Assisted dying and Christmas

 Parish Magazine Item for December 

From The Rectory

 

We are praying that all our Christmas services will be full of joy. We hope you’ll join us and find them uplifting experiences. 

 

I’m sorry, in a way, that this item isn’t especially merry. But then nor was the first Christmas. It likely involved, amongst other things, scandal, long and hard journeys, a painful birth, a borrowed manger, plot, escape and murder. We make a mistake, may I suggest, if we imagine that we can all have a couple of months which are all glitter and tinsel.  

 

I want to take this opportunity, if I may, to say something about a difficult but important issue of the moment and then to think about it in the light of Christmas. If you’d rather give this article a miss, I quite understand!

 

The new Labour government has had a flurry of initiatives and announcements. But one of the potentially most consequential events in this parliament will take place on 29^th November as the House of Commons holds its first debate on the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill to allow for the assisted suicide of terminally ill adults in England and Wales.

 

Of course our first response to anyone suffering pain or feeling hopeless must be compassion. We must do all that we can to help.

 

The case against assisted suicide has often been made eloquently, recently so by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Google will help you find those. Or readers might also be interested in Baron Etchingham’s contributions to this debate in The Spectator: spectator.co.uk/article/not-all-suffering-can-be-relieved-a-debate-on-assisted-dying/

 

Traditionally, Christians have always been strongly opposed to suicide as an act of despair and therefore contrary to Christian faith and hope. We believe that God alone gives life and that we should trust God with our deaths. Christians are for life. Although it is hard for secular society to grasp, we reject the idea that persons are utterly free and autonomous individuals divorced from all connections or loyalties. We belong to God both by creation and redemption. It is not complete to say “It’s my body; it’s my life; I can do what I want.” Speaking actually in the context about how we use our bodies sexually, the Apostle Paul tells believers: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.”   

 

As well as this in principle objection, I am pretty terrified by the potential practical problems of such assisted dying legislation. The “right” of terminally ill adults to die might be expanded to teenagers with mental health difficulties. And we can, I suspect, easily imagine that some pressure might be put on (or at least felt by) granny as she clings on to her, we are told, “poor quality of life” in her expensive care home as the grandchildren’s inheritance is put up for sale. If this seems alarmist, we might look at some of the experience of other countries. Or at the theoretical safeguards and procedures around abortion and its practical availability. The statistics give me pause. We might think we are talking about very rare and restricted circumstances, but we might in fact see many many deaths, even if the formal legislation remains apparently preventative.

 

I find it hard to think that assisted suicide will aid the advances in hospice and palliative care that we undoubtedly need. It is perhaps worth saying that ethicists have often accepted the idea that pain relief might legitimately shorten a life if this is a secondary consequence, not the primary aim.

 

Laws such as those which are proposed would radically alter the relationship between patient and doctor. Those who are pledged to preserve life will be dealing in death. Will family doctors also terminate life? Or will offering assisted suicide be a specialism to which some devote all day, every day?

 

Much more could be said, but perhaps Christmas also tells against “euthanasia”. The baby of Bethlehem shows us how much God values human life. God the Son came from heaven for us. He came to mean and difficult circumstances, overshadowed by death. He who made the stary host, was weak and vulnerable. Human life does not matter for what we can do. The Romans were given to infanticide. Babies were disposable. The Christians cherished helpless, crying, spewing babies. The infant Jesus shows us that someone who cannot speak or in fact do anything for themselves can be – is – of infinite worth. Here too, perhaps here especially, is the Image of God, the God who could be made man, made small. Christmas affirms again the dignity and worth of all, including the last and the least. The newborn Christ shows us that the old and the sick are cherished by the Almighty.

 

Jesus was born to die. And at the very heart of the Christian faith is suffering with meaning and purpose. Of course the death of Jesus is unique. But I hope it doesn’t seem glib to say that the cross proclaims that there are worse things even than gruesome pain. Jesus’ death was deliberately terrible and humiliating. No effective pain relief for him. He seems to have rejected that which might have dulled his suffering. And no quick humanitarian end. Soldiers would sometimes break the legs of the victims of crucifixion who lingered on to hasten their death, but this was not needed in Jesus’ case. He had already died when they came to check on him.

 

To the Christian, it is not only all life that has meaning and value. Suffering too can have infinite worth. When a death is horrible, or we are tempted to think it shameful, maybe we can see there a hint of the cross of Christ, which was in reality the wisdom, power and glory of God, for all the agony and seeming futile waste.

 

Whatever we face, pray Christmas might bring us fresh peace and hope.

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd

The prayer huddle

 The Bible speaks of various postures in prayer (standing, kneeling etc.). 

We have just had a few days holiday in Spain. At the departure gate, a group of maybe ten young men from south London formed a prayer huddle - an inward facing circle, arms around one another. 

Good for them, I thought. I'm not sure it would be quite my cup of tea, but it seemed to express a resolve and solidarity: the boys on tour contra mundum. 

1 Corinthians 11vv1-16 - a handout

 

THE CHRISTIAN DRESS CODE

FOR MEN AND WOMEN

FOR CHURCH

(Useful background reading: Genesis 1-3)

1 Corinthians 11:1-16 (page 1152)

 

INTRODUCTION: Fasten your seatbelts!

 

Ch 11-14 – the public gathered worship of the church – note v1

 

Difficult and controversial

 

Important and useful

 

Not Christianity 101!

 

True, good and beautiful

 

TWO UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES:

 

(1) Men and women are human: equality

 

 

 

(2) Men are not women; women are not men: difference

 

 

 

IMPLICATIONS: These two principles should be appropriately expressed in life and especially in public worship

 

 

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Hats, haircuts and our contemporary culture

1 Corinthians 5 - an outline / handout

 

The Necessity of Excommunication

 

Chapter 4: Being stewards of the grace of the cross means taking repentance and change seriously that we might be a holy covenant community

 

• A shocking sin (v1)
• The sinfulness of puffed-up acceptance / celebration of sin (v2)
• A serious public clear unrepentant sinner should be “handed over to Satan” (vv3-5)

 

(1) For the sake of the salvation of his soul (v5)

 

(2) For the sake of the purity of the church’s Passover Feast (vv6-12)

 

Good news?

 

Us?

 

(The Book of Common Prayer Communion Service and The Canons of the Church of England - B 16 Of notorious offenders not to be admitted to Holy Communion)

 

On funerals and the Christian gospel

Over the course of my ordained ministry, I must have conducted hundreds of funerals. And yet each one is special and unique. It is always a privilege to be involved. And often I find out something fascinating even about those I have known quite well. There may be periods or areas of their lives that some of us knew nothing about: that service in the Navy, the early job as a baker, the passion of jazz or the prize-winning gymnastics.

 

I can sometimes go quite a long time without taking a funeral and then several seem to come along at once. Recently there have been four. To stand in church with the coffin, or at the graveside, or in the crematorium remains a stark reminder of our mortality. This end will come to us all (unless the Lord Jesus returns speedily).

 

So death and the world to come have been much on my mind. Alongside this, I was also at an event for Christian ministers when we were sitting around discussing the gospel. What is the essential good news of the Lord Jesus which the church is trying to communicate to the world? A number of those present wanted to emphasise the real day-to-day benefits of faith. And quite rightly so. Christianity is not just pie in the sky by and by when we die, but ham where we am. One even audaciously said that giving a hungry person baked beans from the food bank is the good news. Now, I can see that food is good news to the hungry. And they may not be in a place to receive any other message than this tangible demonstration of love. There may be ethical issues too about giving out rice and Christ.

 

But I think we dare not withhold Christ from people – from anyone. Christ is what – whom - the Christian church must always offer. He is our USP. Unless we get to explicitly holding out the real Jesus of the Bible, we might as well join some secular organisation (even if our motivation is quietly “religious” or inspired by the Gospels).

It is essential that we Christian have much to say for this life of course. We believe in life before death. But we must also have something to say about the Last Enemy and the looming eternity. Permit me a lengthy quote from the New Testament because it is directly relevant to these questions: What is the gospel? And what does it say to our dying race? The Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth:

“Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [=Peter], and then to the Twelve [Disciples / Apostles]. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,  and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born….

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians chapter 15, part of verses 1 to 22)”

The whole chapter would repay thoughtful reading. It would be a very suitable passage for a Christian funeral. An essential part of the Christian message is that the crucified Jesus lives as Lord. He gives an indestructible life to any who will trust in him. That coffin is not the end of the story. For those who have faith in Jesus, nothing is in vain.

 

May God bless you with joy and peace in believing both for Wednesday morning and for the ages to come.  

Unburdened by doctrine or served by healthy doctrine?

 Parish Magazine Item for August 2024

From The Rectory

 

I won’t be saying here or from the pulpit how I voted in the general election. Perhaps there is a good case for keeping these things private. You know, discussing religion or politics might end up in an argument! And I shall certainly be praying for our new Prime Minister. I could easily have written about many things Tory or other candidates have said with which I disagree. But I would like to highlight a prominent statement by Sir Keir.

 

Standing on Downing Street, the newly electing PM has promised us "a government unburdened by doctrine." 

 

Charitably, he means he will be pragmatic and not doctrinaire or ideological. 

 

However, a government entirely without doctrine is neither possible nor desirable. 

 

We cannot imagine that, even if his Manifesto was a little thin, Sir Keir will really approach every issue entirely without beliefs and seek to work out what works. We do not believe he has a blank sheet of paper and nor should he. One only has to ask: “What works for whom? To achieve what?” We are back to doctrine. We all have and need these fundamental beliefs and guiding principles.

 

The British Army would tell him that you need your doctrine worked out, understood, shared, applied and open to revision. It is no good turning up in a battle and launching a three-year study with options for how the enemy might be defeated. You will find yourself overcome while you worry about rules of engagement or methods of attack.

 

Even if Sir Keir has a very broad and ill-defined aim such as “the flourishing of the British nation”, he will still need doctrines about what constitutes the good life, who shares in the British nation, and how advancement for many or all might be achieved by governments. Politics actually gets almost theological pretty quickly, it seems to me.

 

We do not want a government burdened by false doctrine, but served by true, good and sound or healthy doctrines, which are open to reformation if there are new arguments or evidence, and which may be adapted to changing circumstances. 

 

Likewise, Christians have sometimes used “doctrine” as a sort of boo-word. It can sound a bit boring or irrelevant. And wouldn’t love be better than dogma? But in fact this is a false dichotomy. Belief and behaviour belong together. Doctrine ought to lead to delight and duty.

 

Granted the church too could be too ideological, doctrinaire and dogmatic. The old slogan: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, love” still holds good. There could be inappropriate theological hair-splitting or unreasonable degrees of intellectual enforcement, but these are unlikely to be the main dangers for most of us in the C of E.

 

Our creeds are an attempt (in response to errors of their days) to state some of the most fundamental Christian doctrines. The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed continue to provide a basis for broad Christian unity. We might want to add something about grace and salvation, the cross, the Scriptures or ethics, since these have been matters of great controversy since the early centuries when our creeds were agreed.

 

But I think we (church, army, government, individuals) can all be clear that we need a certain amount health-giving doctrine. We cannot avoid beliefs. The question is where we will get them from and how they will guide us. The church goes back to the Bible, the Word of God written, aided by her traditions and reason, as she seeks doctrines which will serve her common life afresh in this generation.

The Revd Marc Lloyd

"a government unburdened by doctrine"

Standing on Downing Street, the newly electing PM has promised us "a government unburdened by doctrine." 

Charitably, he means he will be pragmatic and not doctrinaire or ideological. 

However, a government entirely without doctrine is neither possible nor desirable. 

We cannot imagine that even if his Manifesto was a little thin, Sir Keir will really approach every issue entirely without beliefs and seek to work out what works. What works for whom? To achieve what? We are back to doctrine. 

The British Army would tell him that you need your doctrine worked out, understood, shared, applied and open to revision. It is no good turning up in a battle and launching a three year study with options for how the enemy might be defeated. 

Even if Sir Keir has a very broad and ill defined aim such as the flourishing of the British nation, he will still need doctrines about what constitutes the good life, who shares in the British nation, and how advancement for many or all might be achieved. 

We do not want a government burdened by false doctrine, but served by true, good and healthy doctrines, which are open to reformation if there are new arguments or evidence, and which may be adapted to changing circumstances. 

Sir Keir also offered actions not words. In a speech. And it would be petty to quibble that words are actions. But let us hope that what Keir does is perhaps a bit better thought through than what he says, or tells us he believes.  

Disagreeing and assuming harmony: reading the Bible again

 I have sometimes been surprised that people more learned and cleverer than me read some Bible texts so differently from the way I do.

Our assumptions or presuppositions make a big difference. 

A huge question is whether we are inclined to read a text in its canonical context (that is, as Holy Scripture) and whether we assume it is in harmony with the rest of the Bible and the Christian tradition of not. If this is the Word of God, we should look for unity in it, whilst acknowledging its rich variety. 

It is obvious that no two texts are exactly the same. If they were there might be little point in having them both. Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, John and Mark all have distinctive things to say in their different voices. 

But do we assume that Paul got Jesus wrong? 

That Peter and Paul couldn't agree?

That Paul and James had a different gospel? 

Or that John contradicts Mark?

And that is before we try to bring Old and New Testaments together. 

In my experience, biblical scholars are sometimes especially prone to make a difference into a contradiction unnecessarily. But is a reasonable harmonisation possible? If so, why not embrace it?

A difference of emphasis need not be a repudiation of substance. 

Someone obviously thought that these texts could be read coherently together as they collected them up. 

The great tradition knew about the law of non-contradiction and has affirmed all these texts as infallible. The differences are not a new discovery and were not thought an insurmountable problem or a barrier to affirming all these texts as true. 

Augustine and Aquinas may have erred in many ways, but we should take their sense that the Bible's many voices constitute the voice of God to us seriously. Our Anglican formularies commit us to such a view. The human Scriptures are the Word of God to us - and God does not contradict himself. 

Each bible text enriches our understanding. It qualifies but it does not cross out the other texts. 

Leadership, accountability, 1 Corinthians 4 and how to read the Bible

 

In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul has some pretty strong things to say about his accountability to God alone: I do not care if I am judged by you or by any other human court. Let us wait for God’s judgement.

 

This could be a disastrous text if we applied a particular spin on it in a simplistic way.

 

As always, we must read the text in context and alongside other texts. The text is “true” and has an important and useful meaning, but we must not read it in a particular way and then totalise or absolutize its meaning and apply it to other contexts unreflectively. We must always say, “this Bible text is obviously correct and relevant to us (we know that: it is the Word of God), but in what sense is what it says true for us and what does it mean in our context?”

 

Any text can be used or abused. And it isn’t hard to see how this text could be license for the most unaccountable maverick self-indulgent and frankly dangerous off the rails ministry practices – even potentially for illegality.

 

One might say Paul was an Apostle. Quite right. He was uniquely called and authorised by Christ compared to ministers today. But even this doesn’t “solve” the issue as we know that Paul held Peter publicly accountable for his conduct. Even the Apostles did not, or should not, act as they please and say, “O, God alone can judge me: I am the Authorised Ambassador of Christ, don’t you know!” The Apostles were not perfect and infallible and they knew it. They were open to learning from others.

 

So if there are some things the Bible text does not mean, what does it mean?

 

The broad thrust in context is clear, true and useful, I think.

 

Christian leaders (and indeed all believers) are ultimately responsible to God alone. God is the ultimate judge. It is vanishingly unlikely, but it is possible that God will be true and every man a liar and that it will be you against the world. If this seems to be the case, it should give you serious cause, but it might just feel as if all your circle think you are mad. You should still do the right thing. Though of course your conscience might need educating.

 

We can see the particular relevance of saying all this in 1 Corinthians 4 if there is a temptation for charismatic leaders to win a following for themselves by their worldly wisdom, learned rhetoric or supposed power. In the context of division and factions with groups seeking to attach themselves to impressive or influential patrons, what Paul says makes perfect sense.

 

You are called by Christ. Responsible to Christ. Ministry is not a popularity contest. We are not holding a referendum on the Word of God.

 

It obviously does not mean that leaders (or anyone else) should fail to listen to others, or follow rules, or can never be held accountable to any human standards or tribunals. Not least, Paul’s whole argument is a correction, a rebuke, a warning, a call to repentance and reform, to conform ourselves to the cross of Christ and the counter-cultural wisdom of God which has us on display as the scum of the earth, called to humble self-sacrificial service, not arrogantly grandstanding and asserting our independence or untouchability.

 

1 Corinthians 3 - handout / outline

 

1 Corinthians 3 (page 1145)

 

A GROWN-UP CHRIST-CENTRED VISION

OF CHURCH, CHURCH LEADERS AND ALL THINGS

 

 

1:10-12 – response to divisions and rivalries

 

 

The apparently weak and foolish word of the cross is real wisdom and power for Christians (“the mature”) – 2:6

 

 

 

Ø  Don’t walk like merely human unspiritual, fleshly, babies (vv1-3)

 

 

 

Ø  See Christian ministers not as rival party leaders but as co-workers with God (vv4-9a)

 

 

 

Ø  See yourselves as God’s field, God’s building, God’s Temple (vv9b-17)

 

 

 

Ø  See yourself as a “fool” in need of God’s wisdom (vv18-20)

 

 

 

Ø  See all things as yours, and yourself as Christ’s (vv21-23)

 

 

A brief funeral sermon on 1 Corinthians 13

 

Our reading from 1 Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings.

But that’s not its original context.

Paul is writing to the Christian church at Corinth, which he recently founded.

And no bride in Corinth would have chosen this passage for her wedding.

In context it is a telling off, really.

The Corinthian Christians have been behaving badly and Paul is showing them the more excellent way of love:

He’s telling them to stop fighting and competing and so on, and to love one another like real Christians.

God’s love should cause them to love one another.

They need to repent and change.  

 

It seems fitting to speak of love at a funeral.

Death gives us perspective.

It shows us what really matters.

And love is surely what we rightly care about most, when we stop to think about it:

Those we have loved.

Those who have loved us.

 

You’ll be thinking of your love for ********, and her love for you, and all that she loved.  

 

Love is what matters most and what lasts, what we long for and what we remember.  

The Bible would tell us that we are made from love and for love.

That we often fall short of love.

But that God is love.

And that he goes on loving us – even though we’re not always entirely lovely.

In fact, he loves us so much that he gives his only Son, whom he loves, for us, that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus has a love stronger than death.

He is the risen Lord of life and love.

His love has won and death is vanquished.

And he offers his love to us today – to all who will receive him in repentance and faith.

 

So our great reading about love is not just for weddings or for funerals.

It raises our eyes to the God who is love, who loves us.

And it calls us to depend on that love today and every day, to receive the free gift of his love, knowing that even the grave cannot overcome it.

May you know and love the God who is love, and may that love overflow to others, for Jesus’ sake.

Amen.

Humans, men and women

 It is always worth remembering that men and woman are human beings. That’s probably most of most of the interesting and important stuff about them.

But men and women are obviously not identical nor interchangeable.

Differences between men and women might be influenced by creation and / or the fall.

They might be a matter of nature and / or nurture, creation and / or culture.

We ought to distinguish between narrative and normative, description and prescription: is and ought.

There could be questions of principle and application. Or of a rule and its situational expressions.

There could be exceptions.

Valid generalisations are valid, as generalisations. If we concluded that (in general) men are physically stronger than women, that doesn’t mean that Sally couldn’t box my ears.

1 Corinthians 2v6-end - a handout

 

1 Corinthians 2v6-end (page 1145)

 

TRUE SPIRITUAL WISDOM FROM GOD

 

“Nones”

 

Spirituality / Wisdom / Power / Rule

 

In response to divisions and rivalries in the church (1:10-17; 3:1-4)

 

Bold claims (e.g. v6, v16b)

 

The message of true wisdom (the good news of the cross) Paul, the apostles and all faithful Christians proclaim is…

 

… not the wisdom of this age (v6)

 

… nor of the rulers of this age (v6)

 

… secret / was hidden (v7)

 

… foreordained for our glory (v7)

 

… not understood by the rulers of this age (v8)

 

… inconceivable to human beings, but revealed by God’s free gift of the Spirit in Christ (vv9-16)

 

So…

 

Ø  Receive this wisdom (the work of the Spirit needed! - vv10-15)

 

Ø  Live according to this wisdom (without boasting, rivalry and division etc. and…)

 

Christianity: Left or Right?

 It’s hard to escape politics at the moment.

I’ve found myself wondering about left and right. What do those categories mean? Are they useful?  

Maybe we might compare the conservative (right?) and the progressive (left?). Does the Christian faith line up with either?

Christians are, in a way, fundamentally conservative. They receive creation as a gift to be preserved. We don’t make or define ourselves. What we have we receive. We conform to the reality which the Creator confers on us. Christianity is in a sense a Tradition to which we are to be loyal and which we are to hand on.

But Christians also think we world has gone radically wrong. They think change – a revolution – is needed. We are not for conserving this world order as it is. We are for the lifting up of the humble poor and for the over-turning of the tables of the money changers. Jesus has already brough in a New Creation. There is a new power at work in the world, new life, transformation. Our prayer is that earth might be more like heaven. We are progressing to an end. There is an arc to history which ends with the Kingdom come in all its fullness.

Christianity, then, is both profoundly conservative and radically progressive.

1 Corinthians 1v18-2v5 handout

1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 (page 1144)

 

THE CHRIST-CRUCIFIED REVOLUTION:

 

Not words of wisdom (1v17) but the word of the cross (1v18)

 

 

Divisions and rivalries (1:10-17)

 

 

 

§  The apparent weakness and foolishness of the cross to those who are perishing, but its power and wisdom to those who are being saved (1vv18-25) [1^st person plural: we]

 

 

 

God’s revolutionary cross-shaped wise and powerful purposes proved by:

 

 

(1)   The recipients of the gospel who were mostly unimpressive (1vv26-31) [2^nd person plural: you]

 

 

(2)   The preacher / preaching of the gospel which were mostly unimpressive (2vv1-5) [1^st person singular: I]

 

 

 

Ø Who / what will you boast / glory / rejoice / put your faith in? (1v31; 2v5)

 

 

Louise Perry and Mary Harrington on left and right, life and death

 

I know next to nothing about online feminism, Louise Perry and Mary Harrington, but I found their wide-ranging discussion on The Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast 84 ‘The Trouble with Modernity’ interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6qDj_YyVoc

 

We might say that modern people tend to be a bit like ancient magicians. They think they can master the world by technology. They do not welcome the world as it is with all its givens. They try to control and tame it.

 

But birth and death alike are things that happen to us. They are done to us and we must receive and endure them. We do not do them.

 

This seems intolerable to the modern person. We medicate our pain and eliminate it. We do not think that suffering is compatible with human dignity. So we choose when and how to give birth, and increasingly in the modern West we choose not to. And we say we must choose when and how to die, and be assisted if our suffering is too great.

 

(All this got me thinking about the cross too: voluntarily chosen suffering which is both a death and a birth).  

 

Perhaps this is a fundamental difference between left and right, progressive and conservatives. Do we think there are natural givens which we must accept, or is everything (life, death and the in-between) open to revolution? Do we receive the world on its own terms, or do we use it aggressively, seeking to master, control, change and tame it for our own ends?

 

 

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

Andrew Wilson, Remaking the World - 1776

 

Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West

Andrew Wilson

Crossway, 2023 (ISBN: 9781433580536 hb, 360pp)

 

I have really loved this book. It is an education from poetry to economics. If you are at all interested in history or ideas or understanding yourself and your world, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.

 

This is a fascinating and compelling account of something of our WEIRDER (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic) age, its origins and how Christians might respond.

 

The cover depicts Wilson ten object related to 1776:

 

The quill pen

Thomas Pain’s, Common Sense

A rose (to represent Romanticism)

The cylinder from James Watt’s steam engine

Cook’s ship, HMS Resolution

Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Gear from the Watt steam engine

Flywheel from the Watt steam engine

A Revolutionary War-era flintlock pistol

 

Wilson argues that grace, freedom and truth provide a pathos (how we feel), ethos (how we act) and logos (how we think) which speak especially powerfully to the spirt of our age.

 

Some jottings follow:

 

The American Declaration of Independence’s self-evident truths haven’t seemed obvious to most people. Andrew Wilson writes: “The Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov expressed the non sequitur at the heart of Western civilization with a deliciously sarcastic aphorism: “Man descended from apes, therefore we must love one another.” Yuval Noah Harari says: “There are no such things as rights in biology.” Expressed in biological terms, the Declaration might have said: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.” (p131)

 

* * *  

 

At the age of 30, Richard Trevithick was the first to build a working locomotive. Without warning and to widespread astonishment, he rode his Puffing Devil up Camborne Hill on Christmas Eve 1801. However, when the drivers went off to the pub for the evening, leaving the engine running unattended in a shed, everything burnt down.

 

Trevithick started work on a tunnel under the Thames which he never finished and was declared bankrupt. He went to South America to make his fortune in mining but got caught up in the fight for independence, designing a new gun for the army. He fled from the Spanish in Peru across the jungle, narrowly escaping being eaten by a crocodile and ended up in Colombia, where he bumped in to Robert Stevenson who leant him £50 for the journey home.

 

John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson was so obsessed with iron that he had an iron coffin made for himself and kept it in his office. Unfortunately, when he died the coffin was found to be too small for his body and then too large for his grave. He was buried four times in total, most recently in 1928.

 

The making of British manufacturing was made by metals, mechanization, management, marketing and money. (pp173f) 

 

The HR department at Jedediah Strutt (b. 1726)'s factory was kept busy. Offences included riding on each other’s backs, throwing tea on Josh Bridworth, calling thro' window to some soldiers, putting Josh Hayne's dog in a bucket of hot water, throwing water on Ann Gregory very frequently. (p177)

 

* * *

 

The English Puritan John Owen published over eight million words. The Banner of Truth edition of his works is 16 volumes. Yet Carl Trueman points out the remarkable fact that he never mentions the loss of his wife and all eleven of his children. (p190)

 

* * *

The difficulty of defining Romanticism and an eight-word sketch:

Inwardness

Infinity 

Imagination 

Individuality 

Inspiration 

Intensity 

Innocence

Ineffability 

(p189f)

 

William Blake, “Britain’s greatest Romantic genius” – ‘I went to the Garden of Love’ poem (p205) – Chapel, “Thou shalt not” writ over the door – etc. (p206)

 

Rousseau – “the greatest autobiography since Augustine (Confessions), the most important work on education since Plato (Emile)… the most influential piece of political thought of his generation (The Social Contract), and the eighteenth century’s bestselling novel (Julie).” (p207)

 

Rousseau’s talent for opening lines – footnote p207

 

Inwardness – Truthfulness, sincerity, authenticity (p208) – free to follow your heart

 

Robert Bellah, “expressive individualism”; Philip Rieff, “triumph of the therapeutic”; Charles Taylor, “age of authenticity” (p209)

 

Romanticism + Marx, Nietzsche, Darwin, Freud

 

Donna Tart, The Goldfinch – be yourself / follow your heart – “What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted?” and for some reason leads you towards ruin, self-immolation, disaster etc. – See Wilson, p211

 

* * *

 

The transformation of health, wealth and prosperity – the great escape / the great divergence / the great enrichment / the European miracle (p214)

 

A thousand years of living standards pretty constant for most people.

 

GDP per person per year roughly $550 for Shakespeare and King David

 

The Malthusian Trap was first described in 1798, just as people were beginning to escape from it for the first time (p214)

 

“Today, human beings consume around seventy times more goods and services than we did two centuries ago – an increase… of 7,000 percent – while world population has only increased by a factor of seven….. the average person today … has a standard of living around ten times higher than in 1776. If the Pilgrim Fathers lives on $2 a day in today’s terms, and the average person in the eighteenth century lived on $3 a day, the average person now lives on more like $30. In richer countries, it is closer to $100.” (p214)

 

Graphs – p215f – income per person, life expectancy, social development index (energy capacity, organisation, IT, capacity to make war – a proxy for the sophistication of a society – Ian Morris)

 

Adam Smith – kidnapped by a gypsy woman? (p218) – terribly absent minded etc. – Samuel Johnson called him “a most disagreeable fellow” who was “as dull a dog as he had ever met” (p218)

 

“led by an invisible hand” (p219)

 

The productivity of labour and Gross Domestic Product (p219f)

 

 Reasons for this economic explosion: institutional, socioeconomic, ideological and cultural, geographical (pp220ff)

 

Secure property, law, contracts, representative government, religious pluralism etc. p221f

 

Acemoglu and Robinson, Why Nations Fail

 

Ferguson, Civilization

 

 William Cobbett, Britain as “Old Corruption” (p223)

 

Gregory Clark: The IMF & World Bank might have rated Britain better in the medieval period than today (p223f)

 

GREED – Guns, Resource Extraction, Enslavement, Death (p224)

 

Thomas Thistlewood – “the worst man in the world” (p226)

 

Monopolies and slavery as counterproductive (p227)

 

A modern breakfast & luxury goods (p227)

 

An industrious revolution? (p227)

 

Consumer culture & cotton (p228)

 

The “lords of the loom” (industrial revolution, cotton etc.) depended on “the lords of the lash” (slavery, colonialism) (p228)

 

The effects of the black death – 1/3 of population died, wages increase, peasantry empowered, feudalism destabilised, agricultural improvements incentivised (p228, fn)

 

Bejamin Franklin as a most modern person – pragmatic, cosmopolitan, sense of humour, his career & abilities, inventions, wit etc. – diligent, frugal, prosperous, normal, can-do, upwardly mobile, middle class, democratic, optimistic, Protestant-lite (p229)

 

A culture of growth, curiosities, novelty, improvement (p230f) – discovery, possibility

 

“virtually all cultures put a higher value on tried and tested ancestral wisdom than on newfangled, unproven contemporary innovation” (p231)

 

Christianity – individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, non-conformist, analytical (p231) – town folk (p232)

 

Rejection of Jesuit astronomy in China (fn, p231)

 

A. N. Whitehead on the importance of “the rationality of God” and his providence etc. for science (p232)

 

Yuval Noah Harai increases in knowledge leading to “the discovery of ignorance” – there is so much you don’t know, you are driven to investigate (p232f)

 

A divided church, a heliocentric cosmos & America! (p233)

 

The reception / partial rejection of Aristotle in this period (p233)

 

Books in Europe and China – movable type printing, Protestantism, a relatively free press, literacy, correspondence etc.

 

Cf. attituded to maths and money in Shakespeare and Johnson (p234)

 

Competition, productive fragmentation – independence and connection (p235)

 

Walter Scheidel – polycentrism / “competitive fragmentation of power” (p236) – competition, diversity, innovation, options

 

Maps not chaps (p238)

 

The Eurasian steppe and pastoral nomads (p238f)

 

Separation of church and state but also Christianity / language etc. in common (p239) – political fragmentation and cultural connection in Europe (p240)

 

The republic of letters – a market of ideas (p239)

Church growth, young people and silver bullets

I’ve been in my job serving three small rural churches for thirteen years. The population of the benefice is c. 1700.

I can’t say revival has broken out. But by God’s grace the churches have held on while pubs shut down around us!

Sometimes my four kids have been the only young people in church.

Last week the official statistics showed that we had 11 under 16s at one service. And one of my children had been to the earlier service. And some regulars were missing.

Of course things are still small and fragile but we’re enormously grateful for this little uptick / mind-blowing % growth.

For quite some time, 25% or more of the Church of England's congregations have no children attending regularly. On average, nine children attended each service across all Church of England churches in 2016. And the pandemic hit some places hard. Habits of church going were hard for some people to recover.

 

The Church of England has published ‘Youth and Children Growth research - Research amongst churches which have grown in their under 16 Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) 2014-2019 - Sample: 217 churches - Jan-April 2022.  

The Vicar gets a lot of credit (p11)! They also conclude that that “growth resulted from an active, intentional choice, as opposed to something that happened organically.” (p12). 88% of growing churches agreed that there had been an active choice to engage more in youth, children and families work in your church in the past five years. Well, okay, I’m not sure how much that really tells us. Only 11% said the growth had been organic growth over time (not a result of specific changes). (2% of churches didn’t know). (p12) People are likely to credit their actions with working after the fact, aren’t they?

“When asking churches which, if any, changes have taken place within your church community, the top answer was Increased emphasis in working with families (57%), followed by changes in church style or programme (51%), new church leadership (50%), Increased investment by adults in the wider church (43%) and employing a youth, children’s or families worker (42%). However, when asked about how important that decision was in contributing to the growth of youth and children’s attendance in your church, 82% of those that had employed a youth, children’s or families worker rated it as’ very important’ in contributing to the growth of youth and children’s attendance in your church, with 74% rating increased emphasis in working with families as very important and 64% rating both changes in church style or programme and increased investment by adults in the wider church as very important.” (p13)

We’ve worked really quite hard at church growth over the years. We did a diocesan course about it. We’ve worked on our welcome. We’ve used a special prayer for church growth and we often pray about it at our monthly benefice prayer meeting. We’ve had two benefice missions with outside teams, and all sorts of one off and regular events, courses, holiday clubs, initiatives and Mission Action Plans – some of them multiple times. We did Messy Church in the village hall on a Sunday at 4pm for a few years. We have had a youth group. Toddlers is sometimes at capacity. I could go on, but I can’t say we have any single silver bullet.

Inevitably some people move away and some people become too ill to come to church any longer. So you need to grow to stand still. We have seen a few new people at all three churches in recent times. Mostly they have just turned up, been welcomed and kept coming back.

We can’t see people’s hearts or predict the long term, but it’s humbling to think that we can’t manage or control church growth. None of this is to say that we shouldn’t plan nor do X or Y, but the Spirit moves wherever He pleases, sometimes through our careful organisation, maybe sometimes despite it.

Perhaps that also means we should try not to be too anxious or obsessed about numbers. Of course we want as many people as possible to know, love and follow Jesus. But numbers aren’t everything. Our job is faithfulness. Naturally we long to be fruitful. But fruit is God’s job.

It turns out that the Bible is right. If there is to be any growth, God gives the growth. And we give thanks for all those who have planted and watered. Only eternity will reveal what fruit was good and lasting. Much growth might for the moment be unseen or elsewhere.  

In the meantime, I’m immensely grateful, in particular, for the flexibility and perseverance of our children’s Sunday Club leaders. Well done to them for preparing each week when there might be no customers and coping if the size of the group doubles!