So, what is it?

"When I consider the stars - the work of your fingers, I ask what is a man, that you are mindful of him?"


Monumental Indifference.
That's how one film maker defined the way the universe looks upon us this week - it is indifferent to our being here.

The hard data seems to be irrefutable. In a place where something like the equivalent of millions of thermonuclear explosions everyday take place inside our sun, and viruses smite people on mass arbitrarily, bringing death, sorrow and total carnage to society, who can argue with that?
So, it may be surprising to see that the same film maker goes on to say that life is really worthwhile - that we actually do count, and what we do has value.

Why?

Werner Hertzog (quoted above) would no doubt speak about the delight of being curious and engaging with what we find, but his glances at reality, whether through his camera lens or in his comments, touch upon something that should cause us to pause for thought.

Simply saying something has a point 'because it's there' is fine, but it shouldn't end there - if we're truly curious, it's going to mean asking harder questions and seeking deeper answers.

We've all had to become far more conscientious about our own actions recently - what we do and what we believe has huge bearing now upon those around us, but if we're honest, we know that's always the case - when we do what is good or evil, the consequences ripple out and can cause caring or destructive results.

It's also true that however 'nice' we may wish things to be, we harbour this nasty propensity to do harm, but unlike the universe, it's not something we can truly be indifferent about (unless we detach our humanity), and that says so much about the real 'why' of our being here.

When we're confronted with what our cruelty does, we know that we're as broken as the damage we have done, and that tells us something much bigger than the apparent 'emptiness' of the vastness of space is required to touch something that defies our standard 'weights and measures' - the human soul. That's no doubt why Jesus spoke about this essence of us being the most valuable thing in the natural realm (Mark 8 :36) - it is the vehicle that drives us towards so much more, or less, if we abuse it's raw data. That's why we say there's more to us, even in the face of the 'indifference' we seemingly observe all around.

One of the things that gets me up most mornings is beauty. The way light playfully spreads colour in the sky or the world, to allow an often fleeting sight that makes the familiar fresh and new, or the manner in which the elements combine to blanket the moors in a sea of still mist or dramatic sky-scapes is staggering, and that's just looking at the world from my window, before I've begun to get out amongst it.
There's a great deal more to unpack there, but as you spend time at home, take a moment to think on this. It can lead to some pretty deep thoughts.

The present circumstances grant us a window of opportunity to look harder, think deeper, than time often allows, so let's not waste it. Consider what life, the universe and everything is really trying to say to each of us.

Are we listening?

Decimation

"Yet at the most fundamental level—and this can’t be emphasized too strongly—the cross is in no way “religious.” The cross is by a very long way the most irreligious object ever to find its way into the heart of faith. J. Christiaan Beker refers to it as “the most nonreligious and horrendous feature of the gospel.

The crucifixion marks out the essential distinction between Christianity and “religion.” Religion as defined in these pages is either an organized system of belief or, alternatively, a loose collection of ideas and practices, projected out of humanity’s needs and wishes. The cross is “irreligious” because no human being individually or human beings collectively would have projected their hopes, wishes, longings, and needs onto a crucified man".

Fleming Routlidge - The Crucifixion.

In my childhood, I would often play with my cousins and sister at the open London common known as Blackheath. The title was awarded to the place because of the dark colour of its soil, but there is a common urban legend that it was so named because it became a famous graveyard for the city during the time of the Black Death. Whilst there are people buried on the heath from that period, it isn't a mass grave, but it certainly proved a macabre story to tell us as we learned 'ring a ring a roses'.

There is nothing so mythical about the images recorded in Europe this week.Hundreds of people are dying every day and the contagion is clearly just beginning to spread in many places, so the worst is clearly yet to come.

There have been all manner of reactions to this dreadful moment about who and what is right or wrong, but the awful truth is that many of us are facing a palpable threat of death that is clearly dreadful, and, at the moment, facing it without a readily available form of remedy or aid, so what are we to do? Where are we to look for aid?

There have been countless times in the past few weeks where my thoughts have wanted to just landslide into blind panic over this - I had one very disturbed night where the dreadful truth of what's happening gripped me - but I know that dwelling in such a place isn't going to help, especially if I'm facing my own mortality.

What we are clearly all facing is a breaking of our society that no one would have imagined as generally credible beyond fiction just a few months ago, so where can we find any genuine solace and comfort when pretty well everything we've known is taken away?

Fleming Routlidge gives us a very gritty and tangible place to start:
"Religious figures are not usually associated with disgrace and rejection. We want our objects of worship to be radiant, dazzling avatars offering the potential of transcendent happiness. The most compelling argument for the truth of Christianity is the Cross at its center. Humankind’s religious imagination could never have produced such an image. Wishful thinking never projected a despised and rejected Messiah. There is a contradiction at the very heart of our faith that demands our attention. We need to put a sign on it, though, like the signs on trucks carrying chemicals: Hazardous material, highly inflammatory cargo. Handle at your own risk.".

Like the Coronavirus itself, the truth of Christianity is a hazardous thing - it will twist and turn us as we seek to genuinely come to terms with its pain and joy, but it will heal us even as we face our certain mortality, and that is the healing we so genuinely need.

As Paul puts it, God forbid that I should glory in anything save the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Beyond the Wasteland

If history teaches us anything, it would appear to be that each generation has to face and deal with its own particular tragedy.

My parents lived through and served during the last world war, meeting amidst the terrible days of the blitz and marrying into a country where so much had become scarred and ruined by the sheer devastation of what happened.
They never talked much about it, and when they did, it was usually to talk up the brief good moments or to play down the bad, but it was clearly dreadful. Family and friends were lost, familiar places and ways finished abruptly, and life had to change.

We're only just beginning to wake up to the fact that we're passing into a similar change. There have been 'ripples' in the past few decades that should have caught our attention, but we mostly carry on as we have until the ground is shifting beneath our feet, and that has most certainly begun to happen in these past few weeks.

The next stage is similar to what my parents encountered - the outside world may not disappear in the same way, but our relationship to it and to each other is being re-written now in a fashion that is probably going to have a continual impact for months, possibly even years to come.

So what matters in the midst of what's happening?

Love and care is what must come first, but genuine love will always drive us to do the right thing for each other - to act in a fashion that will impact thoroughly to bring the most good.

Christianity shows us that the remedy can only properly be applied when the malady is truly appreciated. Christ came in the 'fulness of time' to accomplish redemption. In like fashion, God uses all things to bring about a genuine awareness of His love and our need, so amidst the present crisis, we need to be considering how we can say and do what is genuinely good for all, carrying on as normal as much as possible but being deeply aware of the needs of others and how best to respond to these.

In prior times, Christians have run care facilities and established hospitals, provided resources, learning or manpower to overcome particular needs, quarantined themselves in the light of certain death to assist others - the key in all was giving ourselves in a fashion which shows love and seeks to echo God's great mercy to our dying world.

May God watch over us in these difficult days, give us wisdom, and help us to truly help each other in the love that's made ours in the justifying work of Jesus Christ.

Footnote: One of the best informative pieces on the current virus can be found here.

Dealing with it

"I began to dread vainly proposing to myself the iterated dogma of science that all of life is material - that there are no undiscovered lands, even beyond the remotest stars for anything 'unnatural' to find a footing. Yet there struck in on this thought that matter is really as awful and unknown as spirit - that science itself merely dallies on the threshold, scarcely more than a passing glimpse of the actual wonders".

The Black Seal by Arthur Machen.

"We're Physical".

Roy Batty - Blade Runner.

So, pain, and plenty of it this last month.

Then came the rising tide - the news about the virus.

Mortality presses, sometimes like physical pain, when our youthful vitality ebbs in later years.

And, it's the Christian season where the weight of easter comes down like the unceasing rains of the wearing grey days.

So, then - death.

Here's what someone named Ian noted recently:
"We are born into this world kicking against the pricks, and on our deathbeds we will succumb to exhaustion, our flesh marred and torn to pieces by them. Futile resistance characterises so much of our lives, the hopeless retreat against inevitability. 

We cannot bear the truth: each of us will die, and absolutely nothing can be done to prevent it. Perhaps the most nauseating part of this, however, is that our dogged pursuit of life routinely misses its object. So many of our aims set their sights on life but fall hideously short. We enter the world congenitally inclined towards death-disguised-as-life, the addictions we will waste away from, overlong decades latent within our being, awaiting activation in history. But the pain and futility never stop us. Whether you’re Gilgamesh, Juan Ponce de Leon, Roy Batty, or Drake, we’re all always hunting after more life. 

We all need to hear the truth that brings our intuitions and suspicions to completion, because hope only ever lies on the other side of the unmasking of its counterfeits. We must own the hard truth. The worst thing that could happen to you already has: you’ve been born into a world that seeks your degradation and devastation. The suspicion that lurks within all your experience on this planet, in the joys cut short and the injuries you’re certain you didn’t deserve — as well as the ones you think you may have — is correct. But is there anything good on the other side of this brutal truth?"


There are several things here that should 'jolt' us.

The struggle spoken in the first statement is perhaps something we don't examine that much, except perhaps in brief moments when it sneaks up on us, because it's terrifying to encounter.
We invest everything into something that is so small and over so quickly. I still feel about twenty in my mind, but my body is beginning to slip further and further into decay - you come to know that escape isn't possible.

And yet, we want it to be, need it to be.
We fall so "hideously short" of what we hope to reach, but something deep inside us keeps yearning anyway - we're desperately, insatiably hungry for more... we're physical, and that magnificence is supposed to last.

The shock is that life isn't the splendour it should be.
We fight, we claw out a little piece of something, but we know there's meant to be so much more, and that truth and our current limitations scare us as we are dragged ever closer to the end. So we bounce along the surface, not allowing these overwhelming, immense truths to penetrate our sand castles. Afraid or conditioned, we choose not to do anything that leads us away from our little lives that would allow the "big picture" we encountered when we were young to penetrate us. The brutal truths don't go away, but we muffle the sound of what they are trying to say - the final moment is coming, so get your head together!

I was eaten up with despair and dread (yes, hell is real) when I lost my wife to cancer. I couldn't see anything in the black of that moment, but the truth is that there is more than the pain, the suffering and even the loss we encounter in this life, even in the very folds of death.

We're all looking, needing there to be more.

The reason we scramble so hard is because we all know that there's meant to be so much more. That is why Christianity counts - not all the religiosity, or the pretensions or preconceptions that are so often what we see and use to pigeon-hole this as "something not to worry about".

Here's why it counts.

Give it some time, why there's still time to take.