Sunflowers, wheatfields and morality

Here's my article for August:

Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Last year I visited the National Gallery in London, and wrote an article reflecting on how just like the Christian artwork displayed there, our society wants to rip Christian values away from their Christian foundations.   But my visit there was definitely worth it as I had another thought while I was there that has inspired this article!!

As I walked around the gallery there were many tour groups with a guide who spoke about the pieces of art and the various movements they belonged to.  They also told you to move away if you got too close, so you didn't get the benefit of their expertise without paying for it!

In one room there was a particularly large crowd gathered around a picture.   As I moved towards the picture, I saw that it was van Gogh's 'Sunflowers'.   This was quite a surprise as I had no idea that that picture was in the National Gallery.  It was also quite a thrill to see this famous picture in real life, and to be able to get close enough to see the brushstrokes.    The tour groups moved on to another room, and I started to look around at the other pictures in that room.  The picture next to 'Sunflowers' was also by van Gogh, and called 'A Wheatfield, with Cypresses'; I found that I was much more captivated by this picture than 'Sunflowers.'  It had swirly clouds and trees and wheat that were all painted in such a way as to look like they were moving – I felt like I was there and could feel the breeze and hear the sounds of rustling.

Another tour group came in going straight to 'Sunflowers' and then leaving after having heard about it.   I felt sorry for 'A Wheatfield' and wondered how often it was overlooked in favour of its move famous neighbour, and then felt sorry for the tour group, who missed out on what I consider the better picture next to the one they concentrated on.  This left me with the question: is an artwork famous because it's good, or good because it's famous?

I'm not an expert in art so I probably don't have much knowledge to contribute to that discussion, but if the question is shifted to the realm of ethics, that's much more in my comfort zone: are certain actions favoured because they are good, or good because they're popular?   Is there an objective moral standard or does society decide what is good or bad?

If society decides which actions are moral acceptable then it becomes very hard to criticise any group for their actions: the UN Declaration of Human Rights might be the moral standard for this time, but there's no reason it can't be altered, or rescinded, in the future.  And even with the UNDHR, some humans, by popular consent, are not covered by its provisions, for example in Iceland nearly all pregnancies with a confirmed Down syndrome diagnosis are terminated.   However, if morality is not to be arbitrarily decided by societal consensus, and it can't be found by looking at the natural world, it needs to grounded in something outside of society, i.e. something that is super-natural.

For Christians, that objective moral standard is not to be found in a distant divine law-giver, but in the God who in intimately involved in the universe he created, and also entered into that universe, becoming human in Jesus.  Jesus not only came to show us what moral perfection looks like in practice, but also to die to take our punishment for failing to keep those moral standards.

Should we still remember?

Here is my sermon from this year's Remembrance Sunday service at Broughton:

It's now over one hundred years since the first Remembrance Sunday took place at the end of the First World War; this year we commemorated the 80th anniversary of D-Day; next year we'll celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day – and very few of those who remember those events are still alive today. So it might be reasonable to ask the question, do we still need to carry on remembering? After all we don't still remember the battle of Waterloo in the same way, and that too was a war to stop a dictator taking over Europe.

It seems to me that Remembrance Sunday is important especially for those who don't believe in God but still want to hold on to the idea that there are moral absolutes – that some actions are right and others wrong; that some actions are good and others are evil. Without God to define what is right and what is wrong it is necessary to come up with another standard for morality and so the moral and ethical code for many in our society is summed up in the golden rule: “Don't be like Hitler!” And so Remembrance events are annual reminders of that secular basis for morality.

This, however, makes our sense of good and bad a matter of comparison: “I may not be perfect but I'm not as bad as Hitler”! As the old joke says, if you're in a place with bears you don't have to be able to run faster than the bear, you only have to be able to run faster than your companions! As long as you're not the slowest, you'll survive. And that's the way morality is seen too: as long as I'm not the worst I'm OK. We compare ourselves with others, even those around us, and as long as we are better than they are, we satisfy ourselves that we are good. And even if we've got no-one around us who is worse than us, we are still good because we're not Hitler.

In our second Bible reading (Mark 10:17-27), a man comes up to Jesus to ask a question and calls him “Good Teacher.” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” In doing so, Jesus was making a point about himself – in calling him 'good' the man recognises that Jesus is divine; but Jesus is also making a point about us – we are not good. Even if we obey a lot of the Ten Commandments like the man had, we are still not good. The man was relying on his good deeds for his salvation, for his reputation of being good, but Jesus reminds him and us that it is impossible for us to be saved, to be good by our own actions.

The problem is our perspective. When we compare ourselves with others we will always find people worse than ourselves: even Hitler thought he was morally better than others – which is why he put so many into death camps. Unlike the Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch, the Nazis didn't look at themselves and ask “Are we the baddies?” - they thought they were the goodies. We may think that morally we are as far away from the Nazis as we are in distance from Australia, but we are looking at it from ground level. Jesus reminds us that the moral standard is God himself – only he is good. And when we compare ourselves with him, we are as far away from him morally as we are in distance from the edge of the universe. And from the edge of the universe, the distance between us and Australia is ultra-microscopically small. Compared with God we are as bad as Hitler.

A film came out last year called “The Zone of Interest” about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden beside the camp. But what makes this film different to other Holocaust movies is that instead of getting us to identify with the victims, it wants to show us our similarities with the perpetrators.

So while Remembrance events are good for reminding ourselves to not be like Hitler, it is Remembrance Sunday that teaches us the most important lesson: peace will never come through human effort. Because all of us share that inner sinfulness that is only a step away from committing the horrors we see in war. We need to be reminded not to be like Hitler because we are like Hitler. The Commandments Jesus doesn't mention in his list are Commandments about putting God first in our lives, and by failing to do that our inhumanity towards humanity will continue. But the good news that introduces the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2) is that that God saves us not on the basis of our good deeds but on his love for us – which is shown supremely in Jesus' death which takes the punishment for our sins and attributes to us a goodness that we could never achieve ourselves.

Our first reading (Isaiah 2:2-5) tells us that one day those who are willing will learn God's ways and walk in his paths, and that is a good thing to start doing now. But it is only through Jesus that peace will come because he is the good one who will judge between the nations and settle the disputes for many peoples. That is why he is called the Prince of Peace; that is why the peace doves we have here today come out from the cross.

Dressing up evil

Here's my article for October:

A question that quite often gets asked is “Why is there so much evil in the world?”  As we approach the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War we again focus on the horror of war and “man's inhumanity to man”.  But there is also plenty in the news today that makes us despair about the prevalence of evil in the world.

There is, however, an irony in those who despair about the amount of evil in the world but at the same time take part in Halloween events.  Because despite its 'fun' and 'playful' image, Halloween is in essence a celebration of evil.  In fact it is even more dangerous because it makes evil seem to be fun and playful, and children get rewarded with sweets for being evil. This might seem a bit of a stretch make a link between dressing up as a vampire and acts of atrocity, but the normalising, minimising and rewarding of evil means that we become immune to the seriousness of evil.  If the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, this is true whether the direction is right or wrong!

Now that isn't to say that all those who dress up in Halloween costumes are evil or will commit evil acts, it is merely saying that we need to be careful what we celebrate, encourage and reward, especially in children, because that could set a precedent for future undesirable behaviour.  An example of this might be those who mark Halloween as 'Mischief Night' – a time for pranks such as egging or acts of vandalism.  If you can dress as a devil 'for fun' why can't you act as a devil 'for fun'?  Why is one praised and the other condemned?  Why is one promoted on social media and the other moaned about on that same social media?

The answer would be that it is a matter of moral boundaries, but that raises the question of where those moral boundaries should be set.  Once evil in whatever form is acceptable, when does it become unacceptable?  This then becomes a matter of personal interpretation: what one person calls 'being scary for fun' another might call terrorisation.

In the Christian worldview this confusion is exactly what the “spiritual forces of evil” (Ephesians 6:12) want.  The prophet Isaiah warned “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20).  The devil is the 'father of lies' (John 8:44) who masquerades as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14) – a bad thing pretending to be good.  By tricking us into thinking that evil is 'just playing' and 'a bit of fun' he sows moral confusion and gets a foothold in our lives.  In the baptism service, after the parents and godparents have said that they reject the devil and all rebellion against God and renounce the deceit and corruption of evil, we exhort the child to “fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ against sin, the world and the devil.”  But they cannot not fight this battle alone; so we ask God to deliver them from the powers of darkness, restore in them the image of his glory, and lead them in the light and obedience of Christ.  Paul reminds us in Ephesians 5:8 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.”