Get a Grip

And another thing ...

I am sort of sorry, but I feel another bout of invective coming on. Please don't think that I am a terminally bad mood because I'm not; I am just jaw-slack watching the world.

Some of you will be aware that a nice little West-Country town took the momentous step, not to stop flogging the under-5s or putting pensioners up their chimneys, but to stop saying a prayer before its council meetings. The responses to this immense event ranged from "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" to "Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani" - or in other words, the sublime to the ridicuous. Some of the Dawkinsites (I still deny the existence of Richard Dawkins, and believe his followers to be deluded) hailed this as the death of religion. Some of the Christians of our fine nation hailed it as, well, the death of religion. 

I say get a grip.

This Careyesque persecution complex that we are currently enjoying in Britain today is as daft as it is needless. Even Baroness Warsi says we should get a grip and it is not often that I find my socialist heart being projected by the words of a Tory Peer (and a Muslim one too, telling Christians to get a grip). 

I think that we like to be defeated, and I don't know why. We believe in the God of the Universe and All Creation, the author of the stars and moons, of love and puppies. We believe in a Good News so overwhelming that it conquers even death - but not, it seems, the secularist hearts of Devonshire folk. We, the British people of the Book, in our thousands of churches who can pop and and out when we choose, if only we chose to do so, have no right to claim a persecution on the one hand, or that we are under siege from secularists on the other. If we were in danger of being shot in the face by an AK47-wielding sniper when we attend a service on Sunday, then we may have a case. 

Sadly, in many ways, we are giving the secularists and that man Dawkins all the 'ammunition' he needs. We fight among ourselves, we go to church when we don't have a golf game to play, we cannot communicate even within the sphere of our synods and governing structures, we would sooner stop going to a church of the wrong flavour than go and be glad of the chance, our national church website's guide to prayer will tell you only how to use your fingers and we self-flagilate with a whip of our own creation. 

We need to stand up and be counted. We need not whine and self-pity, but be strong in our faith and in the sure belief that we have in the Good News of Christ. We must bust our buns embodying the example of Jesus Christ who never once whined and complained, and do the job we have been mandated to do, and make disciples. To do that, we must make our beautiful wonderful altogether human church seem the slightest bit like a body that people would regard as Good News incarnate, not as a snivelling brood of sulkers as we are in danger of appearing. 

As I said a few days ago: the mission of God does not need a place on the Agenda of a council meeting. It is the reason why the council meeting can happen in the first place.

Do I need to see?

Just a quickie, as I have just come away from watching the News at Ten ...

There are a couple of stories tonight that have caught the attention of Mrs Vern Acular and me - not because of the content, but because of the delivery. The first is the terrible waste of human life in the west of Cumbria at the hands of Derrick Bird; the second is a report of an explosion in Kandahar where thirty-nine people were killed (they were all guests at a wedding). Both are terrible events, and both tell us much about the poverty of human nature at times.

But it is not about that stories themselves that I am annoyed - it is the style of media coverage. In the case of the story in Cumbria, we had prolonged film highlights of people observing a minutes' silence. In the case of the Afghan terrorist act, we were offered the ten-to-fifteen-second clip of a man alone in a street, crouched to his knees, sobbing. 

I know what a silence looks like, and I can imagine a little of the grief of one who has lost a loved one to terrorism. What I am begining to resent is becoming a passive voyeur into intimate moments of people's worst nightmares. To tell you the truth, I am going to start voting with my feet and turn off the goggle-box!

When a camera crew sees a man in a state of near hysterical convulsing sobs, where is their humanity? Why would any decent person flick on the green button and press the red, focus and remain their filming? - console the man, or failing that, preserve his privacy and dignity - not bloody film him weeping.

But let us not blame the media types - after all, they are only meeting a market need. We watch so they film. Shame on us.

Why the long face?

This poor little grub of an alien is, I think, conspicuously Christian. How do I determine this, given my specific lack of Spaceperanto or a Babel Fish? This little Beteljuician Herb Farmer before us is not wearing a Crucifix, and I see no evidence of a car with a fish on the back* (or indeed a laser-emitting zlotter with 'God luvsya' on the side). 

Like the inevitable slime trail behind a slug, you know what is coming here don't you ...

This alien looks so unhappy. It is Easter and yet the green-oozy fella is looking so glum. Gotta be a Christian. 

It gives me no pleasure to make this observation either - because I love Christians and I love all that they stand for, obviously (I hope). Perhaps it is the blokish side of me, but I have often pondered why so many Christians appear so 'down in the mouth'. I know that some smile beyond human endurance (or cramp) all the time, but there seems no happy medium for so many! It is broadly manifest in the way that we pray, I think. 

Like a news editor, it is now something of the vogue to believe that in prayer 'good news' doesn't sell. Intercessions focus on all that is in the negative tones on the pallet, rarely the positive. This must have an effect on worshippers over time. While there is so much to pray for always in terms of remedy and solution to problems, I think that we see too little 'thanks for it being a beautiful day today, and thanks for all that I have'. Such prayers do not have to come with an obligatory tambourine, but they have a place. When I recieve a gift from someone, it is not my first instinct to say 'what about the person who got no gift?' - my first utterance is 'thanks, I appreciate the thought, and it means a lot'. Yes, both are important - but let me lean heavily on the word BOTH!

So, whether you are man or woman, fish or fowl, alien or ordinand - spare just a little of your prayerful zeal for gratitude. Let's give God a break here!

*the fish on the car is regarded in all civilisations to be a sign that the car to which it is affixed will be driven at a funerial pace, and is to be overtaken with some urgency