Well, it didn’t quite work out
like that. Chaos reigned because a
minority of people acting just like spoilt children, behaved without any
consideration for either the law or other people. As anyone who has travelled by road will
testify – put some ordinary meek and mild persons behind the wheel of a car and
they undergo a complete transformation and can behave like power-crazed
maniacs.
What we learn from observing the
conduct of our national life is that certain characteristics that we can
observe on a small scale on our doorsteps and in our homes can also manifest
themselves in the lives of our communities and indeed in our national life.
The spoiled and overindulged
child who has not been required to observe rules and boundaries will believe
that he or she can get away with doing whatever they like in adult life. Such children are often bullies at school and
bullies in the work place. They are also
bullies when they park whether thoughtlessly (“I don’t care”) or arrogantly (“I’m
entitled”). A multi-millionaire
footballer recently parked his Bentley in a disabled parking spot when going to
collect a pizza and when challenged responded “Don’t you know who I am?”
A similarly arrogant businessman
tried jumping the queue at an airport check-in desk and said exactly the same
thing to the receptionist who challenged him whereupon she smiled and picked up
her microphone saying into the tannoy system ‘I have a gentleman at desk 14 who
doesn’t know who he is. If anybody is
able to help this man please come to desk 14.’
The bully retreated to the back of the queue and took his turn.
The point of both stories is that
each man might have had an adult body but each also still had the lack of
maturity of the spoilt child unable to comprehend civilised conduct or
courtesy. Neither man had grown up.
Now the question is, “what has
this got to do with the statement made by Jesus, “Except ye be born
again?” Well that challenge is one which
demands a completely fresh approach to life.
And that approach needs, I believe, to be one which finds a better
balance between Law and Freedom than many of us as individuals or as members of
families, communities and nations have so far managed to achieve.
What is more, that failure is
reflected in many of those self-same families, communities and nations. How else does one explain a man who thinks it
is reasonable to sire 17 children whose upkeep he could never afford or the
five different females who allowed him to achieve this damaging outcome for the
unfortunate children involved?
What am I suggesting is the
problem? Well, I think it is that we are
very good at seeing things in black and white but not so good at coping with
the shades of grey between the two.
For example in our political life
things are either left or right and depending on where we are born and how we
are nurtured (or not) there is a strong likelihood that we will be either one
or the other for the rest of our lives.
Indeed some parts of the country regard it as bordering on treason to
one’s family and community to even think outside the box with the appropriate
label on it.
Yet, as Christians, Jesus teaches
us that such attitudes are too limited in their outcome. Take for example the woman caught in
adultery. The law says adultery is
wrong, she has been caught, she should be stoned – easy – let’s go for it says
the crowd and the outcome is inevitable until, that is, a new approach is
brought to bear which asks the question, “Who is fit to carry out the
sentence?” Matters are rarely as black
and white as we would like them to be.
But to question ourselves
requires maturity and to teach our children maturity is even harder. “Yes” someone should have said to that man I
spoke of earlier ‘you do have the right
to sire children but only if you also have the ability to pay for their upkeep
and the maturity to care for them and their mothers so that each of you can
educate them and teach them how to live self-reliantly as adults.’
It is, in other words, love –
mature love that is not immature lust – that teaches us to live holding our
rights and our responsibilities in a harmonious balance.
There is a dynamic, living and
evolving Trinity here isn’t there? – The demands of our responsibilities, the
freedom of our rights and the mature love that holds them in creative tension.
And if we look carefully we will
find that this is a recurrent theme throughout our lives.
The Trinity is supremely Father,
Son and Holy Spirit, but it is also a gift for us to use in looking for the way
forward in dealing with the difficult issues that can confront us day by day.
We will find when we examine the
situations we face that there are choices and that we are very good at seeing
two of them.
As a lawyer I was always being
accused of being “Mr this and that” – on the one hand this; on the other hand
that. But the key is finding the path
that love would take which often means rising above the obvious to discover
that there is an alternative we hadn’t previously seen.
Jesus did just that when he said,
“Go and sin no more,” and we might do things differently if we considered that
what appears obvious is not always right.
Being one of the crowd sometimes means we can get carried away.
So in this Trinity season why not
make it our task to look for the way of love as Jesus did. Sometimes it can be both a difficult path to
find and a hard one to follow as the rich young man did – he went away troubled
– but how rewarding it is when we find the right way because we let the spirit
guide us. Let us pray that the Spirit
fills each one of us with renewed power to see where Jesus is leading.
In His Name
