Fear and Hope

One of the greatest blessings in my life are my friends. I get to spend my life with the kind of people who make a room brighter just by being there. The kind of people whose first response is always kindness and tolerance, who dream about doing brilliant things, who listen to the world and want to explore it. And being around these kind of people makes me want to be a better person, to deserve the love I receive from them and be able to try and return it.

Then the news is full of anger and violence and pain. Distorted people, blurring away from the cameras, fists in the air. We stand for ourselves. Not them. Out. An eye for an eye. 

And they seem to think hate is good. One EDL member was asked on twitter what the difference between the neo-Nazi's, KKK and the EDL is (by and anti-EDL protester). His response: 

"easy to prove [that the EDL are different from the other groups] ..the Kkk hate black people nazis hated the jews and the edl hate muslims.....the only connection is hate ...so"

The only connection is hate, he said. And that's okay, of course, because it's not the Jews. Not black people. And not white people either.

But I'm lucky. I was always loved and taught to love. Trying to be loving is easy. So I try to understand. Hate begets hate; people who are hurt lash back. I don't like the EDL or the BNP or  UKIP. I hate what they stand for; everything about them repels me, and as a white British Christian I'd like to distance myself and everything I stand for from everything they claim to stand for, and the associations they make with white, British nationality, and even Christianity. 

But it is tempting to hate them sometimes. To sneer. To slap back, violent protest against violent protest, swearword for swearword. I'm a guardian reading leftie; of course I'd like to shout at Farage or Griffin. I'd love to tell Tommy Robinson where he can stuff his Britain. 

But we're trying to be better than that. And again I'm reminded how blessed I am. There's the Hope Not Hate movement, the mosque which opened its doors to the EDL, the good, sensible people who stand up to point out that extremists don't stand for the majority, who rebut mad nonsense with calmly-stated facts. A terrifying amount of people are trying to make hate the norm in this country - in this world - but more are responding with hope and peace. When the EDL protest, when the terrorists bomb towns or blow up cars, when rockets fly over walls instead of over our one planet, there are people who light candles, who pull children out of the wrecked buildings, who hold talks. John Green, in his video response to the Boston Bombings, called these people the helpers:

'If you look at those videos [the Boston bombing clips] you see two extraordinary things [...] all these flags lined up together, none higher than any other... those 96 flags of people running the Boston marathon are side by side because they stand for a larger us, an us sharing a human endeavour that doesn't require a 'them'. And the flags aren't blown over by the explosion, but within seconds some of those flags do come down. They come down when people, onlookers, first responders tear down the barricades to get to the injured. 'Look for the helpers', the great Mr Rogers said about tragedy, 'You will always find people who are helping.'  [...] Think I'm cool living in a world with flags, but I am most proud to live in a world where no flag flies above any other. There are people who don't want to live in that world [...]  but I know that we are not going to give it up. And I know that we can always look in hope to the helpers, and endeavour to be among them.'

John Green,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2X1gA5apcU, April 16th 2013

I don't think I can put it better than that. 

J.R.

A Simple Faith

My shower is evidently a very inspiring place to be. I seem to think up most of my blog posts in it.

(Yes, you needed that contextual information.)

As usual, this morning, I was thinking about my frustration at A-Level R.E. It's a great subject, but it doesn't relate to my faith at all, and so I struggle with the dull critical essays which bandy around words like 'soteriology' 'replacement theology' 'eschatology' e.t.c. without ever getting to the heart of the matter. I sincerely doubt that heaven will only be open to those who can describe using key words and quotations the development of the covenant relationship between God and Man. I don't mean that we should be ignorant and never question faith, not at all; I just doubt that many people will discover their faith on page 235587395158a of Religion for Dummies. 

So I've decided to tell the story of faith in my own words here, as I'd tell it to a child or a bible scholar. I can't guarantee its theological accuracy or even state that it fits in with any particular denomination. Since I took my faith on for myself around thirteen, I've been working on this, asking God questions and trying to make sense of it all, something I'm going to be doing all my life. So this story isn't perfect, isn't complete. Please be patient. 

(When I write 'God thought' e.t.c. this is artistic liberty. I'm not trying to put words into God's mouth.)

This story has no beginning. Recently, I heard a quote from a famous writer on short stories, suggesting that when the story is finished, the start and end should be cut off. I, however, do not know how this story starts or finishes. I am not the author. I am a minor character on page 98, but I'm quite content with my little part. 

For all intents in purposes, it starts with God. No-one except God knows how he got there, or why. Some people argue that this is an unsatisfactory start and that God ought to justify being there if we're meant to believe in him, but as yet God has not answered this question. As I said, the story is far from finished. 

After demanding angrily from God what business he has in existing in the first place, and making things so awfully complicated by doing so, the next question is 'What is God anyway?' Generally, humans like to greet each other by demanding 'Who are you?' but no-one seems to have thought of asking God this yet. They've been trying tests and writing papers on the question for years, but just asking the question never satisfies human curiosity. Humans like to poke and prod and ask questions. Again, this is not a bad thing. 

The one thing that one particular group of people have become certain of about God is that he is Love. Love, like God, is notoriously difficult to define and at some point in their lives every human attempts to do so. My own favourite definition was for some years 'God's favourite drug', a sentence that I felt embodied a suitable amount of sarcasm, naivety and fashionable faith lingo. For now, I've given up pretending to know anything about love. We all know enough, anyhow. You don't need me to tell you about it. 

The scene is thus set for the opening of the story. God is love, or at least he is very good at loving, or something like that, is existing. Nothing else does. There is silence. Peace. 

But all creatures who love need others to love them back. Contrary to human preoccupation, this whole faith-thing didn't start because we needed God. It started because God needed us. 

So God made all of Creation, and it was beautiful. Everything was good, and everything that was good came from God, and was of God. The animals loved him blindly and were part of him in their love. 

The problem was that love does not come from obedient, unswerving devotion. Real love is a choice, and God knew this, as he chose to love his creation, but they did not choose to love him. It was the love of master and servant. It was beautiful, but it was not enough. 

So God started again. He had a brilliant, radical idea. He would make people, built on his own image, with the same capacity to choose to love. He knew, with a heavy heart, that they might reject him and do terrible things to each other in their capacity for hatred, but he did it anyway. Love was worth paying the price for. 

So humanity came about, and they were beautiful. God loved them immensely, and was desperate for them to love him back. Yet as he had feared, they began to turn against him. Temptation lead them into ignorance, and even evil. Some did love him, but a good many simply forgot about him in their rush to discover the new world, and so the relationship with God was lost to humans. 

God stayed with them. He watched them develop and evolve, guiding them, walking amongst them unseen. Some glimpsed him and as the people split over continents and seas, different understandings of God appeared. Some saw his left side, some saw his right, but no-one ever saw him in his fullness. God hid himself in the good things of the world to shield their eyes, and hoped that one day, they would find him.

Time passed.

Then God has an idea. He would tell someone about him and they and their descendants would be his helpers. They would tell others about him, be teachers of the human race. Eventually, he settled for a man named Abram and his wife Sarai. At this point, God could have appeared in glory, surrounded by angels and trumpets and loudly demonstrating his power, although the poor elderly couple probably would have had heart attacks. Instead, he decided to do the most marvellous thing for them, the thing they had been longing for all their lives. Sarai had never been able to have children, and she was too old. But nothing is impossible for God, and he gave her and Abram a son, Isaac. He also chose to rename them Abraham and Sarah. If I was writing an essay I'd call this a 'symbol of their new life', but I'm not, and I'd rather just call it one of the unfathomable quirks of God. 

Abraham and Sarah became the ancestors of the Israelites, God's chosen people - chosen to tell everyone about him and his tremendous love. But not even the Israelites could believe. So God sent them prophet after prophet. He rescued them from slavery, sent them brave leaders to keep them safe, and guided them to a place where they could live in peace. However, the Israelites were just humans like us, so they disobeyed God, and frequently failed to understand him. They fought with their neighbours and kept the truth about God to themselves, so no-one else really came to faith. Who can blame them? The Christian Church has often done the same thing. It's a very human crime. 

God watched all of this and he was sad. He saw them go further away from him and make each other suffer, and it hurt him. He'd tried everything. 


Then, God had a brilliant idea. 


This is the complicated part, because now we get to the idea of 'Trinity', or, three in one. Frankly, no-one, not St Thomas Aquinas or Simon Peter or the Archbishop of Canterbury really understands how this works. God is just too big for human minds. To be limited is to be free to make mistakes, to be ourselves, to make choices and be amazed by the wonders of creation, but it does make God hard to understand. So God needed to meet humanity in a way we would understand, and to do this, he sent part of himself to earth. To demonstrate his love, he set this up as a Father/Son relationship, but in reality they're the same, two different ways of seeing God. To cap it all, God then threw in the Holy Spirit, because he knew we'd find it tough, believing in him, and he wanted to show us a way to reach him, without expecting celestial telephones to drop down whenever we want a chat. The best way I can describe it is like an iceberg. They say that only 20% of an iceberg is visible above the surface - that's the 'Son' part - and 80% is underneath, and that's the 'Father' part. Then I guess all the frozen water nearby is the Holy Spirit... perhaps I'll let that analogy drop. 


Anyway, God sends his son to earth. As humans have proved we're not very good at recognising God, God made his son a human, born in a provincial backwater of the Roman Empire amongst the Israelites and named a rather common Hebrew name, Jesus. 


Here I could write books and books. (Although I don't need to: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have done it for me). Telling this story 2000 years later, about a man I never met in the flesh, I am almost overwhelmed by my feelings for him. Creation was brilliant, but Jesus was a master-stroke. Many humans came to respect him, even those who disbelieved his teaching, for his morality, his kindness, his love. In the three years he spent teaching, he gathered around him a small group of followers who would go on to spread his message throughout the world. But Jesus wasn't just around to spread the word. He had something else in mind, harder and more complicated to explain than anything God had ever done before. 


When asked why Jesus had to die, many Christians have come up against a massive wall. 
"We're sinners," They reply, "We have to be saved." 
"Are we sinners?" responds the atheist. "Why? And why do I owe this God anything? Personally, I think I'm quite a good person. This Jesus didn't have to die for me." 


I cannot even pretend to have a decent or full answer to this. Like I said, I'm writing a unfinished story. 


I suppose the nearest thing I have to an answer to this is that choosing God, choosing to love him means giving up everything that is not of God, all the evil thoughts, temptations, un-Godly ways of living. Humans never manages this. Through the grace of God, some of us can get pretty near - think Mother Teresa - but in the end we just can't give up our evil enough to get close to God. Life comes from God and is of God; without God, we die, far apart from him. It's the worst punishment ever. Humans have tried to imagine Hell as a representation of our worst fears, all flames and whips and chains, but the truth is Hell is worse than this. If all that is good is of God, than to reject God, or turn away from him because of our dependence on sin, means that in the next life when we should be with him and all that is good we must go where God is not, and all that is of God is absent. This is an evil of our own making, and it makes God so very, very sad. 


So God decided to break the rules.


Okay, he thought, they can't break away from sin and all that, so they're stuck with the consequences. But what if I took the consequences away? Jesus could do that. 


Although, they won't be grateful .


But I love them. I'll do it anyway. I miss them so much, and I want them home. 


So God gave Jesus a task. He, God himself, had to die, and descend into the place of unbelief, breaking its power. Then all the people would have to do is follow him out, and forget all the consequences. Jesus was a man and he was scared, but he was also a God who loved humanity, so he obeyed. And God the Father did give him the choice. Jesus chose to love, and chose to die one of the most terrible deaths ever invented. Crucifixion was an excruciatingly painful, drawn-out, public way to die, offensive to the religious beliefs of the Israelites and designed to humiliate the victim. Uncomplaining, he went to his death.


But God wasn't finished yet. 


On the third day, something happened. In the tomb where Jesus' body lay, God stirred. The son came back to life. Time was ripped open; those who had died, those who were dying, those who hadn't even gotten around to being born yet - everyone was saved, and could choose to live again with God, should they accept it. All they had to do was trust God and accept his love, and they could be forgiven anything, could escape the consequences of their prior actions, could be renewed. It was brilliant. 


Of course, nothing is so simple as just accepting love. 


"Why did you make us suffer? Was it you? You weren't there. What about the cancer? The floods? The wars? Did you do that? Why didn't you help us?"


So the questions started, and the people began to vivisect God. It got complicated, very quickly, and even the best storytellers had no proper answers.


Yet God was always there, in the confusion. He walked through hospitals, holding hands, guiding the surgeons, opening the eyes of the children, weeping with the bereaved. He sat with the soldiers, in the pubs, in the back-rows of the lecture theatres, crying for our losses and celebrating our joys. Some people said that it was a test, others that the only way to see God is also to see evil. Some spoke of a devil, the embodiment of evil, or a battle between good and evil in the world. Evil existed, they were sure, but often they forgot about all the good that existed too.


God did not give his reasons. He was proved and did-proved, loved and hated, lost and found. He waited. All the time, he still loved. 






Writing this I'm so conscious of how much I owe God, more than I could ever repay. The beauty is, I don't need to repay him. Just accept his love. My love for him is imperfect, small, flawed, but I know I am loved and one day I hope that I will be able to love him perfectly back.


God Bless & peace out x 
J x 

Who are you when you are No-One?

Tick-Tock. August 2011. Riots, houses burning, youths, violence. Tick. Mr Cameron uses his favourite phrase, 'getting tough on them'. Tock. The papers go wild, not us, not us. Benefit scroungers. White trash. Starkey's infamous race comments. Tick. Tick. Tick. 


I am amazed by the extremity of the responses to the riots. One article criticised this as a 'knee-jerk' reaction, a term I'd like to appropriate; in most circles the knees are up and back to the wall. The level of hatred and fear on both sides, and lack of moderation from our leaders, appals me as a human, a young person and a christian. 


As much as I would love to find an explanation and support the underdog in this, I am unable to condone the rioters. I watched with you all the muggers who robbed an injured boy and breathed a sigh of relief when projected riots failed to appear in my own town. Above all, what horrifies me most is that these people where not fighting for a cause, even if they fought because of one; they were motivated by greed, self-interest and boredom, inspired by the wrong people, morals and ideals, and causing great pain to innocent citizens for a laugh. Their actions bear no justification. This places them on a different platform for than, say, when the protests about higher education fees kicked off into chaos because they had a cause behind them even if their actions were unnecessary and destructive. 


My question is this: Why?


And by 'Why?' I don't mean what drove selfish ruffians to smash shop windows. What I want to know is why do they resort to gang violence? why are we shocked when this happens? why do we let it happen, or why don't we care until they cause trouble? why didn't people see this coming?
Why have adults crossed the street to avoid passing me and my friends?
And why are the generations that brought us up, that control every aspect of society from education to healthcare to government, negate all responsibility to the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, whose only voice is in their fists? 


I am angry at the rioters too. After all, they've just smashed a fragile image of young people into pieces, and made life harder for your law-abiding, hard working younger person like myself. But I blame has been apportioned too quickly and that once again, our 'big society' is attempting to make itself smaller, cutting out those who embarrass it. 


NEWS FLASH: These people are part of our society, like it or not. And that makes it societies responsibility to bring them back to the fold. It's time to let the outsiders in. 


'I will not always be with you.' Jesus told his followers, 'But the poor always will be.' As a follower of the God who drank with tax-collectors (read: politicians/inland revenue officers), travelled with uneducated manual workers, and made died a gruesome death in-between two common thieves (imagine the sunday times front pages...) I see no goodness, no godliness, no hope in the rejection of these people. Society - by which I include all of us, myself as well - has pushed these people to the outside. Labelled as 'chavs' or 'foreigners' or 'white trash' 'sluts' etc in the news, in conversations, in the looks we give them when they pass us in the shops or doctors, they are marginalised and only a very few wonderful people take the time to reach outside of their social spheres to these people. 


I am becoming more aware of this in my own life. Having moved from a poorer area to a more middle class area just before my tenth birthday - and at the same time, our family made the social jump from upper working class to lower middle - I have been lucky in that I escaped not only a rough area and background but also an education system where those who made the grammar schools had a future and those who made the comprehensives...didn't. Having escaped, I have become very proud of my working class heritage, feeling it makes me a commoner, one of the people, but watching the riots detached me all those false impressions. Admittedly, I have a better idea than many, especially our dear government, but now I know how little I understand what it is like to be marginalised, to suffer under a system that offers the rest of us protection, to be suffocated by money and class and stereotypes. I'm on the inside looking out, from the comfortable bubble of 'us' and 'them'... 


Proposed solution A: Let Them In.
Problems: If you listen to the rioters, you will have realised they aren't over keen on coming in. Why should they be? Society has made it rather clear we don't want them. 


Proposed solution B: Go out to them.
This is the solution all the scared, scared letters to the papers don't want to hear. It's so much easier to call for punishment and clean up our homes than go round to theirs and clean up their places, so much easier than questioning ourselves and our responsibility. 
Yet the only way to bridge the gap between 'Us and Them' is to go out ourselves, into the rough areas we like to frown upon from safety, to get dirty in filthy streets and see the world from those places....
I also like to call this solution 'community'. It means no us and them, just the people living and working together, differences celebrated, doors open, problems solved together. 

• Firstly: Who is in these communities asking them why the riots happened? I'm sure they know best: we need to listen to people who know, not just experts but ordinary people, get their knowledge heard and used.
• Secondly: Anger and looting might well be part of a moral degeneration, and kids putting their values in the wrong places. If so, than we need to re-examine the whole of society and what we teach our children. We need public-eye figures to stand up against consumerism, companies to give back more to communities, and ordinary people to show just a little altruism as part of their daily life...A little love goes a long way. 
• Thirdly: Half the kids in Tottenham come from disadvantage backgrounds. People don't necessarily want to give them jobs, they won't have had all the privileges of holidays and trips to museums and castles and all that. At the bottom of the heap the education system is pretty rubbish and teachers don't want to be there (understandably). No-one believes in these kids, police don't trust them automatically, they are the weekly victims of the tabloid press and, to compound it, poor education and financial struggles combined with the introspective, defensive communities necessarily created by the poor and uneducated to tend to produce more problems like teenage pregnancies and gang culture. Instead of solving it, we simply apportion more blame and talk about policies at high levels that never reach these people. So...
• Instead of blaming etc, we need to make a bigger effort than ever to reach out to these people. The government can make a tremendous difference by speaking out for these people, sorting out reasonable and constructive punishments (i.e. community service repairing damage done), improving education, keeping Sure Start centres open etc. Charity support is another major thing the ordinary person can do to make a big difference for these kids. But most of all, it's down to us. Not just asking our MP's this and that but changing our attitudes to people on the outside, and being creative with what we can do i.e. a successful mum's and toddlers group in a well off area might start/support a less successful in a disadvantaged area. Small things can make a huge difference as they accumulate, with everyone putting in a little: Imagine for a moment you are on a train and a 'white trash' family comes on, lots of kids, music, smells of fags, whatever. Usually the whole train sits and prays they chose another compartment. Instead, smile. Let them through, move your bag so the littlest kid can sit down...I know, reading this, you're probably the kind of person who would do it anyway, but it's amazing how many people wouldn't. It's time for a social attitude adjustment.
• Finally - these kids think that their voice is their fists. Do any of them know how to argue, how to get themselves heard safely, how to change their communities positively, or how to get their concerns heard? No. Tick. Tock. It's time to give them voices properly, hear what they have to say and educate them on a better way to say it. Education & Social Attitude changes. 

When these people finally get their voices there will be a lot of people embarrassed or ashamed by what they have to say, but those voices must speak out now, for the sake of the children of tomorrow. Heal the cracks in society and perhaps one day...

...community.

Until then: Stay strong and speak out. 

God Bless,

J. 

Love, Lust and Pixie Dust

Out of all the overused words in the world, Love must surely be top of the list. I tell my friends I love them every day. That's true. I also regularly state that I love bowties, shakespeare, owl city, burning things, and frankly whatever it comes into my head to say at the time. I also use love sarcastically, probably more often than honestly: "This is why I love you" or "I love history essays SO much" being typical statements. Has the word devalued? Maybe, maybe not. But it does seem to me that it has become harder to use it in its original way: just to look someone in the eye and say I love you and mean just that.

Love. Can teenagers know anything about it? Does everyone feel it? And if you don't feel it anymore, can it ever be recovered? There are as many questions about love as people searching for it; my impression is that its life's big undefinable.

Mostly I tend to treat love as a principle. I'm a Christian who follows (as a guideline) the ethical theory Situation Ethics, where all decisions are made, simply, on the basis of love. Is it loving? Then it's morally good. (and vice versa.)  Of course, that's a simplification of the theory, but that's basically it: Love is God-given for us to give to others, go out and share it.
The crucial point in this is that love is not a noun in this description. Love isn't something you can own or put on a card or posess. It's a verb, an action you undertake even when you don't feel it, because to love is to be loving. If you love your friends, you're there for them whenever, you care for them and you look out for them, even if sometimes you don't feel like it and you wish they'd go away. That's my understanding of love, anyhow; something that gives, never taking, receives gracefully when returned. And you know what? Being loving is not easy. I don't think it's meant to be...

I don't have any good advice on 'being in love' or relationships. I'm not a councellor and I can't heal other peoples broken hearts. I'm armed with a few proverbs and a heart, and I'll do what I can do: I will love you as best as I can, because I'm human and I'll never be perfect, but God's love always will.

This is the love that never disappoints or cheats on you, that never lets you down or walks away. This is the love that comes from suffering and the brilliance of creation, not from passion and chemical equations. This is the love of the narrow road. I am loved and you are loved, and when human love fails that is the love that holds us safe, the net beneath the tight-rope walker to break the fall.