Happy 'Winter Festival'!

Christmas originated from a Pagan mid-winter festival.  The Romans piggy-backed on an already existing festival in order to establish their new religion over the masses.  Jesus wasn't even born in December!  It was probably April.  'In the bleak min-winter'?  Not really.

Every year, it seems, there is some town-council that 'bans Christmas' in favour of calling it a mid-winter festival.  But if Christmas didn't originate with Christians, then is there really an imperative to keep Christ at the centre of it?

~

I love Christmas.  I hate winter - the cold, the dark, the wet, and I don't think it's any surprise that the pagans started having a mid-winter festival.  Nowadays, when the nights are long and dreary, it's the ideal time to light up our houses, warm ourselves with mulled wine, and cheer each other up with gift-giving and music.  Without this our winters would be darker and we'd all be much more miserable.  I think everyone who has a winter should have a mid-winter festival, and that doesn't have to be anything to do with being a Christian.

But what about the child in the manger?

The apostle Paul writes: 'So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God'. (1 Corinthians 10:31).   I want to put God at the centre of all my celebrations and worship him in everything I do.  Winter is hard - what better thing to do, then, to draw comfort from God's word and fellowship from others, and live out his mandate to spread that love to the rest of the world, at a time when they may need it most.

But what about the special focus on Jesus' birth?  As I said, it's not like it's Jesus's actual birthday or something explicitly set out in the Bible.  We could just have a celebration and give thanks to God like we would at any other time.  But I'm not ready to dismiss the ecclesiastical calendar.  Maybe it was just an accident of history that the Romans hijacked the mid-winter festival for Christendom, of maybe it was God's divine plan.  I don't know, but I think it's actually quite a good time to remember the events of Jesus' birth.

Light of the world, but may not have been born in a stable.

One of our treasured wedding gifts from a friend.

Paul also writes:  'Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.' (Romans 1:20).   Jesus may not have been born in winter, but he was born in a spiritual winter.  It had been 400 years since the last prophet had spoken, and although a remnant of Israel had returned to the promised land, they were under occupation of the Romans, and the world needed a saviour just as much as it does today.  John started his gospel, often read at Christmas, with: 'The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome/understood it' (John 1:5).  Isaiah writes: 'The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light' (Isaiah 9:2).

Christmas is quite literally a light in the darkness.   The nights are closing in, and yet the small lights on the Christmas tree shine brightly.  It's no spring, when there is new life, daffodils, and lambs galloping across the fields.  But if we believe that God can speak through all things, then that light is hope, and that hope is in the baby in the manger.  Here we remember the infant Jesus, and it's like seeing light at the end of the tunnel as the prophecies of a Messiah, born in Bethlehem are fulfilled.

And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;

for from you shall come a ruler

who will shepherd my people Israel

(Micah 5:2)

The gifts brought by the wise men made it clear that Jesus' purpose was not to remain lying in the manager.  Gold for a king, frankincense for a priest, and myrrh for one who was going to die.  The pinnacle of Jesus' life wasn't fulfilled at his birth, but at his death and resurrection.   And yet we catch a glimpse at Christmas of what he is going to do.  Let's not get stuck singing Away in a Manger, but look forward to the more important things to come!

So I have no intention on being militant over the mid-winter celebrations.  I'd rather everyone had something to celebrate.  If I grieve the lack of Christ at Christmas, it is because I grieve the lack of Christ altogether.  I want people to know that the creator of the world loves them, and wants to know them, all year round.  I don't want people to the carol services to maintain the tradition, I want them to come back so that they can know Jesus, as he is for life, and not just for Christmas.
Shall I repeat this post at Easter then?

Reinventing our zeitgeists #1: 'Be true to yourself'

Over this next set of posts, I'm going to take a few 21st Century pearls of wisdom that I'm usually quick to reject, and see if there is any worth in them from a Christian worldview.


~


There was mild uproar in some Christian circles when the Girl Guides had an overhaul of their promise.  Promising to 'Love my God' was replaced with 'Be true to myself and develop my beliefs'.  I was saddened by the new promise, but that's not the point.  What does 'be true to yourself' actually mean? And how right are the Christians for whom it really grates, myself among them, to be annoyed?

Source: http://new.girlguiding.org.uk/what-is-girlguiding/our-mission

A quick google search, and here is a description of what it means to be true to yourself that I found to be useful:

• Be who you are, be your genuine self
• Follow your own value system and common sense
• Listen to the advice of others, but make up your own mind
• Recognize, appreciate, and develop your unique talents
• Stand up for what you believe in and you will gain respect
• Know that being 'different' is a gift
• Understand that you are enriching others by being yourself
  
  http://www.essentiallifeskills.net/betruetoyourself.html
  
  

From looking at how the phrase is intended, my understanding is this: Being true to yourself is acting in accordance with your beliefs and who you are. It is about not putting on a false 'front', and not doing something to please others.  This is all good stuff, particularly to tell a teenager who is being pressurised to follow her peers into things she is not comfortable doing. It's also very important for all of us to accept who we are.

So why do people have a problem with it? To the humanist, there is little that can possibly be wrong with any of the above.  I use the word humanist to refer to not just those who identify as humanists, but all those who seek to live a morally fulfilling life without a God.

For me, however, I don't necessarily what to be everything that is me.  Left to my own devices, with no self control or prefrontal cortex function, I am a self-centred impatient intolerant narcissist.  My genuine self could be described as someone who seeks her own desires above others. 

And for this reason, I don't want to use myself as the reference point for what is true.  If being true to myself means developing my own belief system and values that is in direct contrast with being a Christian, whereby I believe that 'The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure' (Jeremiah 17:9).  Instead I want to 'Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to [my] earthly nature; sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.' (Colossians 3:5).  And then, of course, there are the famous words of Psalm 119:105 which I cannot help hearing in good old King James Version set to music despite having never been to Sunday School: 'Your word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.'

I am not the source of authority in my life - God is.  Many youth workers have described Sin as this:

• Shove off God
• I'm in charge
• No to your ways

But what of all those lovely things we want to say to the teenager struggling with self-doubt - are they no use?  I think they simply require a little bit of qualification:

• Be who you are, be your genuine self

Who says that my 'genuine self' is the self-centred, impatient, intolerant narcissist.  Apart from God, I am sinful, but I am also a child of God, adopted into his family by Jesus' blood.  'For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.  In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship* through Jesus Christ' (Ephesians 1:4-5).

And yet, all too often, I don't live in a way that is true to my God-given position of having been justified by faith in Jesus. 'Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!'. (Colossians 2:20-21)

Or alternatively, I let my selfish desires consume me for no reason, chasing after possessions, status or comfort (not that these things are necessary bad and can't be used for God's glory) when all along I have the creator of the earth and his word to bring me the deepest joy of all.

• Follow your own value system and common sense

Perhaps this one should say, 'follow the value system of your own Heavenly Father'.  But by God's unimaginable grace by which he sanctifies us, God's value system becomes ours.  '...Though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance' (Romans 6:17).

• Listen to the advice of others, but make up your own mind

This section really brought to my mind Colossians 2:8:  'See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy.'  We should be always discerning and: 'do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all: hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil' (1 Thessalonians 5:20-22

• Recognize, appreciate, and develop your unique talents/Know that being 'different' is a gift

'But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, just as he wanted them to be' (1 Corinthians 12:18).  God gives us each different gifts and abilities which work together like the parts of a body to form his church.   Another passage that springs to mind is Psalm 139:14-15: 'For you created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.  I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made'. 

• Stand up for what you believe in and you will gain respect

The Bible does not promise us that we will be respected - quite the opposite (John 15:18-25), but it does tell us to 'always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have.' (1 Peter 3:15)

• Understand that you are enriching others by being yourself

The Bible makes it clear that God has a plan for us to enrich the world:  'For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.' (Ephesians 2:10).    We may not see the fruit this side of eternity, but God promises a purpose for our lives, and it is very difficult to frustrate his plans!

So although I don't have another suggestion for the Guides, I do for the Christian. 

Be true to your salvation.

Source: www.christian-wallpaper.com

*Sonship refers to the legal standing of an adopted heir in Roman culture

An antidote to racism?

We live, as always, in shifting times when it comes to race, national identify and immigration. Although I've entitled this post 'an antidote to racism', what I mean is the anger, suspicion and resentment felt towards those who have, or even whose parents or grandparents have, migrated to Britain from other countries.  Many people have no problem as long as people 'stay where they came from', but some will say: 'they don't belong here'.

Support for UKIP is rising.  While education secretary, Michael Gove decreed that education should teach 'British Values'.  A few years ago we had the country at its most patriotic, with the Royal Wedding, Jubilee and Olympics.   The EU has expanded and this time last year we'd been expecting a 'flood' of immigrants (although they didn't come - we got actual floods instead).  At the same time, the slowly recovering economy is not where we want it to be, and the NHS is constantly reported as struggling and stretched. 

Last year, a British Social Attitudes survey showed that 1 in 3 people admit to having racial prejudices.  But I thank the BBC for pointing out to the world the obvious flaw in using these figures to measure actual racism, because what may be the case is that people are setting the bar much higher.  We may actually be less racist than we were before, but we also expect a far higher standard of tolerance of ourselves and are aware that we don't measure up. 

But where do these attitudes come from?  Firstly, I think that prejudice and bigotry of all kinds stem from fear.  In the case of immigration, there is a fear of the unknown, and a fear of the real concern of over population.  When I was young, I didn't 'get' racism. That was because there was no opportunity to even imagine a fear. Where I grew up in Devon, there were very few ethnic minorities (unless, of course, you count my Cornish family). I could count on one hand the number of either non-British or non-white people in my school.  It was only when I saw other parts of the country that I understood how the racism narratives - the 'coming here and taking our jobs' stories - had developed.  Whether real or not, it was a explanation in people's minds for falling job opportunities and poverty, and an outlet for the frustration and hatred felt. There was someone to blame. 
 

Secondly, there is the entitlement story, arguably the other side of the same coin.  I think now of the modern day issue: the lack of young British people working in chains such as Pret a Manger.  It's an emotive topic, and it leads many to think that British youngsters should be given more of a chance. 
 

Entitlement and fear converge on one thing: it's OUR country.  We want to mark our territory when we're afraid that someone might take it.  And then when we've got our territory, we believe we're entitled to it. 
 

Well let me put forward a realisation that I had the other day.  It's not my country, it's not your country, it's GOD'S country.  The places in which I live, work, socialise and call my own are given to me by my Heavenly Father, and he can give and take away as he pleases.  
 

If you don't believe in a God, then your rebuttal might be that there is no God, and therefore man is welcome to mark his territory where he pleases.  However, if there is no external standard and we are free to do as we please, then what divine right do you have to a place?  If you are a Christian, you may come back at me with the view that Levitical laws stated that interest could be charged to foreigners in the land, but not to fellow Israelites.  There was a right to the land through inheritance. We don't often think about it today, but the word 'Nation' comes from the same route as 'naitre' - to be born. Traditionally, and etymologically, a nation is an ethnic group and membership is by birthright. 
 

But Romans 9:7-8 says that we are Abraham's descendants not because of physical descent, but through the promise (given to Abraham that Sarah would bear a child in her old age).  Later in chapter 11 Paul goes on to talk about the Gentiles being branches 'grafted in' and that there is no difference between those natural branches and those which are grafted in.  We cannot use the Levitical laws I've cited to justify our own personal territorialism because the new Israel is not an ethnic group, but a nation from all corners of the world drawn together by a promise, whose inheritance is not on earth but in Heaven. We are all foreigners in a strange land, so let's have empathy with those who are foreigners for a different reason.  This is what we are commanded to do (Leviticus 19:34).
 

As an aside, It is heartening to see how many narratives of what it means to be British also follow this idea to some extent.  Sometimes, Britishness is not seen as something which we are born into, but something adopted - why else would we think we could use a test of cultural knowledge to determine citizenship? Although this is different to citizenship in heaven, which is not earned and which no amount of swotting up on how much pocket money children should get will help, I do think that our attitudes to national identity have been shaped by our Christian heritage. 
 

And as for the fear, Jesus himself says:
 

'Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear....Consider the ravens: they do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; and yet God feeds them.  And how much more valuable are you than birds!' (Luke 12:22-24-25). 
 

One modern day equivalent could be this:
 

'Therefore I tell you, do not worry about the economy, how many jobs there will be, or the housing market or whether there will be a hospital bed for you when you need it...Consider the ravens: they do not have planning or border control, and yet God feeds them.  And how much more valuable are you than they!'
 

Now, if we're not worrying about the effects of immigration on our own pockets, then we needn't fear that a bunch of Romanians are about to come over and steal our jobs and hospital beds.  And if we are not afraid, then we can stop seeing people as a group and a threat, but as individuals.  Understanding that people are individuals is the ultimate antidote to racism and prejudice.
 

Now, I realise that this post doesn't answer the difficult questions of immigration policy.  Politicians face many difficult issues when trying to get the best for their electorate.   Resource scarcity, such as housing, is an issue.  At the same time, so is providing refuge to those in need, along with securing a country's place on the global stage and building a strong economy.  But I'm not trying to define what our immigration policy should be, but rather how we should respond in our hearts and our lives to whatever the situation might be. 
 

So, the antidote to immigration-related racism? Free ourselves from the idea that we can be in control, that we are owed anything, and the fear.  If we look outwards rather than trying to cling onto what we think we can control, suddenly it seems easy to see people as individuals. 

Nature, health and Crohn's disease

I have Crohn's disease.  It's a chronic auto-immune disease of the digestive system.  However, I am very happily in remission.  Drugs just didn't seem to work for me - sometimes they'd almost work, but never enough to get me in remission.  What did work was a special diet...

So, what did I eat?  Brown rice? Dried fruit? Lots of fibre?

My medical salvation was entirely unnatural.  I didn't eat anything 'natural', I ate complete nutritional supplement that was born in a lab and a bit like a cross between protein shakes and formula milk.  Its creators, just to top it off, were Nestle, the enemy of all moral foodies.

My diet for six weeks, which transformed me for an underweight, chronically fatigued shadow to someone who could actually have a life.

~~

What I'd like to question today is one of the myths that pervades our current culture: that of the moral link between wellbeing, 'nature' and environmentalism.
 
Fast forward from the liquid diet, and I became fond of Eat Natural bars for a while. They are shockingly expensive so I limited myself to one packet of three a week. My fondness of these was nothing to do with the story they tell - it is simply because I find them tasty.   Eat Natural boast that they use only natural ingredients, 'and nothing dodgy'. Arguing that creating delicious-tasting food is 'simple', they use no additives or preservatives and try hard to find the finest ingredients from 'like minded' producers. I'm sure they do use high quality ingredients - that's how they manage to taste so good without the use of additives - it also makes them very expensive - £2 for a pack of 3 - so really not that simple as half the British population wouldn't be able to afford them. 

Having discovered I tend to get a reaction to wheat, I have also now become a frequent visitor to the 'free from' aisle of the supermarket.  In Sainsbury's, this section is called 'Well-being', although it would be far healthier for me to go to the fruit and vegetables section than to buy some of Mrs Crimble's delicious Dutch Apple Cake. There are a lot of 'natural' products in this aisle as well: ones who's marketing relies on the fact that they contain just a few ingredients and nothing else and therefore are good for us and good for the environment, and are going to turn us into super-healthy glowing people who are connected to the earth. 

So here is the story: natural=delicious, and good for you to. 

In the academic world all this is know as a 'double commodity fetish'.  A commodity fetish is where marketing stories create a product into something new, masking its actual origins.  A double commodity fetish is when this involves creating a new story about where it has come from.

In the academic world it is also clear that 'nature' is a myth.  A myth in this sense is not a mystical being that doesn't exist, but a cultural story.  So what is the 'nature' story?  My conclusion from reading the world is that what we regard as 'natural' is non-human, and has undergone minimal manipulation from humans.  This definition can apply to food or to environments.  In the case of the former, it is a relative term.  It means the food has obviously be harvested and mixed together, but not manipulated in a lab.  In the case of the latter, no farming or building or addition of other chemicals.
 
But this is a myth, and it is destructive.  Humans are just as much a part of the physical landscape as everything else.  Nature is a man-made idea which has been responsible for removing people from their land in order to make space for 'nature reserves', and hiding those involved in production from view.  I carried out an undergraduate dissertation on Dartmoor, a landscape in which farming plays an essential role.  If 'nature' is to run its course then the lovers of this landscape would not be happy as it would become overrun with bracken.  Another approach would be to see the farmers as part of 'nature.'  Well, we seem to see nature as 'non-us', so that would be extremely condescending to the farmers.  They would form part of the landscape, which we view and enjoy in the style of Gainsborough's Mr & Mrs Andrews (core reading for any cultural geographer).
 
As I've already stated, 'natural' is not always best for a variety of standards of 'best' when it comes to eating the food that's best for us.  Sure, lots of added salt is not good for the heart, and fruit and veg and good for you, but the link with 'nature' is by no-means de facto or absolute:

• For health: my medical salvation was found in lab-created food, and I also have a friend who is allergic to fruit.  There are also plenty of poisonous substances to be found in the biosphere, and I'd rather cook my chicken than get salmonella.
• For taste: some of the finest food involves much processing: we have no objection to a starter of pate and toast in a good restaurant, and yet this mashed up and processed paste bears little resemblance to the meat it came from. Simple is not always what creates the best food - think of the fine balance of many, many spices that go towards making a curry.

And what about in terms of environmental and social sustainability.  The Bruntland Report (1987) definition of sustainability is 'the ability of the current generation to meet their needs without compromising the needs of future generations'.  I think in there is also a sister to this temporal sustainability, and that is spatial: 'the ability of one region to meet its needs without compromising the needs of others'.  In the words of our cultural narratives, this means getting the food we need without squeezing poor Nigerian farmers.  There are of course, many important considerations to be made here: not over-farming, fair trading, energy consumption and such like.  But let's not forget the first part of the sustainability definition, the ability of the current generation to meet their needs (and it's counterpart in the spatial sustainability definition).  Additives in bread have made it possible for this staple to last longer and be produced cheaply (known as the Chorleywood Process), and we mustn't forget that poverty is not restricted to the world of coffee and banana growing.  Many people in Britain cannot afford to feed their families.  We cannot expect them to buy the expensive Fair Trade or Organic varieties.

So, we can see that we  need to take each situation on its own in order to evaluate what is 'best'.  So why don't we - well, it's back to the 'double commodity fetish' and other similar processes in the media which construct narratives not to sell food, but to put us off.  Why does it work?  Because people don't know where their food comes from.  I am of the opinion that being aware of where things come from helps to weaken this myth, as well as solve the problems that do support it.  This is because knowing where things come from, and particularly in the case of meat, what it looks like in previous stages of life, makes people less susceptible to the idea that if something is disgusting it must be a) unhealthy, and b) unnatural. 

Let me illustrate: one of my particular reality-TV guilty pleasures has in the past been Channel 4's Super Size vs Super Skinny, where a severely overweight and severely unweight person swap diets in order to see the ludicrousness of their own diets, under the watchful eye of well-known TV guru Dr Christian Jessen.  When either of the pair is particularly notorious with the quantities they take in of a particular food or drink, Dr Christian will often take them away and break down that food into its component parts in order to show them what they are actually eating.  One particular skinny ate far too many gummy sweets - they were basically his sole source of calorie intake.  Dr Christian got him to mix together the ingredients, which included various bits of pig.   It didn't look very appetising or pleasing to the eye.

Every time I see deconstructions such as this, I think: so what?  If one ingredient is particularly harmful, then I agree it is a good idea to cut down.  But looking at the ingredients being mixed together, the pigs' heads really don't put me off.  They came as no surprise to me: at a fairly young age I met vegetarians who couldn't eat Haribo and wondered why, and it was explained to me that gelatine was made from animal bones.  Just because gelatine comes from something which looks unappetising (and I'm not particularly induced to eat a pig's head raw when it hasn't been turned into something tasty), that doesn't necessarily mean it is unhealthy.   This particular point proved nothing about whether or not sweets are bad for you.  But for this particular skinny, it really put him off and he vowed never to eat them again.

I find this really annoying, because I've concluded that main reason why it works in stopping people from consuming these things is because they find it disgusting - it appeals to their emotions rather than their reason.  And the reason they find it disgusting is that they never thought before what goes into their food, and so what I think are obvious things are a great shock.    And so, the producers of Super Size vs Super Skinny are exploiting the fact that people have never looked at where things really come from.  If we were to construct a narrative around something that is quite simple to produce, and where the end product doesn't look so radically different from the component parts, people probably wouldn't be so shocked.  But these things, as shown, are not necessarily de facto better.

A Pig's Head not dissimilar to the one on Channel 4

(Source: http://www.bdws.co.uk/2012/02/07/feeding-the-dogs-part-6/)

 

And what about sustainability?  We seem to like the idea of a shorter production line - it's in fashion at the moment.  I can't deny that it is enjoyable to go to a farmers' market and experience buying meat straight from the person who's produced it, enjoying that open-air, liminal appeal of a market with all its sights and sounds.  I'm also not denying the fact that there are many cases where shorter production lines are better for health, community, or environment.   However, not only does one not necessitate the other, but also, just because we like it, it  doesn't mean it's good.  We are flawed and our emotions are not the way to determine what is best for the environment or our health.  The reason why shorter supply chains are often better is because they involve fewer food miles and fewer middle-men, meaning more of the end price goes towards the producers, not because they are morally pleasing to Gaia.  And also don't forget, those farmers at that farmers' market are people, not picturesque components of 'Ye Olde Worlde' there for your enjoyment.

A key advantage of shorter supply-chains is that people can be more aware of where their food has come from, and therefore when there is a problem, they can do something about it.  I grew up in rural Devon, where being stuck behind a herd of dairy cows on their way to milking was a common occurrence on the country lanes.  Last year, struck by how unhealthy these cows look and how obvious their suffering is, my mother wrote a blog post about buying organic milk if we are able (click here to read the blog, which also provides some far more pragmatic tips on leading a healthier life than my philosophical ponderings).  This is what we should be doing, but note that she recognises that some people cannot afford to buy organic milk all the time.

So, go and buy organic milk if you are able, eat less sodium chloride, or buy locally in order to support your community, but helping the environment will not necessarily earn you well-being points and give you more energy, and neither will eating healthily necessarily help the environment and earn you Gaia points, making you one with Nature.  Understand where things come from, change the things you want to change, and just accept the rest of it.  If you don't want to eat the product of a pig's head, then don't, but realise that this is merely a matter of taste, and not of health or morality.

Teaching or indoctrination? the way that values are inseparable from education

Some people object to the existence of 'faith schools', because they worry that children are being 'indoctrinated'.  In his 2010 Channel 4 documentary Faith School Menace? Richard Dawkins expressed concern that young people were being taught particular beliefs about the origins of the universe, and argued, most importantly, that they were not being taught how to think or question.  The Oxford geneticist has argued in the past that 'it is immoral to brand young children with the religion of their parents' (Independent, 2006).

Richard Dawkins presenting Faith School Menace? in 2010
(Source: Channel 4)

When I was last commuting into London a few months ago the Evening Standard was waging a campaign against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), calling on schools to be at the front line, arguing that teachers are in the best position to spot where a girl is at risk, or is showing signs of having undergone this process whilst on a trip abroad to see family.   Yet here we saw another protest - the Standard reported that often teachers were anxious to get involved for fear of offending cultural sensitivities.  FGM is at the forefront of the debate into when we just agree to disagree and let everyone be entitled to their own view, and when we fight for what we believe is right.

Thirdly, people in my life have expressed concern about the future of education, saying 'I don't want the state bringing up my children, and telling them that their parents are wrong.'  Much of this centres around the controversial and heated topic of sex and relationships education, where everyone has a view and awareness of what actually goes on in these lessons is actually very varied and often affected by the media blowing things out of proportion.    However, there is reason for any parent to concern themselves with this.  I don't know what the current messages will be when it comes to the time that I might have school-age children, but I will want to teach them certain things I believe to be important about sex and relationships, because everyone has values around this area.  So, you may not mind whether your child is married first, and that's where you and I differ, but going back to topics such as FGM, I'm sure you'd join me in wanting both girls and boys to be taught that abuse is not acceptable, showing that everyone does have things they are willing to make a stand for.

So, the big question is what role schools should play in instilling values. You may not want the state, church, mosque or secularist instilling their values into your children, or anyone else's, and may want to have an education system that is not about 'indoctrination', but about growing young minds and readying people for the world of work and to contribute to society.

Well, I've come to the conclusion that doing this without values is a myth.

Here's my interpretation on how schools came to exist:

At some point in history we learnt how to make enough food that some people didn't need to be involved in food production.  The division of labour occurred and this made things more efficient.  Some people went out and produced food, and whilst they were doing this, other people were doing other things to provide for the community.  The community decided to set aside some people to teach the children - this became a school.

Schools were borne out of the need of a community.  Such a community would have had shared values, and would have wanted to instill these values in their children.   Now, I use the word value in an entirely neutral way.  Believing your daughter needs to go through FGM in order to make a good marriage is still a value which drives your behaviour, even though I think it's wrong.  So is empowering people to make their own choices.

Every community has values and British state schools are still the product of a community with a set of values that wants to educate its children.  That community, however, is no longer a unified community with one set of values, but an artificial one.  The values behind state education come, therefore, from the government who are elected to represent this huge community.  Of course, such a small amount of people can't represent 60 million people, and, more to the point, the values and beliefs of that people in this country hold are diverse and contradictory, and therefore it is impossible to have an education system that instills all of them.

And so, our education system reflects the values of the government, an artificial reflection of our 'community.'  These include, and I'm not saying whether these are 'right' or 'wrong': multiculturalism, 'tolerance', sexual liberalism, academic skills, readiness for the world of work, gender equality, thinking critically, and I'm sure many others.  Now, do I blame the decision-makers in state education for wanting to drive education to these values?  No!  Because everyone wants their children to be educated in the things they think are important.  I do believe that politicians choose their careers for a reason, and even if it's just the votes than encourage you to try and lower teenage pregnancy rates, or fight gang culture, you still want to make a change.

They might not realise it, but the new atheists who object to faith schools do not do so because the faith schools are teach values, but because they values they teach are ones they disagree with.  The values of humanism centre around the idea that people shouldn't waste their lives worshipping a God that doesn't exist and society should value human beings instead (if God doesn't exist, then fair enough!).  These are values by which people live their lives and make decisions.  The reason why Richard Dawkins argued so passionately against faith schools is because he believes so wholeheartedly in living according to the values of evidence-based reasoning.  This isn't about how he came to that conclusion, what it means for how we should live our lives.

And then with young children, you have to 'indoctrinate' them in order to teach them anything!  People indoctrinate their children into looking right and left before they cross the road.  I want any future children I have to be safe, and to know they are loved, and so I will do all I can to get that message into their heads.  For me, part of knowing they are loved will be knowing the love of God.  I would be a terrible parent to not teach my children something I believe is so important, regardless of whether it is right or not.

So, what can we do?  We can't get away from value-driven education.  It is impossible.  How on earth can we have a state education system that brings up our children in the way we want?  And what do we do about the education that goes in the opposite direction to what we value?

Those, my friends, are the questions.

Was the division of labour a big mistake? The loss of something important

When it comes to making a difference in our world, caring for those in need, and fulfilling the activities that the market cannot, there are millions of heroes who give their time to work in the community, at home or abroad. These people connect with those around them and make a difference. We need them.

However there is another group of people we need - they are the earners. The companies that sponsor charities, the individuals that provide the cash, and those with the mortgages. I think the last point is one maybe most often overlooked: the way that the non-economic workers depend on the economic workers is not just a matter of cash transactions. When I was in my late teens I travelled to Argentina with a missionary organisation. I funded myself through working. However, I was able to do this because I had a permanent home provided by my parents. I know many people in various different churches, who give their time working for the church, and who lodge with members of the congregation. This wouldn't be possible without the homeowners within the congregation.
 


Connecting with a community in Salta, Argentina

 
So, the economic and the non-economic are dependant on one another, and I could just leave it there, the message being that we should value both and not just assume the romantic bohemian lifestyle as superior to that of the established - it is what you do with your resources that is important. It's an important point to make, and until recently I thought that was it.

However, that is just setting the scene.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in history, but I do know one basic fact. At one point, people learnt how to make enough food to allow some people to not be involved in food production. These people could then specialise. This was the beginning of 'civilisation' and the building of cities. Out of this came the technologists, scientists and artists. The production of specialised goods meant that things were produced for trade - the birth of the market and the 'economic'. It was also the birth of different 'classes' or groups in society.

There's another shift that's happened - I'm told it was during the industrial revolution. Economic activity moved out of the household and into the city. There was a place of home, and community, and a place of work.

I am currently in the economic work domain. Sometimes I feel a little envious of friends that are freer to travel and don't have mortgages to pay and or 9-5 jobs to which to commit, but actually I'm very happy. There is one thing that bothers me, however, and that is that I am often cocooned in the world of the professional and sometimes wish I had more time to get out into the community of the non-economic and connect with others. To be honest, I can find the time and I resolve to, but it's hard.

At work, we 'do CSR'. We actually are entitled to one CSR day a year, which we can take to engage in people-based voluntary work - I'm not sure how many people use it. It's difficult enough fitting holiday in - there's always something coming up. The easiest way for people I work with to engage with charity is to give their money: we have cake sales and dress down days and workplace giving.  Corporately, many companies are wanting to move away from purely giving money, in the form of the traditional philanthropist, and trying to 'do business' in a better way - this is good.  But here I'm talking about the individual.  It is OK for us to just earn money and then pass some of it on, in the manner of the traditional philanthropist, but on a smaller scale?

The thing is, giving money is easy when you're earning a good salary, because at the end of the day you can always make more. I say this in comparison to giving your time, which you will never get back. Time is absolutely finite.

There's another thing with giving your time. When we transfer money, we just send it away to that less fortunate 'other'. We can feel better about ourselves: it's a simple transaction where in return we simply get the knowledge we've helped someone somewhere or a reduction in guilt (in the cases of most, probably a bit of both). But go and actually meet the 'other': suddenly they are not the poor or unfortunate or ill, but people: people who you are no longer judging by their economic or social background, but people who are individuals and who can teach you in return.

And if we can view those we previously merely pitied as individuals, we can view those we previously looked down on as individuals too, not seeing accent, lifestyle, clothing or education, but just men and women and children. Even in my short career in business, I feel like I've come across so much lack of awareness of 'how the other half live', and so many prejudices against those in other parts of society. That is not to say everyone is heartless - but being cocooned in the world of the professional and wealthy doesn't help.

It is at this juncture I find myself in a place of tension. On the one hand, I believe that economy should not be seen in terms of individuals but as households, because that's the way it so often works. And this division of labour goes wider, and society forms groups who provide certain functions, according to the skills they have. Each depends on each other. Of course, even if this is true we do not recognise it. At different points and by different groups, different types of are valued work over others - particularly the economic over the household.

And yet I find myself wishing that every single person could work part-time. How great it would be if I could spend, say, 2/3 of my time in economic production and the other 1/3 in non-economic work. I wonder if this would really work?

Perhaps it is a case of the old 'small is beautiful: if something is wrong, it is too big, as expounded by writers such as E F Schumacher.  Our economic world is simply so big that we can travel such long distances within it and never see the outside. If you live and work in a small community, all parts of society, economic and non-economic, rich and poor, are in reach of each other. Then take my working day when I worked for a client in Canary Wharf: London is so big that it could build a world of wealth all around me, from getting on the train at my local station, to reaching the office, where I never saw anything else except office workers and the occasional wealthy mother with a designer pram when I went out to get some lunch (from Marks & Spencer, of course...).
 

Canary Wharf (Source: The Guardian)

 

So, the real sacrifice is to give our time and our hearts. Arriving at that fact is not rocket science. However, we are embodied people and we feel through our actions and lives, and the logistics of breaking down those barriers is harder than we might think.  In the division of labour, we risk losing empathy.

Living the Questions: about this blog

Just over a week ago I attended a TEDx conference on the theme of 'Living the Question'. This is inspired by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke in her poem, Letters to a Young Poet:

'...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.'

The motto behind TED, and TEDx (independently organised conferences under its name) is that of Ideas worth spreading.  Conferences are filled with interesting and inspiring talks largely based around creating a better world.  I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to be challenged intellectually and morally at the same time.

I have wanted to write a blog for many years, and the TEDx conference was what inspired me to actually get on with it.  It also gave me a theme - that of living the questions - which fitted perfectly with everything already in my mind, and hence I have shamelessly stolen it for this blog.

I love exploring the questions.  Sometimes, I come up with tentative answers, but often these lead to more questions in themselves.  I firmly believe that we shouldn't underestimate the difficulty in answering a question.  When talking to people, I meet many with differing opinions, faiths and beliefs to myself, but what bothers me most is when someone has an opinion and they've never thought why.  How we arrive at a conclusion is often just as important as the conclusion itself.

Having said that, I do believe in objective truth and I do have a faith in Jesus Christ, who died for me in order to pay the price for my sin.  For some people, having faith in a God is completely incompatible with the open, intellectual and questioning mind.   And yet for me it is fully compatible with a respect for the complexity of the truth and the difficulty in truly knowing the answer.

It is my belief that we cannot only act on that which we are certain - that would be foolish.  Sometimes I find myself paralysed because I do not know the answer because it is so complex, and I therefore do not act when I probably should. No one is certain regarding the exact nature of the degradation of our planet, for example.  Yet if there is a risk that we are damaging resources for future generations then surely we should act?  Faith actually goes further than that - it is not just a case of weighing up the risk.  I am not a Christian 'just in case'.  I cannot explain faith - it is a deep conviction of God having acted in my life.

All people have faiths - not just the 'religious' or the theist.  This is something that will no doubt enter into future posts.  The atheist has faith that there is no God, for example.  Everyone has a worldview which they will hold onto: 'it is right to love your children and look after them' - that is not something we've arrived at through intellectual debate. 

What is important is knowing what is faith.  If  you have faith in something, fine. But accept that it is faith and you cannot win others over to that faith by intellectual arguments.*

Furthermore, I believe my faith and Christian life is one of living the questions.  Living the questions rather than searching for just the answers.  The Bible is full of people questioning God, and yet after all: 'Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?  Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?'  (Isaiah 40:12)   But never fully knowing is not the same as wrestling with the questions.

So, this blog is one of posing questions, and sometimes offering tentative answers.  It is a blog of deconstructing narratives, myths and attitudes and grappling with questions that are important to us.  If we are to move forward to some answers, we must know what the questions are and why we are thinking them.

Happy reading and questioning!


~

Thank you to the organisers of TEDx Exeter for putting on the event which was the final catalyst for putting me into blogging action.  Click here to find out more about TEDx

*Disclaimer: this does not mean that as a Christian I am against verbal proclamation or apologetics - far from it.  We just have to know that in the end it is the Holy Spirit who convicts, and intellect alone will not win people's hearts.