(Jaws 4)
There were two moments last week that were of particular horror in my mind, they were as follows:
In the seminar on 'mission to the poor and the marginalised' (which was held in a tiny back room and really poorly attended - more irony for you) there was a guy from St.Tom's talking to me about the work that he does. He wasn't running the seminar and was, in fact, disgruntled that it didn't go far enough for him. His complaint was that deep investment in people, giving them jobs, having them live with you etc wasn't really spoken of.
He was right and i was really excited by what he was saying and by his story. He talked of not being smart or wealthy, but of owning his own building company. One of the things he's done in the past has been give people jobs with him, build things with them, have them live with him and his wife - then BANG! This excitment i'd felt burst and turned to sheer horror when he said "...the thing is though, you've got to be careful about who you take on and invest in in this way. They've got to be saved first or, if they die, they go to Hell and all that energy and resources you've poured into them are just wasted".
Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
Secondly, in front of everyone on the last day, it was said that the wealth, freedom and lack of corruption we experience in this country is down to the Christian basis on which this country, its economy and its government are built.
I almost stood up and shouted "Bollocks!" except that i couldn't breathe, so instead i leant up and looked entirely aghast with all of the reasons this wasn't right barging through my mind. We didn't steal an Empire, it was ours to take, right? Slavery didn't give us a foot up, nor has oppression of women, come to think of it, our arms trading isn't too corrupt, and the same can be said of our dealing with the middle-east over oil. I'm sure there can't be too much of an economic benefit from getting Indonesians to make our sportswear etc etc.
The horror, the horror!
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4 comments:
Indeed, the Heart of Darkness
Excellent work, Winter, i appreciate that.
Enjoying this series of posts. Keep em coming. Perhaps like an American TV show if you get to 100 posts they could then run on an endless loop on one of the lesser blogs.
And yet . . . and yet. As flawed as the West is (your country, mine, others . . . even the Canadians), as much as the abuses it's gotten away with have enriched it (though I don't think slavery actually did, but that's an argument for another day), there's a very real kernel of truth to that speaker's message. It's not the sort of thing that should be said in a self-congratulatory way, or without recognizing the ways in which we have betrayed, and betray, our Lord; but if you compare the societies that arose out of the forming work of the Christian church vs. the societies that have arisen on other foundations, you can see a real, though not uniform, difference. That too is part of the picture.
(And really—why shouldn't it be? Granted the prosperity gospel types are nutso, the fact remains that as a matter of logic, if the Christian faith is true and other faiths are therefore false, there ought to be at least some evidence of that in the fruits they produce. Jesus certainly offered that as a test of individuals.)
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