Worth It

Inspector Arthur Steed:            You might lose your life before this is over.

Maud Watts:                               We will win.

Suffragette (2015)

Thanks to Phil_Bird at freedigitalphotos.net for this photo of the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst that stands in Victoria Tower Gardens in Westminster.

It’s been just over two years since Suffragette came out now.¹ I’m not, consequently, altogether sure why it’s taken me so long to get round to writing this post: perhaps I’ve just needed all those months to recover from the emotional turmoil to which the film mercilessly subjects its viewers. In any case, the essence of the argument I’m about to make was, I recall, already formed in my mind when I left the cinema (or rather, the music and drama room at my university):² I turned to my friend and made some remark to the effect that Suffragette really makes you think about what you’d give up for a cause.

Our heroine is a young, working-class mother of one called Maud Watts. When we meet her, she has little to no interest in the female suffrage movement, but through a combination of chance encounters, her friends’ involvement in the movement, and a gradually dawning awareness that having a say in political matters might offer the chance of a better life, she ends up taking part in a few votes-for-women-ish activities. In fact, she ends up suffering some pretty hefty consequences for doing so. Maud is arrested; jailed; stigmatised by her neighbours. As her involvement in the suffragette movement increases, her husband throws her out of the house; she is denied any opportunity to see her son, George; she is defamed in the press; she is fired from her job. She is imprisoned again and, when she goes on hunger strike, subjected to force feeding. The height of the emotional turmoil I mentioned above, however, is when Maud finds out that her husband feels unable to cope and is putting George up for adoption: she has no idea where he’ll be taken and desperately begs him to remember her name and find her when he’s grown up. At the start of the film, Maud wasn’t a suffragette; by the end, there’s practically nothing left in her life except being a suffragette. She does at least manage to hang on to her life, despite the warning of the police inspector as in my opening quotation, but his words are still oddly prophetic, given that, at the climax of the film, Maud ends up accompanying Emily Davison to her fateful publicity stunt at the Epsom Derby.³

And it does make you think, as every new wave of trouble comes crashing over our protagonist: is it worth it? I don’t think anyone reading this would deny that the goal of the female suffrage movement was an entirely desirable one (indeed, I certainly hope not), but Suffragette makes a stark exhibition of an awful lot of eggs that might have to be broken for the sake of producing that omelette. When does one stop? After which blow is one permitted to stay down? After which loss does the column reckon up, despite the enormity of the possible gain, as a negative number; do the scales begin to tip in the other direction, despite the great weight of the pursued goal? Does it ever, even? Is Maud’s cause so worthy that it would see her bear every loss possible, that it would see her subjected to every variety of pain and misery known to humanity, and would still not allow her to relinquish it? Would it take and take and take from her until she has nothing left but the cause itself, and yet still consider that no more than her duty?

And if the stakes are as high as that, how can she be sure it’s worth it? On what ground can one be sure that the next blow and the next loss are worth bearing? Whose word can one take to know that the cause matters that much?

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”⁴

When God raised Jesus from the dead, he proved that he is able to repay every loss that someone might suffer in service of his cause – the gospel – even down to one’s very life. This was proof that Jesus’ offer of eternal life to those who followed him was no empty claim, but a demonstrated guarantee. And if that part of the claim was proven, so was the accompanying promise of a hundredfold repayment in this time of every loss sustained. As to what that actually looks like in practical terms, I’d say that the hundredfold Jesus is talking about comes in the form of the Church. Clearly nobody who leaves behind a brother or sister for the sake of the gospel finds himself surrounded by a hundred biological siblings in recompense, but he does find himself part of a community of believers, millions strong, which constitutes his spiritual family.

One of the most inspiring moments of Suffragette is when a reading is made from a book that has been passed on to Maud as the last of a long line of heroines of the cause, exhorting her to be encouraged, though she seem to be marching alone, by the unsilenceable roar of the crowd that will follow her. We too have the phenomenal encouragement of being surrounded by a crowd – or rather cloud⁵ – of comrades in our cause, our spiritual siblings, but that isn’t the first place we look for a reason to keep running the course laid out in front of us. The first place we look is Jesus, who ran it first. He opened up the way for us to walk in faith, and guaranteed to uphold us to the end of it. Maud and her fellow suffragettes are the vanguard of their cause, marching into unmapped territory, and they can’t know for certain what’s in store, what they will or won’t manage to achieve. Not so for the Christian.

I’m not saying, incidentally, that because they didn’t have a hundred per cent guarantee of success, the female suffrage movement shouldn’t have been prepared to undergo severe trials for the sake of their cause; on the contrary, I’m deeply glad and heartily grateful that they did. I’m just pointing out how awesome it is that we have, in the risen Christ, an absolute guarantee of the victory of our cause, and consequently how great and peerless a reason we have to be prepared to undergo severe trials for the sake of our cause. Nor am I saying that this is a principle I have any real experience in putting into practice, which I’d hazard is true of many of us in the nice modern developed Christian-to-post-Christian west – but it’s worth getting the principle right so that I’m not left floundering when I am called to put it into practice.

In sum, we can be sure that the next blow and the next loss sustained for the sake of Christ and the gospel are worth bearing first because no burden is heavy enough to tip the scales against the weight of glory God has prepared for us in eternal life; and second because our obtaining that eternal life is a complete certainty, guaranteed by the fact that Jesus has already obtained it for us. Whatever following Jesus demands of us, we are repaid a hundredfold in this time, and in the age to come eternal life. Should our cause take and take and take from us until we have nothing left but the cause itself – nothing left but Christ and him crucified – that’s not even a bad place to be. Christians throughout the ages have lost their lives for their Lord, and many more will surely do so before this is over, but we will win. Strictly speaking, Jesus already won on our behalf.

It’s worth it.

Footnotes

¹ Here’s a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056FI2Pq9RY. Gosh, I’m getting all emotional again just watching that.

² Standard Campus Cinema plug: http://www.campuscinema.co.uk/.

³ Personally, I subscribe to the theory that Davison wasn’t actually trying to kill herself, but to attach a banner to the king’s horse: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/26/emily-davison-suffragette-death-derby-1913.

⁴ That’s from Mark 10: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+10&version=ESVUK. Compare also the parallel passage in Matthew 19: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+19&version=ESVUK.  

⁵ I here allude to the beginning of Hebrews 12: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+12&version=ESVUK. Lots of cool stuff to be said about that cloud, but not for this post, methinks.

Thoughts on the Integrity of the Christian Student

“Well, why would I [mention that I’m a Christian]? … I’m not planning to run your polymer factory along Biblical lines.”

Tracey Ullman’s Show S2 E4 (2017)¹

 

This lady looks far too well put-together to be in anything but the earliest stages of essay-writing. Where is the chaos of notes, discarded plans, and no-longer-relevant books?

First off, allow me to present you with the following (probably) familiar Bible verse:²

In your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect. – 1 Peter 3:15

Said verse was the subject of some third of our discussion time at a Theology Network meeting earlier this week. (Theology Network, for those of my delightful readers that don’t know, offers a chance for Christians studying Theology to meet up, think through what following Jesus might look like for theologians in a secular university, and encourage one another in that endeavour.³) Plenty of value was said, and in particular I was struck by my own frequent lack of preparedness to give a reason for the hope that is in me when I’m asked about it in person; it’s one thing to spend time nicely typing up a blog post that articulates the substance of the gospel, but quite another to articulate it when the subject comes up in conversation. What I’d like to put forward in this post, though, is a point of view which fostered slightly more (very mild and courteous) contention than I was expecting when I expressed it during our discussion of 1 Peter 3:15.

Previous remarks by the group had prompted me to consider the integrity of the verse, that honouring Christ the Lord as holy and always being prepared to make a defence for one’s hope in him are very much tied up with one another. If one honours Christ as holy – if one recognises that he is completely good and perfect and worthy of worship and so behaves accordingly towards him – then of course one should always be ready to explain why; and being ready to explain why is part of honouring Christ as holy. And because we’d been talking about how this jazz applied to the everyday student situation of having to write an essay, I voiced the idea that, if we’re not honouring Christ as holy in the essays we write (as in everything), then, since the two are so inseparable, we undermine our ability to make a defence to anyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us.

This suggestion was met on some sides with remarks to the effect of, does it really matter? How much has the content of our academic work really got to do with our faith? Isn’t the point of writing an essay not so much for its own sake as in order to get a degree and go on to serve God in whatever he would have us do? Isn’t it worth writing essays from non-Christian perspectives in order to better understand those perspectives? Is what we choose to affirm or deny in an essay really going to have any effect at all on how we share the gospel with our friends?

I think it is.

The thing is, if I believe that the gospel is true – more than that, if I believe that the fact that the gospel is true is more important than anything else in the world – why would I write an essay in such a way as to imply otherwise? What advantage could I possibly see in adopting the persona of an unrepentant heathen for the particular endeavour of producing academic work? Put it this way: is that a persona I could in good conscience adopt in any other scenario? Surely it wouldn’t be acceptable for me to say, yes, I’m a Christian, but when I have conversations with that group of people I’m going to behave as if I were not; or when I engage in that leisure activity I’m going to behave as if I were not; or when I use that social media platform I’m going to behave as if I were not. Why, then, should it be acceptable for me to say, yes, I’m a Christian, but when I write academic essays I’m going to behave as if I were not? Have I not been charged to do everything – word or deed – in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him?⁴ I’m not saying, I feel I should make clear, that I should be making some explicit gospel reference every paragraph regardless of whether it’s actually relevant to the thrust of the essay, or that I should pig-headedly refuse even to acknowledge that reasonable points have also been made from other perspectives, but, as in conversation and leisure and running polymer factories and so forth, should my overall approach to the thing in front of me not be characterised by a determination to honour Christ as holy?

 

What an odd expression ‘pig-headed’ is...

Do I not feel capable of approaching an essay from a Christian perspective? Do I think it will be an easier thing to write if I argue in favour of an alternative cause? But why should that be so? Does that not imply that I find the evidence for what I claim to believe less compelling than the evidence for a different view? In which case, why exactly do I believe what I do? If the topic of the essay runs up against a particular point of doubt or challenge to my faith that I’m currently struggling with, would it not be more worthwhile to use the process of writing the essay to wrestle with and resolve that issue, than to run scared from the confrontation and, for ease, throw my lot in with the arguments that are causing me these doubts?

Do I not feel that academic work carried out from a Christian perspective is going to be of as good quality as academic work carried out as if from a different perspective? Why on earth not? If the gospel is true, then surely it follows that a worldview that acknowledges as much is better able to make sense of the world – better able to comprehend and communicate what is true about the world – than any other? If the gospel is true, then surely the one perspective from which I am best equipped to carry out academic work of good quality is a Christian one? Is the prospect not in some measure an exciting one that I should have the opportunity to write an answer to an interesting question that faithfully acknowledges the truth of the gospel and is a better piece of work for it? Again, surely other perspectives must strike me as less compelling than mine, or else why do I believe what I do?

Or do I think that, much as I might find an essay written from a Christian point of view compelling, my lecturer won’t? Do I think an essay written under the assumption that the gospel is true will earn me a worse grade? But why should I think so badly of my lecturer as to assume she can’t tell a good essay unless it argues something consistent with her own personal worldview? Or, equally, why should I think so badly of her as to assume she would mark down an essay that disagreed with her own personal worldview even if she knew it was a good one? And besides, surely the question of whether I’m honouring Christ as holy takes precedence over the question of my worldly achievement? Surely, if it were a choice between writing my essay from a Christian perspective and getting a good mark for it, I shouldn’t automatically plump for the latter?

Is it not hypocritical, at the end of the day, to affirm the truth of the gospel in some contexts and deny it in others? Furthermore, does writing essays as if I weren’t a Christian not set a dangerous precedent for doing other things as if I weren’t a Christian? Does it not reveal an unwillingness to submit every facet of my life to God? And if that weren’t alarming enough in itself – which I stress it very much ought to be – to swing back round to the issue of sharing the gospel with friends, well, does this unwillingness not constitute a breach in the integrity of my Christian witness? If my friend asks me what I’m writing my essay about, is my reply not going to indicate that I don’t really think Jesus is important enough that I should be honouring him as holy in my academic work? Why, then, should my friend pay any attention to what I say about Jesus at another time? And even if I somehow manage to conceal the subject of every essay I ever write from every single one of my friends, do I really think that articulating myself in an essay is a process so completely detached from articulating myself in conversation, or online, or in any other context where I might feasibly want to communicate something of the gospel, that I won’t become better practised at attacking the gospel than defending it if I do the former in my academic work?

Of course, everything I say about evangelism is to some extent by the by: if denying the gospel in my academic work does not constitute honouring Christ the Lord as holy, then I shouldn’t be doing it, full stop. My point, in the end, is that the Christian life is a whole: one must submit all aspects of one’s life to God, not just some. Indeed, I can’t imagine there are too many Christians who would disagree with that point in the abstract. Why should the academic aspect of one’s life be any exception to that? Do we really think that academic work doesn’t count somehow, doesn’t belong to the real world, even though what’s being said in universities right now is almost certainly going to be what’s being said on the street in twenty years’ time?

In short, failing to honour Christ as holy in writing essays damages the integrity of our Christian witness because failing to honour Christ as holy in anything damages the integrity of our Christian witness. If I believe that the gospel is true – more than that, if I believe that the fact that the gospel is true is more important than anything else in the world – then the fact should be evident in everything I do. Granted, none of us is anything close to genuinely having that kind of integrity: we’re all still hypocrites, and we’re kidding ourselves to a potentially lethal degree if we think we’re not. Still, we should be striving in every way we can to honour Christ as holy and become holier ourselves. After all, if I believe that the gospel is true – if I believe that God who is alone holy looked at me in my total refusal to honour him as such, in all my hypocrisy, and chose to make me holy enough to enjoy eternity in his presence even at the cost of the life of his own dear Son, Christ the Lord, who for his one sufficient sacrifice of himself for the sake of the unholy is worthy to receive all honour – then why would I want to write an essay, or run a polymer factory, or indeed do anything, in such a way as to imply otherwise?

Footnotes

¹ Tracey Ullman included a number of ‘oh – you’re a Christian?’ sketches in the latest series of her comedy sketch show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_jzDGv0KKw. The one about the christening is even funnier.

² Here’s the whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter+3&version=ESVUK.

³ Theology Network has local branches, as it were, in universities round the country, and is looked after by UCCF, https://www.uccf.org.uk/theology-network/, which at my university makes it technically part of the Evangelical Christian Union, https://www.exeterecu.com/.

⁴ Hint: I have. Check out Colossians: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+3&version=ESVUK.

But You Can’t Know for Sure

“Well, it would comfort me very much to know for sure, but instead, I choose to believe he’s up there.”

The Little Prince (2015)

Le Petit Prince was the set text my A-level French teacher chose that my year should study for our final exam.¹ Par conséquence, I find myself, upon starting to plan this blog post, beset by nagging convictions that I really ought to mention Major Themes of the Novel like its portrayal of les grands personnes versus les enfants, and its emphasis on seeing with the heart; that I must at some point quote ce qui est essentiel est invisible aux yeux; and that it would be far more appropriate for me to be writing en français. Désolée. English only henceforth, I promise.²

 

Blimey, betalars at newgrounds.com is a gifted individual - to whom I owe hearty thanks for this beautiful depiction of the little prince and his rose watching a sunrise.

In any case, I’m not really writing today about the novel I read for my A-level, but about the recent Netflix film adaptation of it.³ Le Petit Prince is a very short book: the basic plot is that a pilot who has crashed his plane in the desert inexplicably meets a small boy – the titular little prince – who claims to be from another planet and to have had various interesting encounters on his travels to, and subsequently on, the earth. To pad that out into a feature-length film, Netflix’s version adds a framing device in which the now-elderly pilot cultivates a friendship with the young girl who has just moved into the house next door to him; he achieves this to a large degree through telling her, by a combination of in-person and on-paper narration, the tale of the little prince. Although the bulk of the film is CGI-animated – as per the usual in this day and age – these flashback scenes to the little prince’s original story are rendered in achingly lovely papery stop-motion, as if they’d stepped straight out of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s own illustrations.⁴ Indeed, the bits of the film that are drawn directly from the novel are very true to it. The framing device, however, makes some very major changes indeed. I surely hardly need state that an onslaught of spoilers is approaching.

At the very end of the novel, the little prince arranges for a venomous snake to bite him, because, he says, he needs to return to his planet to take care of the (anthropomorphised) rose he left there, and his physical body is too heavy for him to take it on the journey with him. Upon the pilot’s expressing sorrow that he’ll never hear the little prince laugh again, the latter comforts him: “When you look at the sky at night, since I will live in one of [the stars], since I will laugh in one of them, then it will be for you as if all the stars were laughing. You will have stars that can laugh!” After a little more conversation, he slips off and has himself bitten. The narrative voice wraps things up by imploring the reader to let him know immediately if he or she should happen to be in that part of the desert and come across a small boy with golden hair who refuses to answer questions – and here endeth the book.

Not so in the Netflix adaptation. The scene in question is flashbacked to a mere halfway through the runtime, as the pilot narrates it to his new friend. “You didn’t let him go!” she exclaims. “Not to the snake!” He replies, eyes downcast, “It wasn’t my choice.” In beautiful stop-motion we see the pilot accompany the little prince to the appointed place, the snake appear out of the sand and snap at the little prince’s ankle, and the little prince himself gently fall sideways onto the sand like –

The scene is interrupted. Back in CGI-world, the little girl stares at the page of story the pilot has set before her in astonished horror. “But … but…” Her expression hardens. She sets down the manuscript and turns round in her chair so that she is no longer facing the pilot. “You said he’s up there, didn’t you?” she recalls. “Back with his rose?”

“Well…” The pilot, wrongfooted, stammers. “It is as he said,” he manages eventually. “I look at the stars and I hear him laughing.”

The little girl is not impressed. “But you don’t know for sure.”

“Well, it would comfort me very much to know for sure,” admits the pilot, “but instead,” he adds, “I choose to believe he’s up there.”

The little girl, clearly upset, grabs hold of her cuddly toy fox and hugs it close.⁵ “Is that what you want me to do when you go?” she demands. “Just look up to the stars and make-believe that you’re not gone?” The pilot has been telling her for a good while that he’s going to have to leave at some point soon, but she hasn’t managed to catch on to the death metaphor he’s employing quite as successfully as the pilot caught on to the one employed by the little prince; this very conversation, indeed, was prompted by the fact that she had brought a full suitcase and a firm intention to accompany her friend on his journey when she arrived at his house that day.

“Oh, but if you look with your heart, I’ll always be with you,” the pilot attempts to reassure her. “It’s – it’s just like I know the little prince will always be with his rose.”

“But you can’t know for sure,” repeats the little girl. Agitated, she stands. “What if he’s not back with his rose? What if he’s all grown up and alone? What if he’s lost and he’s forgotten everything?”

“Wait, wait, wait.” The pilot is incredulous at such a suggestion. “Sweetheart, the little prince will never forget. He’ll always be up there for us, to help us.”

But the pilot, as it turns out, is completely, blindly, horribly wrong. Later, he falls ill and is hospitalised, and the little girl, in deep distress that she ended up storming out of their last conversation with a declaration that she had wasted her whole summer on the pilot’s stories, decides to borrow his broken plane and go in search of the little prince, whose help she is sure will be able to save the pilot. Whether the whole subsequent adventure is a dream or not is just about left to the viewer’s interpretation, though I’d say it’s pretty heavily hinted that it isn’t. The little girl flies the plane straight out into space and successfully tracks down the little prince – and discovers that every single one of her fears has come true. The little prince isn’t back with his rose. He’s all grown up and alone. He’s lost and he’s forgotten everything.

 

The rose is the only female character in the whole of the novel, which I have to say doesn’t pay too much of a compliment to the female sex.

Of course, because it’s a lovely uplifting family-friendly film, she manages to rescue him and remind him of his real identity, and there’s then a scene where the beloved rose, now wilted and dead, is in some sense resurrected as a sunrise (the little prince was notoriously fond of sunrises, I should mention). At that point, the little girl claims that she understands now. I, though, felt none the wiser – because the fact remains that she was right. The pilot’s faith in the little prince was dismally misplaced. The little prince made a claim that he was going back to his planet to be with his rose, and he failed to make good on it. But you can’t know for sure, the little girl insisted, and she was completely vindicated. The pilot’s ‘choosing to believe’ meant absolutely nothing; it was no true reflection of reality, and the little girl was correct in calling it out as the poor, self-deluding comfort it was. What reason does she have to believe the pilot’s claim that he’ll always be with her, if even the little prince couldn’t follow through on what he planned to happen after he departed?

Perhaps I articulate these things in rather harsh terms. The reason I feel able to do so is because those of us who are trusting in Christ have a comfort of a sort that hasn’t the slightest need to be couched in unqualified ‘choosing to believe’ in order to reassure us, and next to that, anything else frankly strikes me as a total cop-out and a waste of time. The little prince made a claim about what would happen to him after his physical death, but he couldn’t follow it through. There was no way of knowing for sure that he had done what he said he would; the pilot had to ‘choose to believe’ that he had, and consequently ended up believing an utter lie. Jesus, by contrast, made a claim about what would happen to him after his physical death and followed it through precisely – and this, might I remind you, in the real world, where people don’t typically rise from the dead any more than random children from faraway planets typically show up inexplicably in deserts and have conversations with passing fauna.

Jesus repeatedly stated that he would rise again three days after he was killed,⁶ and he did. Hundreds and hundreds of people saw him alive after those three days, often in large groups and on many separate occasions,⁷ and many of them proved to be prepared to suffer and die for the sake of proclaiming his resurrection. This in the real world, where people don’t typically rise from the dead; note that Paul, in his speech to the Athenians – most of whom would have been totally clueless about the whole Messiah thing, so he had to argue from somewhere common to all human ways of understanding the world – stated the fact that Jesus had risen from the dead as the proof given by God of everything else he had said: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”⁸

I’m not here to do apologetics; there are better sources for that if you want them.⁹ I am here to make the point that Jesus’ resurrection is proof that he can follow through on everything he has promised. With the little prince, the pilot had no way of knowing for sure; he knew what his friend had claimed would happen after he died, but he didn’t have any evidence that it had really come to pass, and he ended up believing something that wasn’t true simply because he wanted it to be. With Jesus, we can know for sure: we know what he claimed and we know that it really did come to pass, and we know that if he could follow through on a claim as outrageous as rising from death, he can follow through on anything. We never have to worry that he’s not going to achieve what he said he would.

For this reason, we have no cause to cling to any platitude or false comfort that Jesus didn’t actually affirm. We don’t need to ‘choose to believe’ anything we don’t know for sure, and indeed it’s an affront to our Lord if we do so. We know Jesus will make good on everything he claimed – that he will be with us, that we shall be conformed to his image, that he will return to judge the world in righteousness, ¹⁰ all of it – and there’s no ground to supplement that with anything less certain. Adelphoi, let’s stand confident on the promises we have – and thank God that he grants us to know for sure.

Footnotes 

¹ It’s a 1943 novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and well worth a read. An English translation is available here, http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Le_petit_prince, but it doesn’t have any of the lovely pictures, so maybe you should just get hold of a hard copy: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Antoine-de-Saint-Exupery/The-Little-Prince/7112799. 

² Translations of the French in this paragraph, in case you need them: Le Petit Prince = The Little Prince; par conséquence = as a consequence; les grands personnes = grown-ups; les enfants = children; ce qui est essentiel est invisible aux yeux = what is essential is invisible to the eyes (one of the most famous quotations from Le Petit Prince); en français = in French; désolée = sorry. 

³ If you’re a Netflix subscriber, you can watch it here: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80057578?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C850c574d3835c2b691e40f03135c8ed2bb58de27%3A0dca7c314ce5aa2ee2b10c6aa17e1bde53030be8. 

⁴ If you happen to be a fan of said illustrations, all sorts of pleasing household items adorned with them are available from the online shop of the official Le Petit Prince website, https://www.thelittleprince.com/#, which I have to say it would have seemed pretty rude not to have linked to in one or other of my footnotes this post. 

⁵ The fox is one of the characters the little prince encountered on his travels; one of my personal favourite parts of the novel is when the fox explains the process of ‘taming’, that is, creating ties with someone so that he or she is unique in the world to you. “One runs the risk of crying a bit,” the narrator remarks, “if one allows oneself to be tamed.” One also runs the risk of crying a bit if one thinks about the concept too lingeringly. *sniffles* 

⁶ I dealt to some degree with the three occurrences of this in Mark’s gospel last month in ‘Nobody Saw That Coming’ (I’m sure you’re competent enough to find it in the box on the right if you feel so inclined); see also Matthew 12:39-40; 16:21; 17:9, 22-23; 20:17-19; 26:31-32; 27:63; Luke 9:22; 18:31-33; John 2:18-22; and I don’t think that’s even exhaustive. Granted, some of these passages refer to the same incidents, but regardless, Jesus clearly mentioned this quite a lot. 

⁷ You’ll find the relevant accounts in the last chapter or two of each gospel; 1 Corinthians 15:6 is also relevant: “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.” Why does Paul bother to say that most of them are still alive? Why, so that the reader knows he or she can go and talk to them about it, of course. 

⁸ That’s in Acts 17: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts+17&version=ESVUK. My university’s Evangelical Christian Union runs an evangelistic ministry called ‘Acts 17’, https://www.exeterecu.com/get-involved-1, which, if I understand rightly, is based on verse 17: “So he reasoned … in the market-place every day with those who happened to be there.” It works particularly well given that the word translated ‘market-place’ in the ESV (ἀγορά) could also be rendered ‘forum’, which is the name of my university’s main building – which happens to have in it a shop called the Market Place. How very pleasing. 

⁹ As one example, I recently read Lee Strobel’s famous The Case for Christ, https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/case-for-christ, in which he draws analogies between the evidence we have for the Bible’s claims about Jesus and the kind of evidence that stands up in a court of law. A pretty cracking read, I have to say, though I recall that I disagreed on one or two of the less weighty points of argumentation. 

¹⁰ See Matthew 28:20; Romans 8:29; and, well, the above Acts 17:31 will do perfectly well, for these particular promises. And if you’re objecting that it was Paul, not Jesus himself, who actually said those latter two, Adam4d has a tidy reply to that: http://adam4d.com/never-mentioned/.

Born Dalek

“Inside that shell is a creature born to hate, whose only thought is to destroy everything and everyone that isn’t a Dalek too. It won’t stop until it’s killed every human being alive.”

Doctor Who S3 E4, ‘Daleks in Manhattan’ (2007)

 

Hearty thanks to the talented KrystalFlamingo at newgrounds.com for this hilarious cutesy Dalek.

But then arguably, a Dalek never chose to be born a Dalek either.¹

It can hardly be considered the fault of your random average Dalek that its ancestors underwent genetic modification that turned them into killing machines stripped of every emotion except hatred. The blame can hardly be laid at the door of your random average Dalek for the fact that it is programmed in the very core of its essence to despise and destroy any and every life form it encounters that differs from itself. It wasn’t on the initiative of your random average Dalek that it was brought into existence as a member of the most evil species in the Whoniverse. But nevertheless, it was. And much as it can’t help being what it is, well, it can’t help being what it is, if you catch my drift: it can’t now decide not to be a creature born to hate, any more than it decided to be a creature born to hate in the first place.

A Dalek does what it does because it is what it is. It hates because it was born to hate; it isn’t capable of anything else. To destroy everything and everyone that isn’t a Dalek too is the only course of action it knows how to take, and therefore the only course of action it will ever take. It never chose to be born Dalek, but that’s frankly a million miles away from the point when it’s busy rampaging the universe causing untold death and destruction wherever it goes. It has to be stopped, or else it won’t stop until it’s killed every human being alive (and probably myriad aliens as well).

On top of that, it likes what it is and does, insofar as a Dalek is capable of liking anything. It never chose to be born a Dalek, but given that it is one, it’s committed to the Dalek goal of conquering the universe and exterminating every non-Dalek in it. It values its own Dalek-ness; we see this in ‘Evolution of the Daleks’, for example, when the rest of the Cult of Skaro exterminate their own leader because he hybridised himself with a human and started having funny ideas about Daleks maybe not being the greatest beings in existence after all; and in ‘Victory of the Daleks’, when a group of Daleks agrees to be destroyed by the New Paradigm Daleks they themselves created on the grounds that the latter have superiorly pure ‘original’ Dalek DNA.² It never chose to born a Dalek, but if you were now to ask it whether it would rather be anything else, there’s absolutely no way it would answer with anything but emphatic denial (and then exterminate you into the bargain).

A Dalek is deserving of destruction on account of its nature. You never see the Doctor stopping to make absolutely sure the particular Dalek in front of him is actually guilty of having exterminated someone before he starts concocting a plan to defeat it. It’s a Dalek; that’s enough. And yes, we do get those fun little moral questions about whether the Doctor is really any better than a Dalek if he is as intent on their destruction as they are on everyone’s except their own – he is, after all, a highly flawed character in his own right – but equally, we’re still expecting him to have either killed or banished the Daleks by the end of the episode, otherwise they’ll continue to pose a threat. A Dalek never chose to be born Dalek, but because of what it is it has to be got rid of, or there can never be peace and safety and happiness in the universe. Indeed, in the notoriously tearful Series Two finale ‘Doomsday’, when the Doctor arranged it so that the army of Daleks threatening the earth were all pulled back into the deadspace between universes, the Void – “some people call it hell” – that was a victory. “So you’re sending the Daleks … to hell? Man, I told you he was good,” enthused Mickey at the time.³ When a Dalek gets sent to a place of everlasting calamity, that’s a right and good and commendable thing.

And likewise, none of us ever chose to be born in Adam – that is, to be born in open rebellion against a holy and perfect God, to be born with sin infused into our very essence. It wasn’t on our initiative that our ancestor brought upon himself such curses as were warranted by his disobedience.⁴ And much as we can’t help being what we are, well … we can’t, any more than a Dalek can, help being what we are.

We do what we do because we are what we are:⁵

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. – Matthew 12:33-35

 

This particular tree-grown fruit looks pretty good to me, but I suppose I’d have to eat some of it to be sure.

And on top of that, we like what we are and do:⁶

You [O mighty man] love evil more than good,

And lying more than speaking what is right.

You love all words that devour,

O deceitful tongue. – Psalm 52:3-4

And we are deserving of destruction on account of our nature:⁷

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” – Genesis 6:5-7

We didn’t choose to be born sinful any more than your random average Dalek chose to be born Dalek. And yet we deserve death on account of what we are exactly like it does. The only possibility of our avoiding that fate is if we can become something other than what we are. Think of ‘Dalek’, the episode that tells the story of the Doctor’s first encounter with his most famous enemy after he thought he had destroyed all of them at the end of the Time War. When Rose touches the Dalek, it’s able to absorb some of her special time-traveller’s DNA to regnerate itself, but it gets more than it expected into the bargain: Rose’s DNA starts turning it human. Its urge to kill all the humans it can begins to wane. It expresses desires to be free and to feel the sunlight. It seems as if there might be some chance of rehabilitation for this Dalek, but only because it has become something other than what it was. Similarly, in ‘Evolution of the Daleks’ (mentioned above), once Dalek Sec has been hybridised with the human Mr Diagoras, he starts suggesting that the new Daleks he and his subordinates are busy creating ought to have emotions other than hatred, and concerns other than establishing themselves as the supreme beings by killing everything else in existence. “Our purpose is wrong,” he says. “If we do not change now then we deserve extinction.” And the Doctor sums up: “So you want to change everything that makes a Dalek a Dalek.”⁸

But the Daleks had to stay the Daleks for the sake of the ongoing saga of the Whoniverse, of course, and so in both instances mentioned above, the new human-Dalek combinations are promptly killed: Rose’s Dalek by himself, and Dalek Sec by his subordinates, but in both cases out of a proper Dalek disgust at such an affront to proper Dalek purity.

Happily, our story has rather a different ending.⁹

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned … death reigned from Adam to Moses … but the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgement following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all me, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. – Romans 5: 12-19

We were born sinful, in Adam, doomed to death because our ancestor’s wrongdoing determined the nature of all his descendants, just as the Daleks’ ancestors did theirs. If we do not change, we deserve extinction. But in Christ we, adelphoi, are changed. We are made something other than sinful, the exact opposite, in fact: we are made righteous. And because we are not what we were, we are no longer deserving of death on account of what we are, but deserving of life, just as Jesus is deserving of life who has life in himself and has won the victory over death. If a Dalek is no longer a Dalek, but the opposite, there’s no longer any need that it be got rid of.

It’s an astonishing turnaround, and it’s brought about entirely by God’s free gift of grace. When we were sinners, we liked the sinfulness of what we were and did: if you’d asked us whether we wanted to be something other than a rebel against God, the way we desperately clung to our idols would have been enough to infer our emphatic denial. And so we sinned because it was the only course of action we knew how to take; we weren’t capable of anything else. It would have been entirely justified for God to have just destroyed us – we were, on account of our nature, deserving of it – but instead he chose to give up his beloved Son to destruction in order to bring about this seismic change in our nature, such as we could never in all eternity have brought about ourselves. Now, therefore, we have it in our nature that we are capable of doing righteous things – only to a certain extent in this life, odd, hybridic, transitional period as it is, but after our full resurrection, our nature will be changed so entirely that it’s sin we’ll no longer be capable of.

“So you want to change everything that makes a sinner a sinner,” someone could sum up. Sounds good to me. God be praised forever for by his grace achieving exactly that.

Footnotes

¹ If you’re a bit unsure on who exactly the Daleks are, here’s an exhaustive history with really thorough referencing: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dalek.

² There isn’t any Doctor Who on iPlayer at the moment, but you can get all the episodes mentioned in this post on Netflix if you happen to be one of the happy subscribers to that marvellous procrastination tool: https://www.netflix.com/search?q=doctor%20who&jbv=70142441&jbp=0&jbr=0.

³ Big thanks to Chrissie’s Transcripts Site for all episode transcripts plundered in this post, http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/index.html, and to NowMyWingsFit for recommending the site.

⁴ The story’s in Genesis 3, of course: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+3&version=ESVUK. I suspect the end of 1 Timothy 2 also has something to contribute as to why Paul focusses so squarely on Adam and not Eve, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+timothy+2&version=ESVUK, but I have yet to get my head round quite what’s going on there. Suggestions appreciated.

⁵ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+12&version=ESVUK. Lots and lots in this one.

⁶ Or alternatively Psalm 2:4-5, depending on whether you count the little subtitley bit about Doeg the Edomite as part of the psalm or not. The ESV doesn’t: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+52&version=ESVUK.

⁷ Here you go: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+6&version=ESVUK. Of course, then God did blot out the people and animals he’d made in the Flood, but flick forward a few chapters and it becomes clear that even after that, human beings were as bad as they ever were. It was going to take something even more radical to really deal with the problem of our sinfulness…

⁸ Although all that said, it isn’t initially obvious that being more human will make the Daleks less evil, as is clear from this rather fun clip from slightly earlier on in ‘Evolution of the Daleks’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUsj3U9WtmA.

⁹ So if you only read one of these footnoted chapters today, probably best make it this one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+5&version=ESVUK.