Month: November 2017

The problem of the British is only that they don’t not realise that this envy and rage are directed against them, and they do not take any steps to defend themselves. Our political culture and institutions seem incapable of recognising their opposite, or of recognising that they have enemies and must defend themselves against them. The institutions of our government, the judiciary in particular seem incapable of acknowledging that these insults and assaults may not be simply individual criminal acts, but political and ideological acts, directed against us as a society. Each attack attempts to weaken our society by detaching each individual from its protection, so that our society no longer identifies with any individual the savages set upon. Each attack on an individual is also an attack on our law and our national cohesion.

The Church is an assembly of people, each different from the other, so it is a plurality of voices. This assembly is given to each particular location in order to proclaim the gospel to the community in that place. That these many different voices agree and speak with one accord, and that all these different churches of different times and places give the same witness, is itself evidence of the authority of the gospel, the power of God and the truth that he, and no other, is Lord.

The Church teaches that the whole company of heaven, some of whom are the patriarchs, prophets and apostles portrayed in Scripture, are heard and even glimpsed in its worship. This heavenly company makes itself heard through the worship in the voices that make up each local congregation. It gives us the speech of Jesus Christ to his listeners, both disciples and adversaries, and it relays the speech of Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah and all the patriarchs and prophets as they reply with their worship to Christ. In church the singing voices of our neighbours are amplifications of the voices of the patriarchs, prophets and apostles alerting us to the arrival of the Lord among us.

The Christian doctrine of God derives from the service of Christian worship. In this worship Christians gather to distinguish publicly the true God from the false gods, to thank the true God and to defy and deride all other gods. Christians proclaim and chant in public, in every town centre that You alone are the holy one, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the most high, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father. They perform this service for the benefit of the surrounding community; all those who hear this worship may understand which gods are false and are owed nothing, and which God is true and truly for us.

There are a multitude of powers. When these powers act beyond their authority and remain out of control, they are gods – and demons – to whomever falls under their influence. To worship the God of Jesus Christ is simultaneously not to worship any other gods. It is to realise that there are other claimants and so there are plenty of powers making claims on us, and so claiming semi-divine status over us; when they do so they are false gods. But Christian theology that takes its mandate from the worship of the whole Christian people must distinguish the true God from false gods and the powers of our age. These gods exert a power over us, and so we have to concede that we are captive to them until we are free of them.

The Christianity of recent decades has ignored one central question. It asks whether we believe in God. It does not ask which God we believe in? Which gods are our gods? Which powers are we committed to? Of course we cannot remember surrendering to any gods, but this is only because it happens too slowly and subtly for us to notice that this is what is happening. Of course we may refer to them as powers, forces or fundamental principles rather than as gods. Christians assume that we do acknowledge and defer to gods, and we have to name them and question whether they are worth our worship. We do not agree that moderns are atheist as they claim. They have their own gods, but their cult conceals this from them. They tell themselves that they are the master, and that each self is the centre of the world; that all things exist to please them, and that they can be anything they want to be. But they live in a perpetual battlefield of the gods, in which every power and every spirit competes with every other, and they are competing for us. They want what we have. They want power over us. They want us to be theirs. It is up to us to learn from Christian worship how to identify, give names to and defend ourselves from these powers.

This is a time of transition, the centralisers always tell us. They tell us that they are increasing our chance of democratic decision-making, but to do so, they have to make some changes which they must take for us. Power will soon be returned to you, they claim. This transition, this state of emergency, is just temporary. The changes are unilaterally foisted on us because we do not speak up and protest, and each failure to speak up makes them stronger and us weaker. The centralisers don’t want feisty, independent people. They want malleable, easily-directed people. So it is never a good idea to ‘see what our leaders decide for us’. Those in positions of authority who tell us this, are telling us that we have no authority of our own. We do. They may not deny it. We have authority. They have no authority to tell us that we have no authority. This authority was given to us in our baptism, when we were made Christians, and as Christians, we first come to share in the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ. Parishes can be amalgamated only because the people in each parish have got out of the habit of saying morning and evening prayer. There is no one at the altar rail in the mornings in these churches, no one performing their public office as Christians, so the churches are not being used, and occasional services apart, are effectively closed. The lights are off and no one can see where they are going. The church is stumbling around in the dark and, as a consequence, our society is stumbling around in the dark. The darkness grow with the huge amount of artificial lighting emitted by every building and every electronic device. Only the Christian hunched over bible and then singing and praying before the altar lit by one candle can see where we are all going. Those who do not pray to God, of course, unwittingly direct prayers to other forces which are only too ready hear and take advantage. Those who appeal to anyone other than God are surrendering themselves to forces without pity.

The British have in their possession a vast political, legal and cultural gift. They have received a legacy that is deep and wide. It has as much future as it has past. But this makes them the objects of the envy and resentment of other people. These other people do not tell the British people how great this legacy is or how lucky they are. Rather they do whatever they can to obscure this fact. They mock what they envy. They charge the British with imagined offences, who foolishly listen and believe that the blame is theirs. The British do not realise that is envy and rage that motivates other people. They do not realise that others are their enemy. They never concede how great this legacy is or reveal any desire for it or admit that they are. They suffer the cruse they have imposed on themselves. They are their own enemy, and they wish to spread their unhappiness, and so they are the enemy of all. Envy and rage are their sole motivating force. Anyone who listens to them is vulnerable to them.