Not What Will Happen, But What We Must Do

Immigrants. Migrants. Refugees. Asylum seekers. Day in, day out, morning, noon and night, the news is filled with them; their faces, their shelters, their journeys, their crimes, their corpses; where they’ve come from, where they’re going, what they’re doing, why they’ve come. Simultaneously, we are told about ourselves; how we’ve met them, how we’ve blocked them, how we’ve helped them, how we’ve turned them away. Preachers and politicians and broadcasters have spilled oceans of ink to tell us why we should welcome them, why we should hate them, why we should help them, why we should stop them.

The Christian response has been, at best, mixed.  I was made aware of an article written by someone in America who considers themselves to be Christian. He was writing on why God approves of building walls and turning away refugees. All I can say in response is that his god is not my God. It smacks of using religion to justify what you’ve already decided to do, rather than to instruct you on what you ought to be doing. As the quote goes, if your god hates all the same people as you, they’re probably made up.

The Pope has recently spoken out to urge countries to take in more asylum seekers, and condemned the populist rhetoric and self-centredness of some countries towards those in desperate need of help. Other churches and church leaders have said much the same things.

Other have warned of the consequences of taking in large numbers of asylum seekers from Muslim-majority countries. On top of the supposed economic perils, they warn of the dangers of accepting thousands of people with views and beliefs purportedly inimical to our own. ‘Islamification’, ‘cultural dilution’, ‘racial displacement’, even ‘cultural suicide’. We are told that we are a Christian culture, and that therefore these Muslims are not and should not be welcome.

These concerns are not wholly without justification. I admit that. I would, however, make two points. The first is to ask whether a culture that leaves men, women and children in the camps, on the streets, on the beaches, or at the bottom of the sea is a culture worth saving? It certainly doesn’t sound like the sort of culture I’d have any interest in rescuing or maintaining. The second is to point out, especially to those who’d try and use Christianity, either personal or cultural, as an excuse, that these concerns don’t matter. Not a bit. Even if they’re justified and genuine, they don’t matter.

Others may argue that the example given in the Bible justifies us in excluding or turning away refugees. I would merely remind them that we have been instructed otherwise. God Himself has told us directly, and in no uncertain terms; welcome the stranger, feed the starving, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless. Most importantly though, and most pertinently to this situation, is that he told us ‘to love one another as I have loved you’. Do you want an example of God to follow? There it is. Christ loved unto death. You might almost say he committed suicide.

What God really requires of us though, in this case, is not love. We need to love yes, but much, much more importantly, we need to have faith. C. S. Lewis is always a rich source of quotations, and the character Puddleglum from The Silver Chair is one of his finest channels of wisdom. I won’t quote the line, but rather paraphrase; ‘God has given us our instructions.  He hasn’t told us what will happen if we follow them, only what we must do.’ We need to believe that God knows what He’s doing, and I think that might be the hardest kind of belief. It may bear further examination, but for now, we need to believe that He does indeed know what He’s doing, and follow Him accordingly.

If it helps, I don’t believe for a second that it will be anything like cultural suicide. My hope is that it will be a cultural rejuvenation. Just imagine if every person who claimed to be Christian, and every person who carps on about us being a Christian culture, actually went out and welcomed the stranger, fed the starving, sheltered the homeless, loved with a love that glows and shines and can be seen from orbit. If that happened, do you suppose a single one of the people who came here could do anything but respond to it in kind?

It’s a faint hope, and I am a pure hypocrite. I am not anything like the being I describe above, but it gives me something to aim for. In the meantime, I will put my faith in God, try and do what He tells me, and let Him look after the consequences.

Different Kinds of Faith

Last Sunday, I attended an extremely thought-provoking service. One of the best features of Methodism is that we get lots of different preachers coming through, and last Sunday’s preacher was one that I hadn’t heard before. I say I found the service thought-provoking. It was. It just wasn’t enjoyable.

Part of the problem for me (and the following is nothing but my own narrow view, coloured by my prejudices and preconceptions) was that her faith seemed so incredibly sure. It was solid, towering. It was in fact not faith but certainty. You could have bounced rocks off it. (I may have been tempted to…) Perhaps it’s something retiring, humble and excessively British within me, but I react badly to such overt certainty, such sure knowledge that God’s on side and will do what’s needed. I raised an eyebrow when at one point she suggested that we should ‘tell God to go ahead of you this week’. In my universe, God is asked, not told.

She was able to assure us that although she is a trained local preacher, she is nonetheless (and presumably to our great surprise and relief), a ‘sinner just like you’. I’m sure she meant it in an encouraging and genuinely humble way, but it possibly lacked in the execution.

The other major hurdle to my enjoyment of the service was that she came wielding a guitar. Past traumas mean that the sight of a preacher picking up a stringed-instrument bring me out in shudders and flashbacks. The only thing worse are the words ‘Now this next hymn comes with actions’, which are to me as salt is to a slug. Her brash, forceful, noisy, solid, certain Christianity struck me as uncomfortable and distasteful.  Realising this reaction within myself is what prodded my thinking apparatus into movement.

The service was thought-provoking in that it forced me to consider my own case. I am aware that my faith is occasionally lukewarm, shy and intermittent, and often (if not usually) fails to take centre stage within my own life. However, although I am not necessarily satisfied with the confidence of my faith, I am entirely happy with the style. I don’t pretend to be charismatic in any sense of the word; I am not one of the great evangelists. The closest I get is the inherently passive activity of writing this blog. As a result, I look askance at anyone who is, and suspect that they are ‘doing Christianity wrong’ in that they are doing it differently to me.

As Christians, we find ourselves in the odd position of being told that our faith ought to be solid and sure, unfailing, unflinching, at the same time as hearing that ‘certainty, not doubt, is not the enemy of faith’. Our faith should be absolute, but stop short of knowledge. Shouldn’t it?

The Church is a broad, deep, wide beast, with plenty of room in it for all kinds of people. If I pride myself on my retiring, unassuming faith (if that’s not a ludicrous contradiction to start with), I can hardly look at others and think they are not doing things as well as myself. There is also the unpleasantly strong suspicion that my own dislike is born out of jealousy for the strong, confident faith that this women displayed. I have written in the past about my own internal struggles with whether or not to ask people not to blaspheme in my presence. On Sunday this woman proudly stated that she did not permit blasphemy in her office. My own quiet, unassuming belief, steady though it is, must surely be shown up in contrast to such a confident, public Christianity.

It is not the strength of my faith that concerns me so much as the manner in which it is shown. I don’t necessarily wish to emulate the style with which she evinces her religion. I’ve already said that I find it a little distasteful. It is the confidence, perhaps even the unshakeable certainty that I am envious of. At the same time, I wouldn’t wish to replace my faith with knowledge. I’m not sure if this contradiction makes me deep and complex, or just irrational.

I comfort myself with the idea that the body has many parts. No doubt the foot thinks the eye is a very poor foot; the hand must seem to discerning spleens like a very poor spleen; the tongue a most inefficient ear to ears everywhere. Last Sunday’s preacher might well be (or at least believe themselves to be) the voice-box or hand of the church, but there must be room for less visible organs too. If that makes me the gall-bladder or the left buttock, then that’s fine. The body needs those just as much as a voice box or a hand.

Responsibility and Historical Wrongs

If, dear reader, you are a resident of the United Kingdom, you will most likely be familiar with the newspaper, The Daily Mail.  If you’re not fortunate enough to be British, console yourself with the thought that you are at least fortunate enough not to be familiar with the Daily Mail.

The Mail is one of the more right-wing examples of a printed media establishment that is overwhelmingly right-wing, being vehemently anti-immigration, anti-union, denying climate-change and generally stacking up the standard right-wing views on whatever the left/right, conservative/liberal culture war issue of the day happens to be.  They are (in my own personal opinion) up there with the Daily Express as being fairly loathsome sorts.

Their detractors make much of the Mail’s supposed historical support of fascism prior to World War 2, presumably considering it an indicator of a long-term moral rot that has merely become (slightly) more subtle with the intervening decades, and bring it up presumably in the hopes of embarrassing the Mail and its supporters.  However (and as much as I dislike the newspaper), I would agree with this article that it is entirely irrelevant.

That the Mail, eighty or so year ago supported fascism doesn’t matter.  The people in charge at the time are almost certainly long dead.  Presumably they were responsible for hiring the people who hired the people who hired the people (etc etc) who now work at the Mail, but the modern editors and journalists are not those editors and journalists.  Is the Mail still strongly right-wing?  Certainly.  Do I like it, or the things it stands for?  Certainly not.

I can tell that you’re waiting with baited breath for my stunning segue to some matter of theology or apologetics, so here goes:

Similar arguments to those made against the Mail on the grounds of its historical leanings are made against religion, and specific religions.  The Crusades, the Inquisition, religious persecutions, pogroms, purges and wars were all inspired by religious feeling.

In the case of Christianity in the West, these are now very much in the past.  The religious wars of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are long past, the Inquisitions over, the Crusades done.  Are there still abuses and wrongs being done in the name of Christianity?  Yes, but no longer on the scale or with the violence of time past.  Nor am I arguing that the historical wrongs named above should be swept under the carpet or labelled as unimportant.

The late Christopher Hitchens made a comment regarding how ‘barbarically (religions) behaved when they were strong’.  Of course, ‘religions’ can’t behave in any way, barbaric or otherwise.  They have no independent agency.  Only people can.  Unfortunately they did, and justified it to others and themselves as being religiously motivated.  That they did it would be neither truthful or helpful to deny, but those people are not us, and their justifications and cultures are not ours.

It is vitally important to remember that they were not carried out by the people who now fill our churches.  Claiming that ‘religion’ is violent because people in centuries gone by were violent is nonsensical.  The Christians who did such things are not the Christians of today.  We are not responsible for the sins of our fathers and mothers.  We should learn from them, remember them, promise ourselves that such things should never be allowed to happen again, that we will never allow ourselves to be persuaded that such things are right or good or even necessary evils.  However, neither should we feel personally responsible for them, or allow anyone else to make us feel that the actions of people long dead can be used against us in any kind of rational argument.