I have had first world problems this morning. I am at the NZ branch meeting of the college of psychiatrists: we have been picketed this morning by the antipsychiatry groups (NZ Citizen Committee aka the scientologists) and the internet is not working. Well, there are solutions for all these — if you are travelling around NZ you should have an internet stick, and I forgot to bring one up with me.
This morning we were talking in the meeting about the dire issues relating to indigenous people and youth, particularly how youth unemployment and disengagement affects us in mental health, where we are all too often the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and where the problems we see may have been started a decade before we are asked to solve them.
But today’s text reflects more widely. I am worried about first world problems. Access to health care in a country where there is health care. Cultural accessibility in a place where no one is killed because of their beliefs.
There are places where this is not: where you are enslaved because you are Christian, or black, or (frequently) both. Where we are not kings, but in the gutter. And where there are no demonstrations, no spectacle, but tawdry oppression.
Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?
(1 Corinthians 4:8-21 ESV)
There are many people who talk a good game. Who say they are righteous, and that if they are in control all will be well. That if we have the correct flags (rainbow) the correct speech, the correct process, all will be well.
As if a twitter hashtag can correct oppression, or an article in the New York Times. Now, I have low taste in movies, and the most recent one I saw on the tube was a good thriller where the woman was the MacGuffin, who both the CIA and the Chekists were trying to keep from talking… to the UN and New York Times.
As if they had any power.
What matters is who has the power. Whose spirit is in control of this world. Where the hearts of men lie. And we all have the image of God within us, and that drives us to look for truth, for beauty, for honour. If that be by slaying the dragon, or by placing ourselves at risk for revenge. (Oh, yes, women can be at risk in this. Women can be the martyrs and the heroines).
What matters is not what we say, but the fruits of our influence on others. What matters is not the perfection of our ideology, but the reformation of our behaviour.
Or to quote John Wright, we can either call God the devil and dethrone him as the Gnostics did, or stop lying, see God on the throne, and repent. For we are not kings, but beggars before the Almighty.
