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Although King Henry VIII considered
himself a Christian, he passed edicts that ran entirely counter to
God’s law, spreading great grief and even terror in the process. By
dissolving the monasteries and confiscating their assets, he left
the poor with nowhere to go. Advisers who did not agree with him
likewise risked being put to death. This was the fate of John
Fisher, who had once been close to the king. When the time came for
Fisher’s sentence to be carried out, he made his way to the scaffold
in his best clothes.
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“This is my wedding day,”
he explained, “and I ought to dress as if for a holiday.”
Carrying his New Testament, he was led to the execution
platform. There he prayed, “Lord, grant that I may find some
word of comfort so that I may glorify You in my last hour.”
The first words he saw as He opened the Scriptures were
these: “Now this is eternal life; that they may know You,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent”
(John 17:3). “That will do,” he said. “Here’s learning
enough to last me to my life’s end.” Within minutes, he was
dead. |
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We live in a day when we,
like John Fisher, must take a stand, because God’s laws are
being systematically set aside. May the Lord strengthen us
for this task, not because we believe that we can ever set
up an earthly Utopia before the Lord returns but because it
is important to let people know Who the Lord really is.
As a society we are excessively at the mercy of our
passions. That is why, on a purely emotional level, the
shock of Princess Diana’s tragic death unleashed an
unparalleled wave of mourning throughout the United Kingdom.
In the early stages, at least, this flood tide of grief
served as an unwitting focus for many people’s own
unresolved hurts and losses.
More ambiguously, hordes of people flocked to visit the
small town of Soham in Suffolk, where Holly Wells and
Jessica Chapman were so brutally murdered. What was it that
motivated these “grief tourists?” Was it just morbid
curiosity – or were they in some way attempting to find
resolution for some unresolved grief in their own heart?
Most of these visitors did nothing to help the community to
pull together in the aftermath – unlike in Hungerford, which
has recovered well, despite the intense media attention,
from the dreadful day twenty years ago when Michael Ryan
shot sixteen people dead with an automatic rifle. Many
American institutions have had to face similar challenges
following the spate of shooting incidents on college
campuses.
If we are prepared to work towards forgiving even such
intense wickedness, there is less likelihood of offences
being prolonged, and the temptation to resort to seeking
revenge is sharply reduced. But whilst special grace is
often given to those most immediately affected, it is often
from the ranks of colleagues and bystanders that the
slow-burning flames of resentment are fanned. In worst case
scenarios this leads to the onset of full-blown vendettas.
In rather less dramatic ways, this is a risk we all face
when we hear negative comments about others. This is how one
friend summarised Jesus’ important teaching on the subject:
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Forgive your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you – and that includes those
of you who are looking on. Be careful to let go of the
offences and not allow them to lodge deep down in your
heart!8 |
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The question of how nations
recover from the grip that grief and deception impose on
them in is a crucial one to grapple with. Consider, for
example, the devastated German people, who found themselves
obliged to embark on a grief process at a national level for
the second time in thirty years in the aftermath of their
defeat at the end of the Second World War. The myth of Aryan
supremacy had been exposed, but what was to take its place?
Not another Hitler, as happened after their humiliating
defeat in 1918, but, in the case of East Germany, another
totalitarian regime, this time in communist uniform.
Many Germans preferred to sidestep entirely the issue of who
had started the war and to perpetuate the blame game. They
argued angrily that the damage done to German cities through
Allied air attacks was morally as indefensible as anything
their nation had done to the Jews.
The weight of historical opinion remains divided about the
value, let alone the legitimacy of the Allied attacks that
killed so many civilians, but there is no such ambiguity
about the concentration camps. Gradually, as people woke up
to the shocking realisation of just how far their beloved
Führer had misled them, it was like the heart wrenching
shock that cult members experience when they finally
recognize the enormity of the deception that they are caught
up in.
Psychologically, it is profoundly disturbing to see how
quickly a nation can come to accept fundamental injustices
and pathological depravity. Robert Jay Lifton studied the
actions of the Nazi doctors during World War II, and
concluded that many of these perpetrators of evil
conditioned themselves with surprising ease to living a
double life – each part acting “independently” from the
other. One moment a cultured man is playing classical music;
the next he is sadistically torturing a prisoner.9
Does this not parallel those cases we hear about from time
to time, when an apparently ordinary (and sometimes overtly
religious person) perpetrates some immense evil? Ever since
Robert Louis Stevenson’s pioneering descriptions in Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde of the complicated processes by which
apparently mutually contradictory tendencies can exist side
by side within one person, such people have tended to plead
various forms of mental instability when finally cornered or
brought to court.
At this point, most perpetrators play up the extent to which
they themselves have suffered. Their emphasis is almost
always along the lines that “this would not have happened
had I not been treated the way I was,” rather than, “I have
done something seriously wrong.” Keen though they may be to
absolve themselves, the fact remains that most people with
multiple personalities make a more or less conscious
decision at some point to “switch over” to their “dark
side,” even if, in extreme cases, they lose track somewhat
of their actions once they have made this switch.
Such egocentricity lies at the heart of the “shadow
archetype” which Jung considered to be resident in us all.
This corresponds perhaps to the sinful nature that Paul
inveighs against in Romans chapter seven, but whose
existence most of us are surprisingly loathe to admit to,
where rage and envy, covetousness and greed lurk. Those who
are willing to change often need setting free from the
“power source” of distorted ideas or doctrines that the cult
or ideal has superimposed on them.
Returning to the German example, many in the nation were by
no means heart-convinced Nazis. All, however, needed both
grace and deprogramming to recover from the ordeal of the
Nationalist Socialist years.
It is a tribute to how seriously Germany has sought to face
shameful episodes from its past that it now has the fastest
growing Jewish community in Europe.10 The work of
Trauerarbeit (“Grief-work”) in post war Germany has been
complicated, however, by the continued activities of various
pro-Nazi sympathisers, but overall, Germany must surely rank
with South Africa as the most comprehensive example in
history of a nation doing its best to face its past.
If the best way forward is for nations to confront their
wrong actions and to extend forgiveness, then the South
African “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” is a splendid
model. Using Desmond Tutu’s book, No Future Without
Forgiveness as a model, it set out as a serious attempt
to face the immense grief that the apartheid system
unleashed.
More than 21,000 testimonies of abuse and cruelty were
heard, often in the presence of their perpetrators. Over
1,300 people received a full amnesty in return for their
frank and full confession of the ordeals that they subjected
their victims to. May the Commission’s motto, “The truth
shall set us free”11 prove prophetic at this critical time
in South Africa’s history, when crime rates are so
alarmingly high.
Unlike South Africa, Serbia has shown considerable
reluctance to face up to atrocities committed against
Kosovar Albanians. Serbia’s default mechanism has been to
peddle the line that they are victims rather than
perpetrators. This not only holds them back from
acknowledging their guilt, but has proved a serious obstacle
to it regaining its proper place among the nations.
There are many complex issues to consider here, not least
whether it is right or even possible to repent of sins that
previous generations committed. I believe that God does hear
prayers along such lines, and that leads some of us along
the path of such “identificational repentance.” We can
readily discern the need for it.12
None of us can be sure that we are untainted by the
prevailing attitudes in our society, unless we specifically
seek God for Him to set us free of them. Many converts in
China, for instance, have absorbed a guilt-filled ethos
which doubtless has its origins way back in history, but
which has witnessed many unpleasant recent manifestations.
During the intense suffering of the Maoist revolutionary
years, for example, village meetings were characterized by
the “naming and shaming” of individuals for their faults and
failings. These new Christians are prone to feel ashamed at
their lack of spiritual fruit – though, by western
standards, many of them are leading people to Christ in
truly staggering numbers.
As an infinitely more self-confident generation emerges in
China, it is vital to pray that the Lord raises up His
children to exercise influence in high places, lest the
new-found infatuation with Mammon leads the soul of the
nation still further astray than communist propaganda had
done.
To avoid possible misunderstanding, let me make it clear
that this is in no way to imply that our own nation is in
any way “better”. Those who understand spiritual cultures
and atmospheres would probably say the reverse. Quite apart
from the legacy of national pride and economic exploitation
that continue to take such a toll, do not our media moguls
have their own equally destructive ways of shaming people
and ruining their reputations?
Our sinfulness may lie deeper beneath the surface hidden
than in some societies but that does not make it any the
less serious in God’s sight.13
These are entirely relevant issues to pray and ponder as
great swathes of humanity swallow the lies that the forces
of Antichrist are sowing.14 May more and more see through
these false values, and reject the false standards that are
being proposed to them.
I have recently completed
a teaching series on the seven letters
to the seven churches in Revelation. These, like
the rest of the book of Revelation, are powerful messages
from God’s heart to remain true to Him at times when the
temptation to compromise is particularly strong.15
At the same time, I find myself asking difficult questions
about western values. Can it ever be right to oppose terror
with torture? How will future generations of Americans, let
alone non-Americans, regard the “water boarding” torture
techniques recently practised on Middle Eastern suspects?
All this has major implications for us as we confess the
many ways in which we fail to honour Christ from day to day,
as individuals and as a Church, as well as in the life of
the nation. Many have come to recognise our need to offer
specific prayers and acts of forgiveness for the many ways
in which we (the British people) mismanaged and abused so
many in the far-flung Empire that the Lord trusted to us
rule. Those who are not British will doubtless be able to
call to mind comparable examples from their own nation’s
history.
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