I have just scanned the news and four things jump out as having something significant in common: David and Samantha Cameron’s son Ivan died last night at the age of 6; the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have published a superb and strongly-worded condemnation of Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe and announced a day of prayer and fasting (as well as giving cash); a plane has crashed in Amsterdam; Obama has addressed his people with a strong encouragement that America will emerge from its problems eventually.
The thing that links these four ‘items’ is the fact that whether we are talking about a single family or a whole nation, a community of travellers or a starving and oppressed people, every individual counts. Millions of people die every day – most of them too young and most of them utterably avoidably. Over four million people have died in the Congo. Zimbabwe, with which I mostdeeply connected, is suffering terribly both from its own internal problems of misrule and corruption, but also from the neglect from elsewhere in Africa to do anything about Mugabe. But, when millions die unnecessarily every day, why does the death of one person hit the main headline?
Anyone who has done pastoral work – especially in contexts of bereavement – knows that the death of someone close makes the rest of the world disappear. A million may die, but each individual has a network of family and friends that is unique and irreplaceable. One death changes the whole world for a load of other people. Zimbabwe rightly disappears from view when your own child dies. When I read about the suffering in Zimbabwe, I don’t think of an amorphous mass of people who look the same; rather, I see the faces and hear the voices of particular people in particular contexts with particular challenges.
Obama is rightly telling people the truth: there is no quick fix and some people are going to suffer before things get better. There can be no hiding from that truth. But, we need to recover our ability to take a long-term view and re-shape the world slowly, step by step, at every level from the macro (government, banking, fiscal systems, etc) to the micro (looking after my neighbour who is suffering or in need). Obama sounds increasingly like one of the perceptive and brave Old Testament prophets.
The Cameron family will, I hope, withdraw from the world and grieve fully and properly for the loss of their son who was profoundly vulnerable during his short life. I hope they will be given the space to come to terms with the fact that the whole world has changed and other people can handle the Party and our economic challenges while they take the space to love and be loved.
Zimbabwe needs our love and anger and action. I hope many will give to the Archbishops’ Appeal – not because this is a tidy way of salving the post-colonialist conscience, but because the need is immediate and great and bigger than the niceties of my particular feelings about how they have got into this mess and who is responsible for it. My conscience or analysis does not matter a great deal to the parents of the child in Gweru who is not eating, not going to school and in danger of suffering from Cholera.
Every human being is made in the image of God and is infinitely valuable. Some of us have to hold the tension between the macro and the micro, but the shock of the macro (Zimbabwe) should never minimise the trauma of the micro (the death of one person such as Ivan Cameron- RIP).
February 26, 2009 at 5:41 am
‘Obama sounds increasingly like one of the perceptive and brave Old Testament prophets.’
Which one?
Jeremiah, who said
‘This is what the LORD Almighty says: You must drink it! See, I am beginning to bring disaster on the city that bears my Name, and will you indeed go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, for I am calling down a sword upon all who live on the earth, declares the LORD Almighty.’
I hope to God that Obama never sounds like this, or else he would be sectioned.
Or does he sound more like Hosea, who wrote this about what his God would do to Jews
‘Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open. Like a lion I will devour them; a wild animal will tear them apart. “You are destroyed, O Israel, because you are against me, against your helper.’
I don’t think Obama sounds like any of these prophets.
February 26, 2009 at 10:13 am
Steven, I don’t have any faith as such. I try to be objective about these things, but you’re really spoiling some intelligent debate here. You do seem to repeatedly miss the point and your comments increasing lack any consideration, taste or tact. You sound like a rabid fundamentalist… Perhaps you need help. I’m starting to wonder if you are a plant by some anti-atheist group – as you generalise about theists, you run the risk of tarring all other atheists with your barely-palletable brush. I understand Nick’s reluctance to bar your comments, but please stop spoiling this excellent blog for the rest of us.
February 26, 2009 at 10:51 am
Couldn’t agree more, Jonny.
“Zimbabwe needs our love and anger and action”. Hmmm, thanks Nick! Anger I can do, Love? that’s not so difficult at a distance & action – well I can give money. I suppose where I’m challenged & have a question is: is there some way we can synthesize those three into something that will really work – not just for Zimbabwe but for the rest of Africa; which has such potential but seems unable to realise it. It’s a question: any answers?
Dave
February 26, 2009 at 10:51 am
I think what Jonny means is that somebody has spoiled it all by quoting the Bible.
Nick had an excellent blog, where he called Old Testament prophets perceptive and brave.
And then somebody had to go and point out some of the things these brave and perceptive prophets had said, by daring to quote from the Bible.
That sort of thing sickens people.
February 26, 2009 at 10:53 am
I concur with Jonny.
The Old Testament scholas Walter Brueggemann, writing about ‘the prophetic imagination’ (in his monograph with that title) helpfully articulates the kind of pattern of speaking and acting that I believe +Nick is intimating here.
A prophetic imagination being exercised will urge:
1) a task of prophetic ministry which evokes an alternative community which knows it is about different things in different ways. And that alternative community has a variety of relationships with the dominant community;
2)a practice of prophetic ministry which is not some special thing done two days a week. Rather, it is done in, with, and under all the acts of ministry – as much in counselling as in preaching, as much in liturgy as in education. It concerns a stance and posture or a hermeneutic about the world of death and the word of life that can be brought to light in every context;
3)a seeking to penetrate the numbness to face the body of death in which we are caught. Clearly, the numbness sometimes evokes from us rage and anger, but the numbness is more likely to be penetrated by grief and lament. Death, and that is our state, does not require indignation as much as it requires anguish and sharing in the pain. The public sharing of pain is one way to let the reality sink in and let the death go;
4)a seeking to penetrate despair so that new futures can be believed in and embraced by us. There is a yearning for energy in a world grown weary. And we do know that the only act that energizes is a word, a gesture, an act that believes in our future and affirms it to us disinterestedly.
February 26, 2009 at 11:00 am
JONNY
It concerns a stance and posture or a hermeneutic about the world of death and the word of life that can be brought to light in every context;
CARR
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
February 26, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Dude. Seriously – what is your beef?! You seem to know the Bible inside-out without having made any real attempt to understand it or appreciate others’ understanding and interpretation. Have you noticed that it’s only a small number of radical lunatics that quote from the Bible to justify dispicable inhumane acts and discrimnations? Have any of them appeared anywhere in this blog? You’re fighting the wrong battle here.
P.S. It was Paul who was quoting Brueggemann – I can’t take the credit for that.
February 26, 2009 at 1:25 pm
JONNY
Have you noticed that it’s only a small number of radical lunatics that quote from the Bible to justify dispicable inhumane acts and discrimnations?
CARR
I had indeed noticed that most Christians take whatever bits of the Bible they like, and ignore the rest.
Very few Christians indeed say that God inspired passages like ‘Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open. Like a lion I will devour them; a wild animal will tear them apart. “You are destroyed, O Israel, because you are against me, against your helper.’
But if Bishops are going to praise Old Testament prophets as ‘brave’ and ‘perceptive’ and claim that American Presidents are starting to sound like them, then I see it as my duty to quote the kinds of things these ‘brave’ and ‘perceptive’ Old Testament prophets actually said.
So that we can get such ‘radical lunatics’ out of modern politics.
If Bishops want their world leaders to sound like Old Testament prophets, they are going to be challenged to defend what these Old Testament prophets said.
If Bishops do not want their world leaders to sound like Old Testament prophets, there will be no problem.
February 26, 2009 at 1:41 pm
CARR: I had indeed noticed that most Christians take whatever bits of the Bible they like, and ignore the rest.
JONNY: Try changing ‘most Christians take’ to ‘Steven Carr takes’ and ‘Bible they’ to ‘this blog he’
Seriously, I give up. All I can say is ‘open mind: happy heart’. Stay happy Steven.
February 26, 2009 at 3:19 pm
I have a spot of sympathy for Steven Carr’s point of view on this one issue: reading the Old Testament for the first time was painful, for me – the notorious Psalm 137, for example, some of the things which happened to women, the assumption that God was calling for the massacre of the original inhabitants of the holy land.
I would say the bible is not a monolithic document, it does contain contradictions and Christians do have to choose interpretations. The scientific or philosophical mindset which looks for contradictions and, once it finds them, invalidates a whole hypothesis, is not so useful on its own with a large compendium including some poetry.
I assumed Nick’s comparison to the prophets referred to their calls on people to change, not the dire warnings of violent consequences if they did not. I am sure I am not alone in finding parts in the prophets that speak to me, where they are yearning for a better connection with God and more truthful worship from the people: Isaiah on social justice vs showy worship, as read out on Ash Wednesday, for example.
February 26, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Joan et al, I will write something shortly on the bible and how to read it. I have reluctantly concluded, however, that Steven is just obsessed with being unintelligently provocative. I’m going to cut him off and let people go to hsi own website if they want to pursue his rather bizarre agenda.
February 27, 2009 at 9:31 am
I rather enjoy challenging debate, but I must say I’ll be glad not to have to read Steven’s stuff.
I shall look forward to a post on ‘reading the Bible’. It’s frustrating when Christians read it literally with little regard for context & we then have to defend against the same ‘aunt Sally’ approach of the literal humanist/atheists. It makes it difficult to have an intelligent discussion of the real issues: i.e. how should Christians live as God’s people in God’s damaged but still beautiful world.
Dave