Must the government enable Black people to succeed?

April 18, 2013 5 Comments

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[It being 5 a.m. I humbly ask the reader overlook the cumbersome style and read on]

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The following is an excerpt of an email I received today:

We are living in very precarious times with massive cuts and drastic changes to legislation which means that such things as Equality Impact Assessments and funding for single issue projects are all but disappeared  We need to ask the question where to now? [sic] How much can we influence policies and deter the demise of Black political, economical and cultural influence.

At first glance the statement looks somewhat innocuous, and one could even make a good case for its reasonability, but when I look at the underlying thesis which drives this sort of pronouncement I am forced to simply shout and scream at my screen, because the latent principle is this: That Black (by which the email refers to – and I will throughout this piece refer to – those members of the Caribbean and (West) African diaspora in the UK and their British born descendants) political, economical and cultural significance is dependent upon government legislated spending and all the trappings of the welfare state. Do I have a problem with the welfare state? Not in principle. Do I have a problem with government spending helping our communities from whose pockets taxes are raised? Not in principle. So, what exactly causes my utter revulsion? It is the notion that the success of our Black communities depends upon the State and not on our own collective inspiration, intuition & innovation. This is a grievous error and one which I wish to elucidate upon a little further under four short headers:

  1. Statism
  2. A denial of the past
  3. A betrayal of the future
  4. The destruction of our community

Statism

As I alluded to earlier, hope in government for that which government is responsible for is right and proper. What is not right and proper is a reliance upon government (the state) for the advancement of a people wholesale and it is this which the sender is seeking to promulgate. The impression given then is that without total government intervention, the various Black communities in the UK cannot advance politically, economically or culturally. I find the last one absolutely laughable. God fobid the day where the myriad of African & Caribbean cultural experience cannot effectively be lavished upon the British landscape by the very people to whom these rich traditions belong!

In the final analysis government whether big or small will always fail. As a Christian, my anthropological worldview tells me that this is a natural inevitabliity. Government, no matter how grand in promise, generous in vision or great in size will fail simply because government is the coming together of a flawed, corrupted humanity. Is this then to engender in us some daily apocalyptic complex? Perish the thought. It is however a moment for pause for the consideration that one must, though one is just as flawed, take steps to order order one’s affairs in relation to the larger, national society as well as those many smaller levels of society to which one finds oneself placed in by Providence, the family, the local community and keenly in the present case, the cultural community both near and far; for a more effective, though still limited, outlook.

A denial of the past

I touched on the cultural impact under Statism. One brief example I would draw our attention to are the carnivals which through the late 1950s, 60s and 70s initiated by Caribbean immigrant communities the length and breadth of Britain. Suffice to say that this brand of carnival was born in the colonies of the West Indies and South America often both in defiance to and self conscious collective affirmation in the face of, colonial masters. These colourful carnivals were imported to Britain and continue to this day. Indeed it is this second point where I want to look at as a denial of our past. The generation of my grandparents, the Windrush and post Windrush generations (West Indian immigrants of 1948 and the following decade) and indeed African migrants of the 80s and 90s did not come to seek a land of plenty to suck it dry, they stepped off ships and aeroplanes in the overwhelming main as principled, hardworking and determined people groups and they brought their culture to bear upon their new home by themselves, often borne out of the struggles which they faced in the face of a frosted and hostile ‘welcome’.

Economic and to a smaller extent political influence and self-organisation was something begotten within their own bosom. They did not wait for the State to provide their needs. No, this was their own work, supported where needed by the State but not in its whole or majority part, of the State.

A betrayal of the future

If you do not know where you are coming from, you do not know where you are going. That mantra, or something akin to it is often whimsically noted to bolster some sense of heritage in an upcoming generation. In our present case it is a mantra worth employing. If this attitutde of state dependence is passed on to future generations the fault will be squarely ours. We have already seen over the half century period of mass immigration from the West Indies and Africa that this principle does not work. Whether it was the overt racism of the 1950s or the Sus laws of the 1980s, we have never and can never rely on the State to support the sender’s aspiration of increased political, economical and cultural influence. The fact that it is plain lazy and that that child is hardly ever a blessed one to whom the parent passes on such a lackadaisical spirit, and apart from as I have said it does not work; one needn’t strain to realise that by both history and reason we see that those times of greatest increase in our communities have been ones where we have taken the lead and shaped our own destiny as a collective unit working together, solving our own problems and forging our own future. We are then duty bound to set in motion such a pattern for ourselves and for those who would come after us!

The destruction of our community

My final point will be short, I have said much what I would say here above. Where we look to the government alone to provide, this sort of community progression the sender wishes, ceases to look inward – amongst ourselves as a unit. We cease to push ourselves, our neighbours and our children for individual betterment and therein for the much greater end of familial and communal advancement. We look to another and so do not look to ourselves. To live with our hands constantly out means our hands will never be put to the plough, unearthing new ground together, planting seeds for the future, sustaining our generations to come. It is obscene that we would forget that our forefathers lived, breathed and died together and that we could ignore eachother but for a collective shout, to say to those powers that be, “give us more!”

Conclusion

My main concern here is that our historic sense of community is ignored and that initial gravitating point is clouded in the constant push for State sponsored progress as a people, only to find that when we have returned to our meeting house nobody else came, because they too forgot what was of true importance: not simply our end  but the means by which our end game was to be realised, together as a people united.

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Tea with two Jehovah’s Witnesses

February 22, 2013 1 Comment

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After an interesting encounter in the neighbourhood recently, I shared in the first of two meetings at my home with a couple of nice ladies who are part of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, otherwise known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses.a

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I had initiated proceedings, approaching them on my way out one afternoon, to enquire as to whether my house had been ‘blacklisted’, a practice I am under the impression used by the Witnesses to ignore houses where they have previously had ‘rough’ encounters – I was here thinking of an episode around 2 years ago where I engaged in an hour-long conversation with two other ladies doing the rounds. I was by no means rude, but I am a Christian and therefore disagree with fundamental tenants of Witness belief and consequently we engaged in a robust discussion on all things Biblical. Anyhow, these ladies were quick to inform me that such was not the case – and to my ecstasy my house was indeed on the whitelist (!) – as a result an appointment was arranged. It was to my surprise then to see two smiling faces at my door, reminding me that (one of them) had had that conversation with me those weeks ago – I had evidently forgotten all about the encounter. As is with me, those who know me can testify, I was busy at the time and we arranged to meet this morning!aa
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In line with my generational custom, I tweeted (utterly shameless plug coming: follow me @ ‘Dr___B’) to inform my followers (how cultish) of my impending engagement:a
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“I guess this means a long chat about how Jesus is not Michael the archangel and how he actually is God tomorrow morning on the doorstep.”aa
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To which one of my friends responded:aa
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“Or in the lounge over delicious snacks. One effect of knowing God as Trinity is pouring ourselves out for others. :) Enjoy!”a
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This gave me great cause for pause. If Jesus were engaging in this sort of thing would he smile and talk at the door post, or would he be totally unBritish and unashamedly throw open the threshold of his abode. Suffice to say I concluded on the latter, that our Lord, the one who embodied what it is to walk in community and relationship stooping down to the lowliest child, standing tall with the loftiest scribe, describing his soteriological mission, delineating His great gospel, and describing the Almighty Father would do just that!a
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As I thought more about the encounter I shifted focus to 6 questions (I dropped a 7th), from whose answers form part, if not the entirety of the vast chasm between Witness belief and that of orthodox, Biblical Christianity.
 
Who is God?
Who is Jesus Christ?
Who is the Holy Spirit?
Who is man(kind)?
What is man(kind)’s relationship, in his natural state, to God?
What is the gospel?a
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Ultimately they came in and we began. In my evangelistic experience I always want to know about the person, the message will be the same but it will be packaged differently depending on whom I am speaking with. While the gospel does not change, we see that throughout the New testament the Apostles always began where the people they were speaking with were at. To the Greeks they began at creation (Acts 17) and to the Jews they began with Abraham, Moses and the Torah (Acts 2,3 etc.). I came to understand a little of the history of the two women now sat across the room how they came to be Witnesses and such like. Alas, to my questions we came:a
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Who is God?a
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We began in the Scriptures. Now here is a sticking point which could probably form a 7th question to the above. The Witnesses have not simply a different version of the Bible – by different version I mean a text that is based out of the wide stream of the Greek & Hebrew manuscript tradition and onwards through the textual line of Christian translations, but quite simply another Bible – the New World Translation (NWT) being its official title. This spurious document deliberately changes key wording in order to, amongst other things, de-deify the Lord Jesus Christ. After taking me to some passages, the two Witnesses described God as the great Creator of all things, being a Spirit full of attributes such as love and all those other wonderful things you learned about in GSCE RE and some other ones you didn’t learn about.a
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Who is Jesus Christ?a
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This one (as expected) was a little more drawn out, again after Scriptural discussion, the description given was that he was an angelic being, the first creation of God and His fellow master builder in creating all ‘other’ things. This provides us with an example of the tampering by the Witnesses of the Bible, there being a radically different rendering of the phraseology of Colossians 1:16.a
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A standard orthodox Bible (in this case I have used the English Standard Version [ESV]) renders it: “…by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”a
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The NWT renders the same verse: “…by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth, the things visible and the things invisible”.a
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They then took me to a couple of texts, to establish this pre-existence, while denying the eternal nature, of Jesus Christ these being Proverbs 8:22 and Colossians 1:15.a
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Proverbs 8:22a
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“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work the first of his acts of old.”a
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The wider context shows us what/who is being referred to here is Wisdom. Wisdom is used throughout the Proverbs contrasted with folly, as a sort of personification of the attribute which the addressee of the Proverbs ought to aspire to. In line, it must be said with many mainstream Christians, the Witnesses I met applied Wisdom to the person of Christ – I do not see the connection in the Christian sense, not to mention the Witness sense. However, the Witnesses take it even further to apply this parallel in a very strict sense, thereby to say that this is Jesus being referred to as being ‘possessed’ which can also be rendered ‘created/fathered’ and wouldn’t you know it, Bob’s your uncle, a prooftext for the creation of Jesus Christ! I challenged them on this, taking them to Genesis 1 where we see the description of the creation of the Universe and my question to them being, could we not also say that at the beginning of God’s work he created the heavens/the earth/light and every other thing there laid out. My natural conclusion being that we do not say that Jesus is earth/heaven/light (in the strict sense spoken of here, though he is the light of the world in another sense) and so why do they feel that one can draw the inference that this is Jesus. It appears to me simply that they already have a doctrine formulated that Jesus Christ is this originally created angelic type figure and then found a text in Proverbs that speaks of something being ‘created’ at the beginning of God’s ‘work’ and suddenly, the scales ought to fall from my eyes and recognise Jesus!a

A further text we went to regarding the person of Christ was Colossians 1:15a

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

Much ink has been spilled over that word ‘firstborn’ and it is not here my aim to present a systematic exegetical defence of all Scriptures contended by the Witnesses – that is the preserve of those far more qualified and abler – I will direct you to two short links as to the use of the word ‘firstborn’ in this text at the end. One important rule of biblical interpretation taught by the Protestant Reformers is the analogy of faith (interpreting the Bible by the Bible) and when such is done it is clear that Jesus Christ is not some ethereal superangel, but in the words of the ancient Nicene Creed ‘very God of very God’.a

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Much more was said, and once we got on to the discussion of the Holy Spirit one of the ladies had to go to a prior booked appointment. They were very gracious to offer a further opportunity to meet and that we shall be doing next week by God’s grace following which I’ll write back!

A couple of short articles looking at that word ‘firstborn’. Once we have finished our meetings I’ll present some more material which seeks to debunk many of the false claims of the Witnesses.

http://carm.org/religious-movements/jehovahs-witnesses/col-115-firstborn-all-creation

http://www.equip.org/perspectives/colossians-1-15-the-firstborn-of-all-creation/

P

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Lord, not Valentine.

February 14, 2013 Leave a comment

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So I had a little Facebook outburst earlier on today. These have become quite rare of late but I saw something on my timeline using the letters of the word Valentine as some sort of acrostic with a bible verse. I hope that if the person in question reads this they do not take it as a personal attack. It is merely something symptomatic of a general trend I’ve witnessed year after year.

As I posted earlier today I see it as extremely imbalanced, borderline blasphemous and not a little weird! This sort of equation with Jesus as a boyfriend/man (really it feels wrong to even write this) is seriously misplaced and again…weird [often this is just the language used and generic posture taken and nothing distasteful is meant - but the point still stands]. I readily concede it comes out of an honest heart and a Christianity who is surrounded by a general culture where feelings are king, laced in a postmodern individualistic self determinatory soup. On top of this if you are a young single girl in certain parts or Christendom you are often told to make Jesus your centre before going after a man – naturally I agree with this, but what does not help are the loaded unsaid connotations which seem to imply that as opposed to being your Lord and Saviour, to whom you owe ultimate submission and allegiance in general; he is somehow a replacement to your ‘man’ also!
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Let me explain, lest I appear to be contradicting myself. As Christians our worldview is defined by the recognition that the the Lord is God. That He and He alone is sovereign over all whether it be matter or man (and woman). But the single Christian life is not one in which Jesus plays your man until your man comes along. The single Christian life is one in which you have joined the covenant community of the faithful and when your man comes along – if he comes along – he does not replace, but you then join as two people together in a very similar way to how you were as one; doing the same thing: submitting together to Christ as Lord, resting in His finished work and enjoying Him as Redeemer/Saviour and making much of Him as King.
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Let’s once and for all stop seeing the high and holy King as a ‘man-gap-filler’ and rather as He is, our Lord and great compassionate Saviour, come to die in the place of sinners taking upon Himself the due penalty for sin and making the way in Himself whereby all who come to Him as Saviour may gain entrance back into the presence of God for which we were long ago created!
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It’s Christmas! Part 1

December 6, 2012 2 Comments

In years to come this Christmas, I do believe will provide somewhat of a watershed. I long since lost my childlike longing for trees & gifts (Disclaimer: I do hope to gain some Amazon vouchers for the supplementing of my library. My address can be provided upon request). The joy garnered simply from tinsel and idyllic snow are long since gone and that final bastion of mere seasonal affinity, yes the grand family meal(s) have now lost their great appeal – not that I do not enjoy the smattering of curried goat, fish, chicken, turkey, ham, ackee & saltfish et. al, nor do I particularly hate my family, I rather quite like them as it happens. I say all this to say simply this, these things in and of themselves do not invigorate me for this season as much as its true raison d’être.

Indeed, talk of the ‘Christmas Spirit’ is beginning to nauseate me, the notion of Christmas being that time of the year where we do good has long irked me since the realisation that it was probably good to do good all the year round! And as a consequence the other cultural trappings we often get faced with have all come to culminate in a sort of crescendo moment for my rejection of all things done. Now more than ever – for this is more evolution than sudden wave – where the real meaning of Christmas (yes I can still employ the sentimental garb with which we illustrate the season) is ever upon my mind. Now, enough existential droning, let me muse over forthcoming posts on that great joy with which this season effuses.

So what do I love about this time of year? What caused me on December 1st to reach such a state of boyish anticipation? What was it that caused me to download that Christmas album(1)? What is it that makes me want to utterly spam – beyond the usual – my Facebook wall with lyrics of Charles Wesley’s timeless, Hark! The herald angels sing? The answer to all of these questions and more can be found in one word: Incarnation!

Yes that 3 dollar word that is the geat sunum bonum of this so great a season, this season of Christmas. I am well aware of the fact that Jesus Christ was not born on 25th December, perhaps more 25th September and yes I am fully congnicant of centuries worth of amalgamation with secular and pagan festivities and this great Christian of celebrations. However none of these serve to militate against this great story, that some 2020 years ago, the divine Son of God himself, in the great humiliation described for us by the Apostle Paul, ‘empited himself, being born in the likeness of men’ (2). Yes it is that most Christian of words, the incarnation, by which we mean: the coming into this world of sin, sorrow and strife the divine second Person of the Godhead (Trinity), God the Son: Jesus, clothing himself in humanity, shrouding immortality with morality. He who came to save His people from their sins (3), it is this great celebration of the coming of Jesus Christ as a babe to grow into a man to head to that old rugged cross, it is this which invigorates such passion for this most holy of time.

If one were to follow the wind of the day where the mere mention of the Lord Jesus in connection with this season meant to commemorate His coming would be such a foreign notion (4), it is therefore natural that we in a country, allbeit a little far behind in the road of rampant secularisation, would suffer some sort of disconnect with the tying of Christmas to Christ. Those kings, indeed wise, who came to see the infant Jesus were on the money, ‘Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him’ (5). Oh yes, those men of the east knew the real meaning of the season, they had come to worship! Indeed this is Christmas. It is, to borrow the words of the Westminster Catechism, that most opportune time for us to rekindle enjoyment of him (6).

This is Christmas, it is to come to the manger; it is to come to the temple as did that aged holy man Simeon, who had been waiting many years for the promised Messiah, and having taken the holy child ‘up in his arms’ could finally say ‘Lord , now you are letting your servant depart in peace’ (7). Yes, it is time for us to come to the manger, to come to the temple. It is the time to come to the River Jordan where we listen keenly to the awestruck John the Baptist, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’ (8).

With John may we behold the holy One, may we gaze upon the face of Jesus as Simeon and may we say, ‘O come, O Come Emmanuel’!

(1) The album in question being ‘God of God’ by Enfield. A compilation of remixed Carols, a warning that this is probably not for the purists, http://enfieldband.com/music/gog/index.html

(2) Paul’s Letter to the Philippians 2:7

(3) The Gospel of Matthew 1:21

(4) I refer here to the recent absurdities in Sweden where school children are to be taken to Advent services with the proviso that no references to faith, prayers and dedications are made.

(5) The Gospel of Matthew 2:2

(6) Westminster Confession of faith, Answer 1, http://www.ccel.org/creeds/westminster-shorter-cat.html

(7) The Gospel of Luke 2:29

(8) The Gospel of John 1:29

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We all have faith

October 7, 2012 Leave a comment

We all have faith.

Faith is to be assured of a thing without having full cognitive and exhaustive awareness of all that that thing entails. The writer to the Hebrews says it is the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). Though we have awareness and a partial knowledge of a thing it is this with which we base all further assurances of that thing; in that we have functional knowledge, that being the sufficient amount with which to advance without great measure of fear.

All of us have faith, faith is merely the balance of probabilities in ascertaining the certainty of a thing. We are certain, nay, we have faith about the structure of the atom because based on probability it really is the way it is.

We have faith that God really is God and that He has really revealed Himself through ideas and words, (1) In the written form and (2) in the living form of his Son Jesus Christ.

We have this faith not as a wishful projection of wishing to be, that which we would most like. We base our faith, indeed we evidence our faith in that which we do know: through His revelation in nature and then in Scripture and following this our experience of Him in life.

To be continued and greatly expanded upon at some unspecified time in the not too distant future

P

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One of the recent contributions to the furore over MPs & abortion

October 6, 2012 Leave a comment

A rather timely article in the New Statesman: “Do pro-choice feminists really speak for women”

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/religion/2012/10/do-pro-choice-feminists-really-speak-women

Two snippets I thought most insightful:

“Two incredibly lazy but widespread assumptions combine in the notion of a “Tory war on women”. Firstly that the divide on abortion is primarily political (and left-right) rather than moral, and that the pro-choice position is progressive and the pro-life one reactionary. Secondly, that the pro-choice case is the pro-women, feminist one and its opponents are motivated by hatred of women, or at the very least by an inherently misogynistic desire to control women’s lives.”

“One thing that does seem clear to me is that the pro-choice position depends less on a feminist argument than on a libertarian one. It says that a woman is, first and foremost, her own person, belonging neither to her family nor to her community or religion nor to her biological destiny but to herself. It asserts the primacy of the individual over the community and offers a scientifically reductionist view of the foetus as being essentially a biological fact and not yet a human being with rights. Research consistently shows that men are more responsive than women to libertarian arguments; women’s instincts tend more to the communitarian.”

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Jesus had a wife! Sloppy media.

September 20, 2012 Leave a comment

The effects of sloppy, popcorn servings of the media’s take on historical theology & textual criticism.

Karen King – eminent incumbent of the Hollis Chair of Divinity at one of America’s finest institutions, Harvard, has earlier this week presented a Coptic (ancient Egyptian successor to the hieroglyphics) 4th century (perhaps) manuscript which hysterical media would have us believe unveils a picture just short of a 2.4 child-rearing, 2 up-2 down living, Jesus of Nazareth!

My reaction to the whole affair has been akin to the sentiment of a friend who said earlier today: “And every sensible Christian laughed loudly, shrugged their shoulders and made a cup of tea. The End”

I want to add at this juncture that this is in no way an attack on Karen King or the New York Times, simply a word of caution! Professor King herself has said in an excerpt from the New York Times article revealing the find:

The notion that Jesus had a wife was the central conceit of the best seller and movie “The Da Vinci Code.” But Dr. King said she wants nothing to do with the code or its author: “At least, don’t say this proves Dan Brown was right.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/us/historian-says-piece-of-papyrus-refers-to-jesus-wife.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

My concern is not for the stability of my faith, surely not! My concern is simply for the irresponsible way this sort of thing is dished out and the implications such servings carry with them for the non discerning eye.

So for a rational look at the whole affair for those interested and also to dissuade silly Da Vinci Code esque comments, do take a look at a selection of a variety of types of articles which have been passed across my eyes on the net over the past 48 hours:

Al Mohler, President – Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kentucky

The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife? When Sensationalism Masquerades as Scholarship

http://www.albertmohler.com/2012/09/20/the-gospel-of-jesuss-wife-when-sensationalism-masquerades-as-scholarship/?utm_source=Albert+Mohler&utm_campaign=b205bc6532-Albert_Mohler_Email_August_6_20128_6_2012&utm_medium=email

Dave Mackie, Friend

Dave: Did Jesus have a wife

http://twomackies.tumblr.com/post/31879252442/dave-did-jesus-have-a-wife

Peter Warden, Warden – Tyndale House Cambridge

Did Jesus Have a Wife

http://www.biblicaltraining.org/forum/did-jesus-have-wife

James White, Arizona based Apologist

A Note to the Secular World: Do Your History

[http://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=5240]

 

Sidebar: One of the quirks of this debate is that it shows up some major dividing lines between Roman Catholic & Protestant church polity.

Roman Catholics believe that the clergy ought to remain unmarried to model Jesus who they believe was celibate, although Protestants, on the whole, usually dismiss this requirement noting that the question of Jesus’ celibacy has no bearing on the marital pursuits of His clergy. Moreover it would appear that in the early church the married status of the clergy was a given c.f. 1 Timothy 3 where Paul seems to be re-emphasizing the importance that a bishop/paster/elder ought to be a faithful spouse to his wife if he was married; the original Greek in this case literally translating as ‘a one woman/wife man‘ !

“The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.”

P

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