Well here we are at the beginning of a new year, and because of what happened in 2020, the start of a new year makes us wonder if this year will bring any more world-changing events. Many of us are weary of two years of restrictions and uncertainty, and it is a constant temptation to take this weariness out on others, whether it is the government, the unvaccinated, the media or whoever.
I have been struck over the last few years by the way prominent and popular thinkers are becoming attracted to Christianity because of its insight that “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart” as Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it. That is particularly remarkable coming from someone who was tortured in the gulags! It would have been natural for him to put the good/evil dividing line between inmates like himself one side and the state torturers on the other, but instead he recognises that all of us are capable of both good and bad, and that the very cause of the gulags was an indulging in the temptation to take the woes of a nation out on a particular group of people.
It is this way of thinking, difficult though it is, that is so compelling to a growing number of people. Jesus was divisive because he prioritised the kind of people who society at large thought of as ‘bad guys’, and the message this sent was clear – that peace and progress come not from scapegoating, but from ‘loving one’s neighbour as oneself’, even those who are least lovable!
Revd Oliver Strange