If

 

From The Rectory

 

At the Warbleton and District History Group in June, we had an fascinating talk on the life and family of Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), and his home, Batemans, Nr. Burwash. Despite a full hour, there wasn’t much chance to talk about his writing, so I thought I’d say something here about his most famous poem, which has also been voted the nation’s favourite, If. You know: “If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you… / If you can fill the unforgiving minute / With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, / Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, / And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!” Refresh your memory online e.g. at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

 

Leave aside for a moment the hot topics of masculinity, toxic or healthy, and think about the poem as a vision of human flourishing. There is certainly much to admire: a calm level-headedness, trust, waiting, goodness, thinking, truth, resilience, perseverance, diligence, industry.

 

But I can’t help thinking that the whole thing is impossibly Stoical and far too buttoned up. To contemporary ears, the poem sounds decidedly repressed. Kipling certainly reflects Christian virtues such as turning the other cheek and doing to others as you would have them do to you. But I think the Bible would be rather more realistic about Triumph and Disaster. They’re not the same and life often hurts – sometimes terribly. There are times to rejoice and times to mourn. Many of the Bible writers find themselves lamenting and crying out to God. They don’t just sail serenely on and pick themselves up for another throw of the dice.  

 

If holds out a vision, but it gives us little help as to how that might be achieved. Frankly, I find it impossible and – as I say – not wholly desirable.

 

The biblical book of Proverbs is advice from a father to a son. He is warned to avoid the adulterous woman, Lady Folly. With all her promises and supposed charm, she seeks to lure him to unfaithfulness which will be his ruin. Instead he is to marry Lady Wisdom. Proverbs tells us that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. God seems entirely lacking from Kipling’s poem, but of course knowing God as our loving heavenly Father makes all the difference to how we think and live. Although this is a hard truth to grasp, Christians believe that God is on the throne of the universe and all things (triumph or disaster) come to us from his loving hand. Life is sometimes horrific and horrible. But Christians believe that we can build our lives on the solid rock of Jesus Christ, who is an immovable foundation and shelter, through all the storms and “chances” of life. The cross shows us that God loves to use even the worst evil for good. God exalts the humble and lifts up the broken hearted. When all seems death and despair, there is resurrection hope.  

 

Jesus said as he faced his own death, that it is possible to trust in God with an untroubled heart, even if you are betrayed and facing death, or bereavement. As all Jesus’ disciples’ hopes are dashed, their dreams in tatters, Jesus says that they can have a peace and a joy, even, which the unbelieving world cannot give, understand, or take away. Christians are not promised an easy, charmed life this side of Glory, but they can have the kind of secret inner security to which Kipling encourages us to aspire. They key is not our own fortitude, but that Jesus holds us fast.

 

Elements of Kipling’s heroic vision need to be combined with a sense of our humble dependence: our weakness, our finitude and, frankly, our many and frequent failures – some of them deliberate. The Bible’s message to us is more than: Man Up! There is grace and forgiveness in The Man Jesus Christ, who alone had a perfect trust in God. Life will sometimes buffet and batter us. But we have a Saviour who has gone before us and who can bring us through. We won’t always sail on through life placidly unaffected. But we need not be anxious. Rather than pressure to live up to an impossible standard, God invited us to cast our worries on him, knowing that he cares for us.

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd