The Unexpected Guest

I wrote this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

When does Christmas start in your household? At what point is it socially acceptable to put up your tree and start playing Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ at full pelt?

With the regularity of a liturgical calendar, the Christmas adverts on TV arguably mark the beginning of the festive period for many of us. Nowadays, the Christmas ad is as much a part of the season as Boxing Day sales, broken toys, and left-over turkey.

Although it’s perhaps lost something of its lustre over the years, the John Lewis ad is still something of a benchmark. This year’s – ‘Unexpected Guest’ – sees our young hero befriending an alien who has crash-landed their ship in his local woods.

Overcoming his initial hesitancy, he introduces the visitor to the delights of the season: wearing novelty jumpers, eating mince pies, throwing snowballs, watching schmaltzy films. And all to a stripped-back cover of the 1984 classic, ‘Together in Electric Dreams’, the tale of friendship reaching a climax with the lyric ‘love never ends’.

The ad’s tagline – ‘For a Christmas as magical as your first’ – interprets their story for us, inviting us to reach back to something more basic, more lasting, more secure.

Where might that be found?

In part, it’s found in that which the ad itself captures – in befriending strangers and sharing traditions. Treating people as unexpected guests rather than unwelcome intrusions makes sense for those who are themselves part of the story in which God loves, Jesus serves, and the Spirit ministers – in self-giving tenderness towards us. Sentiment aside, how might we demonstrate over the festive season, and beyond, a generosity of heart and home?

But in a storyline which raises the possibility of an ‘unexpected guest’ coming to earth, and with a tagline which invites us to rediscover the magic of our ‘first’ Christmas, we might be encouraged to think of the very first Christmas of all.

Whatever we make of Christmas TV ads, the longings they reflect about relationship, togetherness, and harmony come together in the one who is truly able to offer them. It’s not that the sentiments are wrong. It’s that the solution to our sense of lack is located in the wrong place. The ads lay out a need we have that can be met only in the one who came that first Christmas to set in motion a divine rescue plan – Immanuel, God with us.

On Being Overwhelmed [Redux]

I wrote this piece for ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. If it sounds familiar to the two regular readers of my blog (Hi, Mum! Hi, Brett!), that’s because it’s a beefed-up version of a piece I wrote last week.

It was Harold Wilson who allegedly said that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. In these recent momentous days, it looks as if that should be reduced to five minutes.

In the space of a very short time, life has been turned upside-down. Work, school, family life, daily routines, leisure activities, as well as that number one pastime – shopping – have changed for all of us, almost overnight.

It’s easy to see why our nation – nay, our world – is uneasy. You may feel it yourself, identify it in friends and colleagues, or see it reflected in your social media feeds. We’re experiencing what theologian David Ford has called ‘multiple overwhelmings’. Whether personally, professionally, or politically, it’s one thing to have a single event that knocks us off our feet. But what if the knocks continue to come thick and fast? Is it any wonder we’re confused, anxious, distrustful, and fearful?

In all this, though, shafts of light manage to break through – the neighbours forming WhatsApp groups to support people in their street, the already-exhausted NHS workers coming in for the next shift, the rainbows in windows of houses saying more than the occupants of those homes perhaps know about the commitment of God to his creation.

They’re all traces of grace, showing something of a refusal to be shaped by the prevailing culture, which Christians of all people should understand. Because while some ‘overwhelmings’ wound and crush us, others are life-giving and transformative. As David Ford says, the wisest way to cope is ‘not to expect to be in control of everything’, but ‘to live amidst the overwhelmings’ in a way that lets one of them shape the others.

During this period of Lent, Christians remember that Christ himself embodied ‘multiple overwhelmings’ – baptised in the Jordan, driven into the wilderness, tempted by the devil. Then, at the climax of his life, betrayed, deserted, tortured, crucified. But, as Ford writes, ‘then came the resurrection, the most disorienting and transformative overwhelming of all’.

Given that death-and-resurrection pattern, what would it look like at this time to be overwhelmed by gratitude? Overwhelmed by generosity? Overwhelmed by a commitment to pray? Overwhelmed by a desire to see others thrive, even if it comes at our expense? Overwhelmed by an assurance of God’s love?

Given the resources available to us in the gospel, what might we be overwhelmed by today?

Business as Usual?

I wrote the below piece for ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Big Ben won’t bong, but time will roll on regardless and Britain will leave the European Union at 11pm on Friday 31 January 2020. It will be the end of one of the most significant political processes of our times.

How we feel about that and the new era that lies ahead will depend on a host of well-rehearsed and hotly-contested factors, which will not disappear overnight.

Noting that Christians ‘in good conscience continue to hold a wide range of views about Brexit’, leaders of church denominations have encouraged prayers for peace and reconciliation. Tweeting a prayer every day this week, Justin Welby notes the importance of ‘praying for our country as we move into a new season of challenge and opportunity’.

How, then, do we navigate this moment?

The slogan from Christians in Politics – ‘decisions are made by those who show up’ – offers a helpful prompt. It reminds us not just to ‘show up’ when it’s time to vote or debate, but to ‘show up’ in daily life too.

Many Christians are on the frontline in the world of politics itself, but politics affects us all, wherever we find ourselves – the teacher in the classroom, the cleaner in the hospital, the parent in the home.

Every sphere – education, business, economics, the media, law, health, family – can be influenced for the good by the presence of Christians. These are the everyday places where we are able to build relationships, seek justice, model reconciliation, make a gracious stand for the truth, live and speak as messengers of the gospel. And we do so not to get what we want, but as an overflow of our love for God and other people.

So, however we feel about the turn of the clock later this evening, we can move forward purposefully. Let’s pray for the Government and for our local MPs. Let’s ask trusted people to help us think through issues from a Christian perspective. Let’s inform MPs of matters that concern us – not simply the narrow range of topics where people expect us to speak out, but on other things too – education, health, unemployment, environment, immigration. Let’s get involved where we’re able to do so. And let’s recognise that the best changes will be brought about by demonstrating through our lives that there is a better way to do business as usual.

One Step at a Time

I wrote the below piece for ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. It is a light rewrite of one first written in 2013.

How are the resolutions looking this far into January?

So far as we can tell, people have habitually marked the beginning of new years. And the resolve at such times to ‘do better’ goes back at least to ancient Babylon. Something about the turn of the calendar carries with it a pervasive and powerful desire for a fresh start, a clean slate.

According to recent polling, 25% of us make resolutions each New Year, most of them to do with becoming healthier, managing money, and improving ourselves. And yet, research also confirms what we already suspect – perhaps from personal experience – that the majority of us will abandon our resolves by mid-January, with many of us not making it beyond the first week.

Still, the making of resolutions at least implies a felt-need for transformation of some kind – a need that Christians of all people should understand. That need, and our failure to meet it, is addressed in the gospel, which declares that the heart of the Christian faith is not mere potential for self-improvement, still less the need to secure ‘salvation’ through following a certain ‘code’, but freedom – leaving us free from the pressure of having to do things to gain favour with God, free from trying to prove ourselves to others, free to submit to Christ.

The gospel not only explains the need for change, but also provides the power to bring it about, a power which comes from the finished work of Christ on the cross, from who God is and what he has done, with the Spirit as the agent of transformation in our lives.

The biblical image of ‘walking’ to describe the Christian life is particularly apt. While it’s beneficial to take stock of where we are and make some changes if necessary, the walking metaphor suggests a more regular pattern. It’s an ongoing process which occurs in the everyday places where we live and where we work – on the commute, in the home, at the office, at the gym, in the checkout queue.

In such contexts, we discover, it’s the consistent, everyday habits and actions that make a difference, as we continue to walk step-by-step – our lifelong process of transformation into the likeness of Christ through the ongoing work of the Spirit.

The Christmas Jesus

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

When does Christmas start in your household? At what point is it reasonable to put up your tree and start playing Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ at full pelt?

With the regularity of a liturgical calendar, the Christmas adverts on TV arguably mark the beginning of the festive period for many. Nowadays, the Christmas ad is as much a part of the season as Boxing Day sales, broken toys, and left-over turkey.

Over the years, the John Lewis ad has become something of a sensation. This year’s is called ‘The Boy and the Piano’, and it features Elton John. We’re taken back in time to the moment his excited younger self ran down the stairs one Christmas morning to open his first piano. The moral of the tale, as the tagline tells us, is that ‘some gifts are more than just a gift’.

But, can a gift really make that sort of difference to our lives?

If the commercial hype feels too much, you might like to check out a two-and-a-half-minute Christmas film, made for £50, called ‘Love is a Gift’, which has been viewed millions of times.

It features a young man decorating his tree and counting down the days until Christmas, when he sits alone and listens to a cassette tape his Mum made for him before she died. We’re able to see that she recorded several tapes for him to listen to every year on Christmas day following her death. As a tear falls down the man’s face, it’s revealed that it’s the last tape his mother made. The film ends with the tagline: ‘Love is a gift that lasts forever. Merry Christmas.’

But, is love really a gift that lasts forever?

We need love, and we long for connection; good gifts really can make a difference in all sorts of ways. It’s not that the sentiments are wrong. It’s that the solution to our sense of lack is located in the wrong place. The Christmas ads are laying out a need we have that can be met only in the Christmas Jesus.

Can a gift really make a difference to our lives? Yes, but all the gifts in the world won’t make the difference we really need. Is love really a gift that lasts forever? Yes, when it comes from the one who lives forever. And he offers it to us today.

A Problem Like Syria

I wrote this week’s Connecting with Culture, a weekly email service from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. As it happens, it’s a lightly-edited rerun of a piece I wrote in August 2013, when Parliament was recalled to vote on whether or not to intervene in Syria in an armed response, resulting in what was widely seen at the time as a humiliating defeat for David Cameron.

Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) should be enough to persuade us of the deeply ambiguous nature of existence in the time before the final harvest. There is ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and both grow together until the end. Until then, we take seriously the inevitable messiness of life and the requirement for caution in some moral judgments. Unambiguous clarity is not always possible.

The alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime on its civilians has reignited debates on the principle of armed intervention. This week has seen threat and counter-threat, risking the escalation of conflict. Promises of action from Trump, May, and Macron have been countered with promises of reprisals from Putin, with Syrian civilians caught in the middle. While non-intervention is seen by some as appropriately cautious, others see it as an abdication of moral responsibility. There are MPs on both sides, campaigners on both sides, Syrians on both sides. And Christians – including Syrian Christians – are on both sides too.

For all of us, a bigger picture may provide some perspective. The Old Testament prophets make it clear that God holds nations to account. A nation or a people cannot conduct itself as though it were an ultimate end in itself. It must understand its own life in the context of a larger dynamic of which it is a part – and which will answer ultimately to God. There isn’t a direct match between ancient nations addressed by the prophets and their modern counterparts, but there is an uncanny resemblance in the reasons for which they are indicted – pride, greed, violence, injustice – and no one nation has a monopoly on those.

Indeed, the line between good and evil, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (who had good reason to yearn for regime change) reminded us, runs through our own hearts.

Prophetic sayings against the nations weren’t designed to deal with nitty-gritty decision-making in international politics. But they brought hope to the people of God – of his unrivaled supremacy in the world, and of his plan to bless all nations even while holding them to account.

Ambiguity about the best way forward needn’t lead to inaction or despair. Even when we can’t see it now, Christians of all people have reasons for hope and confidence. And to pray and work purposefully for things that make for peace now.

Deeds Not Words

I wrote this week’s Connecting with Culture, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Queen Alexandra, George V’s mother, described it as a ‘sad accident caused through the abominable conduct of a brutal lunatic woman’. History has been kinder to suffragette Emily Wilding Davison who squeezed through the railings at the Epsom Derby to make a grab for the king’s horse as it raced past. Buried in Morpeth, her headstone is inscribed with the King James Version of John 15:13, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’, along with the maxim of the Women’s Social and Political Union – ‘Deeds Not Words’.

It was nearly five years later that the Representation of the People Act was given royal assent, granting the vote to women over the age of 30 who owned property, an act whose centenary has been marked this week. In the immediate wake of #metoo, the BBC equal pay debate, and the Presidents Club debacle, celebrations are mostly tinged with reflections on how much more needs to be done.

Earlier this week, The Guardian asked a panel whether parity between men and women would be achieved in the next 100 years. Economic inequality, the cost of childcare, and the objectification, even pornification, of women were all mentioned as issues to be tackled.

Christians have a stake in these debates. Christians also have a stake in demonstrating to those around us what renewed relationships in Christ look like, not least between men and women in different spheres of life.

Notable at the beginning of the biblical story is that men and women are equally and together created in the image of God, called to exercise dominion as representatives of God on earth. This gave men and women a status and responsibility not found in other cultures of the time. Notable, too, is the New Testament’s insistence – again, largely against the grain of its first-century world – that men and women are one in Christ, caught up together in God’s plan to reconstitute humanity.

As those living out this different story, we can start with the women we know, where we are – in our family, workplace, college and church, our colleagues and clients.

Originally the Suffragette slogan, ‘Deeds Not Words’, was a call to radical action, but it resonates with the biblical injunction that faith without works is dead, and is seen most remarkably in the supreme sacrifice of Jesus giving his life for his friends.

The End of the World is Nigh?

I wrote this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Would you rather be turned into a zombie, or watch everyone you love get turned into one? Would you rather share supplies with someone and risk running out, or hoard your supplies and be alone?

Those were just two of several ‘would you rather’ questions posed about the apocalypse in what BuzzFeed last week designated ‘DisasterWeek’. Also featured were polls on ‘design a luxury bunker and we’ll tell you if you would survive the apocalypse’ and ‘what actor should be your survival partner when the world ends?’

It’s not too difficult to detect behind the humour an anxiety that things feel worse now than they’ve ever been. Yes, we’re aware that history is littered with doomsday warnings, but there’s something about the speed at which current events are moving which heightens concern. Our fears are increasingly shaped and intensified by the threat of global disaster – climate change, nuclear threats, cyber attacks, terrorism, pandemics – all reinforced by nonstop media.

In popular culture, we see end-time angst most pointedly in films, TV programmes, and games which portray the apocalypse or life in its dystopian aftermath. Sometimes the end is brought about by our own stupidity, and sometimes it’s imposed by outside forces like monsters or zombies, asteroids or aliens. Such cultural products expose human anxieties and reveal our yearnings for a better, more secure hope. Indeed, while the threat of the end is inevitable, hope that the final destruction of humanity is avoidable – or in some sense survivable – runs through virtually all apocalyptic tales.

We are hope-shaped creatures, in need not just of a sense of hopefulness, but a hope-filled story, one which leads somewhere.

For Christians, hope is not an optimistic belief in our capacity to meet every eventuality. Rather, hope derives its shape from trust in the God who has acted in Jesus Christ, who is working out his plan of redemption, and who will one day inaugurate a world free from ‘the old order of things’. Christians believe not in the end of the world, but in the beginning of a renewed world.

That hope frees us up to live expectantly and confidently, though realistically and wisely, in ways that seek to transform the here and now of our bit of the world, in line with what will be – not out of fear, but as a response to God’s gracious promise.

On Being Overwhelmed

I wrote this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

It was Harold Wilson who allegedly said that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. In these recent momentous days, it looks as if that should be reduced to five minutes. As David Cameron himself quipped in his final Prime Minister’s Questions, this week alone has seen ‘resignation, nomination, competition, and coronation’.

It’s easy to see why our nation is not at ease. You may feel it yourself, or identify it in friends and colleagues, or see it reflected in your social media feeds. We’re experiencing what theologian David Ford has called ‘multiple overwhelmings’. Whether personally, professionally, or politically, it’s one thing to have a single event that knocks us off our feet; but what if the knocks continue to come thick and fast? Is it any wonder we’re confused, anxious, angry, distrustful, and fearful?

In all this, though, shafts of light manage to break through. I was one of millions who watched the video, courtesy of ITV news, showing a young Portuguese boy consoling a distraught French fan after France’s defeat to Portugal in the Euro 2016 final. It was a touching display of empathy, showing that it’s possible to embrace someone wearing another team’s colours – an embrace in which both are required to yield, the one to the other.

Just as arresting was the picture of a protesting woman taken during civil unrest in Louisiana. The juxtaposition of heavily-clad armed police officers and their apparently hesitant stance with a serenely-poised woman in a long flowing dress is striking. Whatever one’s views of the situation, it’s easy to see why the photo was quickly drawing comparisons with other classic protest images.

Both cases illustrate something of a refusal to be shaped by the prevailing culture, which Christians of all people should understand. Both show that while some ‘overwhelmings’ wound and crush us, others are life-giving and transformative. As David Ford says, the wisest way to cope is ‘not to expect to be in control of everything’, but ‘to live amidst the overwhelmings in a way that lets one of them be the overwhelming that shapes the others’.

What would it look like to be overwhelmed by gratitude? Overwhelmed by generosity? Overwhelmed by a passion for justice? Overwhelmed by a desire to see others thrive, even it comes at our expense? Given the resources available to us in the gospel, what might we be overwhelmed by today?

A Faith for Every None

I co-wrote with Neil Hudson, one of my colleagues, this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Christianity doesn’t rise or fall with affirmations from the national press, but it’s interesting to read them when they come along. Two recent ones in this case.

First up was an editorial in The Guardian, noting that Christianity’s move to the margins of public life ‘could change the country profoundly’, wondering – as we face the challenges of the next century – what will supply ‘a vision of humanity that transcends narrow self-interest’.

Then, writing in The Telegraph, Tim Stanley observed that in the peaks and troughs of the history of Christianity in Britain, one thing has turned around decline – evangelism. Christians, he says, have become their own worst enemy – killing their faith with silence. He has a point. We’ll never bring people to Jesus if we don’t tell them about him.

Both articles were reflecting on recent British Social Attitudes data which shows we are experiencing a rise in the number of self-labeled ‘Nones’ – those who, when asked the multiple-choice question about religion, identify themselves as ‘None of the above’. Apparently, it’s now the largest single identification in England and Wales.

Even so, having rejected formalised religion, people have not stopped engaging on a ‘spiritual’ quest. It has simply shape-shifted into different forms. Back in 1969, Peter Berger, a sociologist of religion, wrote of ‘a rumour of angels’, signals of transcendence that won’t disappear: desires for order, joy, hope, justice, and a humour that mocks the self-pretension of the world.

It doesn’t take too long in a conversation with a friend, colleague or neighbour to find such yearnings embedded in the ordinary experiences of life, a sense that things aren’t as they should be, a desire for connection to something higher. It’s not that people don’t believe in fairness and freedom and decency, but they might struggle to articulate a coherent story which makes sense of those beliefs.

We saw it exemplified in the Brussels Vigil in March, where people gathered together, lit candles, sang, declared their hopes that evil will not have the last word, and offered prayers to whoever. For those and those like them, we can say that there is a light which shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never overcome it.

Just because many in this generation have the confidence to self-identify as ‘Nones’ doesn’t mean that they don’t long for more. For them, as for others, we have good news.

From Fear to Faith

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

How do you talk to your friends about Jesus in multi-faith Southall? Answer, according to one six-year-girl, ‘I ask them, “What do you like about your God?” And then I say what I like about my God.’

I’ve been reminded of her response in recent weeks. The election of Sadiq Khan as the first Muslim mayor of a major western city was widely reported around the world. An internal review by the BBC has concluded that the Corporation’s output is too Christian, suggesting that Muslim, Hindu and Sikh faiths should get more airtime, while plans for new laws to tackle extremism were announced in this week’s Queen’s Speech.

Whatever we make of these issues – and responses vary – they are a reminder, if we need it, of the religiously plural nature of contemporary society. In many parts of the UK, through globalisation and migration, trade and technology, we increasingly live and work in close proximity to people who are adherents of different world faiths.

It’s not the first time the church has carried out its mission in a pluralistic context. Christianity was born into such a situation, and has faced the challenge many times in its history.

That challenge also brings opportunities in public life. In Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World, Christian theologian Miroslav Volf argues that world religions can contribute to societal wellbeing not by one winning out over the others or by their amalgamation into a common ‘essence’, but by the recognition that each carries within itself something of benefit to which its adherents can appeal, which outsiders can recognise as they engage in conversation with each other.

Of course, truth claims about Christ and salvation matter. Being civil doesn’t require us to leave our Christian convictions at the front door of any discussion. On the contrary, it’s only as we engage in conversation from a firm stance of faith in Jesus and his lordship over the whole of life that we’re able to find places to connect with others, confident that the gospel answers the deep longings of men and women even while it challenges the way those longings are understood.

The danger would be to dig in or fight back, as if there was no other way but to respond in fear. A six-year-old girl in Southall would beg to differ.

Tell Me... Do You Bleed?

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Can it really be that one who is all powerful could also be all benevolent?

Today sees the cinema release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Echoing the concerns of some fans at the end of the previous installment, Man of Steel, Bruce Wayne is fearful about Superman’s destructive abilities, and feels compelled to re-don his Batman suit to make sure such power is put down. It is, as one character puts it, ‘the greatest gladiator match in the history of the world – god versus man’. ‘Tell me’, says Batman in one of their confrontations – more as a threat than a question – ‘do you bleed?’ A god bleed? Surely not.

Like all such movies that could so easily be dismissed as a special effects extravaganza or for its clunky dialogue, it still sheds light on contemporary fears and aspirations. Even watching the official trailers, one is struck by the repeated use of the word ‘power’ on the lips of various characters. ‘That kind of power is very dangerous.’ ‘Human beings have a horrible record of following people with great power.’ ‘He has the power to wipe out the entire human race.’ ‘The oldest lie... that power can be innocent.’

It may be that Superman represents one sort of power and Batman another, but the trailers hint that they come together with common allies against common enemies, who are even darker, more ferocious, more destructive – the power of sheer ferocity, the power of egotistical manipulation.

We have seen evidence of a certain kind of power at work even this week in Brussels...

But this Friday, around the world, Christians will tell again the story of a different sort of power, seen in the death of Jesus. The cross subverts human expectations about the way power operates, about the way things get done. As the apostle Paul wrote, ‘the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God’ (1 Corinthians 1:18). Yet the cross also brings what we long for. According to Paul, that which is most desired by Greeks and Jews – wisdom and power – is delivered in that which is most despised, in ‘Christ crucified... the power of God and the wisdom of God’ (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).

All power and all benevolence in shed blood.

Grit and Grace

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

‘I firmly believe character education prepares our young people for life in modern Britain, regardless of their background or where they grew up.’ So said Education Secretary Nicky Morgan in a recent speech, reinforcing calls for schools to help children develop ‘grit’ – confidence, perseverance, resilience – in order to equip them to meet the challenges of future life.

How this is to be done, and whether or not it places an unrealistic demand on educators are moot points. Also debatable is the identification of what counts as ‘character’, whether ‘grit’ is still about those qualities which make academic success more likely, rather than traits such as selflessness, humility, and generosity.

It reminds me of the distinction David Brooks makes in his book, The Road to Character, between ‘résumé virtues’ (the skills you bring to the marketplace) and ‘eulogy virtues’ (the ones that are talked about at your funeral).

According to Brooks, we live in the culture of ‘the Big Me’, where success is achieved through competition with others, where the rules of life are those we make for ourselves, where the self is defined by tasks and accomplishments. Instead, he says, painting an alternative ‘moral ecology’, those to be admired are honest about their weaknesses (whether selfishness, pride or cowardice), but their character is built precisely through confronting weakness. They are humble, self-aware, other-centered, and ‘become more disciplined, considerate, and loving through a thousand small acts of self-control, sharing, service, and refined enjoyment’.

Brooks calls this the ‘crooked timber’ school of humanity, the recognition that we are richly endowed yet deeply flawed. He writes as a cultural and political commentator, not a theologian, but his unashamed use of words like ‘sin’, ‘righteousness’, and ‘redemption’ resonate with a Christian perspective, as does his declaration towards the end of the book that ‘we are all ultimately saved by grace’.

Whether or not he speaks more than he knows at this point, this is the ultimate answer to the issue of character and its formation – the need for a rescue that comes from elsewhere, outside our own capacity to make something of ourselves. Christianity is not alone in producing people of moral character, but it is alone in offering the good news of free grace. And it’s that grace which not only brings about a new standing in Christ, but the empowerment to become people who reflect in our own character something of him.

Longing for Nostalgia?

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Like many in my generation, I grew up with my parents listening to Terry Wogan on the radio only to find myself as an adult tuning in to him years later. I was not alone this week in greeting the news of his passing with a sense of nostalgia as well as sadness.

We’ve heard similar sentiments following the recent deaths of Lemmy, David Bowie and Glenn Frey, where it’s been clear how music significantly shapes the formative years of fans in a way that remains long after those years have passed.

Nor do other areas of popular culture escape the nostalgic brush. The release of Dad’s Army this week is only the tip of the cinematic iceberg. While some criticised Star Wars: The Force Awakens for being too much like its 1977 counterpart, if anything its similarity in theme and plot reinforced a sense of nostalgia for the original audience and their children. This year will also see recycled Marvel and DC Comics heroes, along with the third installment of the rebooted Star Trek franchise.

Then, think of the success of Penguin’s tongue-in-cheek ‘Ladybird Books for Grown-Ups’ which also trade on the nostalgia of those of a certain age. Think of the market for retro sweets and toys, or TV’s love for period dramas. Examples could be multiplied.

While nostalgia often comes down to simple appreciation for the things that have made us who we are, some worry that it stifles creativity. More personally, nostalgia can exaggerate the happiness of the past, which is remembered as stable when it was perhaps anything but. At its worst, nostalgia can carry its original sense of being homesick, longing for a different time and place, yearning to return ‘home’ – but to a home that never quite existed.

Nostalgia demonstrates our longing for a different world. Perhaps it reflects something of our ‘homeless’ existence between Eden on one side and eternity on the other.

Wonderfully, the good news of what God has done in Jesus provides the ultimate answer to such yearning and homesickness. It allows us to take seriously the past, to celebrate it where appropriate, but not to idealise it. And the gospel directs us not just backwards but forwards, neither hankering after a time gone by nor battening down the hatches until Jesus returns, but living now in the light of the one who is ‘the same yesterday and today and for ever’ (Hebrews 13:8).

Connecting with Culture, Connecting with People

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

What dominated your conversations with friends and colleagues in 2015? The terror attacks in Paris at the beginning and the end of the year, the General Election, the tragic plight of refugees from Syria, the Greek debt crisis, the Ashes, floods, climate change, Poldark, The Great British Bake Off, Star Wars, Ashley Madison, Princess Charlotte, Sepp Blatter, Jeremy Clarkson, Jeremy Corbyn?

And what does 2016 hold? It could be the year the UK decides to leave the EU. We’ll see the US election, missions to Mars and Jupiter, the Queen’s 90th birthday, and the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. For literature buffs, 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Roald Dahl, and the 150th of Beatrix Potter. In cinema, we’ll have Batman vs. Superman, Captain America vs. Iron Man, and the latest installment of Star Trek, while international sporting events will include football’s European Championship in France and the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

2016, like 2015, will offer plenty of opportunities to ‘connect’ with culture. And as we do so, we can feel confident about bringing a Christian perspective into everyday conversations.

Theologian Ted Turnau notes how popular culture provides ‘a touchstone for our deepest desires and aspirations’. It reflects ‘a messy mixture of both grace and idolatry’ that we would expect from created-but-fallen human beings. So, ‘fragments of grace’ are woven into songs, movies, TV programmes, books, social media, political campaigns and sporting events, but are often bent to the service of gods who will not deliver salvation.

In all such cases, for Christians, the good news of what God has done in Jesus offers a better alternative. Whether it’s the search for love, the need for heroes, the desire for community, the longing for redemption, the yearning for a better world – all these are echoed in the biblical story and find their deepest answer in the gospel.

We don’t make connections as a cheap evangelistic ploy, trying to shoehorn a reflection about the meaning of life into every episode of EastEnders. Still, for the sake of our witness to Christ, learning to read culture with eyes informed by the gospel provides a way of enabling open conversations – not just engaging with ideas in the abstract or even primarily with culture as such, but connecting with people in order to introduce them to Jesus.

Just a Job?

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

‘We may love our work, hate our work, find meaning in our work or none, but it’s what we do all day long, and it shapes us.’

So writes Joanna Biggs at the start of All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work. It’s an enjoyably absorbing read, offering brief glimpses into the lives of 30 or so different people. So it is that we meet a pot-glazing supervisor from Stoke-on-Trent, a fishmonger from Belfast, a care worker from Newcastle, along with shoemakers, baristas, a stay-at-home mum, a goldsmith’s apprentice, a rabbi, and so on.

There are struggles – the baristas who lose their bonus if they don’t display ‘passion’, the cleaner who fights for a living wage, the legal aid lawyer who wrestles with budget cuts. Yet what also emerges is how hard people work even though they have seemingly little to show for it, how much satisfaction people get from working, and how (in many cases) such satisfaction is not dependent on the salary earned.

All this resonates with a Christian perspective. Work is part of our DNA, one of the ways we’re made to function as those created in the image of the God who designed work to be fulfilling not frustrating. But work – like all things – was impacted by human rebellion against God and alienation from each other. Here is a daily reminder that the world remains out of kilter with God’s design, where it’s possible to make too much or too little of work. So, for instance, we can succumb to idolatry, where our job becomes the primary object of our passions and source of identity. Or we can slide into idleness, unable to see God’s purposes in work or the value of work in and of itself.

Yet there is hope, for work is not just a way to pass time and make money, but a service we render to Christ himself (Colossians 3:23). Work is a crucible for discipleship, a place to grow as a follower of Jesus, even in the mundane tasks: writing an email, placing an order, servicing a boiler, tightening a bolt, changing a nappy. Seeing our work – paid or unpaid – as an arena to serve Christ won’t necessarily deal with all our frustrations, but it will put them in proper perspective as we take our place as God’s stewards in his ongoing governance of the world.

Going to Extremes?

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Monday this week saw David Cameron deliver a speech announcing plans to tackle Islamist extremism. Calling for the promotion of ‘British values’, the Government, he said, will confront ‘groups and organisations that may not advocate violence – but which do promote other parts of the extremist narrative’.

The unease, voiced by some commentators, is that a wide definition of what counts as ‘extreme’ leaves the door open for attacks on anyone whose views differ from the Government. Writing in The Independent, Abdul-Azim Ahmed expressed concern that the speech ‘casts the net of extremism so wide it undermines some very basic civil liberties’. In The Telegraph, Brendan O’Neill wrote of a ‘dark, twisted irony’ to Cameron’s speech, warning that attempts to clampdown on ‘non-violent extremism’ will extinguish freedom of speech and debate.

All this in a week when Tim Farron, new Liberal Democrat leader and self-confessed Christian, had to tackle pointed questions about his views on same-sex sexual relationships, and whether he would seek God’s guidance before making policy decisions. To many, it seemed a bit unfair. As Farron himself pointed out to John Humphreys on the Today programme, ‘everybody comes to every situation with a set of value judgments’.

Indeed, every political vision operates out of some overarching perspective on life; every policy decision is supported by moral considerations of some sort. But there still seems to be a lingering presumption that a so-called ‘secular’ perspective is more neutral, less in danger of ‘extremism’, and so more appropriate for the public square. That is surely open for debate.

Does the belief that Jesus Christ is Lord mark Christians out as ‘extremists’? Maybe so. But it ought also mark us out as civil, seeking the good of others. The ongoing challenge will be not just to continue to contribute to the common good wherever we find ourselves, but to do so as Christians, with all that our discipleship to Jesus entails.

Seeking neither to take over the institutions of society nor abdicating responsibility altogether, we can feel confident about bringing a Christian vision into everyday life, including the public sphere. As theologian James K.A. Smith puts it: ‘The public task of the church is not just to remind the world of what it (allegedly) already knows (by “natural” reason), but to proclaim what it couldn’t otherwise know – and to do so as a public service for the sake of the common good.’

Business as Usual?

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

The swirl of interest and activity surrounding a general election is matched in Christian circles with publications and postings on voting wisely, with the organisation of hustings for the quizzing of local candidates, with prayers for good government, and more besides. And rightly so.

But what happens when the voting stops? What is our default mode for engaging with politics when the drama of an election dies down?

The campaign from Christians in Politics has been enormously helpful in reminding us not just to ‘show up’ on the day to vote, but to ‘show up’ in daily life too. Not only are many Christians on the frontline in the world of politics itself, but politics affects us all, wherever we find ourselves – the teacher in the classroom, the cleaner in the hospital, the parent in the home.

So, not just the world of politics, but of education, business, economics, media, arts, law, health, family – spheres which can be influenced by the presence of Christians within them, more than we might imagine, as we build relationships, seek justice, make a gracious stand for the truth, be a messenger of the gospel. And we do so not merely as a useful means for getting what we want, but as that which flows out of our love for God and neighbour.

The guiding vision for such a posture is the New Testament’s portrayal of the cosmic Lord Jesus Christ, who created all things, who will one day redeem all things, and who calls us – as those in whom the end-time reconciliation of all things has begun – to live as signposts to that future even now. Yes, now. And yes, the teacher, the cleaner, the parent, me, you.

So, let’s not lose the momentum generated by the election, however we feel about its final outcome. Let’s pray for the Government and for our local MPs – by name. Let’s ask trusted people in our churches to help us think through issues from a Christian perspective. Let’s inform MPs of matters that concern us – not simply the narrow range of topics where people expect us to speak out, but on other things too – austerity, education, health, unemployment, environment, immigration. Let’s get involved where we’re able to do so. And let’s recognise that the best changes will be brought about by demonstrating through our lives that there is a better way to do business as usual.

Who’s to Blame?

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. It was written before David Cameron’s Easter message to Christians via Premier Christianity on Wednesday, which I would have liked to address, though I think the below – with its emphasis on the cross – does so anyway.

‘Blame is just a lazy person’s way of making sense of chaos.’ So says Janet Drummond, the matriarch of Douglas Coupland’s novel, All Families are Psychotic. ‘It’s nobody’s fault. It’s chaos. Just chaos. Random numbers popping up in a cosmic Lotto draw.’

And yet, issues of blame – and requisite justice – will not go away. In spite of more than a million people signing a petition calling for his return, Jeremy Clarkson’s BBC contract will not be renewed following his ‘physical and verbal attack’ on a Top Gear producer. Lufthansa has confirmed that insurers have set aside $300m to cover claims following allegations that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed their Germanwings plane en route from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, killing all 150 people on board. Italy’s highest court has acquitted Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher in 2007, leaving the exact circumstances of her death an ongoing mystery. The celebrations surrounding Richard III’s burial at Leicester Cathedral prompted a backlash of accusations that a detestable tyrant was being treated like a saint.

On the face of it, the need to have someone to blame and for a sense of justice to be carried out assumes some kind of moral fabric to the universe. While such a stance has been argued from secular viewpoints, it makes complete sense from a Christian perspective. We fail and fall, actions have consequences, justice is necessary.

But Christians also hold that the ultimate predicament of human beings – rebellion against God and the judgment it deserves – is dealt with uniquely at the cross of Christ. Here is the place where justice is served and love is demonstrated in the same act, in the death of the one who took on himself that for which we would rightly be held accountable.

The work of the cross is applied personally, though not privately, for it is the place where the wisdom and power of God are demonstrated to the world. Jesus’ death is God’s chosen means of restoring ‘all things’, liberating men and women – and creation itself – from sin and bondage, with the guarantee that one day evil will be removed completely.

Meanwhile, that hope sustains our discipleship and mission as we seek to make sense of the cross and be shaped by it, knowing that we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.