise of thinking for its own sake, a great challenge. Fantastic to strip down life's great questions to such as:

Can we know anything?
How can we achieve certainty?
Do we need the church?
What is human existence?

It is equally interesting to read a summary of what the world's great thinkers (the list is the author's choice) have made of these questions. At the end of each chapter Kolakowski lists further questions and issues that are raised by the particular philosopher's views.

I loved it. And in passing I note how many of the world's great thinkers have given no answers whatsoever but merely raised questions that others have then gone on to think about in detail. Friends and colleagues will be aware of my dislike of answers and love of questions. Shoulders of giants and all that.

Cost me £8.99 through the Guardian book club.

Changing Things

Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to 'turn' a consenting homosexual?

This was apparently (and I'm quoting the Guardian's diarist Hugh Muir here) tweeted by Conservative MEP Roger Helmer. Helmer is an avid twitterer and you can follow him at @RogerHelmerMEP. Try and put aside any knee-jerk reactions you might have against a Conservative MEP. The idea that he would be a homophobic second-rater is simply blind prejudice.

Let's get in touch with our inner Baggini and treat the comment fairly. Which means analysing the question.

That surgeon will not have had one chat with a patient and gone for the scalpel. Previous, lengthy psychological consultancies will have taken place. Surgeons cannot carry out random sex-change operations on a whim. None of the consultants carrying out such procedures, I'm sure, will have gone into the discussions with their patient with any particular outcomes in mind.

But we do know of counsellors, mainly those who approach their work from a faith perspective, who go into consultation with gay patients holding the view that re-orientation is the most desirable outcome.

So the flaw in the question, I think, is the comparison of a last-resort procedure with one which we know some people discuss as only-resort or first-resort.

It is also the case that Helmer has form. We can suspect that the comment was deliberately phrased as it was to make mischief. But whether or not that was the case we do well to answer questions as clearly and carefully as possible. If we credit mischief-makers with the best possible motives and simply answer the question we will train ourselves the better to answer genuine questions when they arise.

I would be quite happy to concede that for some patients, for whom sexuality is a grey area, therapy which helps identify a preferred orientation even if such preference is marginal might be beneficial. Note the words 'some' and 'might.'

The answer, widespread across Twitter, that Helmer is an idiot, will not do. This doesn't mean he isn't.

Humorous Thoughts

How can you tell if you're sleeping next to an axe murderer?

In one of the great jokes of all time Bob Monkhouse said, 'My family laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian; they're not laughing now.'

It's brilliant because, and I accept that if I have to explain why a joke is brilliant I might be struggling, firstly he got the pause at the semi-colon right every time. Secondly because it turns the tables twice. As he turns the tables on his family he turns them on us too.

I credit him with the joke, as I always do if I know who done them, because I know how long it takes to write a joke. If you can look and talk you can do observational comedy moderately well but to do jokes - that takes skill.

A clergy colleague once asked me to write him some new Christmas cracker jokes. Since I often joked and punned I guess he thought this would be easy for me. It took me hours. Then I handed them over and realised, as they bombed, that I had written jokes only I could tell. This was partially because of the length of the pause needed at the semi-colon but mainly because it turned out he couldn't read.

A regular visitor once described this blog as whimsical. I loved that. People often under-estimate how much truth you can smuggle in under the cover of light-heartedness. It increases the likelihood of my occasional deepish thought being pondered.

As a clerge I've been doing stand-up for years and the trick seems to me to be to judge the audience early before trying your best moves. I find, 'Good morning and welcome to the service my name's Steve Tilley' so extraordinarily useful in assessing the congregation's mood. If it is a congregation I don't know well they will, more than likely, be blown away by the fact that the minister told them his name. You can also surreptitiously, see if anyone spots you used the exact format of the introduction to Have I Got News For You. If they're with you on that you'll have comrades and companions for the journey (and it will be fun too). But in many cases a blocking mechanism takes place. People chuckling in church somehow feel they are being naughty. They don't think it ought to be fun. I go for at least one laugh every funeral if I can. It's usually what the dead person would have wanted, unless they were... no you don't trap me that easily.

Humour is complicated. When you deliver a punchline you are resolving incongruity by a pragmatic reinterpretation (Wyer and Collins - A Theory of Humour Elicitation 1992). Bet you didn't know that. And the amount of humour is a monotonic inverted U-function of the time and effort required for interpretation and reinterpretation (op cit).

So, for example, Emo Phillips' joke. 'When I was young my parents told me not to go near the cellar door for if I did I would see things I shouldn't see. Then one day I went near the cellar door and I saw - that the hall had carpet.' The parents turn from good to bad and Phillips' quirky character has another bit of background to it.

Which is why Stewart Lee's book How I Escaped My Certain Fate sub-titled the Life and Deaths of a Stand-up is so important. As a response to the adverse reaction to Jerry Springer the Opera from certain evangelical Christian quarters, in one section he attempts to lead his audience on a journey which ends with Jesus assisting him when drunk. Most of you will find it offensive. The point though is to address the boundaries of humour and taste. For in a piece where the subject matter is unpleasant - being drunk and sick - he portrays Jesus as a sacrificial servant. But obviously not in a way any Springer-hating, evangelical Christan would want him to be. At the same time as doing this, Lee has turned his back on all cheap-shot humour which humiliates people for their appearance. Quite right too.

Something funny is happening to comedy. The label 'comic' would seem inappropriate if you are not laughing at the label-wearer's jokes. Today some comedians lead you to the joke but then deliberately try not to make you laugh. Or try to con you into laughing inappropriately. And if you sit in the front rows you are opening your life to ridicule at the hands of another who has a microphone when you don't. A live comedy event then, once you've made sure you are in row C or further back, becomes not so much entertaining as an exercise in intellectual rigour. More like a philosophy gig maybe.

Oh, and I nearly forgot, if you can tell, don't sleep next to them.

The Meaning of Life

Echoes of the answer from Douglas Adams' Deep Thought computer in the reply from the lovely guy on Today yesterday morning, a man who had travelled the world seeking the secret of happiness in different groups of people. He had journeyed far and wide but eventually found himself standing next to a bearded pagan character on Glastonbury Tor one solstice.

This guy said he had heard that the traveller was seeking the secret of happiness. He said he had found it, strangely, printed on the side of a bottle of bleach. As the traveller took out his note book he heard the advice: 

Keep upright and stand in a cool place

Well that will do for me for a few weeks. It should be accompanied by the great warning about life contained on the side of many food products: 

May contain nuts

I have found this to be true.

Why is There Something?

I love the idea, widely being talked about as a result of Stephen Hawking's latest publication and conversation, that the universe bears witness to its own self-creation. The complex physics and maths necessary to grasp this so-called M-theory (no-one is quite sure what the M stands for) are only understood by a very few theoretical physicists in the world. As far as I (O level physics 1971 - fail) grasp it, the existence of a vast number of other universes is implied by the maths.

I do find it fascinating that the never-ending, never-starting universe is both more complex and more simple than we could ever imagine. And I am appalled at the inadequate understanding of the creator and sustainer of the universe that this theory should be alleged to disprove such.

Back in the 1960s, theologians got to grips with the increasing reduction of the size of God caused by childish Christian philosophy and scientific progress. If God is only what remains when you have explained everything you can, then it is not surprising that that God gets smaller and smaller as progress is made. Such a God is like something which slipped down the back of the sofa never to be seen again. In fact the 'God of the gaps' is no understanding of God at all.

Every children's Christian action-song seems to have some way to suggest that God is pretty big. The observation that you don't need an understanding of God to explain how the universe works doesn't mean there is no God. It is a logic-failure of massive proportions. Christians are often criticised, rightly, for saying 'because God could have done something he did do something, therefore the Bible is history, Adam and Eve were real and we can carry on looking for Noah's Ark.' Or some such. M-theory says, 'God needn't have been involved in this process, so wasn't.' God is big, right?

I agree that the creationist bubble gets well and truly pricked by this latest round of thinking. And by creationist I mean all young and young(ish) earth theories. All Christians are creationist to some extent because we believe there is a God who is involved in and somehow loves creation and creativity.

Psalm 14 says 'the fool has said in his heart 'there is no God.'' However clever he might be, whatever unbelievable progress he has made almost single-handedly to fathoming the mysteries of the universe(s), the judgement of Scripture is that Stephen Hawking is a fool.

Once upon a time Hawking said, '...if we do discover a complete theory ... Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God.'

This was the final paragraph of A Brief History of Time. Looks like he has changed his mind. Well if he can do that once...

Us Christians do talk disappointing clap-trap about our faith. Maybe we ought to go back to the foot of the mountain and leave God in awe and mystery for a few hundred years. Until the fuss has died down.

Absolutely

One of the things writers are trained to do is to avoid word repetition. If you enjoy such an exercise you will probably make a good writer, if you are not scrawling already. So, for instance, having answered 'yes' to a question I will probably say 'that's right' if I need to affirm a positive a second time, followed by 'quite', 'indeed' or maybe 'correct.' It is also one of the reasons, I discover, why 'I love you' doesn't trip off my tongue as a mantra. Repetition, for me, robs things of their meaning unless done for narrative effect, so I prefer to find more interesting ways to affirm my devotion to those I care for. Which can be annoying. 'Absolutely.'

I was wandering around in this minefield of my own self-awareness as I awoke this morning. You still want to be me for a day? Thought not. And I recalled a question asked me by a woman following an evening service a few weeks back, after I had preached an, 'I won't tell you what to think; work out your own view,' sort of sermon.

'Do you believe there are absolutes?' she asked me.

Now a moment's thought will reveal the trap in this question for the budding relativist. 'There are no absolutes' is an absolute statement. There must be a minimum of one even if it is only 'It is not true to say there are no absolutes.'

You can't say everything is relative. As Nick Pollard once said, and probably wrote, 'I refuse to take this oncoming bus into my sphere of credibility,' is a recipe for disaster. It is best to act as if an approaching large vehicle will absolutely flatten you even unto death.

But you may survive the impact. It may brake. 'This bus will kill you' is not an absolute. 'This bus may kill you' is. But the introduction of the word 'may' to an absolute statement seems to leave us with some sort of a truism, not an absolute. An absolute must be true in all circumstances, must it not?

And are there paradoxical absolutes? For instance:

I absolutely believe in a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body.

I absolutely believe in the unborn child's right to life.

(Thanks to Paul Vallely for setting this one up in an article a few years back.)

So there are absolutes but working out what they are is a very complex, philosophical exercise. Descartes got to 'cogito ergo sum'. 'I believe therefore I am.' He worked out that he may be being deluded about everything else in the world but he could be in no doubt that it was he who was being deluded.

What tests might we use to find an absolute statement?

In his little book on Epistemology, David Wolfe suggests four tests for statements about knowledge which we can usefully apply to absolute knowledge:

Consistency (freedom from internal contradiction)
Coherence (internal relatedness to other assertions)
Comprehensiveness (applies to all experiences it describes)
Congruity (the statement works with the experience it describes)

So my death by oncoming bus is consistent (buses do kill). It is coherent (it fits with other related statements such as 'buses are heavy'; 'buses are fast', 'buses have a record in this area'). It is congruent (project the model and I look pretty flat). But it is not comprehensive. Survivors of bus impact are out there.

'This oncoming bus will kill me' fails as an absolute, but it is absolutely sensible to treat it as if it passes.

Ready for your cornflakes now?

Absolutely.

Marcus du Soutoy

I enjoyed Marcus last night. Few mathematics professors in my experience wear lime green trousers, pink velour trackie tops and yellow T-shirts with buzz cut, possibly bleached, hair. Weird but cool. Good communicator.

He gave a brilliant, one hour, illustrated lecture which should leave the few children who were there fascinated by numbers for the rest of their lives. Advice on choosing lottery numbers so you don't share the winnings, why footballs spin rapidly as they slow, number series, primes and movie clips.

'Is mathematics creativity or discovery,' someone asked. Good question, said Marcus.

Key message for me, 'Are you sure you're asking the right questions?' When maths gets complicated, mathematicians try to make sure they are asking the right questions. It enabled them to predict how the rarity of prime numbers expands (they get rarer the larger the number). You can say how many there will be without yet knowing a formula for finding the next one. I might not have put that right, not being a mathematician. There are prizes for finding big prime numbers. That's how hard it is, but you can programme your computer to do it during its down time.

I will try to go to more of this festival next year. The ticket cost £6.

Advent Thought 12

The Four of Us, St Paul, the Wachowski Brothers and Plato. What do they have in common?

St Paul suggested that, 'Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.' (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Plato's Republic included an allegory which St Paul probably drew on - the idea of a group of people who were chained in a cave so they could only see flickering shadows. Plato mused on how hard it would be for them to grasp the real light if they turned to it, for they would have assumed that the dull light they had experienced up to that point would have been reality. He further speculated that one person, breaking away from the group to find the true light, would find it difficult to be believed on return.

The Wachowski Brothers produced the Matrix Trilogy, a set of movies which began with the premise that everything we think we know is false and virtual.

And the Four of Us? Fine band from the mid 1990s. Their excellent Man Alive album opens with Sensual Thing, a wonderful, up-tempo pop song. They said:

'I want to burst outside this canned reality
I want to turn it round and see it like the way it's meant to be.'

Don't worry. You haven't stumbled into the Mustard Seed Shavings version of the Round Britain Quiz. (How bad would that be?) You have walked into this morning's thought though which is, how do you know that your morning so far has been, and will continue to be, real? Really real.

Have a real good day.

Great Questions

Sam raises these questions in a recent post:

'What will historians say about our society in 100 years time? Where are our blind spots? What do we casually ignore?'

Read the whole post, a review of a couple of films, here.

I have commented there, and repeat here, that these are great questions and I think we all ought to give ourselves to them for a few days. Longer post later then.

Well hello

One day Satan was wandering around with nothing to do when God caught his eye. 'See my servant St,' he said. 'What do you reckon?'

'Can't say I've noticed,' said Satan. 'He ever done anything that I should be bothered about?'

God was impressed. Developing the work and staying under the radar. Better than I thought, he thought.

So it came to pass that Satan gave God good odds that if he was allowed a little niggle that St would pretty soon buckle. They kept St unaware of the deal as he would probably have been into Ladbrokes himelf. Nothing serious like bereavement. That was saved for real heroes of the faith in the days when women, children and camels were deemed equally unimportant by the people who wrote these things down, despite God's best attempts to get through to them.

So Satan used the itchy skin disease with sores and boils trick. Nice one. St spent three months scratching himself although technology had moved on from broken pot shards to HC45 cream. Satan was particularly careful not to put the sores anywhere visible so St would look like a moaner if he spoke about it.

'See said God.' He remains optimistic.

So Satan caused West Brom to lose away at 9 man Preston, but he hadn't studied the tables and they were still top on goal difference.

'We'll see,' said Satan, who caused St to bite a massive chunk out of his cheek in two places so it ulcerated, a trick he saved for holidays. St shut up talking, cos it hurt, which was a bit of a rebound on Satan for it only made him more friends. His wife loved him more and more for using his listening skills on holiday and granted him favours, even though the house they were staying in was cold so that was nice of her.

So Satan gave St a fever which caused him to go to bed for 12 hours in the middle of his holiday and then he felt better. God wondered what happened to the all-powerful tormentor who brought houses crashing down on rooms full of slaves. West Brom beat Burnley to stay top as Satan had tickets for the rugby.

And so it came to pass that St and Mrs T came home from their holiday planning one final evening of relaxation know what I mean before disappearing up the backside of employment so Satan stuffed up their heating system which dissuaded one of the parties from parading around the house in a series of interesting outfits. The other party was stoical and three hours later the heating system fixed itself.

Meanwhile St got a sense of perspective, realised he had a good job, a good wife and many friends and threw himself back into his work with the sort of wreckless abandon for which he is easily ignored. He missed, which may, as Douglas Adams once remarked, be the secret of flight if it is the ground you throw yourself at. Consequently his first day back has only two appointments one of which is for a free lunch and the other for beer, as a baptism visit cancelled on him.

So he watched the video of last night's football while the heating system cut in and decided to have a quietish day and pop to the doctors for some more cream as he still felt a bit sore and itchy.

That was what I did on my holidays by St aged 52 apart from the restaurant reviews which will be posted separately. Not the greatest holiday of our lives but necessary and in the right place chronologically.

Did I mention that West Brom were still top?

Quality Control

I'm grateful to Gillian Oliver, the Church of England's Head of Communications Development, who I met recently. I was impressed that, in a busy week reporting on the Diocese of Bath and Wells alleged communications systems she found time to chat to me before a meeting, think of an article relevant to our conversation and remembered to copy it to me with a note on her return to her office. Probably why she's a Head of Communications and I'm still an amateur blogger.

She copied me this article by Richard Morrison in the Times from April 17th this year. If you haven't time to go read it yourself you need to know that it concerns the reaction to a virtuoso violinist when he busked in the Washington subway rather than played in the concert hall.

The gist of the article is that we recognise greatness by context and most of us can't tell greatness and averageness apart, especially in the performing arts.

It's a good question. How duped are we? Could you tell an old master from a forgery, a £5 bottle of wine from a £50 or a vintage Stratocaster from a 2007 Tanglewood? In other words, do we rely too much on people telling us what is any good rather than trusting our senses? In the world of art our opinion is everything and nothing. I have seen the Mona Lisa and it didn't move me nearly as much as The Wedding at Cana on the opposite wall. But what do know? I also like Jack Vettriano but experts tell me he is poor.

If Joshua Bell, the violinist in question, came to play in Nailsea High Street with his £2 million Stradivarius I'd have no idea if he was any good. I don't live in that world. Would you? And what difference would it make if someone told you who it was and what he was playing? Would you like it more?

Intellectual and emotional honesty are precarious and precious commodities are they not? So how sure are you that you like things because you like them and not because someone else says so?

More Pig Eating

Being back in full-time ministry I suspected that my reading life would go to pieces and so I have tried to diary a monthly reading day and will be equally trying to get away for a two night reading retreat twice a year. Trying to feed others is impossible if you don't eat.

Today I have finished this wonderful little book and would like to share one final 'thinking' problem.

A couple have three sons and always treat them fairly at Christmas, budgetting the same spend on each of them. This year they all want the same games consuls and at £100 each they are exactly within the budget.

As they go to make the purchase they see a special offer in the store. If they buy two of the newer versions of the games consuls at £150 they will get one of the earlier models (the one they were just about to buy) absolutely free. Same total spend and two better gifts. But would this be fair?

Surely it would, argues mum. One lad gets exactly what he wanted and was going to get anyway. Two do better.

But, argues Dad, the one who gets the old version will feel the poorer, for it is all comparative.

But both agree it would be stupid to buy less with their money than the best they can get. It's a tricky decision.

And it is. I remember geting my first proper bike aged 7. One month later my sister got one too. But she was three years younger than me so why should she get hers earlier? I got over it. Kids do. But I remember feeling a bit miffed.

Years later, tackling the parenting of seven year olds myself, the idea of fairness seemed unnecessarily restrictive. Why should we have to be fair and balanced all the time? The slogan, 'What do you want, a fair life or a fun one?' was born. I expect it annoyed my sons as much as the bike situation annoyed me but it seemed to work. From time to time one son was singled out for a treat which seemed appropriate without feeling the other one had to have something at the same time.

But the Christmas present problem poses the whole scenario sharply. Could you break it to the boys that one was doing less well then the other two?

I think I'd be inclined to put the problem to them and see if they could solve it. My boys once did a deal that instead of a small bedroom each and a shared playroom the one son would have the two small bedroms and the other would have the larger playroom as his bedroom. They lived more or less happily this way ever after.

I think empowering your kids is the answer, but as Julian Baggini says, on a local scale, all poverty is relative. We can feel poor if a neighbour gets rich even if we stay the same and it is not at our expense. And the same argument applies nationally and internationally. The inequality of presents poser asks us difficult questions about global poverty too.

Great book. Recommended. Maybe for Christmas?

Taboos

A six year old boy has a pet guinea pig which he loves. One day, in the act of cuddling it, he drops it and it falls to the floor. It is instantly and utterly dead.

Fantastic says Mum. A source of fresh meat. It would honour little Snuffles to eat him rather than bury him.

You are mortified at this (so is Snufffles but that is a poor joke). You don't eat pets where you come from. Why not?

Recently I have been pondering this in the light of programmes such as Escape to River Cottage, Jamie's Italian Adventure and Gordon Ramsay's F word, in which excellent chefs rear their own meat and treat it lovingly, then see it slaughtered (or in Jamie's case don't rear it but do kill it themselves - respect) and prepare it. If we do not feel there is anything intrinsically wrong with eating meat, what is wrong with eating the freshly road-killed cat? You can eat round the tyre marks.

This is a poser in Julian Baggini's wonderful book of thought experiments I am still working through called, 'The Pig That Wants to be Eaten.'

The power of taboo is very great. Some cultures don't eat pigs, some cows, some meat, some rotten milk - we all have our taboos. But are they more than cultural? Would labrador stew have been a greater mark of respect for the eccentric retriever Alex (RIP) than the pet crem.

Thinking about it.