Between night and day

After yesterday's dark post, I wondered if there could be an Easter Morning response. I thought it might come to me at our Easter service, and it did.

It's the difference between night and day, like nothing has changed but everything has changed. It's the same world and the same me living in it, but now there is the kind of light that no one, not even death, can put out.

Christ is risen.
God raised Him.
There is nothing we can do.

What if Easter Sunday never comes?

Most of the messages I've heard from Christian leaders this Easter relate to the hope that Easter brings. That's OK for them, but for some reason it's not resonating with me this Easter. It feels like they are skipping from A to C without going through B.

Spoilers.

How can you appreciate the glory of C without the desolation of B?

As far as the unfolding story of Holy Week goes, we're currently at B, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I wonder how they felt on that first Easter Saturday? They'd just seen their Messiah crucified. What next? They didn't know what tomorrow would bring. Just like us.

It was a Sabbath, a day of rest and worship, yet it must have felt strangely empty and void without the presence of Jesus, in whom they had placed their faith.

If God was going to do something, why the wait? As I mused yesterday, perhaps it was to allow us to come to terms with the consequences of our actions. And they were our actions -  it wasn't Judas who killed Jesus, or the Jews, or the Romans, or the disciples. All of them failed in some way, but they personified our failures - they were our representatives. If we had been there, would things have happened differently? I think not. We would have found ourselves somewhere in the narrative accusing, betraying, abusing, running away or ignoring what was going on.

So, in the spirit of the day after Good Friday and not knowing what Sunday would bring, let me offer the following reflection as a kind of in-the-moment alternative to the affirmative messages of hope you might otherwise hear.

God is dead.
We murdered Him.
There is nothing we can do.

Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday

At our Good Friday morning service, I found myself thinking through the narrative. Can we put out the Light of God? Evidently, yes. What happens when we do? In a word, darkness. Also chaos and death, thuggery and betrayal, undone-ness and lost-ness. In another word, Hell. Will God allow it to remain that way? Sunday hasn't come yet. Time to reflect on the gravity of our murder of God.

Why TV makes it so difficult to believe

Don’t grab your tinfoil hat quite yet. This isn’t a conspiracy theory.

However, it does deserve some thought as to why we have turned, in the space of a couple of hundred years, from finding it impossible to not believe to finding it possible to not believe to finding it impossible to believe in God. I blame it on TV.

Of course I would. It’s an easy target. What interests me is not how it does it, but why. Why the hostility toward God? Why does TV routinely trash belief in general, and Christianity in particular?

(I’m not going to presume to answer for other religions, but I’m sure they share much of this experience.)

If you say “so what?” let me ask you to be a little observant this Easter about who gets to say what, and how long they are given to say it. For instance, where I live, we’ve just had the trailers for a mini series of documentaries on the Secret Life of Breasts. I’m sure there’s plenty of good science in there, and most of the population will have their curiosity piqued either by having an interest in owning a pair or by having the chance to look at some.

I might have missed it, but I see nothing in the schedule about the meaning of Easter. Call me a pessimist, but the most I am looking forward to is a grudging acknowledgement that some people think Easter might be important (balanced with some views on why it isn’t) followed by a sound bite talking head with a dog collar. Don’t misunderstand me; I believe the talking head with a dog collar will do a good job with the sound bite that he (or she) has been given, but why limit it to a sound bite? It’s embarrassing. It’s like trying to compress the entire content of John’s Gospel into a Twitter.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only son that … Oh crap, we’ve run out of characters. Moving on to the football …

The answer to why TV and Christianity don’t mix very well might simply be that they are bitter rivals.

Back in the day before media, the Church was the media. If you wanted to know anything about the world, you went to Church to hear about it. If you were educated enough, you read the repository of writings kept in the Churches. Then came Gutenburg and his repeatable press, so that you didn’t have to go to Church to read the writings, but it still helped because there were Church people on hand to interpret the information. The Church knew this, and trained its people in the interpretation of the information. The good interpreters pointed their flocks down the good paths, and there was a sense that some paths were worth going down, even though they were not the easy paths. The Church was the repository of knowledge, and it interpreted that knowledge for their flocks so that their flocks knew how to live their lives for the better.

TV has moved into that role. TV is now the repository of knowledge and it interprets that knowledge for its consumers so that its consumers consume its products. When it points people down paths, it doesn’t care if they are good or bad paths, as long as they keep buying pizza.

The key thing here is that for TV to assume that role, it had to push aside the Church. Not all of this is good news. Allow me to expand a few thoughts;

1. TV trades on outrage. Nothing is as effective at getting you back to watch the fight. Pick a side, it doesn’t matter which one, as long as you stay long enough to hear the sponsor’s message. In short, TV is Coliseum 2.0.
2. TV hates tolerance. See 1. Opposing views are only worth expressing if they generate some camera-friendly conflict in a controlled studio environment.
3. TV is not answerable to you. You can turn it off, but you’ll have to pay tribute before it will listen to you. Anyway, TV is not interested if you or it is right after the event - why reflect on the past when the ratings have already been compiled? (I have some limited experience here)
4. TV is your peer group, family and friend. In the light of 3, the relationship can only be described as exploitative. There’s no interaction or negotiation here.
5. TV is the repository of all knowledge. Except that it isn’t. The key criterion for broadcast is not the quality of the content, but the presentation. It is worth noting that the leading philosophers on TV are, actually, the comedians.
6. TV personalities are carefully groomed. Understandably, they want to be liked. Understandably, this will get them to subjugate absolutely everything to the need to be liked by the widest possible audience. Virtue is nowhere near as important as image.
7. TV’s personality cult blocks out the ordinary, little people. If, like me, you are ordinary and little, you’re only chance to get on TV is to be a freak. Ordinary religious people can be freaks, but they are only worth filming when they are being freaks, not ordinary. Ergo, religious people are freaks. Don't become one.
8. TV doesn’t care how you live your life. Do what you want, as long as you buy pizza. By the way, TV knows that you’ll keep on grazing and browsing as long as it keeps flattering you with the soothing message that you’re doing the right thing. This might seem a contradiction until you realize that by “right” TV means whatever it takes to keep you buying pizza. Morality is banished like the friz under that must-have hair-straightener (postage extra).
9. TV is obsessed with keeping you. Heaven forbid that it should lose you to a rival, or that you disengage. To this end, TV is full of helpful hints and emotive images to keep you safely in its embrace.

That last point doesn’t just block out potentially competing messages, it denies the very possibility that there might even be competing messages out there. You see, if you knew that there were competing messages out there, you might go to a competing media outlet to find them, and so you would be lost. As the Church is a competing media outlet, this is the greatest sin in the whole of TV-land. It is better to deny the possibility of the competitor, but if that competitor cannot be denied, then it must be belittled, minimized and ignored at all costs. Who told you that that was what the Church did?

And so we come to the impossible-to-believe situation that we find ourselves in. How can we believe in God, when TV assumes a posture of utter indifference to belief in anything but itself?

How to tell if you’re being a troll

Though we’d be embarrassed to admit it, most of us who have a history of posting stuff on forums, blogs and social media have probably engaged in troll-like behaviour to some degree. Admittedly, we may have expressed our inner troll unwittingly, but a troll is a troll, and there’s one in all of us. What’s more, we will never kill it, not in this world at least. However, we might be able to starve it. So, with this in mind, I thought I might offer some diagnostics and remedies about how to deal with your inner troll.

Diagnostic

The troll does not consider himself to be a troll.

I say “he” because most the trolls I have encountered are male. Of course, trolls would become extinct without the female of the species, but the females are more likely to be the imagined recipients of the males’ posturings than the ones putting on the display.

Feed the troll

Ignore the possibility that you’re being a troll

Starve the troll

Grow a soul. Reflect on blogs like this. Heck, the fact you’re here at all is a good start.

Diagnostic

Trolls treat the truth like an offensive weapon; the more offensive the better.

Trolls are incapable of nuance, and that’s what we need to employ here. The required nuance in this instance is that it’s OK to passionately believe stuff. This also means that it’s OK to passionately reject other stuff. The irony, I think, is that most people don’t see themselves as passionate believers/disbelievers, but that’s because they’ve never been confronted with the stuff that is adamantly opposed to what they believe (until they get on the internet).

This makes us human, but it doesn’t necessarily make us into trolls. What makes us into trolls is the use of truth to cause as much damage to the victim as possible. In other words, the over-arching objective is to prove the troll Right (with a capital "R"). The troll has a pathological disregard for the well-being of his victim and would much rather see him die than repent – in fact, the more prolonged, excruciating and public the victim’s execution, the better.

Feed the troll

Use a frenzied, flailing technique with the sword of truth. When you land a blow on your opponent’s exposed flesh, keep stabbing.

Starve the troll

Use your blade like a surgeon’s knife. Keep the incision small, make sure it’s applied to exactly the right place and allow your patient time to heal.

Diagnostic

Trolls brag about their conquests.

We all like to think we have something to say, and when we’ve said something good, we hope people will notice. The road to troll-dom starts with the insistence that people listen to what we say. So, the troll will harangue his victim for an answer and more; he will brag about how good his assessment was to his victim, and to his fellow-trolls, especially if his victim is disinclined to respond in kind. Too often have I read phrases like “they can’t stand the truth” in a context that could only serve to bolster the poster’s feelings of moral superiority. Though it’s true that people avoid shame like the plague, trolls feast on it. Or, rather, trolls feast on the shame they can generate in other people because they have none themselves.

Let me suggest a new word – a “trollbelch”, meaning the kind of sated utterance that follows a well-cooked stew of someone else’s shame, characterized by a self-congratulating assessment on the quality of the meal.

Feed the troll

Seek attention. Insist on getting a response. Tell others about how good you were and how bad your victims were.

Starve the troll

If you get ignored, get over it. Acknowledge the limits of your effectiveness in changing the other person’s posture. Be humble, even to idiots.

Diagnostic

Trolls never ask. They are not interested in interaction. They have nothing to learn from this particular situation.

It’s OK to express an opinion, and you may find yourself in the unpopular minority. But it’s wise to try to understand why the other person thinks the way they do and the only way to do that is to ask. Too many times I have seen people tell other people what they are, or what they believe without even the faintest attempt to understand why. Now, the other person may be misguided and mistaken, but they should at least be given the opportunity to tell it in their own words. Trolls put words in their victims’ mouths and would prefer to sustain gross misrepresentations of their victims than attempt to glean anything of value in what they are, do or say. Trolls have expunged themselves of all empathy.

What is more, nothing rouses the troll’s appetite more than the slightest whiff of internal conflict. Trolls expect everyone to comply with an inhuman standard of consistency. All mortals experience internal conflict over something or other. Usually, it’s the conflict between what should be (in principle) and what is (in praxis) and probably the only people who experience complete freedom from it are eminently prequalified for a career in psychotic hermitry.

Feed the troll

Shun all attempts at meaningful exchanges with your victims. Shut your victim out of the discussion at every opportunity. Preempt engagement with belittlement.

Starve the troll

Allow the other person to explain it in the way that he or she sees it. Allow the other person to be conflicted, if that is what they feel on a particular issue. Even though you might be convinced that it's true, don't stoop to calling them stupid. Don't use synonyms for "stupid", either.

Conclusion

This isn't an exhaustive guide to troll-spotting. If you have any sightings you'd like to share, please drop me a line.

Trolls are bullies. I don't like bullies. I hope and pray that I don't act like one.

Bible stuff – correct and inspired interpretations and translations

I like clever. I like to think of myself as a clever person.

Maybe one day I’ll wake up and realize I have been completely stupid. (I’m regularly reminded that I have been partially stupid many times, but being completely stupid all the time would be a revelation.)

Anyhow, part of my being a clever-liking person is my interest in getting a better understanding of the Bible, which means getting to grips with interpretations and translations; in other words, words.

It should be no surprise that I enjoy word games such as Scrabble and Crossword puzzles. The Bible is made up of words, and my clever-liking self enjoys approaching it as if it were the word game to beat all word games. That's not an entirely stupid occupation, because people have said some stupid things in the name of the Bible, usually by saying it says something that is the opposite of what it actually says. So, we need the ammunition to shoot down such stupidities and we get it from wrestling with the many word-puzzles that it confronts us with.

Then, I get reminded that it’s not simply some word game of the sort that you use to while away those idle hours on a long-haul flight. Proper interpretation and translation is not about solving a word-puzzle, but about entering into the story by faith, and living it as a reality.

Today, I was reminded of that by an anonymous correspondent who, when pondering the difficult decision to stay in Egypt where life is becoming increasingly dangerous for Christians, or to immigrate to another safer country, thought of the story of Jesus walking on the water (Matthew 14:22-32 , Mark 6:45-52 , John 6:15-21) and wrote this …

We live in Egypt today with hearts full of peace and joy, realizing that even as we are on that boat, in the middle of the dark night in the middle of the high waves, Jesus will … show up walking on the waves.

(Reported at the end of the article Help the persecuted stay? Or help them move?)

That’s what I call a proper, inspired interpretation of scripture.

On Heaven's Walls

The Bricklayer
scored his brow.
Despite his straining art
he now
had not one course
to plumb.
The sweeping arches in his mind
would not form,
for each brick placed
would fall
into the endless depths
that swallowed all.

His many bricks
and keening skill
could not bridge
gravity’s will.
No strata
could be found
from which to spring.
No ground
on which to lay.
No mix
of cement and stone
would fix.

Despairing, he watched
the downward arc
of his industry.
Each creative spark
illuminating nothing
as it passed
through eons of empty night
and at last,
shunned by the indifferent void
it died,
crushed in a weightless world
by weightless pride.

Your back, bowing
beneath the weight
of knowing
would but elate
if your feet would yield.
Yet you see what falls
because you stand
on heaven’s walls.
Consider,
as you mete the edge,
the Architect of
your teetering ledge.

An Explanation

What I have tried to describe here is one of life's great paradoxes - the paradox of knowing. Of all the creatures in the universe we are (as far as we currently know) the only ones that can survey their own finitude. We have knowledge of what we are, but that knowledge tells us that we are almost nothing.

The gravity metaphor explores this. If we were in free-fall, we would perceive a weightless world and all our efforts to build would simply disintegrate as it fell around us. Yet we perceive the pressure of weight, like the action and reaction of a weight above our heads and our feet on solid ground. Could we feel this pressure because we live in a peculiar juncture between time and eternity? The picture I have attempted to invoke is of someone peering over the edge, into the void below - his perspective possible not because he is falling, but because he is standing. Is it because his vantage point is from the walls of heaven? And, what would he see if looked up and around?