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British writer A. N. Wilson has announced his return to Christian faith. After decades spent publishing some of the most sceptical biographies of the 20th century, the self-proclaimed doubting Thomas has done an apostle Paul. He’s stopped persecuting and started praising. Writing in the UK’s Daily Mail last week, Wilson said, “With the mentality of a child in the playground, I felt at some visceral level that being religious was unsexy, like having spots or wearing specs.”
 

Having reached his late 50s, being sexy has started to seem less important than being honest and facing reality. As Wilson ‘matured’, he began to feel more attracted to the faith he had so often ridiculed: “But the more I read the Easter story, the better it seems to fit and apply to the human condition”. Wilson began to sense that what he instinctively felt was the case—that human beings are spiritual, and not mere “animated pieces of meat”—was most likely to be true. It’s hardly a knock-down philosophical argument for Christianity, and he admits as much, but it’s where he has come to in his own reflections. I feel a bit like the older brother in the Prodigal Son story of the Gospel of Luke chapter 15, sulking as the wayward one returns home to be embraced by the Father with open arms. Isn’t that just like God, to forgive insulting biographies and smug unbelief? Still, I can forgive him, too. He does write well.


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C P X | Thursday, April 23, 2009 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink
Australians are watching on in horrid fascination as Bikie Gangs engage in a bitter and violent dispute. A clubhouse is bombed. A man is bashed to death in broad daylight in an airport terminal. His brother is gunned down in front of his home. The bomb squad is called to a gang leader’s house and a suspicious package is taken away. Politicians posture about how to smash the ring of criminal gangs. Those involved, unperturbed, threaten all-out war.

 
It’s a common enough story that is played out across the world every day between countries and tribes, among families and former friends—violence and hatred leading to fulfilled promises of revenge and retribution. Young men hell-bent on payback or defending someone’s honour usually lead the spiral into chaos. The results are inevitably the same.

We can all understand the desire for revenge. It is a natural response but one that, if acted upon, guarantees there will be no winners. It makes me think of the radical and life-changing notion of forgiveness as perhaps the only thing that can break these cycles of hatred. True forgiveness is complex and rare. It no doubt sounds quaint and naïve to even mention the word in circumstances where the stakes are high and someone’s death regarded as the only satisfactory price to be paid for perceived wrongs. But I wonder if the mother of the two men—one dead, the other shot multiple times—might not wonder how all this might have been avoided.

Jesus’ call to ‘love your enemies’ is one of his more memorable sayings. It feels as jarring and impossible today as it would have to his original hearers. But like all that he said, it has powerful practical application. Martin Luther King Jnr, a famous follower of Jesus, and one who put his commands into practice better than most, had something to say about this issue:
 
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.   
Breaking the spiral of destruction may well take something as counter-intuitive, and profound an act as forgiveness. It’s worth exploring as a force for good in both the personal and political realm.




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Simon Smart | Thursday, April 02, 2009 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0) | Permalink