Monthly Archives: April 2008

Tesco is a big red herring (April Synchroblog)

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This month’s synchroblog is on the theme of Christianity and Social Justice.

Social justice is undoubtedly a Christian concern – it saturates the Bible, Jesus emphasises it, and the pursuit of it is a necessary constituent part of a faithful life. Over two thousand verses about poverty. And so on and so forth – this is all well and good.

There are various specific ways in which that concern for social justice can be pursued. For me, one aspect came in denouncing Tesco (eg http://elizaphanian.blogspot.com/2008/03/thou-shalt-not-shop-at-tesco-sermon.html). I’m coming to believe that this was – if not quite a mistake, then at least a misapplication of effort. Indeed, perhaps there was even a little spiritual sin involved.

After all Tesco itself is not completely bad – I don’t see much wrong in buying a CD from them for example – my concerns are primarily to do with their food business, in terms of its sustainability, vitality of produce and their treatment of food suppliers. On all these things Tesco seems particularly poor, irresponsible and short-sighted. It seems straightforward to me that shopping at, say, the Co-Op is significantly more supportive of social justice than buying your food at Tesco.

However, the real problem is the underlying system itself, within which it can make sense for a company to be as reckless about social justice as Tesco is. In other words, the problem is about corporate law and the financial markets, who oblige the authorities at Tesco to pursue short term profit margins. (One of the reasons why the co-op, or John Lewis, is much better.)

This system is at the root of much that ails our present world. It is why the peaking of the oil supply will be a catastrophe rather than a bump in the road. It is why global warming will harm more people than it need to. It is why governments are going to war to preserve their way of life. It is why the life in the oceans is denuded, the water available to much of humanity declining, the top soil depleted. There are lots of symptoms telling us that something is wrong, and lots of people objecting to symptoms.

What is the Christian task here – that is, what is the specifically Christian task? Obviously it is a good thing for Christians to be involved in trying to relieve the symptoms, to campaign for social justice, to advocate good environmental stewardship and so on.

Yet I believe the specifically Christian task is a separate one. The ideological system within which the likes of Tesco takes on its role has a specific spiritual root; it is a knotting together of idolatries – of Mammon in particular, but also an excessively high regard for both law and science. All of which are good things, but they have become distorted, elevated above themselves, and consequently they have become life-denying and destructive. As a society and culture we are worshipping false Gods. What we need to do is to proclaim the true God, the one who gives life in response to worship.

In this context, to spend time denouncing Tesco is to waste time that might be better spent digging out the spiritual roots, and teaching people what right worship actually consists in. It is a temptation – to succumb to a desire for control, to engage in a worldly struggle, possibly even a matter of pride – for if you fight an organisation as large and important in British life as Tesco, then some of the importance reflects back on you – and then the real you gets lost, and you become ‘the vicar who is fighting Tesco’, and the gospel is eclipsed.

Hence my present line of thought: Tesco is a big red herring. If Christians are serious about social justice, and right environmental stewardship, then our paramount task is simply this: we must preach the gospel. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

~~~

Other people blogging on this theme today:

  • Cobus van Wyngaard at My Contemplations

  • Phil Wyman at Square No More

  • Mike Bursell at Mike’s Musings

  • Bryan Riley at at Charis Shalom

  • Steve Hayes at Khanya: Christianity and social justice

  • Reba Baskett at In Reba’s World

  • Prof Carlos Z. with Ramblings from a Sociologist

  • Cindy Harvey at Tracking the Edge

  • Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church

  • Matthew Stone at Matt Stone Journeys in Between

  • John Smulo at JohnSmulo.com

  • Sonja Andrews at Calacirian

  • Lainie Petersen at Headspace

  • Adam Gonnerman at Igneous Quill

  • KW Leslie: Shine: not let it shine

  • Stephanie Moulton at Faith and the Environment Collide

    • Falling in love with Frankenstein

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    This is a sketch for a much longer essay about science fiction. Click ‘full post’ for text.

    One of the dominant themes of Modern culture is the Frankenstein conceit – what you might think of as the ‘mad scientist’, or, more profoundly, the Faustian bargain. A man (and it normally is a man) is so consumed by his rational intellectual pursuits that he unwittingly provokes disaster and his own death.

    As I see it, this is the way in which humanity’s soul has digested and absorbed the impact of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment project is precisely that which has elevated one element of our human nature falsely above the others; it has insitutionalised asophism; and thus we are in the midst of ecological crisis. The devil has come to collect his due.

    Being a fan of sf, especially visually, I am struck by the way in which this theme has been subverted and then overcome within the world of fiction and film. I see this as a creative analogue of the way in which the Enlightenment project has itself been undone from within. (This is, I believe, why there is such an efflorescence of angst-ridden writings from the humourless atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens et al – they are aware in their bones that they are being left behind.)

    Three examples of this shift:
    1. The Matrix trilogy. The first Matrix was pure Frankenstein – the intellectual products of humanity turn against their creators and destruction follows; human liberty and salvation lie in battling against the machine. However, the second two films explored something more creative – the machine is not monolithic, it has variety (and therefore more dramatic interest of course) – there is a possibility of an alliance between human and mecha.

    2. Battlestar Galactica, the new series. Whereas in the original series we are facing highly efficient automata (rational products of Enlightenment) now the cylons are riven with their own competing needs and desires. The Cylons are now just like us; we can even breed with them.

    3. The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The original Terminator film is a real classic, and a classic description of the Frankenstein – a totally remorseless source of death and destruction ‘it absolutely will not stop until you are dead’. With the films a little first, but now much more with the series, we have much more creative ambiguity. This crystallised for me in the recent episode where Summer Glau starts to learn ballet. A vision of beauty – and whether it is human or mecha falls by the wayside.

    (I’ve also been put in mind of this by recently finishing Dan Simmons’ Hyperion cantos, but I’ll write about them separately.)

    I believe that what we have in this medium – film and television science fiction – is the creative resolution of the human conflict created by the Western idolatry of reason. As our society moves beyond the Enlightenment, so too does our fiction. Robots who are pure products of reason are no longer very interesting – the robots need to have more to them – and this is simply a mirror for how we see ourselves. In other words, there is more to humanity than the remorseless application of reason.

    I find this encouraging and exciting.

    Johannine inerrancy

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    I really shouldn’t fire off a post like that just before going off on holiday 🙂

    This, in slightly more formal terms, is my argument. It’s a train of thought, it hasn’t had all the wrinkles removed, I might conceivably change my mind…. and so on. Click ‘full post’ for text.

    1. There is a major difference in the presentation of Jesus from the synoptics to John. Specifically the character of Jesus exhibited through the great ‘I am’ monologues is difficult to tie together with the character presented in the other three gospels. It is not academically exceptional to treat the synoptics as providing a more solid historical framework.

    2. I’m happy to accept that much (not all) of the material presented as coming out of the mouth of Jesus in John’s gospel was not originally spoken by Jesus of Nazareth.

    3. I see these monologues as divinely inspired. That is, I see them as teaching eternal truths about Jesus’ identity. I see them as revelation. I believe, for example, that it is true that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

    4. I would therefore be happy to talk about the inerrancy of John’s gospel. What I would mean by this is that John’s gospel contains no errors concerning the nature of the living Word. It is a finger which truly points to the moon.

    5. I would distinguish this form of inerrancy from a form which emphasises an inerrancy of ‘fact’. I see the concept of ‘fact’, used in this context, as at best misleading, at worst idolatrous. This concept of fact – by which is meant something like empirically verifiable data – was developed as a consequence of the scientific revolution. I don’t see those ‘facts’ as the most important material for guidance in our life; rather I see them as trivial.

    6. Some background thoughts: the people alive at the time of Jesus did not fully understand who he was. It is possible that Jesus himself, prior to the resurrection, did not fully understand every aspect of who he was (part of his being fully human perhaps). John’s gospel is a fulfilment of the other three; it draws out more fully the implications of the other three; you could say that the other three – indeed the entire rest of the Bible – is pregnant with John, and John’s gospel is the baby. Except I’d rather say that Jesus is the baby, and John’s gospel is the inerrant witness to that baby.

    7. Any language about inerrancy – treated positively – is a conservative position. Yet #2 above is anathema to more conservative understandings of John’s gospel. I want to argue (have argued elsewhere) that to defend the status of John’s gospel in terms of ‘fact’ (= enlightenment epistemology) is to falsely elevate that epistemology above the much more important spiritual truths which John’s gospel inerrantly conveys. The inerrancy does not consist in the gospel being factually robust but in truly pointing to the living Word.

    8. “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”