This month I suspect many will be fed up with the EU vote. We have so much conflicting information with which to try and make our choice. Where motor manufacturers think it is normal to mislead about the performance of their cars, where leading industrialists can sell companies with large pension deficits, when politicians debate the validity of each others’ statements and predictions. The choice is not simple but it is a choice which reflects the growing individualistic ideals of the popular western culture.
In our country, like many others, it took hundreds of years and many lives to become a joined nation. Yet in so many places we see people seeking independence. Wanting to do what they want and not to be told what they should or shouldn’t do. As a Star Trek fan I am reminded of Spock’s famous words ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few and of the one’, as he sacrifices his life to save his friends. The pull between individuals and community has a long history, ever since people started to live in groups.
Our Christian history begins with an individual Abram being singled out by God for a special job. That job was to bring about the knowledge of God to all people. Abram was to leave his country and homeland and set out to form a new community, he even changed his name to Abraham to mark this. This new community was to set itself apart from the other communities around. They were to have their own rules, their own code of dress and conduct. They were to know that they were the chosen of God. that on their own they would flourish and become strong. Over a period of history that is what happened. They had their ups and downs, they entered into slavery and freedom, they became oppressed by occupying forces. Yet they never forgot their national identity and were always looking for freedom to fulfil it.
Yet from a Christian point of view, over history, the purpose for them being called out was misunderstood. They had been called as a people, to get to know God and trust in Him to develop a special relationship with God. But this wasn’t initially just to be for them, sure it started with them and they needed their space to develop their relationship with God. But in the coming of Jesus we discover that God’s message is for all people. For now in Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, it is the time for the chosen people to go to the rest of the world with their message. Not to make one geographical nation, but a spiritual family. The early Christians took this to heart as they held all their possessions in common, a very communist way of life in many ways. Yet it was mixed with a belief in a royal kingship and a future king.
There were many debates in the early church about was the good news for them alone or for all people? A tension if you like between one group or a communion of all people. Described in scripture as between Jew and Gentile, but it was about a us and them situation. We still face that tension in the church today with our history of the parish system, the local vs the diocese, and we certainly face it still with the EU vote.
So as we as a nation make up our minds and vote, may we as individuals be not selfish or self centred but seek to find in all the confusion the common good. God Bless – Simon