Hope in uncertain times

The rainbow is  symbol of hope in the Bible

As the calendar flips from 2016 to 2017 the world seems in dire need of a fresh injection of hope. There is much uncertainty, not a little threat, and considerable suffering. But that isn’t the whole picture.

Yes, a maverick US president-elect ignores experts and announces policy in 140 inflammatory characters. The UK government understandably refuses to declare its Brexit negotiating hand but in so doing leaves its citizens fearful for an unknown future. Russia and North Korea are becoming more bullish. Terror threats are high. The resources of essential services are squeezed to the bone. Housing and living costs are rising faster than incomes pushing millions of people “Just About Managing” closer to or over the edge. Millions more starve in Yemen and Nigeria; large areas of once bustling cities in Syria are now piles of rubble.

But there is also much to celebrate. There is, arguably, still more good in the world than bad.

There would be so much more suffering and unhappiness if it were not for the armies of volunteers who staff and resource children’s, youth and old people’s centres and activities; who raise funds for charities providing services the state cannot afford; who organise food banks and credit unions; who become street pastors, prison visitors, and the like. There are international aid and rescue agencies clearing up the mess left by power-crazed national and tribal leaders. And millions of ordinary people do what they can to care for their relatives and neighbours, protect the environment and support their community.

We should never let the bad news overshadow the often unsung acts of peace and goodwill that last all year long. There is reason to be hopeful even when clouds gather on the horizon. “True hope is honest,” says Christian writer Philip Yancey. “It allows a person to believe that even when she falls down and the worst has happened, still she has not reached the end of the road. She can stand up and continue.”¹

Hope is not wishful thinking

Yancey offers a simple definition of hope. “Hope means simply the belief that something good lies ahead. It is not the same as optimism or wishful thinking, for these imply a denial of reality. Often, I think those of us who stand alongside suffering people tend to confuse hope and optimism.”²

It is hope that drives research to find cures for diseases, to discover more effective technology, and to develop more nutritious strains of crops. It is hope that inspires people to devote themselves to community service and fuels the dedication of the caring professions and development agencies. It is hope that fires the determination of people in difficult situations to survive against the odds. It is hope that gets most people out of bed in the morning.

By contrast, the lack of hope can have devastating physical and mental consequences. We need to see where we are going. Circumstances may be difficult but for as long as we can see at least a short way forward we can usually cope. But when all we can see is a long dark tunnel or an apparently dead end, despair and depression soon set in and with them comes the sheer physical inability to fight back and take initiatives. The person caught in poverty may find their confidence is drained and that it is impossible to seek more or better work; their life stagnates or even spirals downwards. The elderly person in a care home, perhaps far from family and former friends, sees nothing to hope for except further degeneration, and having no reason to live slowly fades away.

Hope is a factor in the well-known placebo effect, in which a patient’s belief that (say) a pill will cure an ailment appears to reduce their symptoms even if the pill happens to be inert. (Doctors admit to sometimes prescribing such “drugs” to the “worried well”, and there are concerns that clinical drug trials may not reveal the true effects of new drugs because of the placebo effect. In one trial an established drug (diazepam) was found to be completely ineffective when given to post-operative patients who were not told what it was for.³)

Less well-known is the hope-­less “nocebo effect”, a variant of the worried well or hypochondriac syndrome in which people can become unwell, or not recover as they are expected to, because they have, in effect, lost hope. In a famous but tragic case in the 1970s, a man was diagnosed with end stage liver cancer and told he had six months to live. He died within that period but an autopsy showed that he had only a small tumour that was not spreading. A doctor commented, “He didn’t die from cancer, but from believing he was dying from cancer.”⁴

This is hardly a new discovery. Centuries before Christ, a wise man wrote, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12).

The nature of Christian hope

The Christian gospel is full of hope, but not the kind which cynics may accuse it of. Christian hope is not primarily about renewal and restoration in a perfect setting after we die. That promise is there, but biblical hope is as much to do with this life as it is with the next. That is because it is centred on a God who is always active in the world and who purposes the renewal of all creation. We are not passengers on the platform waiting for the delayed train to heaven, but co-workers with the living God in making his world a better place – to be people of hope who bring hope to a troubled society. We are certainly waiting for the return of the resurrected Christ, but all the while we’re called to be making the world and ourselves ready for the perfect makeover he will inaugurate.

So Paul encourages the stressed Roman Christians, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13). Indeed, hope itself is bred from the experience of living faithfully for God in trying conditions: “We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5).

The author of the letter to the Hebrews describes the work of Christ to bring forgiveness, new life and direct access to the living God as a hope which is “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19). One commentator said on this verse, “We are moored to an immovable object”⁵ – there’s hope for you! We cannot be blown out of the water or dashed on the rocks.

With God, there is always a tomorrow. With God, there is always something to do and to discover. With God, there is always help on hand (even if only to endure). With God, there is always guidance for the future (if only to press on into the unknown). With God, there is always love (even when I feel alone or abandoned). With God, there is always hope – now, as well as in the longer-term future.

And that hope is an inspiration for living in the present. Theologian Stephen Travis declared, “Living in hope is a life of adventure, of openness to the future with all its hidden possibilities.”⁶ Or, as Jurgen Moltmann, another theologian, put it, “Hope disposes the believer toward change. Hope is oriented toward what is coming tomorrow. In hope we count on the possibilities of the future and we do not remain imprisoned in the institutions of the past.”⁷

Biblically, hope is closely related to faith (trust) in God and love (for God, and for others), as in 1 Corinthians 13:13. “Biblical hope is never to be confused with a feeling that things are going well, or even that thay might turn out well. It is properly a habit of obedience. Like love and faith, hope is both received as a free gift of God and expressed as a deliberate attitude and disposition.”⁸

Maybe it’s time to revive the old freedom song, this time in the name of Christ, and declare that come what may, we shall not be moved. More than that, we shall overcome by the way we live and speak and work in the world, full of hope in the God who lives, however much the nations rage.

Think and talk

1. What do these Bible passages tell you about hope for people who are struggling? Isaiah 40:29-31; Jeremiah 29:10-14; Lamentations 3:19-24.

2. What do these Bible passages tell us about the source, nature and purpose of hope? Romans 8:22-25; 15:4,13; 1 Thessalonians 1:3; 1 Timothy 6:17.
3.  Hope does concern the next life as well (1 Corinthians 15:19; Colossians 1:27; 1 Thessalonians 5:8; Titus 2:11-14); how may we keep this in balance with hope in this life?
4.  Discuss how hope can be lost and recovered, and the effect this can have on people's lives.

References

1.  Philip Yancey, Where is God when it hurts? Zondervan 1997/2001 edn, p.211.

2.  Op.cit. p. 210.
3.  Michael Brooks, “Placebo Power”, in ed. Jeremy Webb, Nothing, Profile Books 2013, p.59.
4.  Helen Pitcher, “When mind attacks body”, in ed. Webb, Op.cit. p.135.
5.  A.B. Davidson, quoted by F.F. Bruce, The epistle to the Hebrews, Marshall, Morgan and Scott 1967, p.131.
6.  Stephen Travis, I believe in the second coming of Jesus, Hodder and Stoughton 1982, p.214.
7.  Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of hope.
8.  Markus Bockmuehl, “Hope and optimism in straightened times”, Rediscovering Hope, The Bible in Transmission, Bible Society Winter 2013.

(c) Derek Williams 2016. Material from these blogs may be reproduced for private or small group use with full acknowledgement.

Truth is for living

"In respect of things eternal life is vayn and mortal" -
inscription on Lamport Hall, Northamptonshire.
A reminder that truth is bigger than we think. 

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate’s cynical, rhetorical question was flung at Jesus shortly before the Roman Governor of Judea condemned the Jewish preacher to death, at the behest of a noisy demonstration, despite ruling that he was innocent. It has recently taken on a fresh significance.

Oxford Dictionaries have named “post-truth” as their word of the year for 2016. The term means that objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals. It suggests that “the public” is interested more in their view of what reality should be than in what it actually is.

It is a development of the word popularised by US comedian, talk show host and one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2012, Stephen Colbert. For him, “truthiness” is preferring one’s wishes to be true rather than those that are factually true.

It has long been the case that many newspapers, magazines and some broadcast channels gear their coverage to the assumed interests – and prejudices – of their audiences. It is also the case that we buy, or tune in to, the media which conform to our established opinions. Apparently, we are less interested than ever in being willing to have our opinions modified or even changed. What I believe is true, is true.

We should be concerned. Public debate on complex issues is degenerating into blinkered and emotive slogans, exaggerated or imagined threats, sweeping generalisations, counter-assertions rather than careful answers, and personal attacks on the integrity and motives of both protagonists and opponents. Fake news spread on social media becomes imprinted on minds and is difficult to delete from memories. When objectivity declines, anarchy or extremism rises. The mob rules. And civilisations crumble.

In Barack Obama’s words, “It’s easy to make a vote on a complicated piece of legislation look evil and depraved in a thirty-second commercial, it’s very hard to explain the wisdom of that same vote in less than twenty minutes.”¹  And who has 20 minutes to consider anything these days?

Not a new problem

Cultural changes do not happen overnight and the seeds of “truthiness” and “post-truth” thinking (if it can be called thinking) were sown long ago. In the 1960s Aldous Huxley had already noted that the political spin machine was speeding up: “The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as though he was a deodorant, positively guarantee the electorate against ever hearing the truth about anything.”²

            That was the era when traditional constraints and beliefs were being questioned widely, and increasingly overthrown. It was a time when the ability of science to solve human problems was being questioned. And above all the idea that “truth” is relative – what’s true for you may not be true for me – was gaining popularity, especially with regard to human conduct and morality. It’s hardly surprising; it’s more comfortable to do one’s own thing than to toe party lines and do what other people expect of us.

            Christian thinker Harry Blamires summarised it thus: “Where intellect and feeling were in conflict, where wisdom and whim collided, it became the smart thing to reject the intellect and wisdom because they belonged to the sphere of rule and regulation, of fixities and demarcations, while feeling and whim inhabited the ever-changing environment of the fluid, the environment of the Age of Aquarius.”³

(The “Age of Aquarius”, thought of as the age of freedom, is an astrological assumption made popular by the 1960s hippy movement and the song from the musical Hair “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius”; in fact many astrologers don’t think it begins properly until at least the 22nd century. Ironically, the current period has also been dubbed “the Information Age” in which more people have access to more facts than ever before.)

An exponential rise in medical and scientific discoveries – think about the boundary-pushing Large Hadron Collider – has created an assumption that “truth” is a temporary thing, a summary of what we know now which may be disproved later.

The ancient Athenian mentality has grown in academic circles: “All the Athenians…spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas” (Acts 17:21). That has its plus side, of course: it’s good to explore and learn new things, to develop our understanding about the world, and even to challenge some traditions. But truth also has its boundaries; it is not eternally elastic. Some things are not true, and no volume of conspiracy theories or Facebook “likes” can make them true.

When a crowd becomes infected by a false “meme”, a rumour or belief that causes a group to act as one (usually violently in vocal terms, if not in riotous terms), the foundations of civilisation and human decency can be shaken. Not long after Paul’s discovery of the Athenian love of novelty he was hauled into the huge amphitheatre in Ephesus by a howling mob stirred up by influential business owners who saw Paul’s preaching as a threat to their profits. Luke, the narrator, notes that “the assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there” (Acts 19:32).

Or, as the 19^th century nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche put it, “Nothing is true, all is permitted.”⁴ 

Pursue truth in love

There are two remedies for the potential evils emanating from a post-truth world. One is for individuals to seek political, social and even scientific truth even if it threatens to overturn our previously-held opinions. Cautious consideration rather than hasty acceptance or rejection should be the hallmark of rational humanity. Or, don’t believe that everything you read in your newspaper is unbiased and objective.

            In practice, that means taking such steps as:

·         Learn to distinguish between proven fact and disputable allegation
·         Check the facts on both sides of an argument
·         Be measured in voicing opinions
·         Don’t jump on bandwagons and repeat allegations without checking them carefully first.

            The second is to learn to live truthfully, which is easier if we also recover the mindset that recognises that some truths are eternally valid and non-negotiable. They provide a basis for living in the world. These include the existence of a just and loving God and the teachings and redemptive actions of Jesus Christ who is God’s truth embodied in human form. And they form the basis for truth-full living.

            Of course, there is the risk of elevating some Christian traditions and biblical beliefs to the level of indisputable truths or required behaviours when there may be scope for discussion. Our finite minds cannot fully comprehend the works and wisdom of an infinite God. So even with the scriptures in our hands, we are required to listen carefully to others.

Bishop Lesslie Newbigin once wrote, “We are missionaries, but we are also learners, only beginners. We do not have all the truth, but we know the way along which truth is to be sought and found. We have to call all people to come this way with us…”⁵

So take some time to look at the biblical references to truth below, and resolve to walk the way they point to.

Think and talk

1.  Look at these warnings or examples of unfounded rumours and their consequences in the Bible. 2 Kings 7:5-7; Jeremiah 51:46; Matthew 24:4-8,11,23-28; John 21:22-24. What can we learn from them and what similar examples of false rumours, allegations or beliefs that have caused problems in your country or local community?

2.  What is the source of truth? Isaiah 45:19; John 14:6,17; 15:26; 16:13. (Note Jesus’ frequent use of the claim “I tell you the truth” before his pronouncements; in some Bible versions this is “verily, verily” or “truly, truly”.)

3.  What is the effect of truth? Psalm 15:1-3; Proverbs 16:13; John 8:32.

4.  How is truth to direct our lives? Psalm 51:6; John 4:23-24; Ephesians 4:15; 6:14; 1 John 1:6-8.

5.  How has truth been distorted or discarded down the ages and with what effects? Jeremiah 7: 27-29; Romans 1:18-23; 2:6-8; 2 Timothy 4:3-4.

References

1.  Barack Obama, The audacity of hope, Canongate Books 2008, p. 132.

2.  Aldous Huxley, Brave new world revisited, Chatto & Windus 1966, p.84.
3.  Harry Blamires, The Post-Christian mind, SPCK 2001, p.8.
4.  Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spake Zarusthustra, George Allen & Unwin 1932, p.313.
5.  Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to tell, Eerdmans 1991, p.34 quoted by Henry Knight, A future for truth, Abingdon Press 1997, p.137.

© Derek Williams 2016. Material may be reproduced for personal or small group study with full acknowledgement of the source.

Tolerance is not a dirty word (nor is it the best word)

A contrast: a tree speaks of patience;
a bowman of intolerance

Tolerance has been in short supply this year. There are signs that intolerance – towards specific people -groups and ideas – will continue for some time to come. The toxic campaigns leading up to the EU referendum and the US presidential election were marked by ruthless intolerance and intemperance, and characterised by wild and exaggerated claims that had only a shallow foundation in truth, if that.

Yet tolerance is a virtue prized by the liberal majority. Not long ago tolerance was the working philosophy of all but a few people holding extremist views, used to mean “live and let live”, “each to their own”. Now quiet acceptance of other people has been overtaken by the noise of protest and clamour.

“Tolerance” has become a dirty word. In the social and political spheres, it suggests “going soft” on border controls, employment prospects and crime. In some Christian circles, it smacks of compromise in matters of faith and conduct, the thin end of a wedge which, it is claimed, will lead eventually to “anything goes”.

In fact, you won’t find the word in most English translations of the Bible. It was used once in the original edition of the NIV, in Romans 2:4, where Paul writes of God’s “kindness, tolerance, and patience” (all different words in the original Greek). In later editions this was changed to “kindness, forbearance, and patience”.

It was probably a wise alteration; “tolerance” is such a loaded word that it may be taken to mean indifference and it misses Paul’s more restricted and nuanced meaning. It’s a good example of how difficult it is for translators to reflect subtle usages of words in one language which don’t have a simple equivalent in another.

The word in Romans 2:4 (chrēstos) can mean goodness, uprightness, excellence, and kindness depending on the context. In its few New Testament occurrences it is generally translated “kindness” although this hardly does justice to it.

Only on one other occasion in the NIV is it translated “forbearance”. Significantly it replaces “patience” in the list of the Spirit’s fruits in Galatians 5:22 where it’s reinforced by, and distinguished from, related words: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”

The 19th century commentator Archbishop Trench called chrēstos “a beautiful word for the expression of a beautiful grace”. It was a favourite word for God’s patient kindness used by the translators of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament).

Forbearance is not a common word today but it does capture precisely what Paul was trying to express. It means “restraint”, “holding back”. It’s more specific than our general use of “tolerance” and stronger than our normal understanding of kindness (which is being considerate and pleasant) and even of patience (keeping calm under pressure).

In the Romans context, Paul is saying that God holds back from driving forward his judgement on an errant world. It will come, but not yet. The idea lies behind some of the other occurrences of the word or its derivatives where the English is rendered “kindness”. Its use in Galatians suggests that Christians are to be restrained (not repressed!) people, slow to anger and slow to speak as James 1:19 urges.

But there’s more. In Luke 5:39 the word is used of mellow, mature wine; from that we can think of a forbearing person as unhurried and wise in judgement and action. In Matthew 11:30 it’s used of a well-fitting yoke, so a person exhibiting forbearance is comfortable in their own skin, willing to submit to the constraints of discipleship rather than leaping on high horses every time they or their views are offended.

And so God calls us to hold back from driving forward our agendas which might seem right and good, yet which may result in pain to others. The time will come for action, but it may not be yet. That is “tolerance”; not overlooking wrong but holding back on immediate reactions, patiently looking, working and hoping for a change of heart.

Similarly, it means restraining our language about and reactions to situations and people who we dislike or disapprove of. Our problem is that whatever we want, we want it now. The world moves faster than committees. The needs are too great to dawdle over and must be met now. Our voice must be heard and that requires us (we think, wrongly) to shout louder and more caustically than our opponents.

The media and the markets never sleep. We’re caught up in the infernal rush, and drive on. Or get angry when we can’t, and are liable to lash out. But fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Like the world, God never sleeps. Unlike the world, God never rushes. He forbears. He reserves judgement. He acts when it’s appropriate, which isn’t always when we think he should. It’s one reason why Jesus didn’t charge to the rescue as soon as Adam and Eve disgraced themselves and were thrown out of the garden.

It’s why God seems in no hurry to bring the world to an end despite the evil and destruction that desecrates it. God is waiting and seeing; so should we be. (And his restraint has no time limit, no rule about three strikes and you’re out. Forgive your brother 77 times, meaning without limit, Jesus said in Matthew 18:22.)

Think Abraham: he waited decades for his promised son, who didn’t arrive until the old man got his centenary birthday card. Or Moses: called as an energetic young man to be a leader of the captive Israelites, who failed to forbear and snatched at an apparent opportunity, and then was banished abroad to become a rural farmer for 40 years where he learned what true restraint, forbearance, really meant.

Or Paul: a driven man if ever there was one, called to be an apostle yet learning forbearance by patiently working as a tentmaker and part time minister in Turkey for 14 years before the time was right to start his church-planting travels.

And then think Judas Iscariot. He too was a driven man but he never learned forbearance. His disclosure of Jesus’ whereabouts to the authorities was probably the climax of a perfect storm of conflicting desires in his mind. Convinced of his own rectitude, perhaps wanting to impress and achieve, his plan became an obsession with its doubly fatal consequences.

Judas couldn’t (or wouldn’t) wait. Human beings are brilliant at self-deception. We know what we want to do. We find evidence to support it. We treat counter-evidence sceptically, and dismiss it readily. “Praying about it” is not enough; often we don’t really want to hear the whispered “no” or “wait”, so take the silence as a shouted “yes”. That’s when we mess up, big time. God’s ways aren’t always our ways.

Forbearance requires that we step back from desires and decisions sufficiently to allow God, over time and through other people, to transform personal obsessions into corporate, practical wisdom. The same applies to our reactions to other people’s misdemeanours. Our judgements are partial – we rarely understand why they act as they do. We can’t get inside their heads. Harsh and hasty reactions do not serve God’s purposes. They may add to people’s suffering.

Forbearance is imitating God and the practising caring love. It exercises restraint in word and action. It listens carefully to people, takes on board criticism, considers how to accommodate objectors, is willing to modify plans, and waits patiently for God’s time to act.

It’s not compromise, nor is it inaction and it doesn’t prevent progress and change. Rather it ensures that we keep in step with the God who is forbearing towards the weaknesses and errors of fallen people. Including our own, and whose plans span centuries, not just our lifetimes. Then we’ll be ready to speak and act in a world that is crying out for alternative, better, ways of living.

Think and talk

1.  What do these passages, all using the same Greek word mentioned above, say about God’s forbearance? Luke 6:35; Romans 11:22; Ephesians 2:7; Titus 3:4.

2.  Similarly, what do these passages say about the forbearance which is required of us? 2 Corinthians 6:6; Galatians 5:22; Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:12.

3.  What situations can you think of today, in your own situation and in the wider world, where forbearance is required?

Derek Williams latest book The Judas Trap – why people mess up (and how to avoid joining them) is published by Instant Apostle, ISBN 978-1-909728-54-7, RRP £8.99, and is available from Christian bookshops or online.

Welcome to my latest book

Over the years I have written, edited, or contributed to a number of Christian books and publications. However, I have produced very little for the past dozen years because, working as an official spokesperson and bishop’s administrator for a Church of England diocese, I believed strongly that the messenger should not become the message.

However, those days are now behind me and I have brought off the back burner a project which has been simmering there for some 30 years. The figure of Judas Iscariot in the Bible is intriguing. So little is known about him yet he played such an important – and infamous – part in the Jesus story. And what emerges, as we consider all the possible factors that lay behind his final, fatal actions, is that everyone is liable to mess up in very similar ways.

Each of the factors that may have contributed to his betrayal of Jesus’ whereabouts to the authorities are factors which can cause any one of us to stumble.

So I set about exploring those factors, discovering parallel examples from the lives of famous and ordinary people, and examining the research and the conclusions of experts in the relevant fields. And then thinking about how to both prevent and cure the weaknesses thus exposed. The result is The Judas Trap.

I took it to a small and relatively new British Christian commercial publisher, Instant Apostle, partly because they could offer a swift turn-round and partly because I liked their philosophy of largely (but obviously not entirely!) giving a platform to new authors. I also discovered, to my surprise, that their professional thoroughness in editing and proofreading far surpassed what (to judge from the grammatical and printing errors one finds in many recent books) appears to be a corner-cutting trend in publishing generally.

Below is the Foreword to the book written by a lay Christian woman who doesn’t have a theological background. It serves as a useful summary of what the book is. I asked her to do this because while the book is packed full of Bible stuff and carries commendations from two senior Anglican clergy, it’s written for thinking people like Hilary who don’t have the theological background I’ve been privileged to amass over the years.

Below her contribution are the other commendations and the practical details of the book for anyone who wants to buy a print or Kindle copy.

Foreword to The Judas Trap

The Judas Trap is a fascinating challenge to us all. We are challenged to understand what made Judas Iscariot deliver Jesus Christ to the Roman authorities, as described in the New Testament. Judas is a very important person in the story of Jesus for Christians, as he is considered to have "betrayed" Jesus. Judas is the person who started the process of Jesus being crucified. So, it is important to face the challenge that any one of us may have done exactly the same, if we found ourselves where Judas was.

Derek Williams gives us clear, possible explanations for why Judas did what he did, all backed by referenced evidence from the literature and lots of easy to read examples, both historical and contemporary. He has done a thorough job of investigating his topic of The Judas Trap. Maybe the reasons Judas did what he did can apply to all of us. We are challenged to think how we might be at risk of falling into one of the same traps, even 2000 years later.

The explanations use theories from many disciplines: psychology, sociology, economics, ethics, and more. Derek uses the evidence well. He uses it to support his proposed possible explanations of Judas' behaviour. Each chapter addresses a single possible explanation, starting with a clear, brief summary of what is in the chapter (what an invaluable aspect of this book), an apposite quotation, a description of the "trap" factor to be discussed, then the evidence and anecdote. But there is more. Each chapter then challenges the reader on whether we may fall into this specific trap, and then gives practical suggestions on what to do now to avoid doing that. Perfect!

We are led through the process of thinking how awful it was for Judas to do that; how, maybe, there was a reason why he did it; well, maybe, we sometimes behave a bit like that, too; but here's how we can avoid doing it any more. Phew!

This book challenges the reader to think. However, it is easy to read, well signposted and very engaging. You may want to read it one chapter at a time and have a pause between chapters to think. I suggest your thinking will be interesting. You will have been charmingly, gently challenged. Do accept the challenge and see where this excellent book takes you.

Dr Hilary Hearnshaw

Associate Professor Emeritus of Clinical Care, University of Warwick

What reviewers say:

“I highly commend this refreshing and engaging book in which Derek Williams uses Judas Iscariot, that unfortunate icon of betrayal, to challenge us to a better understanding of ourselves and more generous consideration of others. Williams’ accessible style, richly combining Christian reflection with telling historical and contemporary references, provides a realistic yet encouraging view of humanity, leading us to more gracious living.”

The Venerable Richard Brand, Archdeacon of Winchester

“Here is practical wisdom on how to protect against our in-built tendency to go wrong. Derek Williams is readable, thoughtful, brave, startling, challenging, encouraging: take this book seriously, and you will grow as a disciple of Jesus Christ. I recommend it highly.”

The Rt Revd Donald Allister, Bishop of Peterborough

Details of The Judas Trap

The Judas Trap – why people mess up (and how to avoid joining them) by Derek Williams is published by Instant Apostle and is available from 21^st October 2016 at Christian bookshops, bookstores and on-line retailers. ISBN: 978-1-909728-54-7. Non-fiction. Paperback 192pp £8.99. For Kindle readers, see online.

For review copies and media enquiries contact Manoj: info@instantapostle.com

 

The spiritual world of 'Alice'

'If men could not distinguish between frogs and kings,
fairy stories about frog-kings would not have arisen' (Tolkien)

Since human beings first walked on the earth, they have told stories. Long before writing was invented, wall art and oral stories entertained people, conveyed ideas about existence and passed to other generations the traditions, values and beliefs of the family or tribe. The Bible is packed with stories, to convey truths that are too big for cold conceptual statements.

Today, we tend to treat stories as escapism, but while they should entertain us, they serve a bigger purpose than that. They can also make us think. We see different characters reacting to situations in ways that we might approve, or disapprove, and we wonder how we would fare in similar circumstances.

Stories feed our imagination, stimulate our mind, illuminate the world, introduce us to fresh ideas and outlooks, and enable us mentally to encounter the kinds of people and situations we could never hope to meet in reality. Storytellers don’t usually set out to teach something (didactic novels are usually contrived or boring), but their imaginations reflect and illustrate their view of the world and its challenges.

For Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, the storyteller at their best should provide ‘a clear, definite and fresh view of the universe’. To the American novelist Henry James, the storyteller is a ‘“watcher at the window” whose consciousness works on all it sees and presents to us its own version of reality’.¹

Recent research by Toronto University Professor Keith Oatley suggests that stories can improve our empathy with others. ‘Fiction can be thought of as a form of consciousness of selves and others that can be passed from an author to a reader or spectator, and can be internalized to augment everyday cognition,’ he suggests.² That may be asking too much of ‘airport novels’ – the chunky romances or action adventures we take to while away the hours on holiday. But it’s not too much to ask of others.

C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories have charmed several generations and which begin with the strongly Christian themes of the conquest of evil through death and resurrection. He claimed that fantasy stories about animals led him ‘back to the real world with a renewed understanding of it because the story presented such realities as “food, exercise, friendship, the face of nature, even (in a sense) religion….The whole story, paradoxically enough, strengthens our relish for real life. The excursion into the preposterous sends us back with renewed pleasure to the actual.”’³

J.R.R Tolkien, the creator of Lord of the Rings wrote that the best fairy stories deal largely ‘with simple or fundamental things’.⁴ In another essay he wrote that ‘creative Fantasy is founded upon…a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and kings, fairy stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.’⁵ So let’s look at the (allegedly) children’s stories about ‘Alice’.

Alice in Bible land

Lewis Carroll, the 19^th-century author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, was no fool. He was clever and talented. His real name was the Revd Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He wrote the Alice books initially to amuse the daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, where Dodgson was an accomplished lecturer in mathematics.

He wrote other ‘nonsense’ stories and poems such as ‘The hunting of the Snark’ but also published several important academic papers on maths and logic. He wrote on broad philosophical and religious issues, too, was a proficient musician and entertainer, an inventor, and a noted portrait photographer. He was an ordained Church of England deacon and referred to his deep Christian faith in his diaries and letters. 

Having been brought up in a parsonage in the Anglo-Catholic (high church) tradition, which was also espoused at Christ Church, it is possible that he was never fully comfortable with its emphasis on ceremonial and preferred a simpler evangelical faith. This may explain why he was never ordained as a priest, although he used a speech impediment as his stated reason.

He wrote to a friend, ‘Most assuredly I accept to the full the doctrines you refer to – that Christ died to save us, that we have no other way of salvation open to us but through his death, and that it is by faith in Him, and through no merit of ours, that we are reconciled to God; and most assuredly I  can cordially say, “I owe all to Him who loved me, and died on the Cross of Calvary.”’⁶ 

So it’s not impossible to regard the Alice books as more than the strange fantasies of a diffident and self-conscious academic. Indeed, they have long been regarded as satirical, and he was a contemporary of other fantasy writers at a time when the genre was becoming a popular vehicle for stories with a moral. Among them was George MacDonald, his friend and mentor, who was also a major literary influence on J.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and C.S. Lewis (the Narnia stories). Charles Kingsley, another Anglican minister, was also a contemporary, with his moralistic fantasy The water babies.

The Alice stories are full of clever puns, word plays and allusions to writers and ideas some of which would have been beyond the comprehension of even a well-educated seven year old (the age of Alice in the books) in Victorian England. Through the Looking Glass is based loosely on a series of chess moves, which the author summarises at the start of the book (although he cheats with the order of play).

The Wonderland adventures begin with Alice shrinking in size in order to get through a door at the base of the rabbit hole. One of Jesus’ sayings was, ‘Make every effort to enter through the narrow door because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to’ (Luke 13:24).

Entry into Looking Glass World is through a mirror. St Paul noted his own limited understanding of God: ‘For now we see only a reflection,  as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known’ (1 Corinthians 13:12). But there’s more, softer, allusions to theology and philosophy.

Alice becomes an allusion

Beyond the looking glass, Alice discovered a very strange world. To begin with, everything was back to front. She soon got used to that, except when trying to cut a cake. The cake had to be eaten before it could be cut. There’s a lot in Christian faith that’s back to front as far as conventional wisdom is concerned, like valuing giving before getting.

Once she got her bearings, she realised the creatures she met viewed her very differently to how she viewed herself. To the gossipy flowers, she was just another plant with peculiar petals whose looks and views existed only for the onlookers to pass judgement on. They are the embodiment of today’s gossips on street corners, school playgrounds, social media, reality TV programmes and in magazines and newspapers.

To the shop-keeping sheep, with its limited experience of the world, she was a goose, the only category of creature it could conceive that walked on two legs and flapped its arms. We’re very fond of categorising people according to our knowledge, not according to their real selves. Humpty Dumpty thought she looked just like all the other humans. We often fail (or refuse) to see that people are different: ‘Men! They’re all the same!’ Actually, they’re not.

As for the unicorn, he didn’t believe she existed at all. Most of us have encountered unicorns. They inhabit some government departments, commercial call centres and web system algorithms. These unicorns tend to regard people as a homogenous mass and not as a varied collection of individuals. They tend not to regard disembodied voices or electronic keystrokes as emanating from living humans with feelings and needs, but just as a number to be crunched or a case to be unpacked. They’re trapped in a mythical database.

Then there was the small matter of the Red King’s dream. Was it Alice who was dreaming about Looking Glass World? Or was she just a figure in the Red King’s dream, so that when he woke up she would disappear, just as Tweedledum and Tweedledee so confidently predicted?

That of course is a long-standing and deep philosophical question. Do we really exist at all?  Is what I perceive actually real, or just a freak combination of neurological sensations? Or is someone else (a god, perhaps) imagining it all, or controlling a game in which we’re just helpless players? Are there, as some physicists are now suggesting seriously in ideas once restricted to sci-fi books and films, parallel universes in which we or our doubles live differently?

Besides, in Wonderland, Alice considers (more than once) who she really is. As she seems to change with alarming frequency, she asks, ‘If I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle!’ Let’s face it, each of us is a different person in different situations. (If you doubt it, just think how you live at home compared with how you operate at work.) The question of personal identity has become even more acute in our impersonal clockwork society than it was in Carroll’s era when the industrial revolution and scientific discoveries were taking off.

Of course, each reader will see in a story something different, but if we gloss over the allusions we can be missing a point. They illustrate – they simply show, without the author having to describe – an important and unique part of being human. We have an imagination and we can roam way beyond the confines of our bodies without ever leaving our minds. So far as we know, no other creature can do that. And that mental agility is closely related to our spiritual faculties.

Leland Ryken, a former English Professor at Wheaton College in America, suggested that ‘My conviction as a Christian is that to explore the world of imaginative literature is to explore part of God’s created reality…. Studying that world will tell us things that are just as crucial to human well-being and to God’s glory as an exploration of the physical world around us is.’⁷

Think and talk

1. Why did Jesus tell stories? See Matthew 13:10-17 and ask what is he really saying about human imagination and the nature of spiritual truth. Is he deliberately misleading some people, or being deliberately obscure, or do his words mean something else more profound about human nature?

2. Why do you think the author of Judges spent so long on the trivial pursuits of the tribal leader (and rogue) Samson? See Judges 13-16. Note also the general introduction to the book in Judges 2:6-23.

3.  Read Romans 15:1-7. What sort of things can we expect to learn from past events about God, about human nature and human behaviour?

4. When did you last read a story (of any kind) and discover thought-provoking ideas and insights? Share them with your friends and find out what they have learned from stories too.

References

1. Miriam Allott, Novelists on the novel, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965, pp. 116, 131.
2. Keith Oatley, ‘Fiction: Simulation of Social Worlds’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 20, Issue 8, pp.618–628, August 2016.
3. Leland Ryken, Triumphs of the imagination, InterVarsity Press 1975, p.96. He is quoting Lewis ‘On stories’ in Essays presented to Charles Williams.
4. Quoted by Ryken, Op.Cit.
5. J.R.R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf, Unwin Books 1966, p. 50.
6. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, The life and letters of Lewis Carroll, T. Fisher Unwin 1898. It is cited in the Wikipaedia entry on Dodgson.
7. Ryken, Op.Cit. p.77.

© Derek Williams 2016. Material in this post is part of a book in preparation and should not be reproduced in part or whole without the author’s permission.

Mind your language!

The tongue is like a fire, says James.
(Paralympic flame at London 2012

The good news is that the UK police are setting up a new unit to deal with on-line hate crime by “trolls”. The bad news is that barely a week goes by without some widely-publicised example of extreme trolling in social media. People – often anonymously – post hate-filled messages, or start false rumours, aimed at public figures or others they dislike. Trolling forms a part of bullying in school, college and work-place.

Beyond social media, politicians are famed for their insulting, almost incriminating, gaffes made on the record. Among the most recent was US Republican politician Mike Folk’s tweet that Hilary Clinton should be “hung on the Mall in Washington”. He later denied that it was a death threat, as did presidential hopeful Donald Trump when he told the US gun lobby “they knew what to do” to defeat Clinton. He said he meant “at the polls” but the innuendo was either deliberate or the mark of a thoughtless and very unstatesman-like rabble-rouser.

When arguments become passionate, people frequently resort to ad hominem statements . ‘Ad hominem’ is Latin for ‘against the person’. It accuses someone of hypocrisy or ridicules their opinions, not by countering their argument with facts but by deriding the person.

Combine that with sweeping generalisations and you hear whole groups of people being written off as sub-human. The British MP who called refugees “cockroaches” clearly is unable to imagine what it must be like living in a city where many dwellings are reduced to rubble, food is scarce, services are cut off and civilian hospitals are being bombed or shelled. Would she stay somewhere like that?

Facts don’t come into it. That was noticeably the case during the bad-tempered EU referendum campaign in 2016. Extreme negativism is easy to employ and hard to resist. But often it has the effect only of reinforcing the feel-good factor of the speaker and their supporters. Thus it panders to pride, and excuses us from the more difficult task of engaging creatively and positively with whatever issues are at stake.

It’s a cheap form of rabble rousing that adds nothing to the sum of human knowledge or the growth of human understanding. It clouds the truth rather than unveiling it. It obscures the fact that the uniqueness of the human race is our ability to reason and to empathise, to think and feel our way into other peoples’ points of view. That’s something trolls just don’t get.

As US President Barack Obama explains, ‘It’s easy to make a vote on a complicated piece of legislation look evil and depraved in a thirty-second commercial, it’s very hard to explain the wisdom of that same vote in less than twenty minutes.’¹ That’s a sad commentary on civic and political processes, but not an excuse for verbal abuse.

The hurt caused to victims of verbal abuse and their families is well documented. The pain can be worse and longer-lasting than physical abuse. It can be debilitating and lead to lost confidence. Several people commit suicide every year because of online bullying. People accused of crimes for which there is no evidence have their reputations permanently tarnished, their careers damaged.

Looking on, we like to think that there’s no smoke without fire. More often, though, it’s a case of smoke and mirrors, of often malicious deception or distortion, stemming perhaps from anger, hatred or jealousy, or the perverse desire of someone who feels good by exercising power over someone famous or popular.

Speech is central to discipleship

It’s not a new problem. There’s far more attention paid to the way we speak to and about people in the Bible than we might imagine. In fact, to Jesus and the apostles, it was a central part of Christian discipleship.

Jesus condemned abusive anger, likening it to murder. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca’ [a term of abuse, roughly ‘dumb idiot’], is answerable to the Sanhedrin [in effect, to God, the highest court]. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ [a term of contempt] will be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:21-22).

Jesus highlights the psychological link between anger, hatred and murder. He’s saying that treating someone as contemptible is wrong whether it’s done with words or a weapon. It achieves nothing, except to bolster our inflated sense of superiority and to perpetuate the cycle of hatred.

The Apostle James explains why it’s so serious. “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, who have been made in God’s likeness. My brothers this should not be” (James 3:9-10). The victims of our verbal tirades, like us, are made in God’s image and therefore deserve the same respect as we hope to receive ourselves. They are precious people loved by God despite their imperfections, just as we are.

Paul reinforces the command not to slander people with a positive alternative. “Don’t let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen,” he says – and note that “unwholesome talk” is anything negative, anything not conducive to well-being, rather than merely “bad language”. It grieves the Holy Spirit, he adds, thus hindering the speaker’s relationship with and service for God.

He goes on, “Get rid of bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:29-31). God slanders no-one, so neither should we. God is kind and compassionate towards us, so we have no right to be unkind or inconsiderate to others.

But we still love to set others right and exert our alleged superiority. Martin Laird, a writer on prayer, observes that: ‘The jaws of our convictions lock so tightly around people that we actually think we know what life is like for them, what they really ought to do or think, as though we know their innermost hearts, as though we know only what God knows.’²

That is why praying for people who offend us is likely to be more productive for everyone than slagging them off behind their backs (or to their faces). But before we leave this, note how subtle our verbal sins can be. A study by Cambridge University Press of newspaper articles covering the 2016 Olympics has shown that “women’s personal lives are far more likely to be picked up on than their athletic prowess”³. Freud had a point when he suggested that our words betray our true inner thoughts and interests (echoing Jesus, in fact, if you look at Mark 7:20-23).

So here’s some tips for controlling your tongue which, James says, is like a spark that can set off a forest fire.

• Recognise your “opponent” is human too.
• Don’t react immediately.
• Don’t return like with like.
• Sleep on a response before sending it.
• Don’t re-tweet or ‘like’ a claim about someone: you don’t know it’s true.
• Walk away (literally) from a situation that is getting out of hand.
• Do a Bible study on the uses and abuses of the human tongue (below).

Think and talk

1.  Look at Psalm 5, said by some to be one of at least 20 attributed to David in which his “enemies” are gossips and slanderers rather than military opponents. What form do the attacks take? (vv. 5,6,9,10)? What is his reaction (vv. 1-3, 7-8,11-12)?

2.  What is wrong with slagging people off and why should we avoid it? See  Psalm 15:1-3; Psalm 50:16-21; Colossians 3:8-10; James 3:9-10, 4:11-12.

3.  What is the ultimate source of vitriolic abuse and what should we do about it? Mark 7:20-23; Ephesians 5:1-2, 8-9, 15-21; Colossians 4:5-6.

4.  How should we respond to verbal abuse? Proverbs 15:1; Isaiah 53:7 (cf. Mark 14:61, 15:5, Luke 23:9); Romans 12: 17-21; 1 Corinthians 4:12-13.

References

1.  Barak Obama, The audacity of hope, Canongate Books 2008, p.132.
2.  Martin Laird, Into the silent land, Darton, Longman and Todd 2006, p. 124.
3.  Reported in i 2 August 2016.

This post is based on material from The Judas Trap – why people mess up and how to avoid joining them written by Derek Williams and to be published by Instant Apostle on 21 October 2016 (ISBN 978-1-909728-54-7).

© Derek Williams 2016. Material may be copied for personal and small group purposes with full acknowledgement.

 

 

 

 

Who dares to kiss the frog? A call for peaceful transformation

When the princess kissed the frog it turned into a prince

I grew up by the seaside and every summer the Punch and Judy cabin would appear on the beach and enthral groups of children with outlandish puppet action. Punch and Judy has all but disappeared now not least because we rightly consider wife-beating to be an inappropriate topic for children’s – indeed also adults’ – entertainment.

Unfortunately, the legacy of Mr Punch has lived on in political debate and social media. The referendum campaign was for many people a new low point in national life – marked by sometimes vicious and hysterical accusations, claims and counter-claims many of which were by the very nature of the issue speculative and thus subject to exaggeration and over-simplification. Many people have voiced their concern at the depths to which the tone of the debate sank.

The brutal murder of MP Jo Cox for her views – and the subsequent reminder that numerous MPs have received threats of various kinds – was an additional grim reminder that we are becoming a less patient and more polarised society. Slogan shouting and direct action has replaced considerate and balanced discussion. The outpouring of sympathy for Jo Cox’s husband Brendan and their children was touching; dare one hope that it might be more than a temporary reaction and lead instead to a popular rebuttal of Punch and Judy politics – which Jo was herself opposed to?

Now though we are faced with living in a divided nation – 51.9% in favour of leaving the EU is hardly a substantial majority – and for a short while at least divided political parties and a leaderless government. There will be plenty of scope for bitter recriminations, for poisonous arrows of blame and triumphalist darts of “told you so” to be fired across the divide in both directions. Probably there will be years of wrangling internally and internationally, with more bitter exchanges, as the consequences are worked out by MPs and civil servants. Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic face additional and potentially divisive dilemmas.

Five years ago former MP, now columnist and broadcaster, Matthew Parris, wrote a piece in The Times under the heading “Bring down the curtain on Punch and Judy”. In it he claimed that members of the public don’t like party games and brawling in politics. He listed some key words for political debate: “dignified; courteous; grave; generous in argument; calm; quiet; undeclamatory.”¹ Writing just before the referendum however he admitted that “insult and abuse is part of the culture of politics” but also warned that it is easy to rise to the bait and “overstep the mark, go sour”². Nothing has changed. Yet.

Could it? Back to childhood: there’s a fairy story about a princess who kissed a frog. She did not turn into a frog as a result. Instead the frog turned into a prince. The moral is that care, acceptance, gentleness and love can have positive transforming effects. That, too, is the message of faith and the Bible.

The call to peace

Speaking at the Coventry Cathedral “Faith in conflict” conference in 2013, Archbishop Justin Welby said that “reconciliation is recognition of diversity and a transformation of destructive conflict to creativity.… Grace filled reconciliation begins with hospitality.”³

In 1976, the Queen said in her Christmas message, “The gift I would most value next year is that reconciliation should be found wherever it is needed. A reconciliation which would bring peace and security to families and neighbours at present suffering and torn apart. Remember that good spreads outwards and every little does help. Mighty things from small beginnings grow as indeed they grew from the small child of Bethlehem.”

The road to rebuilding trust and co-operation in society begins with each person rebuilding trust and co-operation with their acquaintances. The road to conciliatory and thoughtful debate, to replace the strident posturing that shouts at people without ever truly engaging with them, begins with individuals listening carefully to each other and demanding that their elected representatives do the same. The road to a more unified society begins when we reject the partisan headlines of a campaigning media and demand instead a balanced coverage of the facts from both sides of any given argument.

Why not? “We need an immunization program, one that injects people with respect, dignity, and quality, one that inoculates them against hatred,” wrote Palestinian surgeon Izzeldin Abuelaish from Gaza. “Peace is respect.” Despite having worked happily alongside Israeli doctors in Israel, his Gazan house was targeted by Israeli troops and two of his daughters and a niece were killed. “I vowed not to hate and avoided rage because of my strong faith as a Muslim,” he wrote.⁴ If he could do that without the benefit of the New Testament ethic, then banishing Punch and Judy battering in politics and religion in the so-called Christian west should be a piece of cake. Here’s some ways we can kiss the frog and transform our conversation.

Biblical steps

1.  Think about the common good before you consider self-interest: Romans 12:10; Philippians 2:3-4.

2.  Recognise your own imperfection and that of everyone else, and thus become more understanding of people and more aware that our views are always at best partial: Matthew 7:1-5
3.  Banish bitterness and embrace compassion: Ephesians 4:31-32
4.  Rediscover the power of love by seeking to welcome and do good to people who we have regarded as enemies: Matthew 5:38-48
5.  Be gracious: Colossians 4:5-6
6.  Pray for peace: 1 Timothy 2:1-4

Think and talk

1.  Look at Matthew Parris’s list of words above. How might they become part of our daily conversation? (“Dignified; courteous; grave; generous in argument; calm; quiet; undeclamatory.”)

2. Use Coventry cathedral’s Litany of reconciliation:
All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class, Father, forgive.
The covetous desires of men and nations to possess what is not their own, Father forgive.
The greed which exploits the labours of men, and lays waste the earth, Father forgive.
Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others, Father forgive.
Our indifference to the plight of the homeless and the refugee, Father forgive
The lust which uses for ignoble ends the bodies of men and women, Father forgive.
The pride which leads to trust in ourselves and not in God, Father forgive.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

References

1.  The Times, 17 September 2011

2.  The Times, 18 June 2016
3.  Address given 28 February 2013; www.coventrycathedral.org.uk
4.  Izzeldin Abuelaish, I shall not hate, Bloomsbury 2012, pp. 196f, 232, 227.

Future blogs will deal further with the way we converse. There is also extended material on this in my next book THE JUDAS TRAP – WHY PEOPLE MESS UP which is to be published by Instant Apostle on 21 October 2016.