Harvey Weinstein - the symptom not the disease

The Harvey Weinstein saga seems to contain strong echoes of the case of Jimmy Savile and the BBC in that his behaviour appears to have been an open secret, people who had the power to act did nothing and the seriousness of his behaviours was dismissed as being just the norm at the time. Weinstein has been sacked from his own company and the BAFTAs; no doubt the Oscars will soon follow suit and the police look set to investigate. This is, hopefully, the end of Harvey Weinstein’s reign of terror and no doubt Hollywood will breathe a collective sigh of relief and get back to business as usual.

However, the film world is deluding itself if it thinks that with Weinstein gone, this thing is now over. Harvey Weinstein is only one symptom of the disease which riddles Hollywood from top to bottom – and not just Hollywood but infects everyone who runs after the Hollywood culture. Hollywood is a place without any values whatsoever when it comes to relations between men and women. Absolutely anything goes. In such a moral vacuum it becomes a case of the survival of the strongest and men like Weinstein have sat at the top of the food chain using sex as weapon to ensure that they stay there.

In Hollywood - judging not only by the films which come out of it but by the lives of its stars - infidelity, insincerity and indecency are not only treated with total moral indifference but are actually glorified. Hollywood has for generations been  constantly pushing back push back standards of what is and is not acceptable in terms of behaviour and dress.  Now it is throwing up its hands in horror at the consequences which all of this has had for many women in the industry. But we cannot have our cake and eat it; if we refuse to live with the rules and standards which protect society from this sort of thing, we should not be surprised ourselves to find ourselves in a dog-eat-dog environment where the weakest come off worst.

We will not accept that standards of sexual behaviour given by God were actually given for our own good. Because we want freedom. Well, freedom is what we will get - the kind of freedom that you get in anarchy, which is generally the freedom to be slaughtered by someone stronger than you who wants what you have got.

Hollywood is a long way away over in the US and yet it is also here in our living rooms, on our screens and in our newspapers and magazines.   It impinges on us every day of our lives but we do have a choice in how we engage with it. Every time we watch a Hollywood film, buy a celebrity magazine or read an online interview with a film star we providing a little more sustenance to this serpent at the heart of our Western culture. Perhaps we all need to think more carefully about where our money goes and what we might be unwittingly supporting. And we all need to stop praising and emulating the celebrity world that has given birth to such unpleasant offspring as Harvey Weinstein.

Veganism and Christianity: worldviews on a collision course

Veganism is in the news at the moment as folk are encouraged to go vegan for the New Year. Once apparently the preserve of a few off-beat, left wing, hippy types, increasing numbers of mainstream figures are now declaring support for veganism. Unlike vegetarianism which encompasses a wide range of motivations, veganism is underpinned by a set of quite strict values which make it a world-view rather than mere set of dietary choices, but it could be argued that veganism is pseudo-religious in character. 

It is easy to disregard veganism as just a rather extreme lifestyle choice but in fact these principles that make up veganism are in aggressive opposition to foundational Christian doctrines. They are also increasingly seeping into mainstream thought via the media, especially in areas like conservation and agriculture.

These principles include the following:

• Humans have no special status. Veganism explicitly places the same value on animal life as human life. Human beings are just another animal. Some vegans even go so far as to compare society's use of animals for food to the Holocaust, and human ownership of animals to pre-Abolition slavery. (Ironically, however, vegans actually place humans on a different level from other animals, as other animals feel no compunction in killing and eating one another, and by expecting humans to behave in ways completely counter to natural selection, a theory which has done so much to shape veganism.)
• Rejection of the so-called 'commodification' of animals, so vegans will not, for example, keep animals captive or use for milk production, clothing, riding/ploughing, keeping pets or taking any medicines that might have been tested on animals.
• Veganism asserts that meat eating is immoral and veganism is therefore a moral obligation. One prominent exponent of this position is the philosopher Peter Singer, who at the same time advocates full term abortion and even infanticide at the choice of mothers.

Christianity, on the other hand asserts that:

• Human beings are distinct from the rest of creation because they possesses a soul and are created in the image of God.
• God gave mankind special status as steward of his creation: Man may have abused this role at times but God still regards him as the pinnacle of his creation and as the steward of the rest of creation.
• God gave all living creatures to human beings for them to use including as food and for sacrificial purposes. 
• The killing of other life for food and sacrifices can be viewed as a shocking necessity meant to bring home to human beings the seriousness of their sin. God determined to provide the animals to act as these substitutes and symbols 'before the foundation of the earth'. They were provided to point forward to the final true sacrifice, that of his son Jesus Christ who offered himself 'for the sin of the whole world'.
• To say that it is wrong to kill animals therefore a) denies God the right to utilise things he created as he chooses, b) challenges the rightness of God in giving them to people for that purpose and c) therefore attacks substitutionary atonement for sin which is the heart of the gospel.

Veganism is the combined result of pursuing Darwinism to its logical conclusion and attempts to provide an ethical framework for life which specifically excludes any reference to any being outside the physical world. Veganism and humanism therefore go hand in hand. Most Western vegans have explicitly rejected belief in God although some follow atheistic forms of Buddhism. Some proponents of veganism, like Peter Singer, are among the most obnoxious and vociferous critics of Christianity.It can be seen from this that veganism is not a neutral lifestyle choice but an ideology which is on a collision course with Christianity.

We can see from this that, although it is quite possible for a Christian to adopt a non-meat eating lifestyle, it is not possible to be both a vegan and a Christian. More importantly, we can also see that below a relatively innocuous surface lie a set of ideas which are distinctly anti-Christian, which  are increasingly seeping into mainstream thinking  and which Christians need to understand - both in order to engage with them in contemporary culture and to guard our own hearts against erosion in confidence in God's providences and principles.

Your life - steward or owner?

I’m in the process of reading a book on Bioethics which I’ve been asked to review for a Christian magazine.*  I thought I would just share one striking point he makes, and some of its corollaries.

The Bible describes a God who is always giving generously and sets forth human life as a precious  gift from God, of which we are stewards. The modern world, however, has rejected this concept of ‘stewardship’ in favour of ‘ownership’. Hence, we hear cries of ‘it’s my life, my body, I’ll do as I please with it’. Women, therefore, should be able to do as they choose with what is growing in their body, even to the point of full-term abortion. People should be able to choose when to end their lives. People can cut or harm their bodies in different ways. For Christians, however, the principle is ‘You are not your own, you were bought at a price.’ (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

This writer suggests that the ‘ownership’ concept is dangerous for a number of reasons.

·         It encourages people to live lives of unrestraint and self-determination

·         It encourages a quest for absolute autonomy, with potential for cruel indifference to others especially the vulnerable

·         It engenders an insistence on ‘my rights’, again to the detriment of others

We are already seeing the out-working of this attitude in many areas of life, not just in decisions about the beginning and end of life. ‘Stewardship’ on the other hand

·         encourages people to be circumspect

·         encourages people to be mindful of the wishes of the Owner

·         encourages people to be careful with what God has entrusted to them

·         thinks about a fulfilment of duty and care to others

·         never returns a gift early or prematurely terminates stewardship

The author acknowledges that, in a post-Fall world, this stewardship can be hard and painful at times. But the giving, blessing God who bestows this gift of human life in the first place will also give grace to sustain us in the those difficulties. Abortion and euthanasia both imply that either that God’s judgment is defective and that we know better than he does when enough is enough, or that God does not exist altogether. So, by taking decisions about the beginning or end of life into our own hands, we not only abrogate a responsibility that does not belong to us but we also make God out to be either inept or uncaring.

One phrase which stood out for me was the author’s description of the ownership mentality as ‘predatory’ -  grabbing what is ‘mine’ at the expense of others – and there is a distinctly Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’  tone to modern bioethics.  This is unsurprising, though tragic, in a post-Christian culture. But many Christians are in danger of unthinkingly swallowing this ideology too. We need to be very careful that this thinking with its outward veneer of ‘compassion’ and ‘dignity’ does not seep into our mindset and erode our faith and trust in God, our confidence in his  sovereignty and benevolence or allow it inflate our impressions of our own flawed judgment.

--

* Bioethical Issues by Dr John Ling, Day One Publications, 2014

Let the Devil look as grim as he likes - God prevails in the Book of Esther

Our pastor recently began a series in the book of Esther. Despite having been written so many years ago it resonates strongly with many situations that people face in the modern world. The book is set in a country run by a ruthless autocrat who has amassed vast wealth. He and his forebears have built luxurious palaces, temples, and awe-inspiring fortifications whilst their people suffered. Despite all our advances in democracy, the activities of men like Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussain and Bashar al Assad show that nothing has really changed that much. We then read about ethnic cleansing, mass deportation and enforced conversion of whole people groups. We hear about a drunken king who demands the appearance of his wife, so he can parade her before his political guests as a sexual object for them to leer at. We see a young girl snatched from her family and forced to participate in a deadly beauty pageant where the 'prize' is to become the latest possession of this king. who will expect to have his way with her however and whenever he pleased. Then we learn that the country is run by 'oligarchs' like Haman, men of vanity and ruthless ambition, who show no compunction in bumping off anyone who opposes them.

How could Esther, sucked unwillingly into such a world of idolatry and debauchery, possibly survive or maintain her integrity as a devout Jew ? Yet the book shows that the most godless situations, like a beauty contest, the ruthless and misogynistic behaviour of a pagan king or the hubris of a nasty little man like Haman, can be used by God to further his ends. God enabled Esther, Mordecai, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednigo and probably many others to stand firm in a culture that was hostile to everything they held dear.  

Do you sometimes feel trapped in today's society and want to flee from the impurity and ungodliness that surrounds you every day? Do you despair of your labours for God bearing any fruit in such an environment? Do you wonder how you and your family can survive and maintain a Christian witness when aggressive secularism seems to be everywhere gaining ground? The message of the book of Esther is that there is no situation too evil for God to work in, no environment too dark for the gospel light to shine in and no limit to what he can use to bring about his ends. His purposes will prevail. To quote Luther's great hymn:

And were this world all devils o'er

And watching to devour us,

We'll lay it not to heart so sore;

Not they can overpower us. 

And let that prince of ill

Look grim as e'er he will;

He harms us not a whit

For why?  His doom is writ:

A word shall quickly slay him! 

 

How long O Lord?

Do you need a reason to pray for the world around you? Here three news stories from recent weeks should make you weep for God to have mercy on our nation.

This week it was confirmed that the majority of children would be born out of marriage by 2016. Now the majority of children will grow up with the anxiety and uncertainty of knowing whether Mum and Dad will stay together. Even more children will go through the trauma of relationship breakdown and have to cope with the conflicts of relating to 'step' parents and siblings from other relationships. Children of unmarried parents are at 10 times the risk of suffering sexual abuse and their mothers are significantly more likely to be subject to domestic violence. They will be exposed to greater economic insecurity as marriage also provides a level of economic security to women and children not matched by co-habiting relationships. The demise of marriage is also linked to the absence of fathers from the home and the BBC recently reported on 'A million children growing up without fathers'. Surely all of this is going to have tragic consequences for the psychological and social development of the next generation.

When I read Romans 1 it almost seems that Paul must have lived in the 21st century as he describes a catalogue of things which will result when people increasingly turn their backs on God. And not being satisfied to indulge in all the forms of evil around them, Paul says that they will 'invent ways of doing evil'. In the news recently it was reported that live streaming of child sex abuse was becoming a growing threat showing that men have done just that. What depths mankind will plunge to when God withdraws his restraining hand.

How long, O LORD, how long?

Not my sin? How to pray for a nation on the brink

In Hosea 4, where God sets out his case against Israel, it is clear he is speaking to a society that is rotten to the very core. Israel’s idolatry has not remained an isolated problem but has bred a society characterised by corruption, bloodshed, prostitution and murder. When Hosea says that ‘bloodshed follows bloodshed’ and that their sins ‘know no bounds’ he describes a situation where there were not merely sporadic outbreaks but where these sins had become endemic, woven into the very fabric of society.  Everyone from the top to the bottom of society was involved, and all would be punished together. Even the tiny righteous remnant would go into exile with the others, sharing in the punishment of their community.

After the Second World War, some German Christians devoted themselves to a ministry of repentance and intercession for the sins of the German nation, even though they personally had not been involved in the atrocities perpetrated by the regime. The prayers of the Old Testament prophets reveal a similar view of their relationship to their community and its sin. We are not just accountable to God for our personal sins, but do at times share in the guilt of our community and also in its consequences.

When we consider our own society, we can surely only conclude that it is as rotten as the society of Hosea’s day.  It is not reports of horrific murders, child abuse or parliamentary corruption that lead me to that conclusion but the things I witness every day –  the loss of sense of responsibility for elderly family members, decline in attitudes of young people to parents, teachers and other adults in their communities,  the sea-change in attitudes to drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, etc.

But who of us as Christians can say we have been entirely detached from this state of affairs? Examination of our own attitudes often reveals that we have imbibed the world’s values more than we care to admit. And with iniquity vaunted and temptation advertised all around us, many Christians are falling into the same sins that are affecting wider society.  A generation ago divorce was almost unheard of between believers but sadly today we all know of many cases of marital breakdown, adultery and other sexual sins, including amongst ministers of the gospel. The church is struggling to know how to respond to issues like cohabitation, internet pornography, child abuse, gambling addiction and drug misuse – not only in the outside world but among its own members.

It is time for us to come to God with prayers of repentance for the sin of our society.  Let’s not pray arrogantly.  We must plead with God, not as outsiders looking on, but as part of our society and part of its sin. Surely we also need to repent and plead for God’s mercy for the state of our churches, afflicted by so many things that ought not to be and falling so far short of what the community of God’s people should be like.  When God has purified his churches, they can serve their function of being preserving ‘salt and light’ in British society. Perhaps our society may then be turned back from the brink, and we will not have to share in its punishment.

Sin and the Savile Scandal

On tonight’s Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4, Michael Buerk is to discuss whether, in the light of this week’s revelations about Jimmy Savile and Lance Armstrong, people’s good works are inevitably tainted by their evil deeds. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nbq68 

 

No doubt it will be an interesting debate. The programme will also examine to what extent the sinner can be separated from the sin, and whether works of art are contaminated by the private lives of their creaters. The Bible, however,  gives an unequivocal and unpalatable answer:

‘All of us have become like one unclean,
and all of our righteous acts are as filthy rags.
We all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.      
                                                                                 (Isaiah 64:6)

Even the best things we do are so contaminated by sin that we are ‘swept away’ by the wrath of God. From the cradle our natures are so corrupted that what was designed to generate holiness, goodness and to glorify God produces, at best, something so contaminated as to be of no worth before God.

 

True in cases like Savile and Armstrong, perhaps, but true of us? Take the greatest acts that you have done and analyse your motives honestly. Who of us can claim to have acted completely disinterestedly, without a  thought to our own interests or the desire to stand a little higher in the estimation of others, God or even just ourselves?  The more I have come to know myself and to see myself reflected in the mirror of Scripture, the more I see that my best deeds are indeed as filthy rags – or as other translations put it, a ‘polluted garment’ with which I once tried to make myself presentable before God.

My only hope is in the grace of God, whereby God offers us Christ’s glorious righteousness like a pure white garment to cover over all our foulness. All he asks of me is to admit the utter inadequacy of my former attire and that I appeal to him for grace.

‘Jesus, thy blood and righteousness

My beauty are, my glorious dress.
Midst flaming worlds in these arrayed
With joy shall I lift up my head.’                               
                                                                 (Nikolaus von Zinzendorf)

 

 

Power or principle?

This week the Leader of the Liberal Democrats told his party that they faced a choice between ‘protest  and power’.  Many grass-roots Liberals seem to feel that the choice has in fact been between principles and power, and that the party in its determination to hold on to power has let go of the very things it stands for.

History’s pages are full of examples from all spheres of life of individuals and organisations who sacrificed their principles in order to cling on to power.  We would do well to think a little further about these. The church today is desperate to have influence in our nation and to avoid being ignored or marginalised. In order to cling on to the position they have in society, it has gradually diluted its message,  dropping doctrines, beliefs and practices that the world outside finds offensive and focussing all their energies on appeasing and appealing to the world.

A typical example of this of is a church near here that recently held a beer festival in its mediaeval buildin http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-17775140 . It was clear from the comments made that (possibly in addition to financial considerations) this was about getting non-church attenders inside a church building, and yet having got people into the building by such ruses,  these congregations don’t seem to  know what message they want to proclaim to people. They have so confused and compromised their beliefs that they no longer have anything distinctive to say to the world. I believe that this is why people who are really searching for something spiritual (as opposed to a good real ale) are turning away from the Established church in many places to independent churches who are still prepared to proclaim the undiluted, uncomfortable, radical Truth. I want to weep sometimes when I hear the kind of insipid counsel given to people who are clearly seeking God by people appointed to be ministers of the gospel  - mere platitudes that could just as easily have been spoken by a Buddhist or a humanist as by a Christian minister.

One of the features of our post-Christian era is that we no longer respect people of strong principles. In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, society honoured people of strong convictions and principled lives. Their opponents respected them as people of integrity even when they disagreed with them, and the heroes of the day were people like Florence Nightingale, William Booth, Earl Shaftesbury, David Livingstone and so on. Now people with uncompromising convictions are ridiculed as being fanatical, vilified as bigots or scorned as out-dated in a post-modern era. The heroes of today are film stars, people from reality TV series, overpaid footballers and all sorts of other ‘beautiful people’ with decidedly flexible morals.

So having strong principles isn’t popular in today’s world. But when the chips are down and people are seeking answers to some of the hardest questions of life, such woolly, insubstantial waffle will not do. People want answers of substance, clarity and conviction.

But let’s not fall into the trap of thinking this is just an issue for others people in other places, for this is a temptation for all of us as churches and as individuals. We are making daily judgments about how much to engage with the world, its thinking and its practices. It is not wrong to want to have influence in the world, if that is in order to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. Yet if in the process of gaining and holding on to that influence, we forget why we wanted that influence in the first place, what have we gained?

In a sermon I heard recently on being ‘salt and light’ the speaker made an obvious but fundamental point. Salt is meant to be different! Our function in this world is act as a spiritual preservative in society. To fulfil that purpose we need to remain distinctive, for ‘salt that loses its saltiness is of no use for anything’. Our effectiveness is bound up with our distinctiveness. So if we want to remain effective let’s remember why we are who we are, and hold onto our principles at all costs.

Too bad for justice?

I believe that one of the things upon which societies and individuals will be judged is their ability to treat their enemies with scrupulous justice, however heinous their offence. In the light of this I find some of the practices adopted by the US and UK to deal with Islamic terrorists increasingly disturbing.  There seems to be an underlying line of thought that the crimes committed by these individuals are so appalling that we can do anything we like to them – justice is too good for them.

I’ve been reading about some of the prominent figures of the English Civil War. It seems that they fell into the same trap. Some fine, principled Christians gained positions of influence under Cromwell, but tragically some of them sanctioned appalling acts in the sphere of justice. These men who had endured so much themselves in the cause of religious liberty threw off restraint when they came to power and subjected their former opponents to punishments that seem gratuitously violent and vindictive. Nothing, it seems, was too extreme for certain offences.

The fact that these punishments were often  for  ‘thought crimes’ only makes it worse. But even when an offence is truly horrific, a good society proves itself to be such by treating those who offend against it with greater justice and restraint than the perpetrator afforded to others. The seriousness of the offence never justifies setting aside the principles of justice or descending into barbarism. When that happens, society becomes as bad as the offender. Participation in barbaric forms of punishment debases us to the level of animals – we are behaving like beasts, which act aggressively when provoked because they only know to follow their instinct.  But it is our sense of justice and our awareness of the need to govern our passions that lifts us above the animals. This is part of what it means to have been made ‘in the image of God’. God supremely exemplifies those qualities. He knew that such justice is costly:

‘For God demonstrates his love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us … When we were his enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his son.’ Romans 5:8,10

To blog or not to blog...that is the question.

It is Easter, so it seemed like a good time to begin this blog. I’ve been in two minds about blogging. There seems something inherently narcissistic about broadcasting your own opinions. And I know that pride certainly isn’t something I’m likely to get free of any time soon!  However, there is also a need for the church to engage with the world outside its walls through these media, so I’m praying to be able to use this space in a God-honouring way.

I have called the blog ‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ because that is how the Bible describes the people of God in relation to the world. According to the writer of Hebrews, the great heroes of faith:

‘…admitted that they were aliens and stranger (strangers and pilgrims) on earth… Instead, they were longing for a better country, a heavenly one.’ Hebrews 11:13,16

The Greek phrase for strangers and pilgrims is ‘xenoi kai parepidemoi’. Parepidemoi literally means ‘the ones that are passing through’. It carries the sense of people living in a foreign land for a limited season and a specific purpose, interacting with the society they move in but not belonging there. This reminds me straightaway of the old Spiritual;

‘This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through

My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue

My saviour’s beckonin’ me from heaven’s open door

And I can’t feel at home in this world any more.’

I find this metaphor helps both to know how we should relate to the world and to explain some of the struggles that we experience as we go through the Christian life.  Expatriates experience considerable challenges in some countries. In some countries their presence may be tolerated rather than welcomed, and in others Britons are at risk of  violence because of their nationality. Even where this is not the case, a host government does not have their welfare at heart; this is the responsibility of the British Government. Expatriates are governed by two legislatures as they must abide by the laws of the nation where they reside but are also still subject to the laws of their own country. They never truly ‘belong’ in that country although they may learn the language, make local friends and even adopt some local practices.

Do some of those things resonate with you? Do you have a sense of alienation at times from contemporary British society? Do its values and laws clash with your Christian beliefs? Does it feel at times as though society has turned on the Church - that it is tolerated but not really welcome in society? This is what it means to be parepidemoi. This earth is not where we ultimately belong and this life is not all that there is. Abraham, the archetypal figure of faith in the Bible, is described as ‘looking forward to a city with foundations, whose builder and architect is God’ (Hebrews 11:10) and, once  God had called him, he put down no roots in this world. Living as a nomad and owning no land on the earth, God made him a living picture of this ‘sojourning’ existence. He was happy to live that way because he knew that he had a home elsewhere, a city where he held citizenship. That city, the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21, will be the final resting place of all God’s children and it is the place that we should all be homesick for.

So I’m hoping this blog will be a space to explore our ‘sojourning’ here and to contemplate the great hope that we have before us.

Have a very Happy Easter.