Why is it that there’s no difference between the political parties any more? What do we need to do to bring change? Finishing with a reflection on Psalm 2.
Over the last 15 months we’ve got used to the sight of social media fact-checkers. But are they impartial and unbiased? And is there a deeper problem going on in the field of science?
I believe politics is in big need of a reboot. I believe much of the Western world (but particularly the US and UK) is suffering. Take, for example, the division in society about issues like Brexit, Covid, Transgender, etc. These have all become highly politicised. You can understand why an issue like Brexit would be political, but why Covid? Why should the country’s response to a pandemic become a political isssue, for example?
In a nutshell, I believe this is because politics has taken the place that religion used to occupy. Let me explain in a bit more detail.
A few months ago I wrote about cancel culture. I included this slide from Speak Life, which talks about what happens when you take away “The Sacred” (i.e. religion) from society. Glen Scrivener argued that this simply bumps everything up a notch: politics takes the place of the Sacred, and sports and entertainment move into the political area. This is why everything is preachy nowadays!
I think this is a hugely powerful explanation for what is happening in society. Let’s think about a couple of examples.
One of the things I find fascinating about the government’s response to Covid-19 has been trying to control the virus. It was part of the government’s official message in the early days of the pandemic!
What I find fascinating about this is the way that the government have simply taken it upon themselves to control this virus. Have any governments in history ever been able to successfully control a virus?
Not to mention, the opposition have used covid as a political weapon. At the start of October, Keir Starmer said the Prime Minister had lost control of the virus. Labour have called for stricter lockdown measures to be applied, and applied sooner. The message they are trying to convey is: “we would have protected you from this virus”.
And the things is – and this is more to the point – we’ve let them. Or at least, a lot of us have. We’ve just assumed that the government can and should control the virus. The government say we should wear masks, so everyone dutifully wears masks. The government say we should stop meeting, so we stop meeting. We accept these things because we believe the government are controlling the virus.
In the past, people might have gone to church to pray for an end to a plague. For example, the Book of Common Prayer includes prayers “in the time of any common plague of sickness”. These days we don’t pray to God for an end to plague – we look to our politicians to sort it out.
Before the last election I posted up something on my Facebook about Labour and anti-semitism. Maybe that was unwise, as I don’t really like talking about politics on Facebook. Anyway, it led to an interesting discussion about the rights and wrongs of voting and political parties. One of the things which a couple of friends said was that it was morally right to vote for Labour due to economic reasons.
One person raised the example (from their own experience) of children coming to school who hadn’t been fed properly. Of course, this is a big issue. There are lots of big issues in society. What I found interesting was the assumption that the problem was the government. I see this time and again, especially from younger people on social media: there are deep problems in society (which there are) – and so the government should do something.
The thing is, if you look properly into a lot of these problems, it’s rarely the case that you can say “it’s the government’s fault”. This is an issue I’ve talked about a few times, e.g. on my post about “the poor”. A lot of the problems like this are actually caused by many factors. Is the biggest problem that they’re not getting enough help from the government? I would argue, that’s not the issue here.
If we go back to the Book of Common Prayer again, there’s another prayer “In the time of dearth or famine”. In the past, in this country, if there was a problem with people getting enough food – we’d pray to God about it. These days, we’re more likely to look to the government to help.
As I write this, we’ve just had an election in the US. Donald Trump has lost the election to Joe Biden. (Well, that’s what it looks like right now… let’s just say it’s contested).
What’s been interesting during the campaign, and now the result has been announced, is the way that people think “their guy” is The Anointed One. They often treat “their guy” as the one who can sort everything out, while the “other guy” is going to cause all the problems.
We had the same in the UK with the last election: some people hailed Corbyn as the one who was going to solve every problem (see above), and that Boris Johnson was some kind of fascist. Other people saw Boris Johnson as some kind of saviour, the one who would “Get Brexit Done”, whereas Corbyn was going to plunge the country into debt.
Whichever side you were on, only our guy was going to solve all the problems in the world. This is far too much responsibility to give to one problem!
Again – we are looking to political leaders to sort out all our problems. We look to them as Messiahs. When, as we should know from Monty Python:
I’ve already talked about how woke is a new religion. If you’d like to see someone with a bit more authority than me talk about these things, listen to Trevor Phillips instead.
What’s interesting about the phenomenon of wokeness is the way that many people point to the God-shaped hole which created it.
One of the things I find most fascinating is that many people see there is a “God-shaped hole” in society. I saw this most recently, for example, in Douglas Murray’s fireside chat with Dennis Prager. A lot of people seem to have noticed this, for example Laurence Fox.
I think they’re absolutely right. The political problems we face are actually religious.
This is exactly what the Bible predicts. Romans 1:23 says when we don’t believe in God, we exchange God for other – lesser – gods. G.K. Chesterton put it this way:
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
This is the problem that we have in society. As Christianity has declined, we haven’t stopped believing. We’ve simply replaced God with other things – e.g. politics and the government. In his book Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller says:
When either party wins an election, a certain percentage of the losing side talks openly about leaving the country. They become agitated and fearful for the future. They have put the kind of hope in their political leaders and policies that once was reserved for God and the work of the gospel.
If that was the case when he was writing a few years ago, how much more true is it now! And this is exactly the problem. We put the kind of faith in our political leaders that we used to reserve for God alone. We expect political leaders to be able to sort out our problems, solve the economy, feed, house and clothe everyone, and achieve a perfect society. Unfortunately – those things can only be done by God himself.
Mathematical problems require a mathematical solution. Political problems require a political solution. Religious problems require a religious solution.
We all want to see a perfect society. We all want to see those who are hungry fed, those who are living in poverty lifted out of it. The problem is that the government is unable to accomplish those goals. Or at least, they can give it a good go – but there are limitations to what a government can do.
When we trust in politics and governments to do what only God can do, that is what the Bible calls idolatry: we’ve substituted something in place of God. The good news is, there is a solution for that problem. It’s a person – but not a politician, but a Saviour, Jesus.
Think about these famous words which are often read in Christmas services up and down the land:
For to us a child is born,
Isaiah 9:6-7
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and for ever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
will accomplish this.
The government will be on his shoulders. Jesus isn’t some kind of consultant who tells us how we might think about living our lives better. He’s the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace – he’s the only one who has the power to bring about everything we want in society and in our lives.
And, even better news: he died for our sins so that we might be forgiven and transformed. He died so that we could be forgiven of our idolatry. Isn’t that amazing! God didn’t decide to just cast us aside – as he had every right to. But instead, he sent his Son, a Saviour – one who alone can save us from our sin and idolatry. He alone can set us free from our addiction to political solutions and help us to seek him alone.
Trust in the Lord and do good;
Psalm 37:3-4
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
The other day I read this Psalm, and I was really struck by it. When we take delight in the Lord, then he can give us our desires. This is the case for us as individuals, and it’s also the case for us as a society. When we seek the Lord – then, all the problems that we face in society can be dealt with.
In Britain, as a society we used to seek the Lord. You can see that from the prayers included in the Book of Common Prayer. Even as recently as the second world war, King George VI called for a national day of prayer which ended up in the miracle of Dunkirk – see this video for more information.
I believe the question facing us as a nation – and across the Western world – is simply this: when we are confronted with all the problems in the world, are we willing to turn aside from our political idols, from our addiction to solutions in government, and seek God instead? Are we willing to seek the Lord, who alone can bring about what we are looking for?
If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)
Over the last year or two I’ve got into YouTube: it has gradually become a valuable resource where you can access high-quality content. One of the channels that I’m subscribed to is Douglas Carswell – he is formerly the MP for Clacton (who achieved notoriety by becoming UKIP’s first MP when he defected from the Conservatives). Since he retired from politics, he has started filming conversations with people on YouTube, discussing interesting ideas.
One of the videos I watched recently was his interview with Grace Blakeley:
I thought it was a good interview, and fascinating to watch them talking. Douglas Carswell was coming from a more ‘right-wing’ / free-market perspective, and Grace Blakeley from a more ‘left-wing’ / democratic socialist perspective.
What I was really struck by throughout the interview was how it kept on coming back to the basic human problem: people are selfish and greedy and can’t be trusted. It came across to me very clearly in the video how this was the fundamental issue of government – organising the country in the best way to try and mitigate against human failures.
One thing it made me reflect on was the way that the Christian faith does not fit into any particular political ‘box’. It transcends politics. This isn’t always the way that Christians talk about politics, and we’ll maybe get onto that in a moment.
The root problem is this: you cannot solve the problem of the human heart without Jesus. Jesus is the only ultimate solution to the problem of the human heart. People are selfish and greedy, people are corruptible, people treat others badly. Legislation won’t cure that problem, nor will the free market. Only Jesus will.
It seems that both the left and the right are trying to solve the problem in different ways by politics: the right-wing, free-market solution is to harness people’s selfishness to create wealth which will trickle down to the poorest. Whereas the left-wing, socialist solution is to regulate everything, redistribute wealth by the power of the government, and essentially force people to give money to those who are more deserving.
Neither of these approaches really solves the problem, however. I think this is what came across clearly in the programme: unless you can solve the problem of the human heart’s natural inclinations, people will find a way of wiggling out of their responsibilities. They will find a way of being selfish and greedy whatever the government says. There’s no way around it.
One of the folks from our church is from Liverpool, and he’s often talking about the fact that, in days gone by, in the north of England mill owners would put their wealth into community ventures – orphanages, hospitals, churches, etc. Why? Because having wealth came with social responsibility. And that view comes from within a Christian worldview where we all have a responsibility to love our neighbour. Wealth is not simply to be used selfishly but is a responsibility for us to steward wisely.
I think this is something of what David Cameron was getting at with the ‘big society’. At the end of the day, no political system will really work unless people from all over society actually love and care for each other, and use their positions to benefit others. It seems that these days there is a much more ‘personal’ view of wealth – if you are rich and wealthy, spending that money on the community is an optional extra (and an extra which few people seem to take advantage of).
Jesus is the only one who can transform us from being inward looking to outward looking. With him, we gradually become less selfish and greedy and start loving our neighbour as ourselves. The best thing the church can do to help in the country is actually preach the gospel. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek political solutions to certain things – e.g. I am glad that slavery was banned, to take one example! And I think there are many positive things about the welfare state, e.g. the NHS.
But whatever the state provides, Christians need to acknowledge that it is the responsibility of all of us to care for the sick and the poor, to give to the needy, and to seek the good of others. We need personal transformation, not simply better laws.
Incidentally, all of this is why I feel uncomfortable with the way some Christians (notably bishops) talk about politics. I wrote about this before when Justin Welby called for taxes to be raised to help the poor. As I said then, it’s not wrong to be involved in politics – but the church has a unique position in proclaiming Jesus. If we focussed a bit more on proclaiming Jesus, perhaps the politics would take care of itself.
Justin Welby has been in the news recently for speaking out about politics. Notably, he called for higher taxes to tackle an ‘unjust economy’. He’s garnered quite a lot of criticism for speaking out in this way, and has written an article defending speaking out publicly.
Others have written about this more eloquently and wisely than I – I enjoyed what Ian Paul had to say – so I’ll just make a few brief comments.
Firstly: It’s not wrong for an Archbishop – or any Christian – to get involved with politics. I believe in getting involved in politics because I believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of everything and cares about the whole of creation. I outlined a little about this in my post about not understanding Tim Farron. God’s laws are given for the good of all, and thus I think it’s right for Christians to be involved in politics.
Secondly: Christian leaders should be very careful about being involved with politics. One of the problems with politics is that, whatever you say, people will disagree with. That’s how it works. This is why I think Christian leaders have a particular responsibility to say only what they are absolutely sure is right. I haven’t spoken in any of my sermons about the way I voted in in the Brexit referendum, for example – even though I think there were good reasons for voting the way I did. If you align yourself with a particular cause, people may well think that the Kingdom of God is aligned with that particular cause. In contrast, Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Jesus’ kingdom stretches across national boundaries, across political boundaries, across just about every boundary. Although I may be of one particular political persuasion, I believe that there are faithful Christians who have other political persuasions – and I want to welcome them to have a place at the table. Anyone who Christ welcomes, I want to welcome too. Making political pronouncements which align with one particular style of politics – unless you have a cast-iron Biblical reason for doing so – is wrong and unnecessarily divides the body of Christ on political lines.
Thirdly: Economics is not a straightforward matter. A lot of people seem to be glad that the Archbishop is doing something about the poor (and Christians should be concerned with the poor). The thing is, as I already talked about in my post about the poor, poverty is hugely complicated. I am far from persuaded that what the poor need is more money from the government – in many cases, at least. Among the people I work with one of the biggest problems is family breakdown – fewer people are getting married, more and more children are being born into families with what used to be described as ‘complicated’ arrangements. All this is having a huge effect. I think this is nothing short of a national scandal – I’m sure I’ve read the UK has the highest rate of family breakdown in the developed world.
Why isn’t the Archbishop speaking out about this, for example? Any why is he instead advocating for higher taxes, which many are convinced will not actually help?
Finally: The ultimate solution we have is Jesus. This is the biggest problem I have with Justin Welby getting involved in the way that he has. The solution God has given us to the problems of the world is not politics, but Jesus Christ – who alone has the power to forgive sin and give us the power to live in God’s ways. Welby seems to be putting the State in the place of the gospel. If he actually spent more time publicly calling people to repentance and faith in Christ it would have a far greater effect than asking the government to sort out economic injustice.
I’m not asking for the church to simply preach the gospel and do nothing about social issues. But rather, the church needs to tackle the social issues with the gospel. As people come to faith in Christ, they learn to love God and their neighbour as they are transformed by the Spirit. And it is this kind of language which I see absent from much of what Justin Welby says (and, to be fair, not just him but most of the Church of England).
Earlier on I watched the latest Anglican Unscripted episode, and I enjoyed the comments made in the second half of the video talking about this subject. If the church was committed to the task of evangelism, it would have a much bigger effect on the country than anything the state could do.
Every so often I am asked to contribute a short piece to end our local spoken news service – the Tendring Talking Times. This was my contribution for this week.
It seems like the world is going mad at the moment. The Brexit vote a few weeks ago triggered an avalanche of bad feeling in the country and exposed a deep rift in our society. Politics is becoming increasingly polarised: it seems that it is now almost impossible for people to respect someone with a different political opinion, let alone think they are a decent moral person. We don’t just disagree with people who have a different political persuasion; we think they are actually immoral. Something similar is happening in the USA with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – the country is divided over which political leader to support.
People seem to understand that there is something wrong with society, something wrong with our world, and they believe that these problems need political solutions. Some people believed that the right thing for Britain was to stay in the European Union – that things will all go downhill from now on. Other people believed that the right thing was to leave the European Union – it was the country’s only hope for a better future.
From a Christian perspective, all of these beliefs suffer from the same root problem: hope is placed in political leaders and policies when that hope should be reserved for God alone. I have just finished reading a book called ‘Counterfeit Gods’ by Tim Keller, a pastor from New York, and he puts it like this:
When either party wins an election, a certain percentage of the losing side talks openly about leaving the country. They become agitated and fearful for the future. They have put the kind of hope in their political leaders and policies that once was reserved for God and the work of the gospel.
To ascribe to mankind what should be reserved for God alone is what the Bible calls idolatry – worshipping the created rather than the Creator. In the book Keller goes on:
Another sign of idolatry in our politics is that opponents are not considered to be simply mistaken, but to be evil. After the last presidential election, my eighty-four-year-old mother observed, “It used to be that whoever was elected as your president, even if he wasn’t the one you voted for, he was still your president. That doesn’t seem to be the case any longer.” After each election, there is now a significant number of people who see the incoming president as lacking moral legitimacy. The increasing political polarization and bitterness we see in U.S. politics today is a sign that we have made political activism into a form of religion.
Although Keller is writing about the situation in the USA, I believe he could equally be writing about Britain today: we have turned politics into a god and placed all our hopes in our political leaders and ideas.
In contrast, the Christian faith does not allow us to demonise or to deify any created thing. Nothing human, no person or political idea, is the cause of all our problems or the solution to them. The Bible is clear that the root of the human problem is not political but what it calls sin: as St. Paul puts it, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.
The biggest problem the human race has is sin, and it is a universal problem which cannot be solved by political leaders: it is a spiritual problem. A spiritual problem has to have a spiritual solution, and that solution is found only in Jesus Christ. St. Peter says about Christ, “He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness”.
The biggest issue of the human race is not political in nature but spiritual: we are sinners. But Christ himself bore the penalty for our sin on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live for righteousness. That is the kind of salvation that we all need.
The last few days I have felt particularly ashamed to be British. Not because the country voted to leave the EU, but because of the backlash following it. I appreciate that many people felt deeply unhappy with the result – it’s natural and understandable. Many people believed that leaving the EU was the wrong decision. No problem. People thought the opposite and felt equally strongly about it.
No, what got to me instead was some of the mocking characterisation of ‘Brexiteers’ – xenophobic, racist and ignorant “Little Englanders”.
A few years ago, in one of the comedian Chris Addison’s shows, he made the point that ‘Eurosceptic’ was wrong – because ‘sceptic’ implied that people had actually bothered to think about it. I think this is a good example of the kind of tone used on Facebook and the like recently: not always offensive, but generally implying that those who voted leave were lesser people, somehow.
It really makes me think of the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector:
The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”
This seems to me to get to the heart of a lot of what is going on with moaning about Brexiteers. ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people – racists, xenophobes, ignoramuses – and especially not like this Brexiteer. I voted for Remain and I don’t want to sacrifice the futures of all our children for no good reason.”
The other night I had something of an epiphany: it seems to me that people who moaned about Brexiteers actually believed they were morally superior. It’s easy to treat someone else badly when you believe they are morally in the wrong (and you are in the right) – after all, they deserved it, right?
I think this attitude is linked with the decline of Christian understanding and morality in our culture. I believe that people growing up in decades past would have grown up with the language of the Book of Common Prayer – believing that mankind are “miserable offenders” and “there is no health in us”. Even people who didn’t regularly go to church would have had something of this attitude ingrained.
This has a big effect on how we see other people: if we believe that all people have sinned and fall short of the glory of God – then if someone else gets something wrong, something of a moral nature, then they are still fundamentally no different to us: all are human beings, all are flawed, and the only hope is the grace of God which cannot be earned – only accepted.
On the other hand, if there is no Christian understanding of humanity, then I think you end up with what we’ve just seen: people who think differently are actually perceived as morally deficient in some way. Worse than that, they are wilfully morally deficient. They should try harder and stop being morally deficient, and in the meantime we’ll treat them with disdain and contempt until they realise how morally deficient they are and change.
I wrote about this in November last year when I talked about Bigotry and legalism in our culture. That was in the context of same-sex marriage, but I think the same could be said of Brexit.
If we want to learn to disagree well, I think we have to recover a truly Christian ethic: those on different sides of a divide like this are both human, both made in the image of God, and yet both flawed. Neither is infallible. Both are in equal need of God’s mercy. If by the grace of God we are able to see others in that way, perhaps we’ll be able to make positive progress. But until then I fear for the direction of political discourse in this country.