Empathy

We began to watch the much-trailed new TV series, Gunpowder on Saturday. Opening, as it did, with the horrific scene of the cruel execution of a Catholic woman for treason (hiding a Jesuit Priest) we chose to turn over. Maybe it is an age thing but I find it less and less entertaining, or helpful, to have to watch inhumanity.

Recently a song I love stopped me in my tracks. I must have sung When I Survey the Wondrous Cross a thousand times. I have even performed it.

I love lines such as:

Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my life, my soul, my all.

But I realised, for the first time, that I didn't like the word wondrous. Which victim of execution, looking towards the gallows, would be glad to imagine the method of  their destruction becoming an object of worship?

Gratefulness better than gaudiness, methinks. When I survey the empty cross, anyone?

Time for a bit of a rethink maybe. The writers of Gunpowder say they wanted the viewers to understand the level of anger that led to the Gunpowder Plot. Did it need to be that graphic? Reviewers are divided. I think they could have demonstrated the cruelty with more dialogue and less  screaming. Sometimes a cutaway says more than a lingering camera.

So why is this about empathy? In Karen Armstrong's excellent Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life she has a chapter on empathy and shares this quote:

'...when we look at the crucifix, our hearts break in sympathy and fellow-feeling - and it is this interior movement of compassion and instinctive empathy that saves us.'
(Peter Abelard)

Now I imagine my extremist evangelical reader has probably gone elsewhere now, but should any new ones be around I know that we are saved externally, not by any action of our own. By grace and by God. But take a moment to ponder that any saving that has happened round here was not worth a thing without a response that makes the world less a place of suffering and more a place of love.

A Word of 2015 Testimony

Stephen Fry said recently that you can't believe in a God who allows parasites to eat the eyes of African children. It's an imagination failure really. People find it very hard to imagine a thing, a being, an essence (words fail us) who inhales bad and breathes out good. Someonething so amazing that their very existence encompasses all that is evil and redeems it.

It is amazing that some of these people with such a limited imagination are actors.

Almost fifty years since we moved beyond the god-of-the-gaps idea - that God is what you have left when science has reached its limit - still there are people who carry the idea of a too-small God around with them in case they have to do some emergency debunking.

The faith community can live with this. We laugh at it. We know that it is better debating style to select the strongest expression of your opponent's case to argue against. At least, some of us do.

We do not all recognise the God the atheists hate.

But we also chuckle at the way some people, who pronounce themselves members of the faith community, actually have put their trust in something they think they've proved. They believe in God on the basis of evidence, the balance of probabilities. That's not faith my friends. But sadly, neither is it science. It's pseudo-science and it deserves to be ridiculed. Even the very sad expression 'intelligent design' suggests that other human theories, by comparison, are unintelligent. This is, on the one hand plain rude, and on the other placing far too much infinite value on the earthly word 'intelligent'. Don't ascribe human characteristics to God. That way lies a barren land of omni-this and all-that. Take your shoes and socks off instead.

Faith is acting as if something is true because in doing so it becomes real for you and makes sense of your story. It provides a meta-narrative (and I know we are a bit suspicious of meta-narratives these days) which guides, points and helps. Neither a crutch, nor proving it but simply a theory of everything. Now where have I heard that expression before?

We all prefer to live in hope. My missing child will return. My cancer will be cured. I will find a job. And no, putting those three things in the same paragraph is not to confer equal seriousness upon them. So living, in what the Church of England funeral service describes as the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, is not counter-intuitive at all. It helps us live.

And so from this standpoint we observe the scientific community describing the universe as we know it beginning at a Big Bang, then refining the theory to suggest a series of bangs and crunches ad infinitum backwards and forwards (whatever that means in a multiverse we may have to now know as eternal). And as we observe we posit the existence of the infinite, the ultimate, the beyond-our-ken, the logos, the ground of our being, God. And for some of us it nourishes and sustains us to hope there is more than this, to live as people of faith that this life is not the only one on the market.

Not that we can tell with certainty if our atoms are to be redistributed around the universe or if there is to be a general resurrection. Most thinking Christians have jettisoned the whole damned-to-an-eternity-in-torment thing.

Wise guy once suggested this was the equivalent of seeing through a glass darkly, stealing an idea from Plato. And same guy suggested that in Jesus of Nazareth there were more clues to the other-world than in anyone else.

Which means that many great human stories and metaphors were told to try and get the truth of this man (somehow human and yet divine) taped. God's son? The lamb of God? The son of man? All make a point yet all fall short. No construct of words will ever get anywhere nearer than shoes and socks off time.

Trying to make sense of his death - some call the attempts 'theories of the atonement' - has led to all sorts of forms of words. Christus victor? Substitutionary atonement? Victory over death, sin, the world, the flesh, the devil?

For the evangelical community substitutionary atonement has become more than a model. It was, they say, what actually happened. Christ died in our place. So any member, or former member, of that community in all its breadth, is ostracised for daring to suggest that this might not be the whole truth.

I made this point in a Twitter conversation a few months back and the great Richard Dawkins said something along the lines of 'You mean God sent his son to die for the sake of a metaphor. That's worse.' Meaning that it was worse than all the other theories of the atonement with which people were wrestling and he was disagreeing. I love Dawkins. He writes well. He has helped me understand complex science. And he has had the humility to pull back from his rather aggressive stance against people of faith. He now acknowledges that friendly conversation works better. Respect.

I promised to write a bit more about it and it has taken until today to say this. Believe in God or not. It is entirely up to you. But make sure, if you don't believe, that the God you don't believe in isn't too small for anyone to believe in. Any creed, metaphor or historical account that is raised beyond the level of faith to actual, real, historical truth about the one we hope and trust is the creator and sustainer of the universe has become an idol. And we don't do idols in the Christian community.

Christ did not die for the sake of a metaphor. But metaphors are all we have to describe the sake he did die for.

Thought for the Day

As delivered at Radio Bristol this morning after an early morning re-write - I had done a light piece but the news changed the agenda:

'It was such an ordinary day.' How many stories of tragedy start with that? A short drive can end traumatically with an accident. Or a trip, a fall, and a life-changing injury. Over the weekend a visit to the shops was the mundane last act of those whose destination was a mall in Nairobi and a mass shooting. Attendance at a church in Peshawar, Pakistan ended in a massacre.

 

What helpful thoughts can we conjure up in the light of such appalling evil? What words spring to mind? Vengeance? Justice? Anger?

 

I'd hope we might take a more detached view but I really don't know. Of course it will make a big difference if you are affected personally.

 

In the Bible an Old Testament story is about a man called Job, happy and wealthy. We are shown a conversation between God and The Devil. Job knows nothing of this. God proudly exclaims how faithful Job is. The Devil says, in effect, that this is because Job 'has it all'. 'Were he to experience hardship he would not continue to worship you' taunts the Devil.

 

Cue incredible suffering.

 

Eventually Job has a conversation with God. He gets no answer to his questions, just more questions.

 

If anyone gives you an easy answer to the question of suffering walk away. They are bogus. There are none. Neither do I believe God is having a wager with the devil about the faithfulness of his servants. But he may as well be for all we know.

 

A Job's comforter is someone who offers unhelpful advice at a time of difficulty. In the story, the best thing the comforters actually offered was silence whilst keeping Job company. For those who are suffering today? Maybe there's a lesson for us there.

Job

It has been interesting reading the book of Job in Morning Prayer recently. The books of the Bible that started life as literature are by far and away my favourite parts. I love stories and especially ones with a moral or a deeper meaning. So let's hear it for Genesis 1-11, Esther, Jonah and Job. They remind us of the story-teller's secret art.

Job may have started life as a play. If you've never read it then I am about to plot-spoil. Sorry. Go read all forty-two chapters and come back in a couple of hours.

In my rather conservative New International Version of the Bible an introduction tells us that Job, '...helps to explain why righteous people suffer.' This is such a small fraction of the truth as to be almost worthless. In fact the book does not explain and ends up with God telling Job to stop messing with things that are beyond his understanding. But wait. We are getting ahead of ourselves.

Job starts with a brag and a bet. We are introduced to the character of Job in the first five verses, a man who has it all. Yet a man who is so holy he offers sacrifices to God on behalf of his children in case any of them have sinned accidentally. Satan and the angels present themselves to God who describes Job to them glowingly. 'There is no-one on earth like him...'

Satan responds that this is because Job has wealth. 'He won't be so holy if you let me mess with him.'

God agrees that Satan may so mess.

And so, without knowing he is the subject of this 'gentleman's' wager, Job experiences the loss of his children and servants in four random and simultaneous disasters. Staging the play, the consecutive messengers running on and announcing doom and gloom would be almost black comedy.

Ten dead children and all animal wealth gone. But Job accepts his lot and continues to worship.

Back to the heavens. Satan says it is not surprising that Job is still worshipping (yes it is, we say) because he still has his health. 'He won't be so holy if you let me mess with that.'

God agrees that Satan may so mess, but Job must live.

Job, still unaware that he is being treated like Dan Ackroyd in Trading Places, wishes he was dead but refuses to curse his God.

Three friends turn up. They have a conference before arriving in Job's presence and then sit with him in silence, dust on their heads and robes ripped.

The three friends then take it in turns to make speeches to which Job responds. Amongst other things they put it to him that:

• If he pleads with God this will all end.
• If he is devoted and confesses sin things will change.
• If he stops cursing God his suffering will finish (he has moaned but not cursed).
• God's anger is all you can expect.

Job does not justify himself but refuses to admit wrong-doing. He longs for the days when he enjoyed God's 'intimate friendship' mistakenly equating that with the time of his wealth and success. He seeks a reason for his suffering, not someone to blame. He believes that he is in a court-case and has received judgement and punishment but no evidence.

A fourth friend turns up. The words of Elihu can be removed from the story without it losing its continuity. He is not referred to before his speech or after. Unlike the speeches of the first three 'comforters', Job does not respond. Elihu speaks last because he is the youngest, describing himself as having waited 'bottled up' while the elders spoke. It corresponds with the lot of the young sometimes to speak last, speak wisest and be ignored.

Then God speaks. He does not mention the bet. He lists a load of questions nobody can answer.

Job is finally humbled. 'My lips had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.' Job's privilege is not an answer to his questions about suffering but an audience with his maker.

God tells the three comforters that they were wrong, a helpful reminder to us never to read passages of our Bibles without context for some of it is the record of the speeches of the foolish. They are sent off to repent and make good. Job is instructed to pray for them.

And Job? He gets ten more children. A consolation? His new daughters are more beautiful. Does that help? And his health and wealth back. Big deal? You almost never know what things your new acquaintances have been through to get where they are.

The wager is never mentioned.

The story is for us. Job means 'persecuted one'. A symbolic name for a fictitious and imaginary character who stands for all those who suffer randomly. God may as well, for all we know, be having a bet with Satan about our holiness. It is not for us to know why children die, illnesses strike down good people or warmongers bring terror to us and not the guy next door.

We should not seek meaning or place responsibility for such things. We should recall that the Christian hope is a dead man on a cross identifying with human suffering not explaining it. If times are tough then life is being just as normal as if times are good.