Faithful or Traitor?

Here's my article for March:

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

“Are you a Faithful or are you a Traitor?” This question reverberated around the heads of many people who watched the latest series of 'The Traitors' which bills itself as being “the ultimate reality game of trust and treachery.” IMDB summarises the show as “Twenty-two strangers compete in a series of missions for a chance to win £120k. However, amongst the players lie the 'Traitors', who meet in secret and decide who to eliminate from their fellow players known as 'Faithfuls'.” The Faithfuls have to try to guess who amongst them is a Traitor and vote them to be banished. It's basically an elaborate game of wink murder!

I only started watching it halfway through the previous series, but it has an addictive quality akin to morbid curiosity, and I'm not quite sure what to make of my interest in it. There is something about the premise of the show which revolves around lies and deception that makes me uncomfortable, and although “it's only a gameshow” it involves real people trusting other people and often being really betrayed. And I'm not sure whether it makes it worse that these are 'good' people pretending to be bad, but doing actual bad things in order to win a game. In some ways I'd rather it were 'bad' people doing bad things because ironically at least they would be being 'faithful' to their nature.

But perhaps what really makes me uncomfortable about the programme is the mirror it holds up to me. In reality I am like the 'Traitors' – projecting a 'good' persona to hide my inner self-interest. Jesus was the first to use the word 'hypocrite' in the way we use it today (before that it simply meant an actor), and he once said to the religious leaders of his day “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28.)

The temptation is to blame our surroundings for the way we behave; just as the contestants justify their behaviour because 'it's the game', so we say we have to be self-centred because the world and everyone else is fallen. However, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin exposes that as simply an excuse. There are many jobs that we say we will do 'when we get around to it', but the COVID lockdown proved that many of those jobs don't get done not because of lack of time and opportunity (there was plenty of that in lockdown!) but instead because of a lack of will and motivation. According to Douglas Murray, Original Sin teaches us that “we are this very, very contorted being which is capable of incredible greatness and beauty and kindness and forgiveness and also capable of their opposites and that it's not that you are one and other people are the other but all of us all of us are both all the time.” In the perfection of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose disobedience and self-centredness, and demonstrated that the problem is not our environment, but ourselves. As is often said “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”

Jesus likened himself to a doctor (Luke 5:31) who both diagnoses the problem but also offers the remedy. In Lent we are encouraged to face squarely our hypocrisy, not to crush us with guilt but to direct us to Jesus who took on that guilt, our guilt, on the cross. We are all 'Traitors' but the one we betrayed died taking our punishment – that is a priceless prize!

Black Friday or White Christmas?

My article for the December and January magazines:

Christmas is a time for traditions: the food, the music, the decorations (and complaining about how early they go up!), the parties, the church services and of course it wouldn't be Christmas without the cries of “It's all too commercialised!” We may lament that children are no longer content with Christmas presents consisting of shed-built wooden toys, an apple, an orange and some nuts, but I suspect that none of us would actually want it to be like that again. However it is true that in all the focus on the extravagance of presents or celebrations, the true reason for Christmas gets lost.

Nothing exemplifies this more than 'Black Friday'. Originally a term to describe the crowds of U.S. citizens starting their Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, it became an opportunity for retailers to offer big sales. This trend has recently (at least pre-pandemic) become more popular outside the U.S.A. and has been adopted by many retailers in this country. It's not just the consumerism of Black Friday that is a problem, but also the behaviour that it stirs up – there are often stories about injuries and even deaths caused by crowding and fighting over hugely discounted and desirable products. Fighting and injuries are also a feature of the other UK Black Friday – the nickname used by the emergency services for the Friday before Christmas due to its popularity as a night for Christmas parties. So, whether it's about presents or partying, for many people Christmas is defined by Black Friday.

Although Black Friday, in either use, is almost the opposite of the meaning of Christmas as a time of altruism and peace, it does show us why Christmas was necessary. Black Friday reminds us how as humans we can easily take something good, for example giving presents and celebrating with family and friends, and turn it into something bad. This is what the Christian faith calls 'Original Sin' – the innate tendency of humans to choose selfishness and our own interests over the interests of others, and to reject God's authority over us. Black Friday shows that Christmas is necessary because Christmas is defined not by Black Friday but by Good Friday.

The consequence of Original Sin is that we are unable, and ultimately unwilling, to do anything about our sinfulness and so we need a Saviour. This Saviour had to be human so that he could identify with us, suffer in our place and sympathize with us in our weakness. But he also had to be divine to pay off the infinite wrath of God incurred by our sin. In Psalm 51 King David acknowledged his sinfulness and asked God for forgiveness saying “wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (verse 7). Christmas is the day we remember that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, being born so that he could die in order to pay the punishment for our sins on Good Friday and then rise from the dead at Easter to give us a new start.

So is your Christmas defined by Black Friday or Good Friday? Is it all about materialism, excess and self-centredness or is it about an awareness of your sin, and the celebration of the birth of your Saviour who will wash you whiter than snow?