AUDIO
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Archbishop Peter Jensen's Christmas Message 2011 on the centrality of Jesus to human history
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In the middle of last year’s federal election campaign, Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s team realised that they weren’t making much headway with voters who were already angry about her government’s removal of Kevin Rudd, and who were just not responding to her stage-managed body language and carefully scripted speeches. Her ‘moving forward’ slogan was just too easy for the media to caricature and too obviously a focus-grouped crafted stratagem.
What, are we all idiots?
There was only one thing for it. Gillard announced that from now on, we were going to get the ‘real Julia’. What that principally meant, as far as I could see, was that she was going to speak without notes. This apparently looks more ‘real’. As someone once said, if you can fake sincerity, you got it made.
It was, in hindsight, not very successful, but it was just enough. The ‘real’ Julia was no more convincing than the ‘fake’ Julia or, more importantly, the ‘real’ Tony. But what the emergence of the ‘real’ Julia revealed was how much we as the voting public yearn for reality and authenticity from those who wish to communicate with us.
It’s not that we’re sick of spin. It’s just that we’ve come to expect it. We know that there is no such thing as a disinterested party. We survive by tuning out the thousands of advertising messages we receive every day. And we are well used to the prevarications of politicians. We have cultivated the habit of suspicion and now it is deeply ingrained. Don’t believe everything you read could be our motto.
That’s the conundrum that a public figure finds herself (or himself) in. She knows that what we want is honesty, directness and reality. We want to know that she means what she says – that in some way what she thinks inwardly agrees with what she thinks outwardly. But how can she get this message through? Everything she says, no matter how fine sounding, advances her interests.
It’s like that with corporations who contribute to charities, too. Perhaps they are motivated by purity of heart and a desire to help. But we all know that it is actually in their interest to give to charities, because it makes them look benevolent.
II
Here’s the problem: we don’t have access to the inner world of the public figure so that we might check their sincerity. They might be genuine. But we also know that they have practised the skill of looking genuine. So how can we know that they are?
This is a difficulty for anyone who wants to communicate in public – for church leaders as much as other public figures. Churches look as if they are defending their own interests at every turn. So can we believe their gospel? Don’t preachers want us to believe them so that we will attend their churches and they will look good and get more money in the plate? Don’t they speak of a world to come and of sacrifice, and yet seem to enjoy quite nice lives here?
I certainly feel this as a theologian sometimes. If I write a piece for the secular media, the comments that come in inevitably take the line of ‘well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’
And I would, wouldn’t I?
So what are we to do? Can a way of guaranteeing honesty and integrity be found? Can there be a convincing way of syncing our inner and outer selves?
This is where the concept in the New Testament of a suffering witness comes in. The testimony of a person who will give their life for the truth surely has the ring of authenticity about it.
III
In his famous essay called ‘Up, Simba’ on the 2000 US election campaign, American writer David Foster Wallace tells a remarkable story about the Republican candidate John McCain. Travelling with the media entourage following McCain’s election, Wallace’s cynicism is confirmed at every turn. Is it possible to ever know the real John McCain? Is he the honourable man he appears to be right through to the bone, or is he a shrewd and calculating political operator with a hollow centre of self-interest?
At Q&A session during the campaign, a lady called Donna Duren confronted McCain with something that had happened to her son. Her young son, Chris Duren, had idolised Vietnam veteran McCain as something of an all-American hero. But a push-poller from the George Bush team had rung the Duren household and browbeaten the young boy with claims that McCain was a liar and a cheat, and – worse – un-American. Donna was now asking McCain, with tears, could anything be done to restore this young boy’s faith in the system?
Wallace carefully observed McCain’s reaction, which was one of visible concern. He offered to call the boy personally and apologise to him in person and explain that, yes, politics is still a worthwhile process despite everything and that there are people worth believing in. And so McCain does call Chris Duren, insisting that it will be ‘a private call between this young man and me’. Only, the TV cameras are allowed in to observe the first ten seconds of the call. It’s private, but a pretty public private.
So, Wallace asks, was this genuine or not? Or was this the perfectly calculated way to respond? Was McCain genuine, or just good at looking genuine?
It is impossible to tell. But there was one moment when the integrity and courage of the man could not be doubted. When he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, McCain had been offered an early release. However, he refused to take it on the grounds that the US POW Code of Conduct says that POWS should be released in order of capture, and there were other men who had been imprisoned longer than he. As a result he spent four extra years languishing in prison, most of them in a dark solitary cell.
At that moment, McCain had a chance to show that he could act out of something other than self-interest. And he took it. Whatever cynicism one might feel towards his speech as a politician, it is at least true that in this case we could glimpse the real character of the man.
IV
The McCain story is useful lesson for Christians about genuineness.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus already hints the moral complexity of acting altruistically. Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, he says. It’s hard to guarantee your sincerity when you broadcast your goodness to others.
At the same time, Jesus tells us to let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
How can it be both? How can I be a visible reflection of God’s glory without also broadcasting my goodness with trumpets? Aren’t I simply caught in the McCain/Gillard bind all over again?
Especially given Jesus’ teaching about the inclinations of the human heart in these same verses, it would seem a tricky balance to strike.
But it seems to me the example of his life tells us at least this: that the person who speaks and acts as if God is the only important judge of their words and deeds is the person who we know is genuine. When there is no possibility that you will benefit from what you say – indeed, when you make yourself vulnerable in what you say – then you can see something of the truth. Not that truth-speaking is made impossible by self-involvement. But it can’t be guaranteed.
This then ought to be the pattern for Christian public speech, if we are to cut through the world-weary cynicism of our times and say something that is really real, and known to be really real. We should seek opportunities to speak the truth in times and places and in a manner that shows that we don’t have self-interest as a primary motive; or at least, that we would declare this truth even if it would cost us to do so.
Surely we should speak in times and places whenever the glory of God is our primary motive, even if others impute false motives to us. That is part of suffering for the gospel.
I have found the concept of "managing your horizons" to “allow for your preconceptions and biases†really helpful in such discussion.
This is a fundamental step to take in assessing truth claims in the public arena. Here are some suggested steps one can take to manage your horizons.
1. Make your method explicit and transparent, so others can see the basis on which you're proceeding.
2. State your preconceptions and biases publicly as best you can.
3. Submit your findings to the scrutiny of peer assessment and review.
4. Especially submit your findings to the scrutiny of unsympathetic experts.
5. Look for a consensus opinion, especially if the consensus group comprises scholars from most (if not all) of the various ‘camps’ studying the matter.
6. Make sure you fairly reflect an opponent's view or argument (such that they would recognise it rather than a 'straw man').
Fulfilling such criteria does not prove your case, but generally goes a long way towards managing your horizon and accounting for your bias.
I'm indebted to Michael Licona's The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach for many of the ideas here and a good worked example.
Philippians 1: Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.
We can’t control people’s responses. Jesus was genuine, as Michael pointed out, but most people thought he wasn’t the real deal so ‘crucify him’ was the cry.
I think John Lennox modelled a good example of Biblical plain speaking on Q & A the other night in difficult circumstances. Pray that John continues to speak boldly.
Di
I appreciate your thoughts here. I am drawn to passages about oaths – e.g. Matthew 5:33-37 and James 5:12 – where the idea of adding strength to what is said is somehow aided by the oath. While we don’t do that, I get the idea that our daily talk should be honest, just as if we were under an oath. Perhaps the threat to modern honesty in Christian circles is a propensity towards exaggeration. It seems to me that we devalue integrity if we exaggerate to get our points across.
Surely he is implying here that "good works" - the sort that glorify God - do not require advertisement. The light of their divine source is plainly manifest. The appeal is to the eye, not the ear - the shining good deed in a naughty world.
Evangelicals often seem to be fixated on advertising the brand; proclamation over application; ear over eye. What application there is gets lost in a vuvuzela buzz, or is made bait for a hook, line, and sinker - the good as a "tool", a "strategy", an "opportunity"...
...like that old friend who invites you to dinner for a catch-up, only to try and recruit you for Amway.
The issue of rhetorical exaggeration in preaching is an interesting one. I take it exaggeration is a standard and recognised technique of communication which need not imply falsehood. But it can be used to given mistaken impressions, fer sure.
Genuine perhaps, but not necessarily right.
Those who speak and act in this way would include:
- the Jehovah's Witness who foregoes a necessary blood transfusion out of obedience to his God.
- the jihadist suicide bomber who sacrifices himself in his God's cause.
- the Russian " Old Believer" who burns himself to death rather than submit to ecclesiastical reform.
Folks can be sincerely deluded.
Plenty of "heretics" have endured persecution or martyrdom rather than compromise "the truth" as they see it. I'm thinking of Monophysites in late antiquity, medieval Cathars, Michael Servetus, Quakers, Raskolniki, Jehovah's Witnesses under the Nazis.
Suffering witnesses, all of them. The willingness to die for "the truth" is not a monopoly of the orthodox. And the willingness to kill for "the truth" is not alien to the orthodox.
That's a great point Grant and one I raise with my kids quite often. It's not just that the disciples died for their version of the truth, because how many Communists gave their lives for the glory of Heaven on Earth after The Revolution? But it's what they died stating. It's the fact that they gave eyewitness accounts of seeing a man who had lived a good life, made some rather bold and bizarre claims about himself, died, and then rose again — against their expectations it would seem. This is the difference. So while Moslems might die for their belief that Mohammed had some special dreams or visions, and the Hale-Bop UFO cult drank spiked cool-aid to hasten being beamed up, the disciples death has a different quality to it. They were killed for their eyewitness accounts, their historical claims. If I had been the Roman consul in Jerusalem, the moment this new cult started I would have gone for the body to put an end to my troubles and satisfy the local Jewish authorities. But he never did.
You've opened a whole new can of worms (yum!) that I'd love to chew through, but I fear the thread will not bear it.
Suffice it to say that:
We do not know for sure whether the earliest apostolic associates of Jesus (the "eyewitnesses") died stating the veracity of their Christophanic experiences, et alii. There are no scriptural accounts of their various ends, and the hagiographical/martyrological traditions are, by their very nature, formulaic and tendentious. The Neronian persecution in which Peter and Paul supposedly perished was not about testing Christian loyalty to the imperial regime (like, say the much later Decian crackdown of the mid 3rd century). Rather, it was simply an exercise in scapegoating - an unpopular Jewish-associated group that preached the imminent end of the world by fire would have been an easy target for vengeful reprisals in a context where a city had just been devastated by fire, and where Jews had been known for zealous (even riotous) agitation. At the end, Peter and Paul might conceivably have denied they had anything to do with the Christian movement (unlikely for Paul, more likely for Peter) - it would have made little difference to their executioners, who were not interested in getting them to deny Christ, just in killing off the ringleaders of the designated scapegoat group. Pious tradition was quite capable of constructing an edifying end for one who, from the Roman point of view, was some sort of crazed incendiary.
I'd love an excuse to go and read my favourite handful of good history books on my shelf right now, but I'm cramming for a new job I start in a few weeks. So unfortunately I decline to get involved in discussing what evidence would be good enough for you. Instead just note that the claim itself is substantively different to the other claims we were discussing above.
Regards
Rest you, and all the best with the job!