Category Archives: crisis

A peak oil prognosis (part one)

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A post explaining to someone who doesn’t know anything about Peak Oil why it is important, and what I think will happen. Just my opinion, of course, and I don’t really go into the religious aspects of things – it’s mainly an economic analysis. Click ‘full post’ for text.

The industrial world runs on oil – in a literal sense, in terms of the transportation system, which has been built around the ready availability of cheap liquid fuel – but also in a more fundamental sense, in that so many of our industrial products are derived or dependent upon petroleum as a raw material, in clothing, chemicals, food production and so on. This is why the maintenance of this particular energy supply is of strategic importance to all nations, not least the United States. At the end of the 1970’s President Carter committed the United States to guaranteeing the flow of energy from the Middle East, with consequences that we are all familiar with. There are no known alternatives to oil, in terms of its density, ease of use, and quantity available.

The issue about Peak Oil is that for any particular oil field, there is a point of maximum flow (the ‘peak’) after which, no matter what happens in terms of the technological expertise and financial muscle deployed, the output of oil from that particular field will decline. This was first described by a geologist working for Shell named M King Hubbert, and he described this process using a graph which has become known as the ‘Hubbert Curve’, and looks like this:

Just as one particular oil field will have an initial rise in production before peaking, and then declining, so too will areas of oil fields. For example, the British section of the North Sea has been declining in output since 1999, at an extremely rapid rate.

This is likely to have significant consequences for the UK economy, particularly the balance of payments, as we move from being an energy exporter to an energy importer.

The real issue of present concern is found when considering the world as a whole. When previous areas have ‘peaked’ in terms of the flow of oil – for example, when the United States peaked in 1970 – then other producers came along who were able to ‘take up the slack’ and this allowed the process of industrial development to continue more or less unhindered. The most important producer at the moment is Saudi Arabia, who took from the United States the role of ‘swing producer’ – that is, they were able to modulate their production of oil in order to preserve overall economic stability. When there was a shock to the system, for example after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, then the Saudi government was able to increase their own production to compensate. However, there are now strong indications that the Saudi oil fields are hitting their own ‘peak’ – and that, as one analyst has put it, ‘When Saudi peaks, the world peaks’. In other words, we are now very close to – if not just past – the moment of peak flow of oil for the world.

To get an understanding of the implications of this epochal event we can consider the problems that the United States will face over the next few years. The largest oil field in the Western Hemisphere is called Cantarell, and is found in the shallow water off the Eastern coast of Mexico. Its peak rate of production was well over 2 million barrels per day (MBD) – this in the context of a current worldwide production of oil (and oil equivalents) of around 85mbd (this graph gives the context).

Cantarell is now in very steep decline, of the order of 20% in the last year. Graph:

The consequences of this are profound. Firstly, the oil company in charge of Cantarell is a nationalised utility (state-owned) and the revenues from the oil are responsible for some 40% of the Mexican government’s budget. There will be political consequences proportionate to the decline in revenues. Secondly, Mexico is a significant source of the oil imported to the United States – third largest after Canada and Saudi Arabia. As oil production from Mexico’s fields declines the Mexican government will face the dilemma of whether to continue to sell the oil that they are producing northwards, in order to maintain revenue, or whether to allow their own citizens to access that oil for their own purposes.

The United States economy is highly dependent upon the easy availability of petroleum – to the extent that the US consumes around 25% of all the oil produced in the world. The United States is also a very rich economy, and has, at present, very cheap petrol. Undoubtedly, to begin with, the US will pay whatever is needed to ensure the continuity of its oil supplies. The question is: from where will that oil come?

The standard answer offered by the authorities is ‘Saudi Arabia’. The Saudis assert that they have vast quantities of oil waiting to be tapped and brought into production. However, over the last year or so, their own production has been declining, despite the incentive of high prices and their own rhetoric. It is possible that Saudi production has itself peaked; we will know to a very high degree of certainty by the end of this year – if Saudi Arabia has not increased its production this year then it has almost certainly peaked. Graph:

The issues raised above have been implicit within the economic system for some time; that is, the constraints of supply have caused ‘demand destruction’ as people have been priced out of the system over the last five years, as the oil price has hugely increased. Graph:

This is the first problematic: as demand continues to outstrip supply and the price rises, an economic recession will ensue. In previous periods where this has applied (1974, 1979, 1990) the supply of oil has in the end been adequate to meet the renewed demand, following the recession. The point about peak oil, as a geological phenomenon, is that without a thorough-going restructuring of our economic assumptions OIL WILL NEVER AGAIN BE ABLE TO MEET DEMAND.

There are some related issues to consider, which will add into this fundamental problem and make the overall problem swifter and more challenging to deal with.
The first is the assumption that the present worldwide market in oil will be maintained. China, whose government has been aware of the phenomenon of peak oil for some time, and has absorbed the implications of it, has been making bilateral agreements with oil suppliers around the world (eg Venezuela, several African countries) which effectively takes this oil off the market. However much the West may offer for this oil, it will not be available.

Second, as the economic environment produced by peak oil changes, it will become apparent to oil producing states that it is in their direct economic interest to keep the oil in the ground. Both Russia and Kuwait have been discussing this openly, and undoubtedly other producing countries have been discussing it behind closed doors. Given the precarious state of the US finances, it makes no sense to exchange an incredibly valuable raw material for US dollars which will sooner or later become worthless.

The final wild card is political; that is, the developing and widening crisis in the countries of the Middle East, especially with regard to the Iranian government’s pursuit of nuclear weaponry. Some 40% of the world’s oil is transported through the Straits of Hormuz at the outlet of the Persian gulf.

The US military believes that Iran has the capacity to shut off tanker traffic through the Straits, albeit – in their opinion – for only a short period of time. It would be best if we did not have to find out if that confidence is misplaced.

To sum up the foregoing:
– Peak Oil is a geological phenomenon that has been observed throughout the world;
– it appears that the flow of oil from all the oil fields in the world is now at its peak;
– this will have major economic consequences;
– these consequences are likely to be exacerbated by the interplay with political factors.

What I expect to happen is twofold:
firstly, oil will become more and more expensive, leading to more and more economic actors being taken ‘out of the game’. This will mean an ongoing and deepening recession that will continue until our economies have been reconstructed on a ‘steady state’ basis (ie an abandonment of the ideology of economic growth). The potentially positive aspect of this is that once the crisis has been generally realised there will be a huge amount of effort devoted to developing alternative sources of energy. I am optimistic that much of the ‘domestic’ demand can be sustained; I am convinced that the commercial demand, particularly that for individual commuting and transport, will fail, permanently;
secondly, following the period of high prices, there will develop a situation of permanent scarcity, wherein human society will either have adapted to a form of life less dependent upon easy energy, or else there will be no recognisable human society at all. To my mind the issue is the speed at which the transition from that first stage to the second takes place, and therefore how much of our present civilisation can be preserved. With enlightened political leadership and widespread popular understanding and support this crisis could be an immensely positive gift for humanity. However, it is precisely my contemplation of the absence of such leadership that persuades me that we are facing a generation of struggle and crisis, and much of humanity will not make it to the other side.

The last word can go to the Hirsch report, which was commissioned by the US government to explore the nature of the crisis which Peak Oil would provoke:
“The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and long-lasting. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and discontinuous.”

LUBH 5 – The Wrath of God

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Transcript of session 5 of my talks on Christianity and Peak Oil. This one is exploring the nature of God’s wrath, and how it should be understood. Click on ‘full post’ to read the text – it’s about 5000 words.

Good morning and welcome. It’s nice to be back. One practical thing in terms of dates because of the session that was missed [I was ill], I’m simply shoving all the topics back by one and there will be an extra session on 10 March to make up the balance. If you look on the web site there are now slightly retitled talks to make things a bit clearer, so for example, I’m going to have one session on “The Green Bible, one session called “With you is my contention O priest” which gives you a bit more of an idea of what the topics will be.

But this morning I want to be talking about wrath, and I want to convince you really of two things. This is John the Baptist proclaiming “who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” and then you’ve got Julian of Norwich, “there is no wrath in God”. I want to convince you that both these things are true. That there is wrath, that the phrase the wrath of God refers to something real but also that there is no wrath in God, so that’s my challenge for this morning. Now I do have a hand-out, but I do want to hold it back just for the second, otherwise you might see a surprise too soon.

I want to begin with outlining the pagan understanding of sacrifice, this is Andromeda. Anyone seen “Clash of the Titans”? Remember this bit, basically Andromeda’s mum has offended the gods by saying that Andromeda is so beautiful, and the gods are offended, and disaster descends upon the city, a famine, and in order to work out why it is that there is a famine, they go to the oracle and the oracle says, “It’s because you have offended the gods by describing Andromeda as being so beautiful and therefore what you have to do is sacrifice Andromeda to the gods and then all your troubles will be over.” And this is what happens, you’ve got Andromeda chained to the rock and you’ve got the Kraken coming to gobble her up, but of course if you’ve seen the film, you’ve got Perseus coming along with the head of the Medusa which turns the Kraken to stone. But’s that a separate thing.

But this is the pagan understanding of sacrifice, you have got an angry god who needs to be appeased, the gods have been offended and therefore we have to give up something in order to appease the angry god. OK, this is the pagan concept. Think of Aztec sacrifice for example, or think of King Kong. You know, lots of theology going on here, but the understanding that in order to appease this angry vengeful monster, you have to offer up these beautiful virgins for sacrifice. This is the pagan conception, alright? And at the heart of it is this sense of you’ve got to appease, you’ve got to appease a wrathful god. OK?

Now there are elements of it found in the old testament, if you want to go away and look up this passage, 2 Samuel chapter 21, you have a little account of where the Gibeonites are suffering from a famine and so are the Israelites and so the cause is found to be an offence committed against the Gibeonites; who now want all of Saul’s sons to be offered up in sacrifice. And so they are sacrificed at the beginning at the barley harvest and the famine ends. So, you know, it is not something which is foreign to the Old Testament. It is however, not the Jewish understanding of sacrifice. Which is what I want to explore with you.

This is Solomon’s temple and really what I want to do is talk through the ritual of the Day of Atonement as it happened in the first temple period. Now this could get a bit complicated, but hopefully I will do it gently enough to make it understandable. You recognise the rough shape, here you have got the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, this is the main temple area and here of course, only the High Priest can come, this is the priestly area, the men’s area, the women’s area is out here and so forth, you have got a real hierarchy going up to what’s holy, what’s the most holy bit. OK.

Now the Day of Atonement is when the people get reconciled with God and their sins get wiped away, OK, that’s fairly well understood, and there is a particular ritual which the High Priest goes through on this day which I am going to talk through with you, because this is quite important for understanding the Jewish view of God – and how it is different to the pagan. To begin with the High Priest comes in and he sacrifices an ox as propitiation for his sins. OK? So the High Priest, having made that sacrifice, becomes ritually pure, OK, he’s cleansed. And as a result of that the High Priest then puts on a bright white robe, because in a ritual at that point the High Priest adopts if you like the persona of God, of Yahweh. He becomes Yahweh for a day, he acts in the name of the Lord. And the phrase that we have in our Eucharist “Blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” is taken from this liturgy. So the High Priest becomes the one who wears this bright white robe and he becomes Yahweh for the day, he becomes an angelic figure. He is also called the Son of God at points in the liturgy, OK, so this is what is going on.

The High Priest becomes this bright white figure and he then takes two animals, two sheep or two goats normally, and by process of lot, i.e. chance selection, one is chosen to represent basically the demons, Azazael, he becomes, that goat becomes the scapegoat, of which more later, and the other one represents God, so you have got two goats representing like the good and the evil. And what then happens is that the Priest sacrifices the God goat. OK? In the Holy of Holies. So the goat is sacrificed up in the Holy of Holies and the blood in then sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, and this represents the cleansing of creation. Because the Holy of Holies represents God in his essence as it were. Beyond space and time, beyond creation. So there is the sacrifice of the goat there which represents the cleansing, purifying. OK.

Then what happens is that the High Priest comes out from the Holy of Holies and here you have got the curtain, this is where the curtain is, OK, the curtain that gets torn in two. That one. And what happens when the High Priest comes out he gets wrapped in fabric, the same material as the curtain, and this represents God engaging with the creation. So it is not God in pure white linen, pure purity, it’s God engaging with creation. OK, and he then continues to sprinkle the blood of the goat around this area and around the people gathered, OK? And that is the cleansing of their sins, so you have had the cleansing of creation as it were and expanded outwards the one representing God is coming out into creation and acting to cleanse the people OK? And what then happens – and that represents the healing of the world, the wiping out of their sins – and what then happens is that the High Priest and the other Priest lay hands on the scapegoat, which is the second goat and they drive that goat out. Normally you know, there is a crowd to drive the goat off a cliff and kill it, but that represents the sins being driven out from the community and at the end of this ritual, OK, the people are reconciled to God. So that’s the dynamic.

Now did that make sense just going through those steps?

Because there is one key thing going on here, which is why the Jewish understanding is different to the pagan one, and it is obvious what the difference is. The difference is in the pagan understanding the motion is from sinners towards God, that the sinners do something to appease the god. In the Jewish understanding it is God who is active, who moves towards the sinners. So it is God who is taking the responsibility to overcome sin and estrangement in the world. That’s the fundamental difference. Does that make sense?

Is that a surprise to people? People were aware of this… Now this is quite crucial. For if you are going for example in the letter to the Hebrews, this is what Jesus does, I’ll come on and explain that a bit more in a second. So just to summarise what’s going on. This is the High Priest, first temple period, as I say, the High Priest goes through this journey, this ritual enactment of God’s activity in reaching out towards creation, he goes into the Holy of Holies, represents God, and it is God’s initiative that is being carried out OK, that God is benign. God’s not angry. God is the one actively reaching out in love. You know, there is a profound consistency between this and Christianity, if it isn’t obvious. OK. Now as I say this is where our understanding of Christ’s sacrifice begins, OK? Because this is what Jesus is doing, Jesus is the great High Priest who is acting in the stead of God, obviously the doctrine is developed, but He is the one who is acting as the great High Priest, he is doing this work and He’s not sacrificing an ox at the beginning of the process, He is himself the sacrifice. Make sense?

But the question is, there is this notion of sacrifice going on, you still have got a dynamic whereby there is an angry deity present. But the angry deity is not Yahweh. So who is the angry deity? We are. God is acting to try and overcome our wrath. To reveal it to us and to set us free from it. We are the ones being revealed as the pagans who require sacrifice in order to maintain our sense of identity and social processes, we are the angry ones, we are the ones being revealed as that through what happens to Christ, and the revealing of that and in particular the resurrection, which I’ll come on to in a second, is what sets us free from being trapped in this process. Jesus doesn’t refer to the Old Testament directly very often, but there is one bit from Hosea which he quotes twice, and he says, “Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy not sacrifice.” God is consistent in acting from love, OK? This is the really core fundamental point.

So if God is not wrathful in the sense of this pagan angry deity, “Oh no, you’ve called your daughter beautiful therefore I’m upset.” – you know, that is totally not what the Christian God is about! – what is this language of wrath referring to, because it is certainly saturated in the Old Testament and it is not vanished, it is not absent from the New Testament? Paul for example beginning of Romans talking about wrath, there is a theme in Paul’s writings, but there tends in Paul to be “wrath” rather than “the wrath of God“. I think something like twenty to twenty five references to wrath, only two or three are to the wrath of God. Mostly he refers to wrath as the concept.

So what is it? Two senses. One natural and one human. And that’s really what I’m going to try and describe for you. It is not a divine attribute in the sense that it is not something that is within God’s nature. It’s something that we can experience but it is not intrinsic to who God is, you know, the verse from I think it’s 1 John, “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.” God is love and in Him there is no wrath. OK, but this concept this language of wrath describes something essential, very important. So the natural, what’s the natural side. Well, we understand that the world is made through Christ, that the world is consistent, it can be understood, and that’s what we call logos. Of course this fits in very neatly with a lot of Greek philosophy, that the world is made consistently. And that is one of the foundations for the development of science in the Western world, that because you can trust the maker of the world to be consistent, therefore you can actually apply scientific method to discern truth. You know, scientific method depends upon some prior theological assumptions. If you’ve got a situation where you have got a panoply of gods intervening willy nilly there’s nothing reliable on which you can base your science, but at any point something really arbitrary can happen. OK?

So this understanding of natural theology, that the world is consistent and bound by laws that we can see and understand, OK, and of course one of the claims made, particularly in medieval theology is that there were two ways of understanding God, you had got the book of nature and the written word, the Bible. And that you can discern the nature of God from looking at His creation; contemplating the creation can lead you to affirm the Creator. It can’t lead you to affirm Christ, that’s the realm of Revelation, but you can through natural reason come to the conclusion that God exists. OK, and it all flows from this.

But if the world is consistent and bound by laws that means that the transgression of those laws has particular consequences. If you put your hand in the fire you will get burnt. OK, it’s simple. But that I think is one of the main ways in which the language of wrath can be applied. Wrath is when we experience the consequences of our actions, and grace is when we escape the consequences of our actions. I’ve talked before about karma, because this is if you like the equivalent concept to natural law, that the world is consistent, that every action has a necessary consequence and it cannot be escaped. That if you do something wrong that wrong will return to you, if you do something good, that good will return to you. OK. Now grace doesn’t fit into that system, but there is as I say, an analogous understanding to karma in the doctrine of natural law. That the world is consistent and has certain effects, and therefore if we break the bounds, if we break the laws, then we will suffer the consequences, unless grace intervenes. So this is a sense, I think one of the most important senses in which we can talk about wrath, even the wrath of God, that when we breach the laws – remember the thing about the Ten Commandments, it is not the Ten Commandments, often we miss out the first sentence, which is “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt.” Again this is this benign God acting for our welfare. And then gives these commandments which set out how to live, and if we observe them we flourish, when we break them we suffer, that’s all part of this process. Make sense?

Another sense in which wrath can be described, coming back to the scapegoat. Human society, if it isn’t rooted in God, in right worship, right relationships with self and neighbour, it will fixate on to something else. Something else will be used to form a society around and that idol, for want of a better word, and that idol will need to be sacrificed to in the pagan sense in order to keep the society together. Perfect example, I know it’s a cliché but 1930’s Germany and the scapegoating of the Jews. A society which is under tremendous stress for all sorts of reasons, seeks to shore up its unity by picking on a scapegoat and therefore you get a unity amongst the majority through denying and expelling a minority. OK? And that this is if you like a fact of human nature. If we are not centred on God then we tend to be centred on something else and that something else becomes an idol.

A little hint, [picture of muslim woman in a veil] some of the ways that our society is trying to shore up its identity because we are also very weak. But essentially it is pointing out the truth about our own unredeemed natures. That we are prone to violence and anger and slaughter and sacrifice, and this is what we need to be redeemed from, and of course what that means in terms of the course of human history is war. And I think this is the second way in which the language of wrath can be used. That wrath is first and foremost about if you break the natural order you will suffer, but it also something about the nature of who we are as a human society when we are fallen, that if we don’t focus our human society on God, on the Living God, we will end up having this process of scapegoating and sacrifice repeating itself, and therefore wrath, in this sense, is something human but it is also very, very real. Can you see the two senses of wrath which I want to hang on to?

Now it comes back as always to Christ, remember that He said He was going to abolish the temple and create it again in three days. The empty tomb now corresponds to the Holy of Holies, you know, God has come out from the place of sacrifice and we are sprinkled clean, instead of the goat, goat’s blood, we have Christ’s blood, which makes us clean and reconciled with God. OK. And there is a feature, the two angels at the empty tomb, correspond to the two cherubim on the Holy of Holies, you know, once you are sort of tuned into this there are all sorts of references being picked up in the New Testament accounts. Of Christ the High Priest who has gone and been sacrificed and who comes out and cleanses us, the letter to the Hebrews is the main one, but there are all sorts of references elsewhere. And this isn’t separable from either the crucifixion or the Last Supper, the three things together, hang together and can’t be separated out. “This is my blood of the New Covenant shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” This is the sacrifice which we are called to share in. OK. We are made clean by the blood of the Lamb.

And the core of it is, it is about aligning ourselves with Christ. Christ is through whom the world was created and in so far as we are aligned with Christ we thereby keep the law. You know, standard Christian sense, standard Christian teaching, but just you know, articulating, linking it in with the process of sacrifice, that when we do this we are aligning with who Christ is and therefore if you like we are keeping the law. And the Eucharist begins, think of our liturgy, the Eucharist itself begins with the exchange of peace. And that is very important because that is what stops the scapegoating, the human wrath, that you are at peace with your neighbour. You are not at peace because you are both righteous, you know, we come to it as sinners, as people in need of forgiveness, we can’t get that forgiveness by our own merit, we are relying on that benign God coming out to us, and therefore because we don’t have any righteousness of our own, we are not expelling anyone else who is unrighteous, because we are none of us righteous. It is a core element of sharing the bread and wine, that we don’t expel beforehand. This is what Jesus is accomplishing. This new Covenant. It begins with the exchange of peace and so we receive the forgiveness and we give thanks for it. That’s what the word Eucharist means. It is giving thanks.

But can you see how this is picking up the themes of what went on in the first temple and is focused on a benign God acting to redeem us, to set us free, can you see the link? Good, good. Right. Swifter than I was expecting!

OK, the wrath that is to come. Jeremiah who I quote a lot and what I have been talking about so far, that we are in a situation where we have been profoundly transgressing the natural laws. And one of the sessions, for example on the green Bible, I will be picking out all the elements in scripture which indicate the natural laws that we have been breaking, and there’s a lot. And because we have been transgressing those laws, breaching the limits, then wrath is going to descend upon us, unless grace intervenes, unless we change our ways radically. But if things carry on the way they are, there will be wrath descending upon us because of these breaches of the natural law. So that’s one aspect of talking about the coming wrath, and the second is, as I say, the human consequences, that this is going to put societies around the world, it already is putting societies around the world under tremendous strain.

Rwanda for example, they have done an analysis of where the slaughter was worse and it was where the population was most dense. They weren’t able to feed themselves and they slaughtered each other and it was actually less to do with Hutus and Tutsis than to do with where the population was most dense. These things have begun. This is wrath. “Come let us return to the Lord for He has torn us and He will heal us.” Another one of my favourite verses. That there is never anything inevitable, that hope is one of the most important Christian virtues to keep us going, and it is a decision, it is not a feeling, hope is always a decision to be made. And we return to the Lord because the Lord is merciful. The Lord is forgiving and compassionate and doesn’t want the death of a sinner but that the sinner should turn from his ways and live. You know this is always what God is calling us towards.

God is not for our punishment, God is merciful. The wonderful passage is Micah, “What shall I do O Lord? He has shown you, O man, what is good, you must do justice and love kindness and walk humbly before your God.” We know what the answers are, the answers haven’t changed, it is that we need to turn back to it. And in particular our imaginations, in particular how we understand God, who we understand God to be, whether we picture in our hearts and minds God as someone angry, seeking to punish and chastise, or whether we see God as someone loving and merciful, seeking to bring us into life. I think this is actually where the real fundamental work needs to be done. Our imaginations need to be renewed in the light of Christ, who He was and how He taught. And that requires us to explore the question of apocalypse, which is next week’s session. Exploring what the language of apocalypse is doing, how Jesus uses it and therefore how we are to use it, because the language is like applying the language of the wrath of God, and therefore how we understand that is quite important. And that was quicker than I was expecting, so a shorter session this morning! Questions, thoughts. Interesting?

What year was Solomon’s temple? About 980 BC, that’s off the top of my head, it might be out by a bit, but that sort of time.

Was it the same as the Ancient Egyptians? Exactly the same? Could well be. I don’t know much about Egyptians, what I find ironic though is that the chapel at my school was also built on that model. It didn’t have a Holy of Holies but it had that sort of structure and shape.

It is quite difficult to explain it now but there is a sort of esoteric significance in the layout of the Holy of Holies which actually corresponds to the temple of the body, the human body... Right. The Holy of Holies is actually the head and the eastern turns of the chapel where the spiritual light comes in and so the curtain actually represents the division between the head area and the rest of the body. I’m not sure that would – in the Old Testament the heart actually does the job which the mind is considered elsewhere, the heart is the seat of judgement, and therefore drives the character, yes but it’s always the heart or sometimes it’s the liver or the guts in the Old Testament which are the seat of decision making. So that’s intriguing but I’m not sure it would actually apply. The Orthodox churches tend to have the screen here which I find problematic. I like lots and lots of things about Orthodox worship but I find the screen which separates off the people from the sacrament doesn’t quite fit with how I understand it.

Can you draw a distinction between personal karma and society’s or world karma? Can grace be selective?

I’m not sure, although I’m using karma as an analogy, I wouldn’t think in terms of karma most of the time, it’s just a useful word for people to hand their understand on. In terms of natural law I’m not sure I would make a distinction between individual and social. Grace, you could understand grace as basically God giving extra lives within the system. That if you like the odds are stacked in favour of mercy, but how it happens to individuals I think that is unfathomable.

Going on from what was said about the Greek Orthodox church and that screen, when Reg and I were in the Greek Orthodox church ourselves, I was not allowed to go behind that screen to see what there was, but Reg was because he was a man. And then I had to admit that when I was in Cyprus I went and visited some of the churches there, out of curiosity I did go into the Holy of Holies and it is absolutely wonderful.

As I understand it in the actual Solomon’s Temple, the real Holy of Holies, there is very little there, in the second temple not the first one, because in the first one the Ark was there, but in the revised temple after the exile when they built it again the Holy of Holies was actually empty, and I think there is something quite useful about that as an image.

I’m a little bit puzzled, I think you mentioned the wrath which is manifested in human life is of human origin.

In terms of human hatred, yes.

So there is only one source of wrath which is human because there is no wrath in God, which baffles me, but what I’m puzzled at is if we talk about the wrath to come, I ask the question, whence?

Well either from natural processes or from human processes but not from divine processes.

So there are in fact two sources of wrath, one of them is a natural consequence and the other is human, in which case that would come together?

Yes oh yes.

They are not God?

I think the heart of it is I think this is really Julian’s insight, that God isn’t concerned about punishment. I think the understanding of God in Christian faith is not pagan, it’s not that we have to appease someone who is angry otherwise we will be punished, that God is supremely love. I mean that Julian of Norwich talks about courteous love. That God is loving to the exclusion of all other attributes. Now this doesn’t mean that what is described as the wrath of God or vengeance or punishment in the Old Testament isn’t describing something real. So it is saying that it has got more to do with how in particular the Old Testament peoples understood it than it has to do with the nature of God as revealed in Christ himself. A wrathful, punishing God wouldn’t get involved in this process of allowing himself to be sacrificed in order to heal.

Why do you think then, that God created wrath in man?

Well is it a creation? I’m not sure it is.

I just wondered.

To describe where it comes from I want to talk about the language of the fall. That before the fall there was no wrath and after the fall there is wrath, because we are estranged from our natural relationship with the environment, we’re kicked out of Eden, and we’ve got angels barring our way back, and our relationships with each other have broken down. And what overcomes that is Christ. So therefore wrath is a result of our sin. Our sin provoked wrath, but it’s not wrath in the sense that ‘you have broken my rules I’m going to punish you’, it’s wrath in the sense ‘this is the nature of the creation we are in’. It’s not that God is angry. God doesn’t take offence. Put it like that. God is always acting with love.

Which would tend to give the impression that at the judgement all will be saved, whereas in fact when we stand before God on judgement day we shall be condemned by our own wrath, because we have disobeyed God’s laws.

Well, God sent Jesus into the world not to condemn the world but to save it and I’m certain that God’s intention is for all to be saved, but I also believe that some people can turn him down. I don’t accept universal salvation as it’s called. So I think there is a hell, to put it in a different way. But I think hell is self-imposed. I think God’s desire is for nobody to be in hell, but some people for whatever reasons, put themselves there. And that applies in this life as much as at the judgement.

A Monday morning gloom post

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The title says it all… (click on ‘full post’ to read)

Good article on Mexico’s incipient crisis over at Energy Bulletin here (something I’ve been banging on about for a while): “More than a third of Mexico’s government revenues comes from the state petroleum monopoly, Petróleos Mexicanos, often referred to as PEMEX. Fast declining output from the company’s giant Cantarell field is frustrating efforts to maintain overall production. Some believe that Mexico may now have passed peak oil. If this is so, it is difficult to see how Mexico will be able to maintain its current level of public services or continue on a path of unevenly distributed, but moderately rising prosperity.”

But while we’re at it, let’s also mention the meltdown taking place in Pakistan. Al Qaeda to get nukes? Hmmm.

So what else can we get gloomy about? I don’t tend to take much interest in the prospects of avian flu, but the plight of the bees is concerning. I read the other day that honey is one of the few foods that doesn’t go off – perhaps it’s worth stocking up on.

Thing is, if the bees really are having problems, then it’s not just honey that will be in short supply – it’s everything else that the bees provide further up the food chain – and seeing as how Matt Simmons was saying we’re facing fuel shortages in the summer, perhaps this is the year when TSHTF.

Or, I’m as far off as I’ve been before (still persuaded of that scenario, but my timing is off by at least a few years).

Anyhow, I’m having a fairly relaxed Monday so far – you can probably tell – first for weeks. We’ve even had the parish magazine delivered. Miracles never cease.

I promise you peak oil

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This Show of Hands song expresses my view on Peak Oil rather well. I’m listening to it a lot at the moment.
(click on ‘full post’ to read)

I promise you warm nights
I promise you long days
I promise you summer twilight
I promise you soft waves

But first we must bear
The winter

I promise you blue skies
I promise you the rolling moors
I promise you barefoot sunrise
I promise you open doors

But first we must bear
The winter

The rain and the gales
And the frost and the hail
The hard biting nails
Of winter

I promise you light returning
I promise you hope reborn
I promise you gentle mornings
I promise you new dawn

But first we must bear
The winter

I promise you
things will change
maybe not today but one day
things will change
for the better
but it might be a long winter
maybe
but one day I promise you, I promise you
it can’t last forever

ah but first
we must bear
the winter

UPDATE: just found this version on youtube; I think it’s using the album version, but I only have it on their live album

US General Accounting Office report on Peak Oil

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“The U.S. government is in need of a strategy to minimize potentially dire economic consequences after worldwide oil production peaks and begins to decline, the investigative arm of Congress said Thursday.”

I have a feeling that Peak Oil has just shifted into the mainstream. Now that the phenomenon of peaking is accepted at the highest levels, attention will turn to when – and to all the other random factors which will accelerate the crisis. This is an interview with Matt Simmons, which is worth watching. Interesting figure that he quotes with regard to Cantarell (Mexico), where the decline is accelerating. What are the odds on a Chavez type figure emerging there? And how many different ways can the US find to say ‘we’re @&%$ed’?

LUBH 4 – Idolatry and Science (transcript)

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A repost from 14th March 2007, as I think it’s of general interest (and linked to Blink)

Transcript of my fourth lecture, explaining what idolatry is, and how our society is damaged by the idolatry of science. About 8000 words.

Good morning and welcome back. I have been looking forward to doing this session, principally because the subject matter of this session is one of the first things I ever learnt when I started the academic study of theology, and I think it remains possibly the single most important insight which academic theology can give, and it’s not because academic theology has created something new it’s just that academic theology gave me a way of understanding something which is actually profoundly ancient and certainly deeply scriptural. But firstly a bit of a recap. Jeremiah as our guiding partner really because I see this great calamity coming down upon western society and the last two sessions were really just describing why I believe there is this calamity, this crisis coming upon us. Firstly, looking at oil and the energy crisis and secondly looking at the deeper roots why things like energy and pollution and so forth are becoming a problem in terms of the exponential growth of population.

So really those were setting the scene for why I think we can perceive a crisis or a calamity coming. What I want to do in the next three sessions is really explore some concepts which will give us the tools with which to understand what is going on from a theological, from a Christian point of view. And it begins by thinking of the first and the greatest commandment. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” Matthew 22, I’m sure you all recognise it. Or the Shema “Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart” and so on. It’s from Deuteronomy 6. Or the first of the commandments, “And God spoke all these words, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Eygpt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other Gods before me, you shall not make for yourself an idol, a graven image”, and so on.

What does this mean? This first and greatest commandment. Not many people these days worship golden calves formed from their melted-down jewellery, which is the Old Testament’s classic image of what idolatry is. But does this mean there is no idol worship going on? Surely not. So what is idolatry in the present day sense? If it isn’t literally bowing down to small idols kept in your living room (and maybe that does go on, maybe they have a phosphorescent glow…) but idolatry is something subtler than it used to be and I really what I want to do is spell out how it’s formed. Now I want to begin by talking about someone named Phineas Gage. Anyone heard of Phineas Gage? Good. He was a railroad foreman in Vermont in the middle of the nineteenth century, breaking down rocks with explosives. So he used to drill and put what’s called a tamping iron through the rock which was grounded with gunpowder, and he had an accident. And this tamping iron went through his head, and passed throught the other side and landed about thirty metres away. OK? Now he survived, in fact he didn’t really lose consciousness. His skull is kept, I think it’s in Harvard’s Medical Museum. But there is all sorts of research being done on him, had this tragic accident and it led to a profound personality change. He had been as the railway foreman very competent and very sober-minded, and he became someone reckless, someone who had no powers of patience or persistence, someone who was foul-mouthed and abusive, someone who simply couldn’t track the path of their life as it had been previously set out.

He did spend some time as one of P T Barham’s “freaks”. He used to be exhibited holding the tamping iron that had passed through his head. Basically his life disintegrated. He lived for another fifteen years or so after the accident but he could never hold down a consistent job, and the distinct personality change. Well one thing to draw from that is the way in which brain damage changes the personality and in particular in what seemed to have gone wrong with him is that his judgement was impaired. He could no longer pursue a consistent course, but his reasoning ability was untouched. You could have a conversation with him. OK? Now I’m drawing from a book called “Decartes’ Error” by an American neuroscientist called Antonio Damasio who discusses him, and then he goes on to talk about a man he calls Elliot, who he calls a modern Phineas Gage. Now Elliot had a fall, had a brain tumour and the brain tumour was operated on and it was operated on successfully. Elliot was a man in his mid-thirties, reasonably successful businessman, and after the operation, everything seemed to be OK, and he went back to his place of work and he found he couldn’t actually sustain the job. When he would look, for example, at his client’s papers, he could read and so forth but he would just get distracted. He would just read something which would grasp his interest at that present moment and just pursue it. All sense of priorities had gone. And so after a week or two of this he was sacked from that job, tried a few other jobs, lost all those jobs, got divorced and basically his life began to disintegrate, until he was institutionalised, which is where Antonio Damasio came across him.

And the interesting thing which Damasio is drawing out is the way in which his brain damage was corresponding to the brain damage which Phineas Gage had suffered, hence he is the modern Phineas Gauge. In other words there is something about emotions and judgement which impaired their human lives but left their reasoning ability intact. They could still read, they could still converse, but something had been taken away. What Damasio develops is this sense that decision is making really a crucial aspect of our humanity, of what forming a human life is. And this rests upon an emotional response, it’s not a rational response, it’s not like something that is produced from logic and investigation, but it is an emotional reaction. And he draws the analogy with playing a game of chess. When you have got someone playing chess, you have got a vast number of potential moves, especially when you start going two, three, four moves in. But what a Grand Master for example, or what someone who is very good at chess will do, is actually exclude the vast majority of those options, because they can see, hang on, a few moves down if I do that I will lose my queen. And that is given a great value.

I won’t go into all the details, but what Damasio does in neuroscience is describe a way in which the emotional reaction governs the judgement. OK, and he uses this example of chess that the options presented are winnowed down, are guided, if you like, by the emotional basis of judgement, and that all judgement is ultimately this physical response, it’s a bodily, it’s a carnal process and ultimately it’s like what might be called the reaction of disgust, it’s “Yuk, that’s bad!” So it’s very much at heart a qualitative reaction. This is good, this is bad. And the reason informs this process but it rests, the bedrock of the judgement process is emotion.

So what he argues is that emotions, our emotional reactions are in themselves, cognitive. In other words, they form part of our mind, our mental understanding OK? This is the bedrock of it, and our emotions are ways in which we evaluate information. Compare for example, your wife is a teacher, or your husband, doesn’t matter, or your wife/husband is an adulterer. The reaction to those items of information is significantly different. And that just brings out if you like the way in which our emotional engagement with information is different. Does that make sense?

So you have different types of knowledge, different forms of knowledge, OK and some are more value laden than others, in other words, some are more important. OK? So in terms of deciding what is most important in life, our reasoning can’t give us answers on its own. We have to involve our whole bodies, our whole souls, heart and soul. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul.

Now two analogies, just to really bring out something here. First is imagine a map, imagine our understanding of the world, we formed a picture of the world and you can think of it like a map, this is our map of the world, and this is the map of the world of someone who really likes castles. OK? So imagine a normal map and now imagine that someone who really, really interested in castles is forming their map and I was trying very hard with Photo Shop to make this even better, but this is the best I could do. Some areas are blocked up because here is a really good castle. OK? And here’s a really good castle in Colchester. Here’s a really good castle. So that is if you like a clear or true map, and this is a map which has got some areas blown up in importance. So what I’m trying to get at here is that an understanding of the world with some bits that are emphasised beyond how they actually truly are. Does that make sense? OK. I’m sure you can think of examples, but this is just one example off the top of my head.

A second example, a spider’s web. Think of the spider’s web as the map of an area. This is a normal spider’s web, don’t know if any of you have read this series of experiments where they fed spiders certain substances and they saw what difference it made to the web they spun. OK. So you can start to guess which is which. But my point is here is a pretty good spider’s web, it’s pretty uniform, pretty regular and it covers pretty much all the area. So that’s if you like, that’s a true spider’s web. It’s a sensible, realistic, non-idolatrous spider’s web. And these ones all have various things wrong with them. So this one’s missing various parts, this one again is a bit erratic, and this one is just all over the place. Can you guess what the substances were? This one is LSD, which is in some ways more perfect but there are some things wrong, this one is Marijuana, Hash. Do you know what this one is? Caffeine. The thing that really makes your spider webs wrong is caffeine. Quite interesting.

Anyhow, to continue. You can think of our reasoning ability our logical processing ability as being a bit like a blanket spread over our emotional understandings. So if the emotional understandings change, OK then the reasons follow it. The shape of the reason will follow it. It’s not what our emotions are built upon, our logical reason. Our emotional life is the bedrock and our reason simply flows over the top. There is a wonderful book by Martha Nussbaum, an American philosopher, I think she’s at Chicago, called “Upheavals of Thought,” where she goes through great classical literature describing how this happens, but it’s about this thick. So I won’t try and summarise all of it, but this is something which is very much a current interest of contemporary philosophy and neuroscience. But it’s not a new insight.

This is Hume – “Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” So reason, the point I’m trying to make is that reason is a tool, our logic, our reason is a tool. And it rests upon our emotional makeup and our emotional makeup is very much concerned with values, with what is perceived as important. Some things are perceived as more important than others, that’s you know, we emotionally react differently. Hence that example, your wife is a teacher, your wife is an adulterer. Some things are more emotionally weighted.

So what is idolatry? Idolatry is making something more important than it really is. Simple as that. Make sense? Now this phrase making the penultimate, ultimate – mid twentieth century theologian called Paul Tillich, that was the academic insight which I grasped when I was an atheist, I am sure it was one of the major reasons why I moved away from atheism because once you realise what idolatry is, then of course you don’t want to make things more important than they really are and logically, once you have accepted that you can’t get away from the reality of God. That’s in a sense, that’s the whole theme of this talk this morning. We’ll come back to that. But that’s a phrase – making something which is penultimate, ultimate, making something which is important but not the most important, into the most important thing. It’s getting our priorities wrong. Simple as that, that’s what idolatry is. It’s getting our priorities wrong.

God is the single most important thing in life and if God is at the centre everything else falls into its proper place. You can think of that as a definition of God in so far as it’s possible to define God, that’s a useful definition. God is the most important thing, and as long as we keep God central, everything else will then fall into it’s proper place. This is not an insight restricted to Christianity, or even restricted to Judaism and Islam as well. The beginning of the Tao De Ching “The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal tao.” If it can be named or described it is not the ultimate. Anything which we can specify in words, anything that we can point to is not the ultimate. We cannot capture God. God always eludes us. Our brains can’t capture Him.

In the middle of one session before I think I said, “God is never the member of a class.” We can think of a class of objects, a class of things which are green, a class of things which are wonderful, a class of things which exist. God is never the member of a class. So in strict terms, God does not exist. Remember me saying this in one of my other sessions, simply because we have got a very good idea of what it means to exist? They are objects within the universe. God is not an object within the universe. God’s existence underlies everything else, but to say strictly philosophically speaking that God exists is to go beyond what we can actually say. Very important, God is always beyond us.

One of the spin-offs from this, this is my phrasing, only the holy can see truly, it’s only the saints who can see the world clearly. In so far as our hearts are set on God then we see the truth. If we are not, if we don’t have our hearts set on God and God alone, our vision of the world is more or less distorted. Now I had thought that was an original way of saying things, but of course it’s not. It’s just this, it’s not original to me at all: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” That’s what I’m describing. Make sense? With me so far?

Alright a hierarchy of values, of different ways of not worshipping God. Monolatry, in other words you worship one thing, and that one thing then becomes the most important thing in your world. And everything else has to shift around it. You might be an absolutely dedicated football fan and you have to go to every match that your team plays, and everything else in your life has to shuffle around it. OK. Once you have grasped what this is you can see it everywhere. It’s quite disturbing. Anyway the golden calf is a wonderful image for that. But of course for most people, it’s not as clear and you have polytheism, many gods. And it might be – Oh, my family has this much importance, my work has this much importance, my friendships have this much importance, my pleasures in life, you know, going for a drink in the pub, this has this much importance and there is nothing beyond them. And this is where I think most people actually live. You know, navigating between different competing interests, and they muddle along, but there is nothing which integrates them. There is nothing which puts them all in their proper place and actually allows them to flourish fully.

Of course, another option is simply chaos. Which is the position in fact that Phineas Gage and Elliot end up in. They are driven by the momentary impulse. It’s almost it becomes a biological thing. Oh, catch a scent, follow the scent. You know imagine a dog walking on the beach (an example close to my heart). The dog will just pursue, just run after whatever the impulse is. Again, there are many people who function like that. Everyone worships something. It’s impossible to be human and not have a sense of some things being more important that others, everyone builds their life around something. Now it could be that they build their life around various things, like polytheism, but everyone has a sense of what’s important. So everyone actually has a religion. And some religions are not as helpful, as holy as others. To quote Bob Dylan, “You’ve gotta serve somebody.”

Forms of idolatry. You can often see it in terms of an addiction, you know clear example is an heroin addict, that’s Renton from Trainspotting from any of you who have seen the film, he’s an heroin addict and you can just see him going through all sorts of very gruelling experiences. But think of the process of being addicted to something where the life, the wider richness of life gets drained out and all that the junkie can do is think about their next fix. And all they gear their life around is getting the money to get their next fix, their next high. That is a very good image of what idolatry is. OK?

But it doesn’t have to be a physical addiction, it can be mental addictions as well. And the thing about idols is that idols give what they promise. If an idol is worshipped, the idol will grant the worshippers’ requests. Heroin, to take that example, gives a tremendous high. It gives what it promises. But it takes away life in exchange. This is what an idol is. Mammon, the god of money or wealth, which is an idol which Jesus talks about which is still very prevalent in our society. If you worship mammon, if you structure your life around mammon, you will gain wealth. That is if you like, a spiritual, practical law, if you worship wealth, you will become wealthy, but you will lose your life in the process. Your life will be drained away.

Quote from Jeremiah, “Everyone is senseless and without knowledge, every goldsmith is shamed by his idols, his images are flawed they have no breath in them, they are worthless, the objects of mockery and when their judgement comes, they will perish. But he who is the portion of Jacob is not like these, for he is the maker of all things including Israel the tribe of his inheritance, the Lord Almighty is His name.” In other words, if you worship the living God you gain life. Life in all its fullness. This is what Jesus came to grant us. To reveal the living God and to give us that life, life in abundance, which is His intention for us. But if you worship any other God, you will get what those gods can provide, and they will take your life in exchange, they will destroy life. It is only the living God who grants life, that is why the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Does this make sense? This is how it all does link in.

OK, let’s move on to the second part. The idolatry of science. There are two ways in which science can become a idol. One is to say that scientific truth is the only truth, and that’s called positivism, it really took its codified shape in the nineteenth century but it’s implicit in much that goes on for a hundred or two hundred years before then. OK. To say that scientific truth is the only truth. So only things which can be established by reason or by imperical proof and investigation, those are the, that’s the only valid knowledge. Anything else gets kicked out. Hume, who in other ways is quite sensible, says, “Look upon your bookshelf, see what comes from reason, so maths and logic, see what comes from emperical investigation, and that’s science, everything else on your bookshelf should be kicked off because it’s worthless.” That’s the attitude of positivism. So that’s one way in which science can be made into an idol.

And the other way is to say that scientific truth is the most important truth, to say that what we gain from these processes of scientific investigation, this is more important that anything else. OK? Now this is actually the idolatry of fundamentalism, and many of you will have been here when I did my session of fundamentalism, and it springs from the scientific revolution, because it interprets the Bible through a scientific lens. You know, you put the Bible through a meat grinder because what you want out the end is a sausage. You want particular forms of knowledge from the Bible and therefore you manipulate the Bible in order to extract scientific truth and that’s what fundamentalism is, that’s how it functions. OK. But as I say I did a whole session on that so maybe I’ll come back to that in the questions.

However, what I think is much more crucial to life, my favourite philosopher, “We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered the problems of life remain completely untouched.” All that is most important in our lives is separate from scientific investigation. Go back to that contrast I drew, your wife is a teacher, your wife is an adulterer. What makes a difference between those two statements is not a matter of science, all the things that we are emotionally engaged with are not science as such. I’ll go on to explore this.

But this is a consistent theme in literature and there are lots and lots of examples, but just, almost at a time when the scientific revolution was taking off, the legend/mythology of Faust sells his soul to Mephistopheles, sells his soul to the devil, in order to gain some scientific knowledge, or the the legend of Frankenstein, you know, any film or story when you have got this white-coated mad scientist, “Aha, I’m going to discern the truth of the world”, and terrible consequences follow. And of course, the Matrix, which is one of the ones I’m using. But there are myriad examples where someone has given over all their life to science the pursuit of knowledge and terrible things follow. They are all describing consequences of an idolatry, where science is given more value, more importance than it deserves, and life becomes damaged or destroyed in consequence. I’m sure you’re all familiar with this, it’s such a trope, such a cliché almost. As I say the Matrix is quite a good one.

Now having had a real go at science, there is something quite important to bear in mind, that’s something which I call the holiness of science, didn’t have this in my notes, another good quote from my favourite author – “People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians etc, to give them pleasure, the idea that these have something to teach them, that doesn’t occur to them.” In other words, scientific knowledge and awareness, compared to the knowledge and awareness that can come through understanding poetry or art or great fables and stories, one form of knowing is vastly more important than the other. And in fact narrative is the most important. I think narrative, our way of telling stories to each other, is actually the means by which our emotional bedrock is most formed. This is why the Old Testament says to the people of Israel you must tell your children this story about the Lord leading you out of Eygpt, why Passover, why is this night greater than any other night, and they tell the story. And this is why we have the Bible as it is, because the Bible is a story. It’s not because we can extract scientific facts from it, it is because this story governs our story. That is why the Bible is inspired. This is the story of God’s actions in the world, within which we fit. OK, so that is why the Bible is if you like, the supreme text.

Now, holiness of science. Because science does have something very important to it and I want to just spin this out because it is really quite crucial. It rests upon setting the emotional desires of the investigator to one side. That Greek word is apatheia. Think of the word apathy, which is what that word has now come down to us as. It means totally uncommitted. Not involved. But apatheia strictly speaking means an emotional distancing. OK. And this happens because the scientist is pursuing the truth about the world. And what they are after, they are trying to attend to what is in the world, not what they want the world to be like, so they are putting their desires to one side, they are getting distance from their desires in order to pursue the truth.

Now this is a spiritual discipline. It is actually one of the core spiritual disciplines about keeping our own emotions and desires in check. Now that is a Buddhist phrase. You know, if you like, the spiritual techniques of Buddhism, make this point much clearer most of the time, than Christian teachings. Because the Buddhists are concerned with the elimination of desire, they see desire as the root of all suffering. In Christian teaching it’s something slightly different, but the Buddhist’s aim is to become completely unattached to the world and when you gain this state of being unattached to the world, you see the world clearly. Can you see how there is this parallel going on? This insight is not something restricted to Christianity. Just by way of a side track, Christianity is about the formation of desire, it is not about the elimination of desire. I’ll come back to that at the end. And so science in order to be practised is a discipline, it is a training. You have to be trained in the attitudes of science. In order to become a scientist you have to be trained in how to investigate. I remember my ‘O’ Level Physics and Chemistry. The scientific method was spelt out, this is what you did in order to ensure that your own biases, your own emotional desires were put to one side. There was a particular method, a process in order to investigate things. Science is an analysis, it’s a discipline. But science goes a little bit wrong, this quotation those of you who saw the film “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore’s one on global warming, he quotes this, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” That’s what science is trying to move away from, OK?

But, this is my red or blue pill moment. How many of you have seen “The Matrix”? A handful. So this will probably mean absolutely nothing to the rest of you. Anyhow, basic plot of “The Matrix” is that the heroes are kept within a machine world which is a world of illusion. They have essentially electrodes implanted in their brain which give them the illusion of living in a real world and our hero, Keanu Reeves, Neo, breaks out from this. But in order to break out from it, because he realises that something is wrong, he goes to see Morpheus who is the terrorist, who the authorities are trying to correct and suppress. And he has this conversation with Morpheus, and Morpheus says this, “Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain but you feel it. You have felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you know what I’m talking about?”

We know that there is something profoundly wrong with our world, but we can’t put our finger on it. What’s wrong with our world is that it is profoundly idolatrous, it is not built upon the love of the living God. And our society, the things which our society values and esteems and rewards, these are all idols. None of them in themselves are intrinsically wrong, mammon, for example, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with material wealth. God promises the Israelites the Promised Land which is a land flowing with milk and honey – it’s a vision of material wealth. But what goes wrong it when that is elevated above God. When it is given too much importance. Now society gives everything too much importance, because it has forgotten God, it has turned it’s back on God. Therefore in so far as we live and share in society, we are sharing in a distorted life, and deep down we know that it’s wrong, and do you recognise what I’m describing? Does that make sense. And that’s all this episode of “The Matrix” is describing really.

Now, my phrase the apathistic stance. Remember where I began emotions are cognitive. In other words we learn things about the world through our emotional reactions, and our emotional reactions can teach us. But this process of apatheia, hence the apathistic stance, is a way of learning more about the world, of learning in particular more about the physical and natural world. Because the physical and natural world doesn’t really depend upon our emotional reaction to it. Our emotional reactions do not actually govern the truth. But as with all tools, we need to be taught how to use it. This process of emotionally disengaging from what we are trying to discover in order to discern more truth, you know, learning how to put our own desires to one side, this discipline is a tool, and we need to learn how to use the tool, how to if you like, put it into a broader framework, a broader vision. We are not here to worship the tool. That’s what the idolatry of science is. Positivism is profoundly idolatrous. When it says that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge, they are worshipping the tool. You know it’s a bit like they walk around with a hammer, “Oh, this hammer’s going to save me, this hammer’s going to save me.” That’s what’s going on. When you hear an example like that, it’s obviously ridiculous behaviour.

The use of a tool is power over a tool and the ancient language which talks about how to gain power over a tool is the language of virtue. Virtue simply means power. Virtue – I think it’s Latin rather than Greek. Virtues are what’s been missed, another quote from my favourite philosopher, “what makes a subject hard to understand, if it is something significant and important, it’s not that before you can understand it, you need to be specially trained in abstruse matters. But the contrast between understanding the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things which are most obvious, may become the hardest of all to understand. What has to be overcome is a difficulty having to do with the will, rather than with the intellect.” We need to change our desires, our will. We need to will the love of God.

Now one of the major formative influences on me is this book, called “After Virtue” by Alistair MacIntyre, and he begins with a fable. And the fable goes like this – imagine that there is a great crisis and catastrope. [Funny that] And a hundred years down the line as a result of this catastrope, as a result of hostility to science, all the institutions which have kept science going in our civilisation for the last two or three hundred years, have been destroyed, there has been a jihad if you like against science. OK? But a hundred years down the line people have if you like, people have got over their fit of rage at the scientists and some monks start trying to gather together this understanding of the world which had existed before all the riots and rebellions, and so what happens is they get together fragments. And here is a fragment about “Phlogiston Theory”. (Phlogiston Theory is the precurser to the understanding of oxygen. It was all about how flames use up material, Phlogiston is a scientific theory that got rejected.) And they you have got say Newton’s theories about absolute space and time. You have got Einstein’s theories, but all you have are fragments, OK? And what he says is “Imagine these monks trying to fit these fragments together, but without any overarching sense of how they fit.” You know imagine that you have got a jigsaw puzzle, you’ve lost the box, you’ve only got a third of the pieces, and you are trying to form a picture. That’s what he’s describing.

Now MacIntyre’s argument in this book is that this is exactly what has happened to our understanding of virtues – courage, prudence, temperance, self control, OK? That these were the values governing western civilisation from before the time of the Greeks, all the way through to say about fifteen hundred, sixteen hundred, before science became so dominant. And his argument is that because we have started to worship science as a society, all the forms of knowledge and understanding which are embedded in virtue theory, in other words how virtues are important, has been lost. And we still have this language, this moral language, but because we have lost the overarching vision, we don’t know what to do with the language. And so slowly the language breaks down. We still talk about things being good and bad, we still think it’s good to be courageous, it’s bad to be wicked, but the vision if you like of human life which that language was designed to support and describe, has been lost. And so we are now living in a time after virtue.

A vision to describe this, another quotation from Wittgenstein, “I was walking about in Cambridge and passed a bookshop and in the window were portraits of Russell, Freud and Einstein. A little further on in a music shop I saw portraits of Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin, comparing these portraits, I felt intensely the terrible degeneration that had come over the human spirit in the course of only a hundred years.” And if he went to Cambridge today I am sure he would see books about Paris Hilton. Can you see how our society, our civilisation has in one aspect completely collapsed, the notion of the virtues have been driven out.

Now the most important virtue is phronesis, this is Aristotle, and phronesis is the virtue of judgement. Sometimes translated as prudence, sometimes thought of as practical wisdom. But it is the ability to choose, to choose the wise course of action. To choose what is right. Let’s go back to Phineas Gauge, what was damaged in his brain was his ability to judge. If you like, any capacity he had for phronesis was removed. Same with Elliot this chap who had the brain tumour, any sense of judgement had been removed. That was what was lacking.

Now compare scientia, science, this is the medieval division, the medieval division was scientia, science, understanding of the natural world, reading the book of nature, with sapientia, wisdom, reading the book of God. And prior to the scientific revolution, scientia was not seen as particularly important, sapientia was what gave life. And what’s happened in our society is that’s been flipped over, and if you want, if we have time, we can talk about how and why, because I think there’s a very revealing explanation of why it’s happened and in fact I think the Christian church has a lot to repent of, because it is the Christian church which drove this switch. But we come to that if necessary. But sapientia, wisdom which used to be the aim of contemplation and cultivating an understanding of the world, a fully human life, this has been lost. You could say that we are frenetically anti-phronetic. We have abandoned any notion that judgement is important, and that we can teach judgement, we can teach children for example how to choose between right and wrong, and systematically we have abandoned all the things which used to support the structures of our society.

But sapientia, let’s come back to the first and greatest commandment, the first thing, the most important thing is to love God, love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength; that is the narrow way which leads to life. As I say, only the living God gives life and worshipping the living God allows all the different bits in our life to fit together, it’s like being given – this is your jigsaw, this is the picture of your jigsaw, this is God’s vision for your life and as we look to God’s vision for your life, these are how the bits fit together. If we keep God at the centre, then our lives gain meaning and integrity and purpose.

This is H G Wells, you might recognise the quotation, “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” You wouldn’t normally give a four year old child a set of matches to play with. You wouldn’t give him a gun, you wouldn’t give him a flame thrower. But our society is exactly in that state. We’ve got these tremendously destructive toys and we don’t know what to do with them, because we haven’t been taught, we’ve lost our capacity to choose, we have lost the virtue. We have lost the power of control over our toys, hence H G Wells, the choice.

Now this is a spiritual crisis first and foremost. Our culture has turned away from God in a very profound and often unacknowledged way. And the way forward out of all these problems is by returning to God. Now I’ve talked, I’ve quoted Daoism and Buddhism. The living, the major faith traditions all emphasise the process of discipline, of being trained in ways of knowing, ways of living, ways of understanding, and of course in the book of Acts, Christianity is first described as a way. Christianity is simply the way of Christ, and the job of the church is to teach people how to live in the way. In other words it is to instruct, it is to train people in the Christian virtues. You know what are sometimes called the Fruits of the Spirit – joy and peace and gentleness and self control and temperance and so forth. That’s the job of the church. It hasn’t been all that good at it recently.

Finally “The Matrix”. The story in “The Matrix” is that there is a war between humans and machines, and the humans who are losing the war let off all sorts of atomics in order to block out the sun, because the machines are driven by solar power, so they want lots and lots of clouds to shut down the solar power. But what the machines do instead is breed humans and they take the life energy in order to keep their machines running. That’s the basic premise of the plot. But I think that as an image, as a metaphor for what is going on, in our world today, it’s a very good one. That all our lives are devoted to things that aren’t actually from God and don’t actually give us life. So as an image, as a metaphor describing our world, I think it is tremendously accurate. People are batteries for the system, our lives are being used up in ways that don’t give life, western culture is profoundly idolatrous. God doesn’t allow idolatry to continue forever and the crisis which will break it down is coming.

And that took longer than expected. Questions, thoughts – did that make sense?

“I wonder if you could just describe what the precise significance of red pill or blue pill means?”

OK, Morpheus, once he has explained to Neo and this is Morpheus in the sunglasses. Morpheus explains to Neo that you are aware that there is something wrong, you know the image of the splinter in your mind is driving you mad, OK, and before Neo gets out of the system, Morpheus gives him a choice. Actually, I want to use this for a baptism class, because the ten minute sequence is a wonderful description of baptism, anyway, it begins with this choice. He says to Neo – “Look you have a choice, you can either choose the truth, which is the red pill and then I will teach you how deep the rabbit hole goes”, reference Alice in Wonderland, “you can either choose the truth which will be painful and difficult, and will take you out of this world, or you can take the blue pill, all the blue pill will do is remove the pain of the splinter. You will go back to your life and you can forget about all the things that you feel are wrong. You just go back into the system.” So this is the basic choice. We can either take the blue pill, think “Oh there’s nothing really wrong, just get on with our lives, keep on in the way that we have been doing, ignore what’s going on in the world”, and actually, there’s all sorts of attractions about that, it is much more pleasant, it is easy, you don’t have to struggle. Or you can take the red pill and all the red pill will do is reveal to you the truth. And the truth sets us free.

Of course the whole plot of “The Matrix” is that Neo takes the red pill and he is then taken out of the system and he is born again into a new community, you know there are profound Christian images throughout “The Matrix.” Throughout “The Matrix” trilogy in fact. That’s hence the red or blue pill, we have the choice between pursuing the truth which sets us free and leads to life or ignoring it all and just getting on with our lives – “It’s alright I don’t want to worry about that. It’s somebody else’s problem.” You know, that’s the choice. The broad way or the narrow way, exactly so.

“I sometimes end up by being vaguely depressed by the lectures, Sam, especially when you end up by saying things like the crisis is coming. What do you foresee the crisis is coming?”

Were you here last week?

“No.”

Last week I began saying I want your blood to run colder at the end of this talk because I am going to give you the really depressing stuff to set the scene for all the positive stuff which is to come, and really the thing which I want you to take from this is that if you set your hearts on God, God leads you to the Promised Land. But it takes you away from Eygpt, it takes you through the desert and you know, there was a generation in the desert so that people forgot about Eygpt, they do not still have their hearts turned to the fleshpots where the things were good.

I do foresee a calamity of some sort, the details, who knows, but our present system cannot continue. I think this is if you like, the underlying point I want to make. Our present way of life cannot continue, exponential growth within a finite environment cannot continue. But really what I am doing today is coming at it from a different angle, saying it shouldn’t continue, it’s a terrible, terrible thing. And this is probably the first aspect. Our way of life, the western way of life, like excess consumerism, all the things which are held up to be of value, destroy life. And actually the vision of Christian life, of full humanity, hence the overarching theme “Let us be Human”, is something extremely positive. That there is a way of life shown to us by Christ which allows us to be all that God wants us to be, but in order to get to that Promised Land, we need to see and perceive the truth about the present way of the world, in order to reject it, in order to say this is false, this is idolatrous, this destroys life and I choose life.

Coming back to the thing I’ve quoted before about Deuteronomy, which is where I am going to begin in the next session in a fortnight. “I have set before you this day a choice, choose life that you and your descendants may live.” That is what God says through Moses to the Israelites in the desert. And I think we have to hear those words today. Is that an answer?

“Yes.”

“I’m a little bit confused about the broad and the narrow path. Which is which?”

Right, the narrow path is choosing the truth, choosing God, rather than choosing pleasure and comfort and an easy life and ignoring the truth.

“You can take that either way.”

Really, go on.

“Well, either things are set out for you and you go down with blinkers on if you like, or you have got everything laid out before you to enjoy.”

Ah, I see what you mean. I think that the point about the narrow way is that it is more that it doesn’t involve blinkers. It is a bit like climbing up a mountain. If you keep your eye on the summit you will keep going higher but if you are in the valley and it is comfortable land you have grass to graze on, don’t worry about the top of the mountain. But the flood’s coming.

“Can I share two scriptures please?”

Sure.

“Romans 12 v 32, Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Exactly!

“Philippians 4 v 12b, I am learning the secret of being content in any and every situation whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

Yes, that phrase from Romans especially, the renewing of our minds. That’s an essential part of what being a Christian is, our minds are renewed and therefore we can see the world as it is. You know, all things in the world were created through Christ, so if we set our hearts on Christ, we see the truth and the truth sets us free. You know, it is really quite, it does all make sense, it does all fit together. That might be a good point to end on actually, thank you for that.

Next week I will be looking at wrath – the Wrath of God. Thank you for coming.

Peak Oil and Slavery

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I was away overnight (hence no TBTM today) at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where I had been invited to preach on the theme of ‘Peak Oil and Slavery’ – part of a sequence that the college had on the theme of slavery, given the Wilbeforce anniversaries etc.

The ‘raw’ text (ie, very unpolished!) of my address is below the fold – it was delivered a little differently, as I let the Spirit move me.
Peak Oil and Slavery sermon
Texts: Hosea 4.1-9, Philippians 4.4-9

Hosea passage – one of my favourites – two key elements to bring out –

#1– one of the repeated themes in Scripture, in the Old Testament especially, is that the land, the environment, will reflect the state of society, especially with regard to the levels of social justice – where there is immorality, where issues of social justice are ignored: therefore the land mourns – that is one of the tools that Christians can use to assess our present environmental crisis – it cannot be separated out from issues of international justice, and to the extent that we fail at those issues, so too to that extent will we fail to heal the ecology of our planet – and of course, the claim of social justice is one of the two paramount emphases of scripture, running just behind that of worshipping God alone – there are literally thousands of references to the need to look after the poor, and a society which systematically ignores those commands has no claim whatsoever to be described as Christian

#2 – with you is my contention o priest – it’s all the fault of the religious community for not teaching properly – privatised faith, a faith with no discernible impact upon the operation of the public world – christian faith in British society has largely been reduced to functioning as the oil for the machinery of capitalism, designed to reduce the screeches of pain from those who are crushed in the cogs – [just by way of a sidenote, this is what is wrong with new age spirituality, and the half digested buddhism that so often lies behind it – what is the point of quietening your mind and gaining inner peace when there is tremendous suffering and injustice all around? That is the precise opposite of what Xn faith is about – we are to shout from the rooftops against injustice] – but the problem is that the religious leadership has acquiesced in this privatisation of the faith, they have accepted a role as domestic pet, allowed to mewl for its own milk, but only tolerated for as long as it stays within the home, and eradicates any rodents that come in – any sense that their might be more kinship between the rodents and the pets is to be stamped on as soon as possible

current anglican shenanigans – if religion is private then it is inevitable that religious leaders get obsessed with what we do with our privates – this is not what Christian faith should be focused on!

so: 2 things, the claim of social justice, and the necessity for the religious leaders to speak out on such topics – in other words, the political impact of Xn faith – I understand you have been discussing slavery – wilberforce – outstanding example of the political impact which a Christian faith is called to produce –

hosea – my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge – I want to share knowledge about a concept called Peak Oil, and what it means for the way we need to arrange our lives – so a quick tour of what Peak Oil is, and what the implications are
1. lives built on oil – in western europe we have the equivalent of 100 slaves working for us – that is the amount of work carried out by oil on our behalf, and providing us with the lifestyle we presently enjoy – or endure – oil stands beneath vast tracts of contemporary life, not simply in terms of what powers the transport system, which is the most obvious area of oil dependency, but through the various industries which manufacture petroleum products, from fertilisers to chemicals to plastics to clothing –
2. peak oil refers to the geological process whereby the quantity of oil from a well initially comes out slowly, builds up to a level of peak production, and then falls away over time – analogy of hot water tank – open the tap, water comes out, open tap fully, strong flow, as tank empties, flow slows down to a trickle – same thing happens with oil fields – so US peaked in 1970, britain peaked in 1999, we’re now declining at around 8% a year – around 54 of the 65 oil producing nations in the world have now peaked – and the question is when the world as a whole passes the moment of peak production – I’m fairly persuaded that it was two years ago, but that conclusion is by no means certain – we might have a few years yet to go
3. the impact of peak oil, however, has hardly been thought about, and it will be painful and chaotic – I think of it as a great dislocation as our society will be thrust harshly into a different mode of life – has been described in various ways, as the long emergency for example, for all the assumptions on which our modern way of life has been built will be removed – industrial revolution powered by access to fossil fuels, built up a transport system dependent on liquid fuel – and when that liquid fuel is removed from the system, the system will come to a juddering halt – some of you may remember the fuel tax protests of september 2000, and how rapidly the supermarkets were emptied of food – that was a brief window into our vulnerability
4. the trouble is that there are several levels of positive feedback built into the system, and in addition, there are several what could be called ‘non-linear’ or random factors to consider – for example, consider mexico, whose main oil field, cantarell, is now declining extremely rapidly – mexico’s own consumption is increasing, and in the next two or three years the mexican government will have to decide whether to continue exporting oil to the united states or reserve that same oil for its own people to use – and how long will a precariously elected government last that doesn’t look after its own people? Or consider iran, and whether the bush administration decides on the option of double or quits by attacking iran – that too will have an immediate impact upon the flow of oil, and the price of oil, within the world economy – there are just too many things that can go wrong, and
5. this is the context for my opposition to tesco – an extremely well run british company, which is paying a little bit more than lip service to environmental goals, but which is wholly dependent upon a modern system of just-in-time distribution, powered by liquid fuel – and when that liquid fuel first becomes phenomenally expensive, and then becomes impossible to find – the system will buckle and break – and then where will we find our daily bread? The economy that most of you students will live in for the majority of your working lives will look very different to the one that the rest of us have grown up with – one practical bit of advice, meant in all seriousness – learn to grow your own vegetables

Think back to that figure of 100 slaves working for each and every one of us. What peak oil means is that within the next twenty years or so that figure will be reduced to around 20, if we’re lucky, and if we have enlightened and responsible political leadership. Ahem. If we continue as we are, it may be much less

Now, strange as it may seem – there is in fact something joyful hidden here, something to be embraced and affirmed, and this is really what I want to leave you with – I think it was Mandela who said, in the context of apartheid in south africa, that no man is free until every man is free – that, in other words, slavery is something that destroys the humanity of the slave owner as much as the slave, it is something that destroys the humanity of the oppressor as much as the oppressed – you could say that there is a form of human life which allows us to flourish, to have life in all its abundance, which does not involve a dependency upon slaves

I believe that this applies even when the slaves are fossil fuels, the remnants of plants that died millions of years ago – in other words, that our dependency on oil to do all our work for us is not something that enhances our human life

As an example, let me tell you a story about my four year old son – living in a parish, often receive presents at christmas – got given a bow and arrow – one of those cheap plastic things made in the far east, which, inevitably, got broken after about ten minutes of use – but he liked having a bow and arrow – so off we went to a local wood, with a piece of old elastic, to make our own bow and arrows – much more fun, much more quality time with daddy, much more human – in other words, the use of oil to make such junk is not something which enhances human life

St Paul writes about things which are excellent in the letter to the philippians – whatever is worthy, whatever is honourable, noble, excellent – think on these things – all the things which are most essential for our common humanity are supplied to us; we don’t need this system of idolatrous growth to provide for our real needs – especially in our present context when our culture’s worship of the economy is proving that growth has negative marginal utility – in other words, that in our present context economic growth is a cancer, it is growth in one part of the organism without any regard for the wider body, and which is destroying that wider body

We have forgotten what it is to be human – and the culture instead embraces the manufacture of desires, in order to buy the widgets which pay for the widget makers to buy more widgets and keep this fantastic system of widget making up and running

the real political challenge that is going to be faced by this generation alive today is to withstand the temptation to use coal – if we use the crisis of peak oil to wean ourselves away from fossil fuels and embrace powerdown and renewables then global warming will be essentially solved – but if we try and give our present economic system one more generation of life by turning to coal then the planet will be cooked, it’s as simple and as serious as that. coal is the enemy of the human race

This system is going to come to an end, and very soon. It is built upon injustice, and it is structured around the denial of our common humanity. God will not allow it to continue. A passage from jeremiah ch 4: “‘my people are fools, they do not know me. They are senseless children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, they know not how to do good.’ I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty… I looked, and there were no people; every bird in the sky had flown away. I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert; all its towns lay in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.”

We have a choice – and the call to christians is clear – we are to embrace the ways of human abundance, not material abundance, we are to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before our god – if we turn to him then God will have mercy – and, frankly, in the context of what is looming above us, mercy is what we will need. But at the last, I take comfort from paul’s writings – the call to rejoice in the faith, that the lord is near, and that we are not to be anxious about these things, in order that the peace of god, which passes understanding, may guard our hearts, and our minds, in jesus christ. May God bless you all, and may your vegetables grow well. Amen.