The Department for Dodgy Deals

Got this email today from the Jubilee Debt Campaign - I think it speaks for itself:

Dear supporter,

The Export Credits Guarantee Department is a little-known part of the UK Government that uses public money to back exports to the developing world. We call it the Department for Dodgy Deals.

Why? Because all too often, it underwrites dodgy deals like arms sales, coal power plants and oil pipelines. Last month, the Guardian reported on the ECGD's support for a deep-sea drilling platform off the coast of Brazil that is even riskier than BP’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico.

What’s more, when these exports fail, they create toxic Third World debts. Over 90% of developing country debt to the UK government is now Export Credit debt. And there’s no sign of these debts being cancelled.

The new Coalition Government is urgently considering the future of this department. It's one of the few areas where the two parties haven't worked out what they're going to do. So we have a real opportunity to open this department up to scrutiny.

Since the financial crisis, rather than tightening up the rules to promote responsible exports, the UK has relaxed them even further – exempting some projects from any environmental or social assessment at all and making an existing ban on child and forced labour ‘optional’ in some cases. It’s as outrageous as that.

Our new campaign aims to confront the reality of our unjust global economy: dodgy trade creates toxic debts, and it’s the world’s poorest people who suffer. Here are three examples:

• The Turkwel Gorge hydro-electric power station in Kenya was built on a known earthquake fault and cost four times what it should have, with ECGD support. The Kenyan press described it as ‘the whitest of white elephants’ and ‘a stinking scandal’.
• Indonesia is still repaying hundreds of millions of pounds to the UK for Hawk aircraft, Scorpion tanks and other military equipment sold to the dictator General Suharto, with ECGD insurance. Evidence shows they were used against the civilian population, including during the vicious attacks on East Timor.
• The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline received ECGD backing despite warnings that it would fuel conflict in the Caucasus. The construction of the pipeline led to human rights abuses, environmental devastation and, campaigners claim, was a factor in the escalation to war between Russia and Georgia.

Our campaign is calling for an audit of past UK debts – to uncover the injustices that are keeping people locked into poverty. But it’s also about the future: about ensuring much stronger standards are adopted and enforced to control British ‘lending’ in the decades to come.

Please write to Vince Cable now, and ask him to use his new powers to end Britain’s Dodgy Deals >> 

Best wishes,
Nick Dearden
Jubilee Debt Campaign

The Shape of Love

Another cartoon from the naked pastor:

This is what the naked pastor has to say about this image:

"This guy has just come into the awareness that love is in the air. He’s realized that he is surrounded and sustained by love. He hears love. He thinks love. He speaks love. He breathes love. No, he hasn’t subscribed to any creed. He has just come to know, deep within, that Love, the Blessed, the Beautiful Benediction, is above all, through all, and in all things. It is That from which all things come and That to which all things go. He smiles."

My view is that without love, nothing ultimately makes sense.  Love is the one thing from which everything derives meaning.  Life, the Universe, everything, is suffused with love - but often, although it's all around us, we just don't seem to know where to look for it!

Love though, isn't something that can simply exist in abstract.  Love is always personal - love has to come from someone.  This is what the Bible has to say:

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him."

Many different religions have many different things to say about God.  Some don't even seem to recognise that love is part of the equation, let alone God's primary and over-arching characteristic! Many people on the other hand are against all religious creeds and doctrines because of their capacity to restrict and divide. I assume this is why, according to the naked pastor, the guy in the picture is creed-free.

Well it's true - you don't need to subscribe to any creed or doctrine to understand, appreciate or show love - and neither do you need me to tell you that!  Love transcends race, culture, class, gender, sexuality.  It will cross any barrier except for those of entrenched pride or selfishness and even then it will not give up until it has exhausted every effort.  But the Bible also has this to say:

"This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

This isn't a creed (although it's been included in many) but it is a statement which you can choose whether to believe or not.  It's one of those places where God's love becomes concrete and personal - in fact in many ways about as personal as it gets!
Love cannot be confined to a creed, but neither is it nebulous or void.  Love has a shape and to me, Jesus is the shape of Love!

Shades of Colour

I recently stumbled across this cartoon on the naked pastor's website (I discovered this via Lesley's Blog, which I discovered in turn, thanks to David Cloake at The Vernacular Curate):

This picture made me want to smile and cringe at the same time! I have to say, with some shame, that this is a phenomenon I can relate to, although for me the timeline has been (and I think to some extent still is) less straightforward.

I instantly want to contrast this picture with the words of Jesus, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full", or according to the New Living Translation, "My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life".

Where have we gone wrong? How did the words of Jesus, above, turn into this picture?

Obviously this picture is not true for all believers, or for all converts to Christianity, but religion often does seem to have this sort of effect on people. Evangelical Christians often don't like the word "religion" for this reason, but what they (we?) are offering often doesn't seem much different!

"Black and white" can mean monochrome as in boring, or it can mean definite, rigid and uncompromising.  I think these concepts are often related.  "Definiteness" however, is one of the things that often attracts people to Christianity - that sense of re-assuring certainty in a perilous and uncertain world.

I remember one of my church leaders once admitting that life isn't always black and white. When faced with a difficult choice or situation, there often isn't a straightforward "right" or "wrong" answer. Instead - we often end up being faced with "shades of grey".  I remember recognising this as true, but also feeling a little short-changed - in response to my desire for strong-minded clarity, I was being rewarded with a drab and unappealing mushy grey!

Since then I've had a bit of a rethink.  The problem with black and white is that the rigidity often seems to be imposed from outside.  These are the rules and you must stick to them - whether or not you understand why.  This is OK and sometimes necessary for children - and to some extent we are all still children - but I think God's desire is for us to become fully mature adults, understanding the rules, but more importantly being motivated by the things that caused the rules to come into being in the first place.

The problem with rules - even good ones - is that they never apply perfectly to every situation, because life is more fluid and dynamic than that.  This is why we have such complex legal systems, and no matter how many laws you make and how complicated they are, people will always find a way round them if they're determined enough.

Someone who lives by the heart and spirit of the law though, rather than by a rarified code, will be able to adapt to new situations and respond appropriately.  This requires creativity and ingenuity, but channeled in positive directions rather than destructive or self-centered ones.  The results are likely to be beautiful and surprising.  And suddenly we find that instead of black and white, we have shades of colour,  rather than shades of grey!

Jerusalem

My MP, Mr Greg Mulholland, has recently called for a debate in Parliament about the adoption of an English national anthem (in case anyone isn't quite sure, there isn't one at the moment, at least not an official one - "God Save the Queen" is the anthem of the whole UK).

Apparently "Jerusalem" has been chosen by public vote, ahead of "Land of Hope and Glory", to be played for English winners at the Commonwealth Games this year, so if we do ever get an English anthem it's likely to be a strong contender.  The words go like this:

And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land

I've always felt a little uncomfortable with this hymn, mainly because of the somewhat militaristic overtones of the last 2 verses, which in the context of a national anthem (or similar) I can't help associating with the Crusades.  The first 2 verses have always annoyed me a bit as well - every time I hear them I want to reply: "Of course he didn't!"; "Of course it wasn't!".

Before I dismiss it too heavily though, it's worth remembering that this hymn is based on a poem - by William Blake - and poetry is rarely meant to be taken entirely literally.  The first 2 verses are actually inspired by an (admittedly extremely unlikely) apocryphal story that Jesus once travelled to England with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea and visited Glastonbury.  Blake doesn't say that these events happened, he only asks the question, and uses this story as the basis for his poem, the emphasis of which is on the here and now rather than on what may or may not have happened in the past.

In the Bible, Jerusalem, as well as being a real physical, historical city, also represents God's eventual dwelling place with man.  In the New Testament book of Revelation, the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven to earth, representing the eventual union of heaven and earth in future paradise as God and man are finally able to dwell together in peace for eternity.  Blake's poem foreshadows this and sets it up as a goal to aim for - something all our energies, mental and physical, should be directed towards.

I don't believe we will ever achieve this goal on our own - ultimately I think only God can do this - but if we want to live in line with his purposes then I think this is a fairly good summary of what we should be aiming for - although not just for England of course!

God is not the answer

I recently watched this programme - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p90kk - which was the 6th and final part in BBC Four's "History of Christianity".

It was a fascinating and informative series, but near the end the presenter, Diarmaid MacCulloch, quoted Thomas Aquinas who apparently once said, "God is not the answer, God is the question".  I've done some googling and I can't find when, where or in what context Aquinas said this, so it's difficult to tell exactly what he meant by it.  I did however, find this interesting article on the subject.

I like the idea, mentioned in the article I've just referenced, that God does not "exist" in the sense that anything else exists - instead He is the cause of all existence.  I first came across this idea listening to Pete Rollins at Greenbelt last year, but it's not a new one - in theological discussion God has often been referred to as "the ground of being".

Thinking about questions and answers though, got me pondering that perhaps there are some questions that  actually ask us, more than we ask them.  For example, questions about suffering and the meaning of life.  These are questions that will probably never have complete and satisfactory logical answers, but perhaps our response to these questions is in the end more important than any answers we might find.  These questions don't just challenge our intellect, they call on our deepest emotional and spiritual resources - how will you respond to this question?  What will you do about it?  How will it affect the way you live your life?

Is God a question?  If so, what sort of answers are there to this kind of question, or should we even expect to find any?  The Christian God is at once transcendent (far above our human understanding) and also immanent (with us and accessible to us).  He is the question that keeps asking us, but He is also the answer that we will discover as we keep asking the question.  Ultimately the answer is not an intellectual one.  This is a question that calls right down into our very beings and re-unites us - if we dare to keep asking - with the ground of being - with God himself.  God may not be the "answer" in the conventional sense, but He is always there - the reason, who is waiting to be discovered!

The Fear of Science

A few days ago I caught part of this programme on Channel 4: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/genius-of-britain/episode-guide/series-1/episode-5

Near the end they showed a two-way interview between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking.  During the interview, Hawking asked Dawkins why he was “so obsessed with God”, which I found quite amusing! I was also interested though, to hear Dawkins’ response. Dawkins said (paraphrased – I can’t remember his exact words) that science was all about asking questions and trying to understand things and he felt that belief in God got in the way of this because it encouraged people to use God as an explanation for anything they couldn’t understand.

To be honest I think this is a bit weak as many Christians are also scientists and this doesn’t appear to stop them from doing what they do.  In fact, the belief in an ordered world, which stemmed from a belief in a God of order, underpinned much early scientific research.  I do often wonder though, whether for many people, religious belief does sometimes present a barrier to honest scientific enquiry. I certainly think this is the case for many Creationists (in the narrowest sense of that word). It seems to me that hard-line Creationists have a very strong pre-defined view of what the world should be like, so that any “science” they employ is bent entirely towards proving this picture, rather than towards investigating what’s actually out there with an open mind.

On the flip side however, I think Dawkins actually does something very similar with his hard-line approach towards natural selection. He’s been quoted many times for saying that Darwin made it possible for him to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist”. Dawkins doesn’t like mystery – he doesn’t like the unexplainable – and he believes that natural selection is able to explain everything about how the biological world – including humans – came to be the way that it is. But although most scientists (excluding Creationists) now accept that evolution has happened, there is no universal agreement on whether natural selection is the sole cause. Many (if not most) scientists would be happy to accept that there is still a significant amount of “mystery” around our understanding of what exactly has taken place.

For some Christians though, there can be a significant amount of fear involved in uncovering this mystery. What if we do manage to understand everything? Where would this leave God? If God is in the gaps in our understanding, where does He go if the gaps disappear? What if the things we discover disprove everything we thought we knew about the world?

First of all I think it’s extremely arrogant to assume that we will ever know or understand everything. For every answer we find there are - and always will be - a lot more questions. And if God is real, as Christians believe, then the mind of God will always be beyond ordinary human investigation.

Secondly though, what if the things that we discover disprove what we thought we knew? Well then, we should take it like men (or women)! Christians should have nothing to fear from the truth – it’s the foundation of our religion! If the truth we discover isn’t quite what we thought it was then obviously we have some learning to do! If God is real then we have nothing to fear from discovering His Universe. We should always be prepared to be surprised by God – and also by the truth!

Havoc and Healing

Bad stuff happens.

Sometimes life just seems to go screwy, for all sorts of reasons, or seemingly for no reason at all.

In the Bible, chaos and evil are closely linked. In the first Genesis creation account, God brings order out of chaos. The forces of evil on the other hand, seem continually intent on undoing this process.

Sometimes, precious things that we've spent days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime, lovingly and carefully building and nurturing can come crashing down - be reduced to chaos - in what seems like no time at all.

The gospel on the other hand - the Christian message of hope through Jesus - is all about healing. It's about undoing the chaos - reversing the damage. But what's the point if every time you try to bring healing or to build something good it dies or is destroyed - doesn't chaos always win in the end?

Not according to the gospel - in the end chaos is defeated, death gives way to resurrection. Resurrection isn't just about bringing the old thing back to life though - it's a whole new kind of life. It's a life that's endured suffering and been through death and out the other side - a life that has conquered evil and can hence no longer be touched by it!

This is what Jesus demonstrated through His life, death and resurrection and this is the life that works now in those who put their faith in him. One day this life will emerge fully triumphant in us, just as it did in Him, "if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory" - Romans 8 verse 17