I am me or we are us

There is a key question to which we need to address ourselves. In our 'worldview' do we think of ourselves more in terms of 'I am me' or more in terms of 'we are us'. This core difference affects everything we look at. I believe we see a definite east/west split on this. Starting with the USA, which is 'I am me' and heading eastwards there is an observable shift towards 'we are us'. Easterners are more community or tribal or corporate orientated, whereas westerners are more individualistic.

The USA has a highly developed 'every person for themselves' culture, which they love and cherish. Illustrative of the change moving eastwards is the involvement in the shop floor of the directors of Ikea. As we move to Europe, societies tend to believe they have a responsibility towards their communities for health care and so community health care (which Americans tend to call 'socialized medicine') is common. Further eastwards to the Middle East and we begin to see tribal values come to a head. Even in urban Jordan, most Jordanians will know to which tribe they belong and proudly tell you about it. Traveling right out eastwards to Japan, the corporate rules almost exclusively, with companies taking the place of communities. Japanese live and die attached to the company.

Globalization has shrunk the world so we see on our computer or TV screens what is happening in other parts of the world in real time. However, it has not removed the cultural differences between the 'I am me' and the 'we are us'. Understanding what we see is still coloured by our worldview.

There is a Chinese curse 'may you live in interesting times'. My lifetime has certainly been interesting. The latest interesting phenomena being what is called the 'Arab Spring'. In a CNN article an American Arab writes how Arab Spring nations don't yet grasp freedom of dissent. In that article the author states:

It is hard for younger Arabs not born into freedom to understand how individual liberty works in real life.

Note the author is talking about individual liberty, whereas for many Arabs the Arab Spring was about corporate freedom. Hence the preceding paragraph:

Little wonder, then, that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has called for the prosecution by the U.S government of the filmmakers, and Egypt's top cleric, Mufti Ali Goma, has called on the United Nations to forbid denigration of faiths. Morsy studied in the United States and Ali Goma regularly visits the West on the interfaith circuit, yet both men don't yet grasp that religious freedom and the freedom of expression are inextricably linked in America.

The Egyptians are thinking in terms of 'we' and the author, although himself of Middle Eastern origin, thinks in terms of 'I'. Mostly westerners and many Europeans don't get the we/us. Our models of corporate bodies are very non-Eastern and often illustrate individualism rather than community. 

I was the only non-union member of the Audio Unit for the BBC at one stage. It's kind of interesting to be the only member of a unit working when all the rest are on strike! Was I acting 'I' and them 'we'? No, I don't think so, theirs was not a concern for the corporate we, but a concern for the multiple I. When we think 'we', we are still not understanding true community.

As followers of Jesus, part of the corporate body of Christ, how does this work for us? The early believers 'held everything in common'. For many brought up in the 20th and 21st century this smacks of communism and for some even turns the stomach. Yet it was taken seriously in the early church.

There is the story in Scripture of the couple that tried to hide the truth about the sale price of a piece of land from the apostles and were struck dead for it. I've not heard that happening in too many churches recently!

Middle Easterners can have a lot to teach us, from the West, about 'we'. They also have a lot to learn about freedom and responsibility. Many in the western church are totally coloured in their thinking by their experiences of corporate bodies like the unions. At the beginning the unions were struggling for freedom. In the UK the unions were started by followers of Jesus wanting to stand up for righteousness and justice. Because of the drift towards individualism it appears they have lost the community side of their identity and become beacons of self interest. 

Freedom, whether individual or corporate, bears responsibility. The two Egyptians quoted were calling for that corporate responsibility. In giving us freedom, our Father, looks for responsibility. We often abuse it. We turn freedom into liberty. In a search for freedom from the person they saw as the oppressive dictator King of England, the US enshrined liberty as a core value in the Declaration of Independence. It has lived with that since. 

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It might be interesting to note that the crafters of the Declaration of Independence did not cite Scripture, nor Christian values for these 'unalienable Rights' but that it was 'self-evident'. In other words, the argument put forward by the Founding Fathers was that it was logical to believe these are human rights and illogical to believe otherwise. It was not born out of a exegetical Bible study as Evangelicals might expect today. Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was somewhat anti-Christian, but pro-Jesus. For instance in a letter to Benjamin Rush he wrote:

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other.

When we confuse doctrines and teachings for the person Himself we confuse the very core of what being a follower of Jesus is about. He said 'By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another'. Loving one another is not something you can do independently or alone. It requires community. 

Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves. That is something we, who are followers of Jesus, can demonstrate to the world. Honouring one another above yourselves doesn't mean making films vilifying others, nor does it mean rallying against the films when they are made and killing people.

I don't believe in independence, but in inter-dependence. I don't believe in liberty but freedom. That, I believe, is the Way of the Master.

The short and long of it

"Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on abstractions and propositions, long on stories and parables; short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself; short on condemning the irreligious, long on confronting the religious." - McLaren, _More Ready than you Realise_ 15

The truth is out there... or is it?

During the ‘Arab Spring’ I got emails from some Christian friends in Egypt purporting to describe a huge pro-Mubarak protest that the western media were hushing up. Because I knew the location they were describing and having been involved in large scale events management I knew the number of people described couldn’t fit into the location described. I asked for photographs of the event in question. I never got answers to my emails. I’m sceptical the events were as described in the rather strongly worded emails I was receiving.

More recently I had emails about a news report claiming Egyptian Christians were being crucified...

‘Middle East news media have reported that the Muslim Brotherhood has “crucified those opposing Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi naked on trees in front of the presidential palace while abusing others.” Those opposing the new radical Islamic regime include Christians, and experts have suggested that “extra brutality is reserved for Christians.”’  

This was widely reported including the summary above. There are loads of references to this but this is a good example:

http://aclj.org/radical-islam/egypts-christians-grave-danger-muslim-brotherhood-crucifies-opponents


I admit I was instantly skeptical. I used to work in TV news for the BBC and I was struggling to believe there was no photographic evidence for huge numbers of Christians being crucified in front of the Presidential Palace in Cairo. I researched further and found that all the articles...

‘...base their claims on reports from Sky News Arabic — a recently formed joint venture between BSkyB and Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp.’

Jonathan Kay, a professional investigative journalist traced the source:

‘Sky is supposedly the original source on the story, everyone agrees. Yet neither algemeiner nor WND nor any of the other sources supply the original Sky reporting that purportedly outlines the facts. 

That’s because there is no Sky report on the subject.’

This is his report:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/08/22/jonathan-kay-how-egypts-crucifixion-hoax-became-a-classic-internet-urban-legend/

I would have let it drop but for three other stories that are significant. Last week I was encouraged to sign a petition by a couple of intelligent friends of mine to ask Facebook to block a page entitled 'Soldiers deserve to die'. I'm staunchly pacifist but I don't believe soldiers deserve to die!

It seemed bizarre to me so I researched further, only to find ‘Soldiers deserve to die’  is a rather silly advertising campaign from the Lung Cancer Alliance, where they suggest all sorts of groups including cat lovers deserve to die. It's not anti-military at all. It's a US campaign, not related to Europe. There is no page on Facebook with this campaign. Signing the campaign just shows that the person concerned has not done the necessary research to check it out. Here’s the source to the debunking of this story.

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/state/story/Controversial-ad-campaign-says-you-deserve-to-die/wtD747okcUynBc-CP57aNA.cspx

Now I’m currently reading a book by Jeremy Scahill called ‘Blackwater’ about mercenary armies and their operation around the world. Every assertion shows careful research and citation. It’s a fascinating book. Well worth reading because if it's true the world as we know it is changing more that we might think. Countries have lost their power to corporations.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blackwater-Rise-Worlds-Powerful-Mercenary/dp/184668652

But there has been another issue going the rounds in the last few months and came to a head in discussions over the last few weeks. That is the issue of ‘Heaven and Hell’ or more specifically those believing in ‘eternal conscious torment’ and those believing in ‘annihilation of the soul’. There’s a well researched and well cited book debunking the annihilation theory. Or so it seems. The book cites writings by the pro-annihilation lobby and shows them to be in error. Except... the writings don’t exist and the citations are fictitious. How often do you check citations? I usually do if they feel suspicious as I showed above, but how many creep through unnoticed because the citation agrees with my deeply held belief?

So where is my citation for this? No, that is your task to check it out. It exists I promise you, and as they say... Google is your friend.

‘The Truth is out there’ was the catchphrase of the X-Files, a science-fiction conspiracy theory TV series about a hush up on UFOs. Good TV series. Well made drama. 

I really enjoy the CS Lewis science-fiction trilogy and would love to dramatise that contextualised for the Arabic audience. But that is an aside. In one scene Lewis reports how Ransom, the central character in th books, is discussing with an eldil, or angel. In this scene he describes how the angel appears to be at a strange angle to the room... and then the observer realises that the angel is upright and that the whole room is at an angle. The truth is out there, our perception of truth however is filtered through semi-opaque glasses... ‘Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.’