Scientism's conclusions fail the 'what if...' test

Listening to deep space: a 500-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope in Guizhou, China.

Imagine someone you know has been studying radio waves and has invented an impressive satellite dish that can pick up every kind of radio wave in existence. You are being shown the instrument by its inventor, and you are impressed by its sophistication and the wealth of information it provides; it essentially covers the world of radio waves. At a certain point you pose the question: “I wonder if there are other kinds of waves out there that aren’t radio waves.”

You then receive the confident answer: “Nope. Nothing but radio waves exist out there.”

You are surprised and interested by this claim.

“How do you know that?” you ask.

“Because we’ve never picked up anything but radio waves on the dish.”

You are a little confused. “But I thought your dish was fashioned precisely to pick up only radio waves.”

“Right.”

“So what if there are other kinds of waves?”

“But we know there aren’t.”

“Because…?”

“Because radio waves are all we detect with our dish.”

At this point the circularity of your friend’s thinking has silenced you, so you begin to talk about the weather.

Something similar can happen with certain supporters of a scientistic view. They will note, rightly, that God, angels, and the human soul cannot be measured or observed by the methods of natural science. They will then say: “Science makes clear that such things don’t exist.” If you ask “How is that?” the answer will often be: “Because if they did exist, we would be able to see or detect them scientifically.” 

If you then reply “But what if there is a whole order of reality that is not material, and therefore cannot be detected by the methods of natural science?” the answer comes back: “No, such an immaterial reality doesn’t exist, because our scientific investigations don’t pick them up.”

Time to talk about the weather.

It is worth noting that the scientistic view is very narrow: if it is true, it leaves us with a much smaller and more boring world than the one presented by the Christian sacramental vision. The Christian vision grants all that Scientism suggests as far as the visible world goes, but it adds infinitely more.

Source

Unexpected outcomes in space research

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)

This image produced from the Webb Space Telescope was issued on January 11, 2023. NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way. A star forming region sweeps across the scene, dominated by hues of purple. Tones of yellow outline the region's irregular shape. Many bright stars dominate the scene, as well as countless smaller stars scattered in the image's background. Distance from Earth: 210,000 light years. Constellation: Tucana.

Astronomers probed this region because the conditions and amount of metals within the Magellanic Cloud resemble those seen in galaxies billions of years ago, during an era in the Universe's history known as 'cosmic noon,' when star formation was at its peak. Some 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were forming stars at a furious rate. The fireworks of star formation happening then still shape the galaxies we see around us today.

Since dust grains in space are composed mostly of metals, scientists expected that there would only be small amounts of dust, and that it would be hard to detect. But this new data from Webb reveals just the opposite.

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'God made you this way' needs care

The rainbow of moral qualities God invites us to exercise

To say to a person with a same-sex attraction “God made you this way” is a statement that distorts the person’s reality and so it's destructive. This was the starting point of a video dialogue featuring Catholic priest Mike Schmitz on the Matt Fradd Show on YouTube. My post picks out the main points discussed and uses some of the language employed in the conversation.

Those with a same-sex attraction can be assured God loves every person unconditionally. But to say “God made you this way” basically it undercuts one of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, namely original sin, which is the recognition that while we're made good we also have the wound left in our will and intellect as a result of our original parents rebelling against God.

The result is that “not everything that I want is the right thing; just because I experience a desire or attraction to something doesn't mean that God wants that for me”. A person cannot say, "I have a desire that is deep-seated or ingrained in me – I've never known not to have this feeling. Therefore, God in His perfect will made me this particular way."

That would mean that sin means nothing. As Matt Fradd points out, to say that because I’m tempted to look at porn, or I have always had an Irish temper, that is who I am and, therefore, I don’t need to move from those characteristics, or challenge any such quality within myself.

There is something positive about taking on board the admonition that goes back at least to Socrates (died 15 February 399 BC): Know yourself. But that knowledge should not lead to acceptance of all weaknesses or failings.

Acceptance of the reality of my situation is okay to the extent of prompting the thought, “What will I do with my characteristics, positive as well as negative? In what way is God calling me to change, or to build on my positive qualities?”

Rather than saying “This is my identity” we need to turn to the wisdom of the people around us and the wisdom of the Ancients to say, “Okay, what is a wise way forward” versus “I accept this, and accepting it means that I act on it.” The latter is so destructive. It lets us say, “God made me this way so I have a justification for anything I do or don’t do”. We don't grow as a person.

Twisting shame into celebration

The better way is to now bring it to the Lord. Often, what's inside us is a cause of shame. So we should not twist that experience of shame into a celebration of ourselves under the rubric of personal identity. Instead, it’s here that we invite the Lord into it, to do something with it, especially to hold me in the midst of it so that I recognize that I'm not identified with my shame.

Think about the move from shame to pride. What I see as my shame I may elevate as my greatest pride, as opposed to: “This doesn't define me. This may be a part of my experience, it's part of my reality, but it doesn't give me my identity.” In this we make the distinction between experience and identity.

When would you say to a friend, “You have had such and such an experience. Therefore, that is how you will be identified from now on”? People who have suffered through an accident refuse to be labelled "disabled" as if that is the main feature of their identity.

One of the more profound examples is of someone who’s been abused. That affects one's whole life. But, even if a friend has never known any relationship that wasn't riddled with vice, they’ve never known anything that wasn't affected by this, you would never encourage them to use that experience to declare that their identity is only that of victim.

Fradd played the devil's advocate:

But isn’t the Christian belief that homosexual acts – note, not homosexual orientation but the performance of sexual acts on a member of the same sex – are sinful, isn't that belief based on a false Puritanical doctrine?

Can you understand, Fr Mike, that acting this way is actually a beautiful thing? I'm acting out of a good part of me, the truest part of me. It's not a response to a trauma I've received. Rather it's when I began engaging in who I truly am when I came out and told people that this is how I've always been and entered into a loving gay relationship that I found a freedom that I've never had before and that's what you're telling me is wrong.

To equate that with these negative experiences you’ve cited such as anger and abuse is the problem. You have not yet said anything about my positive experience that makes sense.

Schmitz:

I would say two things to that. One is there's a difference between relief and freedom. So, yeah, if I spent a large part of my life living under the shame of, like, “I don't want someone to find this out. I have to wrestle with it privately”; or “Yeah, I'm feeling the weight of this matter" and then I go to this place where I've come out, and I'm met with welcome, met with a community. I meet someone who cares about me and knows this about me.”

So many people's stories are that they just can't let those close to them find this out about them. “If the people who claim to love me found this out they wouldn't love me anymore.” Understandably, when someone comes out and they find welcome, and they find people do love them, that's a relief.

But relief is not the same thing as authentic freedom, and relief is not the same thing as true peace. It can feel like peace, and it can feel like freedom to a certain degree, but is it just that you're no longer living in shame – which is not something that the Lord or the Church was asking you to do in the first place?

Rising above personal inclinations

However, Schmitz says that if a person tells him they do feel a deeper freedom by expressing their same-sex orientation he would not argue with them but would wait for that person’s experience to mature.

In exploring what true freedom looks like, Schmitz gives an example: I’m a Catholic priest but say I don't think God exists and after struggling with the issue I'm gonna come out and declare my unbelief. There would be a community online that would really be thrilled if I would do this and would welcome me and would praise me and I would want to kind of come alongside them … to offset the disapproving voices.

So, yeah, there's that sense of relief I would get but it wouldn't mean freedom as I’m newly bound by the views and culture of those I’ve aligned myself to. Also, it would mean that in this battle I've been engaged in there's a welcome release. It’s as if I say to myself, “I’ve made my decision. I'm no longer fighting this thing. I can rest and lay down my arms.”

Secondly and strangely, there’s more freedom when we don’t surrender when we know we are involved in one area of the spiritual battle that envelops every person no matter their situation in life. What the Church is asking of the person contending with same-sex attraction is the same it asks of the unmarried or married person, which is to control one’s inclinations, to resist the temptation of offending against God’s will as to rightful sexual relations. The Old Testament book of Leviticus provides a good example. In Chapter 18, a total of 16 verses condemn various forms of unlawful sexual relations between a man and a woman, and only one relates to homosexuality.

As to the true nature of freedom, take this example: “I been really having a tough time in my marriage over my family duties and kids at home, and this other woman has been very, very attractive to me. I've never felt this way with my wife. I don’t feel free tied to my wife and the demands of my kids. With the family I have to be someone I don’t want to be, but with my new friend I don’t have to be someone else. With her I get to be really who I really am.”

Let's keep in mind the scenarios used above as we turn to the excellent practice of an examined life.

Homosexual orientation: Okay, there's a certain feeling of freedom, a feeling of release or relief because I've given into something that I was battling with, and I’m enjoying the new experience. But the question is does God want me to be unhappy? Looking at Christ’s own life and his teaching I think that sometimes he would rather I be unhappy and faithful now than happy now and wrong. I cannot ignore what the Church has taught from the beginning, no matter what opinion polls tell me about public attitudes. I acknowledge God’s word in Leviticus 18 and Romans 1, to take two examples.

The other woman: If I continue on my desired path, my achievements in giving into the attraction of my female friend are to be damned and to have destroyed my family. Therefore, my natural appetite for immediate gratification must be controlled. I see I will be more free if I rise above my immediate impulses. My full response to the needs of my family will bring me out of myself. I will grow as a person. I will exercise many of the higher qualities that have lain dormant in me because of my self-focused lifestyle. I will acknowledge that “love” is a verb as well as a noun. I know I have to die to myself if I want to be close to Jesus, who says: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”.

Some concluding reflections:

The Church affirms the many same-sex relationships that express generosity and patience and so many other uplifting qualities. Some of these relationships can be categorized as deep friendship rather than the outcome of sexual attraction. Cultural prominence afforded dedication of friend to friend is a feature of past ages that has been lost in the present-day culture.

But the difficulty in the eyes of God, as expressed through the Church, is that a genital sexual relationship between those of homosexual orientation, as with any sexual relations outside marriage, is where the love stops and the “me” creeps in.

Those who experience a same-sex attraction should know that Christians can hold these two truths in their hearts at the same time:

1. For the person involved, a same-sex attraction is a very profound part of them and it is to be received and respected.

2. Genital sexual relations outside of the marriage of a woman and a man are seriously wrong because such behaviour is not in accord with the complementary nature of the bodies God gives us. When it comes down to it, God is God and I’m not!

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Recognising spiritual reality helps us grow

Graphic by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

In past eras, people had the mindset whereby they were not masters but participants in the world, that there were more dimensions to the world than the mere material that they could touch and see and exploit. Their understanding of reality was far broader than that within modern "advanced" mentality. This is just one more example of how humankind can lose the thread over time, so that the garment of civilisation falls apart. This has been seen in the collapse of the Roman empire and the ensuing Dark Ages, with the devastating wars after the Reformation, in Marxist states, and in the stultifying impact of Wokeism.

In brief, the worldview of people past and present had and has significance as to the nature of the human person and how we should live.

In a recent post on his Dreher's Diary blog (paywalled), author and cultural observer Rod Dreher delves into value of  worldview that incorporates enchantment, by which he means the world is  "charged with spiritual force and pregnant with ultimate meaning—because of the Incarnation". 

He quotes theologian Hans Boersma, who cites the state of mind of the Church fathers and medieval theologians:

The supernatural was not a distinct or separate realm of being that superimposed itself onto an independent and autonomous realm of nature. Instead, the supernatural was simply the divine means to bring created realities of time and space to their appointed end in Christ. Therefore, created realities participated in the heavenly mystery of Christ as their sacramental reality. Access to truth means sacramental participation in the unfathomable mystery of Christ.

Unlike today, it was a matter of participating in the truth, which meant "to be mastered by it rather than mastering it". That way of living with truth involves being open to the experience of "enchantment".

How the world is “enchanted”, that is, "charged with spiritual force and [...] meaning", is explored in Boersma's book, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving Of A Sacramental Tapestry (2011). 

To pick up on that term, an appreciation of sacramental reality can transform a person's life through the acceptance that God is invisible but can communicate with humans through everything He has enabled in and through us, e.g. food, music, work, family life, friendship, the natural world, our intellectual endeavours.

"Sacramental or Scientistic?" is the title of an article on a website of a Catholic university. The article features some thoughts of the wise on what we call enchantment, which is to be distinguished from pantheism: 

Richard Wagamese (1955–2017) is a beloved writer from Wabaseemoong First Nation (in current-day Canada). His life was transformed by returning to his Ojibwe family and culture after being separated from them for most of his young life. In his final book Embers, he shares meditations, reflections, and prayers that came to him during times of ritual and morning silence. He writes:

Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.

Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh (died January 22, 2022) steps into the Christian realm:

If Christ is the body of God, which he is, then the bread he offers is also the body of the cosmos. Look deeply and you notice the sunshine in the bread, the blue sky in the bread, the cloud and the great earth in the bread. . . . The whole cosmos has come together in order to bring to you this piece of bread. Eat it in such a way that you become alive, truly alive. Eat in such a way that the Holy Spirit becomes an energy within you and then the piece of bread that Jesus gives you will stop being a simple idea, or a notion.

The late Christian writer Rachel Held Evans offers this perspective:

This is the purpose of the sacraments, of the Church—to help us see, to point to the bread and wine, the orchids and the food pantries, the post-funeral potlucks and the post-communion dance parties, and say: pay attention, this stuff matters; these things are holy. 

We grow when we recognise that the world is an enchanted place. This can be expressed this way:

The Christian sacramental vision, the true sight given us by God, reveals the world and our path through it as adventurous, dangerous, beautiful, challenging, meaningful, momentous, mysterious, and ultimately all that our hearts ache for.

Apart from the touch of Christ, we are blind. We think we see, but our vision is distorted, and we mistake real things for unreal ones, and false things for true. We need to have our sight healed and restored. Those two blind men who called to Jesus were given a key piece of wisdom: the wisdom to know that they were blind. "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (John 9:39). What a good prayer to make along with those blind men to the Giver of all good gifts: “Lord, let our eyes be opened.”

The beauty of the visible world speaks of God’s power and goodness: “The heavens are telling the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Visible things are signposts and roads that penetrate to invisible realities.

For Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd, "God [is] the hidden force that holds the universe together":

But it’s not just a centripetal force that holds everything in place. There is complexity and beauty to this force. Have you noticed that the spiral pattern is found in everything from a spinning galaxy to tornados to spiral vortex patterns from electron waves? You will find spiral patterns in seashells and pine cones, fiddleheads and flowers. Scientists have determined that this spiral pattern best allows for both growth and stability—two forces that are essential for life. . . . God’s signature imprinted on the universe. 

However, beyond God sustaining us within the universe, God is active in our lives, individually and as a community/society. The scientistic, materialistic and self-absorbed worldview of people in large parts of the world—not everywhere, fortunately—makes it difficult for them, because of their impaired vision, to accept that God shapes and reshapes our lives, drawing us to Him should we accept the invitation. 

We of the "developed" world would do well to take note of the spiritual depth of our forebears and countercultural contemporaries. The Russian novel Laurus (2016), which made quite a splash in the West, aimed to capture the sentiments of 15th Century Russians, and in doing so, brings to life what it means to be alert to God at work in human affairs:

And everyone was surprised at what had happened and they praised God in heaven and His earthly oil lamp, Laurus. 

Or this:

. . . just as people suddenly awaken on a lovely day, see the sun is already high, contemplate its glints fluttering on the floor and the silver of a cobweb in a sunbeam, and weep tears of gratitude. 

Or this: 

O friend, I do not question the necessity of time. We simply need to remember that only the material world needs time. 

The novel has a prologue, which includes this exchange:

So why did you choose medieval history?

It's hard to say... Maybe because historians in the Middle Ages were unlike historians these days. They always look for moral reasons as an explanation for historical events. It's like they didn't notice the direct connection between events. Or didn't attach much significance to it. 

But how can you explain the world without seeing the connections? said Alexandra, surprised.

They were looking above the everyday and seeing higher connections. Besides, time connected all events, even though people didn't consider that connection reliable.

If we are wise, each of us can enjoy the multiple dimensions of our life, our world, not looking for reassurance alone—though spiritual awareness offers that to us—but acknowledging the foundation of reality.  

Ω Delve deeper into the nature of our enchanted existence through the useful website here. 

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Personhood does not depend on size

9-Week Human Embryo. Ed Uthman. CC BY 2.0

People who defend legal abortion often admit that the unborn are technically “human” but claim they are not “persons.” These nebulous arguments can be seductive and are popular with high school and college students who identify as “pro-choice.” However, one of the best answers to these arguments goes like this:

“We only question the personhood of someone we wish to harm.”

Try to think of a time when a human being’s personhood was questioned for a motive other than using, marginalizing, harming, or killing him. From American slavery to the Nazi holocaust, the whole point of questioning the personhood of others is to deny them human rights. It’s a rhetorical (and arbitrary) technique used to exclude rather than include human beings. [Do we want "inclusion" or not?]

Natural law principles forbid killing innocent human beings or treating them as if they weren’t really human, and the simple truth is that all human beings are persons, no exceptions.

Abortion is a human rights issue. Stephen Schwartz is a philosopher who shows, through non-religious reasoning, that none of these differences between born and unborn humans deprives any human being of basic rights. He summarizes his argument with the acronym SLED:

S – Size: A baby in the womb might be tiny, but how big do you have to be to be a person? And who decides? A baby in the womb is the exact size he or she is supposed to be for his or her age. A person’s intrinsic dignity should never be determined by his or her size.

L – Level of Development: Unborn babies can’t think like you or I do, but neither can newborn babies or some adults with disabilities. Feeling pain or perceiving experiences (what is called “sentience”) also doesn’t make us human persons; after all, rats and pigeons are sentient. Our value and our human rights come not from what we can do, but simply from what we are: human beings.

E – Environment: A baby in the womb isn’t born yet, but so what? Our location cannot change our value or who we are.

D – Degree of Dependency: You’ll hear it said, “It can’t live without the mother!” But that’s an argument against abortion! It makes no sense that we consider it despicable to abandon a newborn baby who cannot live without total dependence on another, but justifiable to kill an unborn baby who cannot live without total dependence on another. A civilized society protects those who are weaker and more vulnerable; we don’t authorize their killings.

We shouldn't be fooled or intimidated. The abortion advocates’ murky philosophical discussion of “personhood” is not a noble or nuanced search for what is true about the human person. It’s simply an excuse for one group of humans to dehumanize, oppress, and kill another group of humans. When faced with these arguments, simply ask, “Why does the difference between born and unborn humans matter? Shouldn’t we protect all human beings no matter how different they are from us?”

Ω Adapted from Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues, by Trent Horn and Leila Miller.

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Kids tragic victims of Western culture

Photo: PxHere

Mental health problems among young people in Britain are a public health crisis, says Dr Max Pemberton, who works full-time as a psychiatrist in the National Health Service. This is his assessment of what life means for incredibly high numbers of young people:

An epidemic of mental health problems affecting the young is becoming a full-scale public health emergency, with new data showing that more than a million children needed treatment for serious mental health problems in the past year.

The data also showed a startling increase in the number of under-18s admitted to hospital with serious eating disorders — a jump of 82 per cent in two years.

As an eating disorders specialist, I have seen first hand the increase in the number of patients being referred to my clinic, as well as those increasingly unwell patients for whom hospital admission is now the only option.

 As to the main cause for what he calls "this terribly sad situation" he identifies a lack of parental control and guidance of young people's use of social media:

The first [cause] is the rise of smartphones and social media. According to a survey conducted in 2021, 58 per cent of children aged from eight to 11 have smartphones — and 89 per cent of UK children aged eight to 17 had their own social media profiles.

We all know that images of models and celebrities in adverts are airbrushed in order to sell products, but increasingly this is also now the case for images posted by individuals, some of whom tweak and alter pictures using filtering and editing apps.

This means young children and teens are being bombarded with images that appear to have been taken spontaneously but, in reality, have been manipulated to create impossibly perfect faces and bodies.

No wonder young people feel under increasing pressure to copy these unrealistic images — with the result they are more likely to diet or work out to change their own body shape. In those who are susceptible, often due to underlying psychological and emotional difficulties, this can develop into an eating disorder.

I worked in eating disorders for ten years and many of my young patients told me they'd become obsessed with images they saw online, particularly things such as 'thigh gaps' (a space at the top of the thighs) on people's Instagram accounts.

Yet they entirely failed to realise that only a tiny fraction of the population naturally look like this, and that many of the images had been digitally manipulated.

Young boys need fathers

Eating disorders are not a minor matter. Dr Pemberton highlights heartrending statistics:

 ... [E]ating disorders have the highest mortality of any mental illness, and one in five of those with a disorder will die from it.

That is a horrendous statistic — yet people are having to wait years in order to get the treatment they need. 

Therefore, it is a mark of shame for British society that attention at government level, nor within the public as a whole, is not given to this emergency. Dr Pemberton emphasises that health resources provided are inadequate, with "shamefully long waiting lists for those who need help the most".

It is a scandal that clinicians working in services for the most unwell patients are powerless to do anything except watch as they deteriorate to the extent they need hospital admission.

  Back to the role of parents in this social catastrophe. Dr Pemberton offers advice:

So what can parents do? Find out who your children are following on social media and why; and encourage them to unfollow those people who aren't portraying real bodies positively.

Parents who suspect a child is affected by this disorder should push as hard as they can for referrals to specials services. He suggests getting support from eating disorder organisations such as the British group BEAT.

Finally, there is an excellent book, Getting Better Bite By Bite by Professor Janet Treasure, which can also help.

But the question also arises as to why increasing numbers of children have "underlying psychological and emotional difficulties", to use Dr Pemberton's words, which make them susceptible to unbalanced influence by social media, and thus, to eating disorders.

He goes some way to answering that question in another item in his newspaper column, where he features actor Hugh Jackman's affection for his father, who had recently died. He reports:

Jackman said: 'My mother left when I was eight, so my father raised us. He taught me really great values. A lot of who I am today is because of him.'

I've no doubt that it must have been incredibly painful to lose his father, but I hope he can take some solace in having had such a wonderful relationship. So many other men, unfortunately, cannot say the same.

All too often, families split up and the father drifts off, but the damage caused by this loss of a role model can last for ever.

I'll probably get pilloried for saying it, but after seeing troubled young men for years, my conclusion is that young boys need a father. 

Despite the fashionable antifamily sentiment that Dr Pemberton refers to, hands-on parenting by a male and a female parent are certainly the foundation of a society that is truly protective of its children, providing them, by means of a strong attitude of social solidarity, the resources and safeguards that healthy physical and mental growth demands.

Conversely, it is becoming increasingly plain to see that the so-called progressives of Western society are not the heroes of the era, but are cowards who prefer to militate for soft, culturally virtuous, goals rather than do the heavy lifting of confronting the corporate and political powers over the creation of conditions that support family life, and over the removal of conditions that perpetuate inequality.

To my mind, the economic and social injustice prevalent in US society that should be the progressives' target was made vivid by the scandalous fact that railway workers, who in November had declared strike action over stalled negotiations on pay and conditions, were left after the legislated settlement without any paid sick leave. Any self-respecting social movement should hang its head in shame at that state of affairs existing in the 21st Century.  

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There is no right side of history

Niccolo Macchiavelli ... saw role for political myth-making. Photo PxHere 

"I’m a political progressive. The idea that 'history' is on our side—which we’re sure to hear during this 118th Congress—is a dangerous myth," declares William Deresiewicz in his Free Press article on January 2, 2023.

He makes some good points:

The phrase embodies a specific view of history, the idea that the course of human events—with whatever stops and starts and temporary setbacks—traces an inevitable upward path. The notion dates back to the nineteenth century, if not earlier: to Hegel and Marx, to the liberal or “Whig” historians, to the Progressive movement itself. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

And those on the “wrong side” of history? “History will judge them”—will judge Donald Trump, will judge Bill Barr, will judge Dave Chappelle and J.K. Rowling, will judge all the bads.

But history does not have sides. It does not take sides. The progressive view of history is not an observation. It’s a theory. It’s a myth that takes its place alongside other, different, historical myths: the belief that history is cyclical; the belief that history represents a long decline from some imagined Golden Age; the belief that we are heading towards apocalypse, or Messiah, or both.

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I have lived long enough to know that history is perfectly capable of slamming into reverse and backing up at 50 miles an hour. It happened with Ronald Reagan. It happened with Vladimir Putin. It happened with Trump.

Yet who’s to say what constitutes “reverse”? Who’s to say where history is headed, even in the long run? To take but one example: In The Great Exception, the historian Jefferson Cowie argues that the New Deal and its progeny—the liberal heyday from FDR to LBJ—was not the norm from which we’ve lamentably swerved. It was itself an anomaly, the result of a unique and unrepeatable confluence of circumstances. The norm, he says, is what preceded and followed it. “It might be more accurate to think of the ‘Reagan revolution,’” Cowie writes, “as the ‘Reagan restoration.’”

As for “history will judge”—the moral side of the progressive myth—it is no less a delusion. “History,” of course, means the future, and “judge” means condemn. But to say that the future will condemn x or y is to assume that the future will look like “us”—that by the time the future rolls around (whenever that may be) everybody will agree with us.

Which means that everybody will agree, full stop. But when has everybody ever agreed? When have there not been “sides”? After all, we are the future to those who came before us. And I can tell you that in the 1980s, the left was just as certain that Reagan and his henchmen would be judged by history. Yet here we are, and half the country still believes he farted rainbows. 

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Why does this matter? First of all, because it makes for complacency. History, in the progressive myth, is a kind of plus factor in political struggle: an invisible force, like something out of physics, that adds its strength to ours. History is on our side—we can’t lose! For decades now, Democrats have been assuring themselves that the coming of a majority-minority America will guarantee a future liberal hegemony. Latinos in particular are supposedly the cavalry that’s riding to the rescue. Well, now it’s beginning to look as if they just might ride in the other direction. As for millennials—a vast electoral cohort that currently skews progressive, and thus the latest leftist messianic hope—people have a funny way of getting more conservative as they get older.

[[[[[[[[[[[

 The progressive myth of history also makes for arrogance and condescension. I said that the notion of history as a kind of force that blows through human affairs is like something out of physics—but really, it’s like something out of Christianity. It is a secularized version of the Holy Spirit. “History is on our side” is a secularized version of “God is on our side.” “History will judge them” is an update of “God will judge them.” To believe in the Holy Spirit is to believe that it acts through—that it fills—some people but not others. To believe in “history,” in progress as a metaphysical principle, is to believe in the existence of a progressive class: the ones who push history forward, the ones who are filled with the future.

In other words, us. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Which means that we have the right—the duty—to teach others how to live. How to speak, think, eat, spend, make love, raise their children, vote. You know how enraging evangelical preachers can be, how insulting it is to hear them talk about how sinful and benighted the secular are? That is how most people, including a lot of rank-and-file Democrats, feel about the self-anointed progressive class.

[[[[[[[[[[

... [T]his is where the bad behavior enters in. As soon as you declare a “crisis,” an “emergency”—another word you hear a lot these days—you give yourself permission to suspend the rules: to bury a story, to suppress dissent, to betray the principles you’re supposed to stand for. History has charged you with a special duty, after all; the future rests upon your shoulders.

No, it hasn’t. No, it doesn’t. Talk of the right side of history is, at bottom, propaganda—an attempt to persuade us that the largest issues have already been decided. 

As the new political season begins, let us not forget that nothing is, in fact, inevitable. The future is open. Let no one presume to foreclose it.

It's a shame that history isn't given much attention by higher education institutions and their clients these days:

'That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach' — Aldous Huxley (author of Brave New World;  (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963).

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Dangers of the spirit world highlighted

We have wandered away from our spiritual traditions and forgotten the lessons from millennia of experience. Though we may have left behind the supernatural, it has not left us behind. Religion used to provide answers and rituals to help us understand the things we cannot understand with only our wits and our senses. Now, increasingly, we search for answers in ways previous generations knew to be dangerous, and so we play with spiritual forces we do not understand and cannot control.

… [O]ur society no longer teaches these rules, but often celebrates breaking them. The problem with that is simply this: God is real, and the rules have not changed. Evil spirits work personally to tempt us into sin and collectively to normalize sin in society. Their goal is to coax us away from God and into a subservient relationship with them. They play nice in the beginning, but when they have a hold on us, they turn cruel and controlling. They strive to isolate us and drive us to despair — or sometimes possession.

These words of warning are from The Exorcism Files, by Adam Blai, a Catholic layman, psychologist, and consultant to the Diocese of Pittsburgh on exorcism. Here’s a link to a page on his website that gives the “basics” of what the layperson needs to know about the devil and his work. "Blai tells you what to stay away from, and warns very strongly against messing with any of it. It’s very helpful, and ought to sober anybody tempted to dabble in witchcraft, divination, psychic consultation, or any form of the occult."

People in our era who follow the herd to abandon established religion to go their own way spiritually, put their lives and souls n a precarious predicament. The latest such case arises in an article on the rapid rise in the followers of shamanism in England and Wales. The danger lies in this:

Shamanism is not a unified field of work. Nor is it organised under any regulating body. The title of “shaman” is not protected or even well defined. As a participant, you must carefully consider who you approach to work with, as the standards from origin cultures may not have transferred over.

Western practitioners do not always fully adopt the shamanic ethics needed to practise safely. This can mean clients may be left with information and experiences they do not fully understand or know how to work with.

Evgenia Fotiou, an academic who has studied the globalisation of shamanism and the erasure of indigenous practices, warns that:

Westerners see no conflict in the appropriation of indigenous knowledge. They believe it is universal and everyone has the right to it … It is rare that westerners will make the necessary sacrifices and adjustments in their lifestyle to fully follow that path.

Contemporary practitioners must examine their motivation to work in this way and break out of exploitative and romantic views of indigenous peoples. It can take a long time to train and develop your work without stepping into cultural appropriation.

There’s also a risk that people with possible mental health issues such as substance use disorder or psychosis might see shamanism as a way to explain and justify their behaviour or symptoms (such as drug taking, delusions or dissociative states) as spiritual experience, and so not seek conventional treatment.

Though "shamanism has been linked with both empowerment and a greater sense of community, as well as a stronger connection with the Earth",  the key takeaway is that it is path to exploitation of others, as well as to predation by the demonic spirits as individuals do their own thing away from structures that preserve the well-being of all involved by the provision of ancient standards.

For more on Blai's findings from his experience in contending with the demonic world, go to this video:

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Incarnation: The unity of divinity and dust

Detail from Georges de la Tour's Adoration of the Shepherds (1644)

 Let’s start with an easy question: What is the Incarnation?

— Well, I’m not sure it is such an easy one. First of all, it is an impossible paradox, because it is the account of the union of two incommensurate entities: the uncreated being of God and our being of dust. The great Christian wonder is that mysterious union. […] We need to remember that in becoming flesh, the Word didn’t simply occupy one human body as a guest for 33 years. Human nature as such ⁠— that is, flesh ⁠— was invested with a potential for divinity. And so being a human being in the wake of the Incarnation isn’t the same as being a human being before the Incarnation, whether or not one believes in Christ and whether one even knows that Christ ever walked on this Earth. We like to talk about things being ‘systemic’ these days, and something systemic happened to human flesh through the Incarnation that opened it to transcendence and to eternity.

Ω From an interview with Erik Varden, a Norwegian bishop and Trappist monk. Read the splendid interview in full here. See Varden's own spiritual writing here.

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'Each of us is willed ... necessary'

“We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”

Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, St. Peter’s Square, April 25, 2005 

God and the reason for existence

Love made plain through action. Photo: Thomas Leuthard PxHere

Samuel Wells again* puts his finger on the pulse of our times in this edited version of a sermon preached at St. Martin-in-the-Fields on Christmas Eve just past:

The first sentence of perhaps the most important story ever written is this: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). This sentence is itself a nod to the first sentence in the Bible, which starts, “When all things began …” (Genesis 1:1). But it’s saying something more profound than that earlier sentence. It’s saying communication — the desire to share and relate, the urge to engage and listen and receive and open up — is at the very core of all things; indeed, it is the reason for the creation of all things: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

In other words, the essence that created existence, the forever that conceived of time, the everywhere that brought about here is, at its very heart, about communication — nonviolent communication, partnership, relationship, togetherness. In fact, that’s the purpose of existence: to communicate fully with one another and to communicate back with God. There’s nothing more important than that.

But here we run into two problems. The first is, not all communication is healthy — some words are hurtful, cruel, and destructive. (This was true even before the invention of Twitter.) The second is, words are sometimes only words. Words aren’t always rooted in feelings, actions, or integrity: sometimes words can be so far from actuality they might just as well be called lies.

In 1990 the rock band Extreme released a ballad that struck a chord with many people whose partners were quick with the terms of endearment, but whose way of showing it made those words empty. “Saying ‘I love you’,” goes the song, “Is not the words I want to hear from you … More than words is all you have to do to make it real. Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me —’cause I’d already know.” Rock ballads don’t get more searing than that.

Listen, with lyrics, here

Now I don’t know anything about the religious persuasion of the members of Extreme, but I wonder if they’ve realised, all the thousands of times they’ve been called upon to sing their most famous song these last thirty years, that they are perfectly expressing the heart of what Christmas is all about.

Communication is at the heart of all things, because the real big bang that started this whole thing off was God’s decision to be in relationship — for the persons of the Trinity to communicate as fully beyond themselves as they do with each other. Humanity is the purpose of creation, because humanity is the partner with whom God can be fully in relationship. But it turns out humanity finds ways to twist communication from its created purpose as the texture of relationship to a sinister parody of relationship in cruelty, and the outright undermining of relationship in lies.

There’s no Virginia Axline to come alongside wounded, fearful, and withdrawn humanity and create trust through patience and understanding. Many prophets offer words; many brave souls offer example. But collectively, humanity’s response to God embodies the words of that song: “More than words is all you have to do to make it real …”

The most important sentence ever written

Which brings us to the most significant sentence in the Bible, and I would suggest the most important sentence ever written. A sentence about communication, and how communication turns into trust and relationship. Fourteen verses into that same story I referred to earlier, a story known as John’s gospel, we find these priceless, peerless, perfect words: “And the Word became flesh, and lived among us.”

Here lies the fulfilment of the whole reason for the existence of all things. Everything that happened before this moment is backdrop and preparation. Everything that has happened since has been echo and embedding. This is the central moment, in which God’s original desire to be with us becomes more than words.

Jesus appears, fully human — born of a human mother in pretty desperate, shoddy, forsaken, neglected, rough, and inhospitable conditions. Let’s just say the ox wasn’t too particular where it went to the bathroom and the ass wasn’t too fussed about where it brought up last night’s fodder.

But Jesus is also fully divine, for the heavens ring with the song of angels and a star guides the Magi to the place of his birth. Jesus is the perfect communication of God to us, more than words, making it real, and Jesus is the perfect communication of us to God, how easy it can be to show God how we feel.

The whole of Jesus’s life is like Virginia Axline’s year with young Dibs. Jesus is creating an environment for us where we can live beyond cruelty and lies, and finally find ways to dwell beyond violence in patience, understanding and trust. He is in search of our self, listening, not judging, offering open enquiry not closed questions, inviting us to wonder and discover and allowing us to find our own solutions at our own pace. Jesus is the Word of God that offers us the epitome of communication, through which we may find a relationship that lasts forever.

Yet there’s no naïveté in Christmas. There is simplicity, and a degree of innocence — but no naïveté. Because we all know that cruelty and lies enter Christ’s story soon enough. They’re there in Herod’s court when the Magi go to Jerusalem by mistake and they’re there when Herod sends soldiers to kill all the young children in Bethlehem. And they catch up with Jesus in the end, when his communication meets the world’s violence, and for a moment violence prevails.

But the light of communication and relationship shines in the darkness of violence, and promises that, if we can only find time and patience, we will eventually see trust and relationship emerge from even the most violent of our failures to find words.

This is the wonder of Christmas: The Word becomes more than words. And inspires us to let the Holy Spirit of patience and tenderness turn our own violent frustration and anger into relationship and trust, and eventually to let those words become flesh, in embodied gestures and commitments of solidarity and love.

It’s because the Word became flesh, because God came among us to embody utter relationship with us, because God has faced the worst of our cruelty and lies, because God has shown us, because God has made it real, that we gather on Christmas Eve, with stars so brightly shining, and say to God, boldly, bravely, gladly: “You don’t have to say that you love us — ’cause we already know.”

Ω Rev. Dr Samuel Wells is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London. 

* Previously posted on this blog:

    The twin dimensions of Christmas

    The logic of God gleams at Christmas

Ω Read the sermon in full here

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Trans as "a liberating, cool, edgy thing"

 File photo from PxHere

A mother of a teenager who is eager to take on a male identity speaks from experience of the pressure young people succumb to because of the cultural influence of promoters of  gender ideology, namely the Western education systems, social networks and news media. This from a site that has earned its credentials as being trustworthy:

In today’s culture, being “trans” is considered by many a very liberating, cool, edgy thing. We know people are (I hate these terms, but they are becoming part of the lexicon) “love-bombed” when they come out as “trans,” and are seen as brave, strong individuals. Further, many young girls fear what being a woman means ‒ how they may be sexualized, how they won’t be successful if they aren’t gorgeous, etc., and some boys fear what expressing their natural sexual desires will turn them into (monsters is what they may think, thanks to an overly enthusiastic “me too” movement that went way beyond exposing corrupt, vial practices of men like Harvey Weinstein, making many young men feel embarrassed simply for feeling strong attractions for women). Many effeminate gay males and butch lesbians still don’t feel very accepted in society. By instead being “trans,” they resolve their gender non-conformity by claiming to be the opposite sex, and have the bonus of getting oppression points (very useful for upper-middle class white kids!).

They are fed the notions that the medical changes associated with transition are safe, relatively painless, and necessary in order to prevent them from committing suicide and, as noted above, for them to be their “true selves.” They are told they will be truly happy only once they medically transition.

To question these notions is to be a bigot, so everyone who does bring up questions about the medical treatments is sloughed off as a transphobic moron, assuming they are allowed to speak at all. Parents like me are considered bigots (my daughter has used this word), transphobic (she has also used this word), and just plain ignorant. (My daughter has used much worse terms, but why get ugly?)

With all these messages about being “trans,” and so many more that I’m not mentioning, it is no wonder so many young people are flocking to it. And are these young people ‒ many of whom are on the autism spectrum, have suffered abuse, are overly sensitive, are gay/lesbian or very gender non-conforming, have anxiety and depression or other mental illnesses, or are just plain vulnerable ‒ really able to consent to these medical treatments when they are fed so much mis-information, and when they are not mature enough to understand the real, permanent consequences of these treatments?

Frankly, I see the medical transition of teens and vulnerable young adults as not only analogous to foot-binding and genital mutilation, but actually worse in many ways. At least the foot-bound and/or genitally mutilated girls did not have to pretend to be something they are not. Further, foot-binding and genital mutilation do not cause sterility, and only cause lack of function in the specific area in question (the feet or the genitals, respectively), rather than total dysfunction of the genitals combined with a host of other medical issues, on top of the mental gymnastics of pretending to be the opposite sex and putting energy toward “passing” as such.

True informed consent can only be given by a mature, mentally stable person who is provided with accurate information about the procedures to be done. This includes the medical necessity of the procedures, the potential side effects, and alternative, less invasive treatments (or non-treatments as the case may be) that may adequately alleviate their perceived suffering.

I don’t think any young person today can possibly consent to the medical treatments associated with transition because, even if they were mature enough to understand all the ramifications of transition ‒ which they are not  ‒ they are being fed so much misinformation, by their schools and universities, by the Government, by large corporations, by the medical community and therapists, by both social media and mainstream media, and by their friends and neighbors, such that they cannot possibly have the information necessary to give truly informed consent. Therefore, we as a society should be ashamed for pushing these medical treatments on to young people. 

US: A mother, teacher describes her child being indoctrinated, encouraged to transition in high school. https://t.co/eEIKRDNzNO

— Genspect (@genspect) December 29, 2022

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The twin dimensions of Christmas

Photo at PxHere

To understand the Christmas story, we need to grasp two dimensions that are apparently contradictory but which, on closer scrutiny, are both showing us the same thing. The first is what we could call the wide-angle version; the second, the close-up picture. 

Let’s start with the wide angle, says the Rev Dr Samuel Wells, in a Christmas sermon. He is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London.

The universe is impossibly large to imagine, stretching to trillions of stars; and who knows if there are plenty other universes beyond this one. But that which lasts forever, which we know as “God”, seems to have a particular interest in this tiny planet in this obscure galaxy. It seems useless to speculate why this planet, in this galaxy, in this universe; the point is, that which lasts forever seems to have so ordered things as to be in relationship with one part of creation — in short, us.

The whole epic magnitude of existence has come about in order for God to be among us as one of us and to be our companion and dwell with us. That’s the wide-angle version of Christmas. It answers the perennial question, “What’s the meaning of life?” The answer is, the meaning of life is for God to be in relationship with us and for us to reflect the joy and glory of that relationship by relating to one another and the wider creation in the same way. That’s the meaning of Christmas — the wide-angle version.

And so to the close-up picture. The three accounts of the coming of Christ, in Matthew, Luke, and John’s Gospels, are significantly different from one another. But they all agree on one thing. Matthew talks about a man called Joseph who discovers his fiancée is expecting a baby and is told by an angel that the Holy Spirit has brought this about. Luke sees it from Mary’s point of view, and locates the conversation in Nazareth. Luke adds the story about the census, and there being no room at the inn, and tells us about the shepherds and angels. John misses out the personal detail and describes how the animating force in the universe became a human being, but, interestingly, he adds this sentence, which we seldom talk about at Christmas but seems to me very significant: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.”

What these three contrasting accounts have in common is that the entry of the creator of all things into the human drama didn’t happen in the way we might expect. It happened in an obscure backwater of the Roman Empire. It the happened to an ordinary woman and a bewildered man with no social prominence. It happened in a shed. It was witnessed by lowly herdsmen.

I discovered what God was up to some while ago when I got to know a woman and a man who told me they wanted to get married. It was a difficult situation. The man had been married before, and for a long time had been partly estranged from his wife. The woman was much younger than the man, and from the very start of their relationship felt she had to tiptoe around her family, because it was clear they didn’t approve.

To be fair, she’d spent her whole life tiptoeing, because her family had been a scene of constant wrangling and great pain almost since she’d been born, and she couldn’t see why her finally finding happiness was taken so badly by a group of people, many of whom it seemed had never found the way to any happiness of their own. But then she became pregnant, and those who disapproved, or took offence, or just couldn’t bear the idea of someone in the family being happy, all decided this was the moment to say the whole thing was terrible, and everyone should be ashamed, and ask what did they think they were doing? But they all turned up to the wedding, and when the bride walked down the aisle, her elegant simplicity, her utterly unpretentious grace, took the wind out of the whole congregation, and all misgivings were set aside for the day.

Two months later, she gave birth. And she wrote to me and said, “You’ll never guess what’s happened. My family has been visiting and have been very kind to everyone including my husband. It’s as if this tiny child heals something inside them when they are with him, and their troubles vastly reduce or disappear around him. It made me think of the wonder of God. This little baby has achieved what my husband and I tried to achieve and couldn't over many years. And so effortlessly!” Those were her exact words.

It was one of the most moving messages I’ve ever received. And not just because this new child had changed the whole dynamic of two troubled families. But because in seventy words, this new mother had shown me what God is doing in coming among us as a baby. God is doing just what this baby was doing: something no argument, no loud voice, no lit-up sky, no heavenly vision could achieve. It’s called a dismantling of the heart. A disarming of resistance.

God comes to us at Christmas — not to blast us into submission, not to make us guilty for what we’ve got wrong, not to stir us to take up cudgels in the latest battle. God comes to us under the radar. God surprises us by appearing as a tiny baby. It’s a high-risk strategy. It’s such a vulnerable way to come among us. But it shows us unmistakeably, irrevocably, eternally, who God is and what kind of relationship God wants to have with us.

God doesn’t want us to worry about the wide-angle story our imaginations can’t encompass anyway. God says, “Receive me as you receive this tiny child. Allow me to dismantle centuries of enmity, heal decades of hurt, transform depths of antagonism. Be mesmerised by me the way you’re captivated by a tiny baby. Let me melt your heart."

❒ Rev. Dr Samuel Wells  

❒ Sermon source here 

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The logic of God gleams at Christmas

Photo by PxHere

Matthew's gospel says the birth of  Jesus isn’t just one of myriad consequences of the original Big Bang. On the contrary, the conception and birth of this particular baby is the single event around which every other event in the universe clusters. That's the theme the Rev Dr Samuel Wells* explores in a sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, just before Christmas this year.

In delving into Matthew 1:18-25 (see in full below), Wells relates an experience of 30 years before:

Just as I was beginning studying for a PhD, I sat next to a very fervent Christian at a wedding reception. ... [M]y neighbour asked me, besides being a priest, what I was involved in. I said, ‘I’m doing a PhD in theology.’ ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘I don’t bother with theology. The Bible’s always been enough for me.’

There’s few things more deflating than to run into a self-assured lack of curiosity, mixed with an air of superiority and condescension, all dressed up in the language of being a simple creature, free from the self-imposed complexities that beleaguer others. I can’t deny I wondered for a moment if doing a PhD in theology was a waste of time. But 30 years later, I realise the response I might have done well to give to that affectedly humble smugness dressed up as piety. I should have talked to him about today’s gospel reading from the back end of Matthew chapter 1. 

Why? Because what I want to show this morning is how this passage opens up pretty much every door in the conventional theological textbook. It’s a whole manual of doctrine on its own. Let’s walk through these few verses and see the entire theological panorama come to life.

Straightaway we have a fascinating word. Birth isn’t a notable word in English, until you realise the Greek word it’s translating is genesis. This is a huge theological claim. Matthew’s saying the conception and birth of Jesus are a more significant moment than the creation described in the book of Genesis. He’s saying, this is the real beginning, for which the creation of the universe was just preparation. We’re used to thinking of the Big Bang and the cosmology that outlines the first few seconds at the start of the universe. And probably most of us have wondered at what feels like the miracle of conception and the growth of a baby in its mother’s womb and the agonising yet fabulous process of being born. Matthew’s saying the birth of this particular baby isn’t just one of myriad consequences of the original Big Bang. On the contrary, the conception and birth of this particular baby is the single event around which every other event in the universe clusters. That’s mind-blowing; and yet we’re only five words into this passage.

After starting with creation, the second big theological theme we move to is Israel. We’re quickly in the company of two Jews, Mary and Joseph, seeking to live faithful lives according to the covenant God made with Moses. The significance of Israel in theology is that almost from the very beginning our understanding of God is one of the essence of eternity being eager to be involved in the ordinariness of human affairs – in this case, the traditions of betrothal and marriage. Interestingly the Old Testament also begins with creation and Israel, the call of Abraham to be the father of God’s people coming only a few chapters after the two portrayals of the creation of all things. Matthew’s emphasising that you can’t talk about God without talking about God’s chosen people, the children of Abraham, and without talking about very earthy and ordinary human relationships in which the life of God is embedded.

Only when we’ve located ourselves in such a way do we get the first reference to God. We’re still in the same opening verse, and we’ve covered a lot of territory: now we stumble upon the Holy Spirit. This tells us two things at the same time. First, there’s something beyond our experience and beyond our existence that’s above, beyond, outside or within that existence. I call it essence – that which lasts forever, in contrast to existence, which lasts a limited time. How that essence relates to existence in general terms is a mystery, although we assume essence was responsible for creation.

But this is the point – the Bible isn’t much interested in God in general terms. The Bible’s interested in God in relational terms – a God who’s invested in Abraham, Moses, David and Elijah; in Sarah, Deborah, Ruth and Esther. And the discovery that’s veiled in the Old Testament, yet clear in the New, is that essence is relational within itself – it’s inherently made up of communicative encounter between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Any relation we have to God is a joining in the relation already taking place within God. God is relationship. The Holy Spirit is the name for the way God extends relationship to us, by making Christ present to us, and how God turns that relationship into abundant life, here and everywhere.

But let’s not get carried away with God. This is a very human story. We trust the Bible to tell us about God because it’s so acute at telling us about humanity. Joseph’s plunged into a moral, social and relational crisis. Mary’s pregnant and he’s not the father. His duties as a faithful Jew mean he should publicly humiliate her. His dignity as a child of God mean he has no desire to do so. Here we land in our fourth aspect of theology, after creation, Israel, and God. That aspect is ethics. Ethics is about how we live in the light of God’s grace. Joseph’s depicted as a man torn between justice and mercy. That’s territory in which ethics often dwells. It turns out the one to blame is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit’s merciful action blows apart our notion of justice. As so often.

Then we get the appearance of an angel – which is how this passage portrays the irruption of God’s essence into our existence. It sets up the experience of a dream as a liminal space between God’s reality and ours. And the two significant aspects of theology that arise here are providence and vocation. Providence is a theological theme many people struggle with. It’s about how God’s purpose is being worked out as year succeeds to year. People struggle with it because it’s hard to see how God’s purpose can possibly be worked out through holocaust or tsunami. 

People also feel nauseated when an individual or nation arrogantly assumes the mantle of the bearer of God’s destiny. But the Bible’s full of moments like this when God’s purpose is visible despite adverse circumstances. Likewise vocation. Vocation is our discovery of the unique part we are called to play in God’s story. Joseph literally overnight goes from a bewildered critic or silent victim of God’s mysterious ways to a crucial agent in advancing God’s story. We do the same. ‘Do not be afraid,’ says the angel. ‘Do not be afraid,’ says the Holy Spirit to us today, when we’re called to take up our part in that story.

We’ve seen six great theological themes at work; but we’re only half-way there. The child’s name is Jesus. This introduces two more dimensions of theology. One is the notion of the kingdom, or realm, of God. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, and Joshua was the one who took possession of the Promised Land. As we transition from Judaism to Christianity, we change from an understanding of blessing based on the land to a notion of grace based on the coming-alive of all those in exile – those oppressed in body, mind or spirit, those suppressed by foreign invader or sinister prejudice or unrestrained cruelty.

These are ways we perceive God’s future now and live today the life God prepares for us to share forever. In the naming of Jesus we also discover the reality of sin. Sin is everything that prevents us fully being with God, ourselves, one another and the creation. Jesus is the full and utter relationship of God that overcomes all these obstacles, whether made by ourselves or others, arising from painful memory or wilful disregard. Hence here we have an insight into the theme of salvation.

The way the angel persuades Joseph in his dream is to quote a line from Isaiah. Here we find the notion of revelation. Many theological textbooks begin with the doctrine of revelation, because they find it impossible to explain issues like authority, narrative and divinity without some idea that particular discoveries and experiences are blessed and honoured by a community. But Matthew has no abstract idea of revelation. He just plunges straight in with it, portraying Jesus within the context of what God has long prepared and always done. 

Within the notion of revelation is the doctrine of scripture, and we can see at work here Mathew’s confidence that, even with only the Old Testament to play with, the ways of God have already been disclosed such that identifying the unique and overwhelming significance of Jesus is not difficult.

Then to the greatest theological theme of all, that of incarnation. The angel announces Emmanuel, and quickly explains that means ‘God with us.’ These three words sum up everything theology has to tell us, and invite us into all the mysteries that theology has in store for us. It’s Matthew’s gospel in three words. It describes the wonder of Jesus – fully human, fully God – the call for our response, to be fully with God, ourselves, one another and the creation, and the embracing inclusivity of the us God chooses to be with. It also gives us eschatology, the promise of how things will be beyond now and into forever: that too is summed up in those three words, God with us. That’s all we need to know about revelation and all we need to anticipate about heaven.

But there’s two final verses, and one last doctrine to articulate. Joseph goes ahead and he and Mary live according to God’s call, making room for Jesus and responding to the implications of Jesus for their lives. That’s what we call church. Maybe church didn’t begin at Pentecost; maybe it began here, when the difference Christ makes began to be felt, understood, and responded to.

So here’s pretty much the whole of theology in eight verses: creation, Israel, Trinity, Holy Spirit, ethics, providence, vocation, God’s realm, sin, salvation, revelation, incarnation, the last things, and church. Theology is simply attending to the work of the Holy Spirit in scripture and elsewhere and discerning what that means for who God is and how we should be. 

I wish my conversation partner at that wedding 30 years ago had realised that the Bible is not like a packed lunch or first aid kit tucked away to get you through all eventualities, but an invitation to explore every aspect of what it means for God to be with us. And I hope he experienced the wonder of making that exploration together, with others committed to find, listen to and share that truth and put that truth to work. That’s the gift of what we’re doing right now: that’s the wonder of church.

* Rev. Dr Samuel Wells is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London. 

❑ Sermon source here

Matthew's Gospel 1:18-25

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about : His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:

23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

(NIV: Source)

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