The Wardman Wire

Was David Davies resignation a matter of principle, or something a bit more ordinary and less heroic? The debate rumbles on.

When Rev. Martin Dudley conducted a service of blessing (which was as near to an Anglican wedding as makes no difference) for 2 gay priests, was he acting on principle as a pastor? Not everyone thinks so, least of all his Bishop.

Those who’ve taken a stand on principle have always been mocked, or had their motives questioned. ‘If you can’t play the ball, get the man’ is the unwritten rules of combat, and there has been plenty of stuff around in recent days which, if you believe it all, discredits both Davies and Dudley.

But should we listen to it?

Sinners and Cynics

I don’t agree with what Martin Dudley did, and Davis’ resignation was a dismal bit of political timing on a day when the government should have been backed up against the ropes on 42 day detention. So there’s part of me which laps up the cynical commentary with glee, but there’s another part of me which feels let down and rather sad about it all. As a Christian I should know that everyone is a sinner, nobody is perfect, and so nobody ever acts out of completely pure motives. But at the same time I want to be inspired, I want to see a bit of heroism, courage, and idealism in my leaders.

The climax of Ben Elton’s novel Popcorn has a couple holding a film director hostage, live on TV, and telling the folks watching that the director will live if they switch off their sets, now. Meanwhile a little device by the camera tells the gun-toters how many folk are watching. Everyone keeps the TV on, and…. well if you want to know what happens, try your local charity shop.

Being Good is Taxing

Whether or not you buy Eltons argument, the fact remains that as the general public we don’t always bring the best out of those in the public eye. And we don’t exactly raise the bar ourselves. It’s taken the recent rise in petrol prices to have any measurable effect on fuel consumption, even though we’ve known for years that we should consume less. We’ve known, but it’s only when the prices started to hurt that we’ve started to change our behaviour. The last few months demonstrate that green taxes, not education, are the way to change behaviour on the kind of scale needed to meet carbon targets.

We’ve even started to downsize the integrity of our heroes. Compare the pristine Superman of the 1970’s with the consciously compromised superheroes of the 90’s and noughties: Spidey’s vanity, Batmans mental state, even our kids favourite Mr Incredible discovering that his pride is (nearly) his downfall. We love those achilles heels - named after the original vulnerable hero.

Ruin, Glorious Ruin

Total depravity, aside from being a great name for a cocktail, and a punk band from Rochdale, is an idea attributed to the great theologian Calvin. It argues that we’re all infected by the virus of sin (or, to use non-technical language, nobody’s perfect), to such an extent that it affects everything we do. Calvin saw humanity as a glorious ruin: amazing and awesome, but also, quite clearly, less than it could be.

The challenge is to keep both the ruin and the glory in focus. It’s easy to become a cynic, to spend all our time looking at the shortcomings of others, and reach the point where we never give anyone the benefit of the doubt. But the other extreme of romanticising the living and the dead - interesting that in politics Conservative hagiography (Churchill, Thatcher) is a much more thriving species than Labour - has the danger of compliant followers who can’t see when their leader has taken a wrong turn, or fallible leaders who have nobody with the guts to tell them the painful truth. Cynicism is safer (you don’t end up with Hitler), but less fun.

So maybe the gift we Brits have to offer the world is our jaundiced eye. Behind that eye is the deeply Christian notion of flawed humanity, and our capacity for self-deception, and mixed motives. But what the jaundiced eye lacks is a vision of redemption, a sense that there might be something glorious here.

Could Do Better

When my kids present me with their latest work of art, I usually respond ‘that’s a lovely picture of a………….’ and let them fill in the blanks, as I work out whether it’s a dinosaur, an egg or a picture of me. Because they’re kids, I try to look for what’s there, rather than what isn’t, and affirm the good rather than point out where it falls short. That way, they have another go, and maybe get better.

I wonder if the same applies with adults: if we cheer the folks who have a go, rather than pointing out where they fall short, would we get more people we could be proud of?

David Keen blogs imperfectly at St. Aidan to Abbey Manor

(Cartoons from ASBO Jesus )