Thoughts on Happiness 2: The Necessity of Sadness

“A slimy grey hand with six fingers and a thumb slipped round the open edge of the door and beckoned to her.

The hand gave Tina a wrong-feeling. Her heart started to beat faster and she got a kind of runny sensation down her arms and legs. She’d never felt it before. But she knew it was wrong, so she tapped a general all-purpose relaxing code into her popper pack and felt better straight away.

The hand beckoned again and Tina walked closer to the door.

It snatched her by the shoulder and pulled her inside.

Tina had a really bad wrong-feeling about this. She couldn’t see much inside the Grey Door, as it was very dark, and then the owner of the hand bit into her side and she got a very, very wrong pain-feeling.

She had enough strength to reach for her popper pack, which sent a soothing balm into her head, and the pain-feeling evaporated. She guessed she was about to be terminated and wondered why. But it seemed pointless to concern herself with this, so she let the question go.

‘I’m fine,’ said Tina. ‘Everything’s fine.’ …

Then the owner of the hand held her steady, opened its huge mouth and bit her head off.”

Gareth Roberts, Only Human (2005)

 

She looks sad, but just so you know for sure, she’s been painted in lovely shades of metaphorical blue.

There are all sorts of bits of fiction I could have written this post about. I could have written about Disney Pixar’s Inside Out, and Joy’s eventual realisation that her colleague Sadness had an important role to play in Riley’s experience as much as she did herself.¹ I could have written about Cartoon Saloon’s Song of the Sea, and Maka the owl-witch’s railing against sadness with such fervour that she would rather turn her loved ones (and herself) to unfeeling stone than watch them endure it.² I could have written about the second episode of the latest series of Doctor Who, ‘Smile’, in which a band of robots charged with facilitating and measuring the happiness of the humans who built them decide that the easiest way to remove the threat of sadness is to swiftly dispatch anyone who starts feeling anything less than perfectly content and grind down the skeleton for fertiliser.³

Wait – are you saying you could have written about Doctor Who, but you’re actually going to write about something else? Dear me, Anne, what on earth has happened to you? Are you feeling all right?

Not so fast – I didn’t say I wasn’t going to write about Doctor Who. It’s merely a matter of transferring our attentions from the aforementioned Twelfth Doctor episode ‘Smile’ to a novel featuring the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack, written by Gareth Roberts and entitled Only Human.⁴ In this story, our intrepid time-travelling heroes encounter a society of humans who have phased out negative emotions altogether. Have a scan of the following extract:

… a man called Jacob was tucking into his breakfast of cauliflower cheese. He realised he wasn’t enjoying it very much, so he reached for the small, brightly coloured metal pack attached to his breast and tapped in a five-digit combination on its small keyboard without looking. Then the breakfast of cauliflower cheese became incredibly tasty, one of the best meals he’d ever had. But then, most of his meals tasted like the best meal he’d ever had. So he punched another five-digit combination into the metal pack and then the cauliflower cheese tasted like nothing he’d ever tasted before, in a strange but very pleasant way.

He heard his wife, Lene, enter the living room of their married quarters. She gave a little sigh as she pulled her chair up to the breakfast bar and poured herself some cauliflower cheese juice.

“What’s the matter, darling?” asked Jacob.

She didn’t say anything, just stared into space with an expression he didn’t recognise.

“Lene?”

“You know I took that diagnostic test yesterday?” said Lene casually. “The result’s just come through from Chantal, on my phone.” She still had her phone in her hand. She flipped it open and stared at the little screen.

Jacob felt a pang of wrong-feeling about her expression. He found he wanted to know – desperately wanted to know – what the result was. That felt uncomfortable. “What is it?”

“Incipient renal collapse,” said Lene.

Jacob felt the wrong-feeling swell inside him. “How long have you got?” he asked.

“Three weeks at the outside,” said Lene. “It’s no surprise, I guess. I am 387 and no one can live for ever.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a proper, fine smile.

Jacob didn’t know quite how to feel.

“Where’s my popper pack?” asked Lene. “I put it down somewhere last night…”

Jacob found her pack under a cushion on their settee and quickly handed it over. Lene took it and pressed its soft, adhesive pad to her chest.

“Right, quickly…” said Jacob. He opened the kitchen drawer and fished out the instruction booklet. He scanned through it, searching the index. “Bad news, bad news … page 43.” He turned to it. “Ah. Here we go. ‘News of your impending termination … Combo 490/32’.”

“490/32,” Lene repeated, tapping the numbers into her pack. Immediately the wrong smile and the strange expression disappeared.

“And I’ll need ‘News of partner’s impending termination’,” said Jacob, searching for it among the lines of crabbed text. “‘Combo 490/37’.”

He tapped the code into his pack and the wrong-feelings disappeared. He smiled at Lene and took her hand.

“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” he said.

“Can’t be helped,” Lene smiled back.

 

Frankly, I’m not a great fan of cauliflower at the best of times, so I hate to think what it would be like as a juice.

Now, there are a lot of pretty messed-up things that happen in Doctor Who stories of numerous formats, but this scene – the reader’s first introduction to the popper-pack society of Only Human – has always stuck in my head as a particularly disconcerting one. (Obviously the one from which I took my opening quotation is also a strong contender, but it comes later on in the novel when we’re already used to the idea of people responding to any and all negative emotions by thumbing a code into their popper packs and acting as if everything’s fine.) That the tone of the scene’s narration is so utterly mild and harmless only compounds the unpleasantness. The very idea that one could fail to be distressed by news of a so obviously distressing nature is extremely unsettling. I find myself beset by all sorts of so-called ‘wrong-feelings’ at the notion of so blithely making light of a situation that clearly warrants some pretty major so-called ‘wrong-feelings’. Although in fact, let’s rephrase my earlier sentence: Jacob and Lene don’t fail to be distressed; they refuse to.

Why so? Because their society deems happiness the ultimate good, and any feeling opposed to it therefore counts as a fault to be corrected. My own society, I posit, is similar to some extent. One’s own personal happiness is definitely considered a worthy and important goal to be pursuing, and that naturally leads to some understanding of unhappiness as a fault to be corrected. If the point of life is to be happy, it follows that happiness is success and sadness is failure. Commendably, there has been some movement to challenge this principle recently; Inside Out would seem as good an example as any of a piece of media whose moral is that it’s OK to be sad sometimes.

Nonetheless, I’d like to push further than that. It’s not just that it would be OK for Jacob and Lene to be sad that Lene has less than three weeks to live – that if they happen to be feeling sad about it, that is to accepted as a valid response. On the contrary, it strikes the reader as frankly wrong that they aren’t sad. That’s the whole wrongness of the scene, in fact. They ought to be sad. It is not acceptable – not right –  for them to smilingly shrug the whole thing off as ‘can’t be helped’. It doesn’t do justice to the severity of what’s happening. So-called ‘wrong-feelings’ aren’t really wrong at all; in this scenario, the only right feelings to have are ‘wrong-feelings’.

It isn’t just that it’s OK to be sad. It’s that there are some situations in which it’s not OK not to be sad.

Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writing case at his waist. And the Lord said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” And to the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark.” – Ezekiel 9:3-7

Here the mark of protection against the coming punishment is given to those who are sad about all the terrible evil things that are being done in the city.⁵ Such terrible evil things warrant sadness, and not to experience it when confronted by them is to be morally deficient. More accurately, it’s to insult the God who has in his perfection decreed that such things ought not to be done. It’s to fail to grasp the severity of disobeying him, just as Lene failed to grasp the severity of her impending death. Or, again, let’s rephrase that: it’s to refuse to grasp the severity of disobeying him. One cannot claim to worship God, to strive to walk in his ways and align with his values, and then turn round and offer a blithe ‘can’t-be-helped’ shrug of the shoulders in the face of rampant wrongdoing. That is not what someone who belongs to God looks like.

After all, adelphoi, to walk in God’s ways and align with his values is what we’re trying to do – to care about the things he cares about – and so if God is saddened by wrongdoing (which he most certainly is), then so should we be. We should be saddened by whatever saddens him. I was particularly struck by this when reading the oracle against Moab in Isaiah 15-16 earlier this week:⁶

Therefore I weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah; I drench you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh; for over your summer fruit and your harvest the shout has ceased. And joy and gladness are taken away from the fruitful field, and in the vineyards no songs are sung, no cheers are raised; no treader treads out wine in the presses; I have put an end to the shouting. Therefore my inner parts moan like a lyre for Moab, and my inmost self for Kir-hareseth. – Isaiah 16:9-11

 

This is a harp, not a lyre: you can tell because the strings go directly into the body of the instrument, without passing over a bridge. But it’s hard to find a stock photo of a lyre.

The authorial voice here – which I think we have to take to be God rather than Isaiah, because the latter can hardly claim to have single-handedly put an end to the shouts of joy concomitant with harvest-time in Moab – is deeply, deeply sad about the judgement wrought against Moab. He weeps and mourns right down to the centre of his being – and no less so because he was the one who wrought the judgement.

I think in evangelical circles we can sometimes be so keen to defend the doctrine that God is perfectly just in punishing guilty human beings that we don’t give ourselves any proper room to be sad about the fact that he does so. To be distressed by the notion of people facing divine judgement sounds to us like the first step towards denying that a loving God could really enact such judgement⁷ – and yet, from Isaiah 16, that shouldn’t be the case at all. Isaiah expects us to hold these two strands together: God brings just disaster on Moab for her sins even as his inner parts moan like a lyre for her sake. It’s not our job to execute divine judgement, but if we’re striving to walk in God’s ways and align with his values, it seems very clear that we ought to be profoundly sad about its being executed even as we acknowledge and praise God’s perfect justice in executing it. And much as that doesn’t seem at all a straightforward thing to do, it nevertheless strikes me as a more satisfactory course of action than denying either one principle or the other.

Last week I argued that I don’t need Jesus to be happy.⁸ It now emerges that in some situations he actually calls me to be sad. Not in all situations, I hasten to add; there’s room for happiness too: rejoice in the Lord always and that. Still, to learn to be saddened by what God is saddened by is to reflect his image more fully. It’s part of my sanctification. I’m not to buy into the myth that happiness is success and sadness is failure – that ‘wrong-feelings’ are faults to be corrected. Rather, I’m to try to grasp the true severity of the situations I encounter and respond in a genuinely appropriate manner. And I’m to do that, furthermore, all the while knowing that those who mourn now are blessed, because they shall comforted, when one day God wipes the tears from all eyes.⁹ That is a reality, indeed, that I am to acknowledge with just as much earnestness as I am to acknowledge those situations which demand sadness as their appropriate response.

Footnotes

¹ Here’s a fun multiple-rejig of the film by Editing Is Everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4GlQ3ciV1M. ‘Disaster Movie’ is my personal favourite.

² It’s my favourite film and you should totally watch it if you’re into ridiculously beautiful animation. Here’s a music video/trailer to whet your appetite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7enRvwFUTes.

³ Quick little trailer to remind you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2hc4UA8pf8.

⁴ You can now get it with a snazzy new cover: http://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Gareth-Roberts/Doctor-Who-Only-Human--50th-Anniversary-Edition/14525409.

⁵ Here’s the whole chapter for you: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+9&version=ESVUK.

⁶ You can have a skim of Chapter 15 (it’s mostly place names, to be honest) and then click the right-hand arrow for a look at the following one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+15&version=ESVUK.

⁷ Not a very sensible argument, as illustrated here by the ever-excellent Adam4d, http://adam4d.com/good-loving-judge/, but I can nonetheless see why people advocate it.

⁸ Box on the right. But you already knew that.

⁹ In this final paragraph I allude to Philippians 4:4, Matthew 5:4, and Revelation 21:4.

Thoughts on Happiness 1: I Just Need it to Live

Mallory:           You don’t need this to be happy.

Matt:                I agree. I just need it to live.

Studio C, ‘Diabetes Intervention’ (2014)

Much as it would be a stupendously difficult task to identify my favourite sketch of all those that the relentlessly amusing Studio C have generously lavished on their YouTube audience in recent years, I suspect that were I to sit down and seriously attempt said task, there would end up being included somewhere in my top twenty a particular gem entitled ‘Diabetes Intervention’.¹ Herein we witness an encounter between diabetic protagonist Matt and his well-meaning but ill-informed friends, who, having discovered his case of syringes and insulin shots, undertake to hold an intervention in order to tackle Matt’s perceived dangerous substance abuse.

 

Insulin refills. Dangerous indeed.

Matt attempts to explain his condition and the necessity of its treatment, but of course for the sake of the comedy it is required of his friends that they completely misconstrue him. After Matt’s initial statement that he has diabetes, Jason responds in a firm but caring manner, “Matt, we can’t have a serious conversation if you’re just going to make up words.” A little later, Mallory assures him, “We’re going to help you get through this, Matt. You can beat this.”

Matt, unsurprisingly, isn’t convinced: “Well, currently there’s no cure.”

Mallory, seemingly close to tears, replies, “I know it feels that way right now, but you don’t need this to be happy.”

Matt nods. “I agree. I just need it to live.”

At this point, Natalie jumps into the conversation: “No, no, there’s other ways to feel alive, there’s natural highs, here, have this giant Pixy Stik.”² She attempts to hand Matt an object that I understand from Wikipedia consists of a long tube filled with something akin to fizzy sherbet. (Because all that sugar is really going to help.)

Proceedings continue along similar lines for another hilarious couple of minutes, with Matt’s friends persistently completely missing the point. As they understand it, he only wants the insulin because he enjoys it. He can’t make them understand that whether he enjoys it is really neither here nor there: rather, the critical thing is that if he continues to be deprived of it, he’s literally going to die. The reason Matt needs insulin isn’t to make him happy. It isn’t to make him feel alive. It’s to enable him to actually live.

And I wonder, you know, whether I’m not sometimes exactly as idiotic about the gospel as poor Matt’s well-intentioned friends are about insulin. Allow me to unpack that.

A little while ago a Thought occurred to me (it does sometimes happen). This Thought arrived decked in a particular sort of packaging, namely the sort that makes one fairly sure that its contents consist entirely or at least mostly of heretical nonsense and gospel-contradicting lies, but of course I had to open it and bring those contents out into the light to be scrutinised, or else they’d get up to something unpleasant and insidious spreading out from whichever dark corner of my mind I left them in. The Thought, I found, went something like this: I don’t need Jesus to be happy. My life is really rather enjoyable all by itself, actually, and indeed, were I to stop bothering with this whole Christianity business, it would still be so. I love my work and my hobbies and my friends; it would be possible for me to have a really nice time based on purely worldly resources; I don’t need Jesus to be happy.

At this point my brain basically yelped in horror at the notion that it had produced such a monstrosity and promptly began attempting to beat the Thought down into whimpering submission. Of course I need Jesus to be happy. None of it would mean anything without him, none of it would matter; I would have no assurance, no ultimate hope; what would existence be, however superficially enjoyable, without the magnificent knowledge that God who creates and sustains and rules over all things has such love for me that he would give up his Son to the full extent of the agonies I deserve, in order that I might have life?

But that’s the thing: all that was in order that I might have life. Not in order that I might be happy. Granted, any real and sustainable enjoyment of the latter is perhaps conditional on the former – supposing Matt did decide to ditch his insulin habit and embrace the joys of Pixy Stix, he might have been happy, but it certainly wouldn’t have been for very long – but all that really serves to demonstrate is that the latter is not in any way the main point. A chunk of scripture that I’ve noticed gets chucked around a lot in evangelistic contexts is the second half of John 10:10, which the NIV renders: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”³ Emphasising the ‘life to the full’ idea is presumably a way of countering the presupposition that Christianity restricts freedom or disapproves of fun, and I can see the point of doing that to some extent. Still, I worry that if one emphasises ‘life to the full’ excessively, the offer becomes one of greater enjoyment of life, which is, of course, not what Jesus was talking about at all. The whole point is that without Jesus we don’t have any life whatsoever; Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus that before they began to trust Jesus they were categorically dead.⁴ Jesus came that those who follow him might have life. ‘To the full’ is merely a bonus, and it doesn’t even refer to the kind of super-positive lifestyle that we would tend to associate with the phrase.⁵ On the contrary, Jesus elsewhere told his followers to expect to be hated and maltreated by others, and on top of that downright commanded them to be prepared to die in his service.⁶

The Thought had proved resilient. I stopped trying to beat it into silence and instead took a closer look at it. Maybe there was a sense in which it was true. Indeed, maybe for many of my brothers and sisters across the world and throughout the church age, there was an even more significant sense in which it was true. Following Jesus has cost, and continues to cost, some people pretty much every source of earthly happiness they have: work and prosperity and friends and family and freedom and health and even sometimes life – though only the temporary life we experience in the world, of course. No hardship can touch the true, spiritual, everlasting life which Jesus came to give us, and which we will one day enjoy with him in a state of altogether superlative happiness. So in that ultimate sense, yes, of course I need Jesus in order to be happy – but only because in primary place I need him in order to live. In another, more immediate sense, my Thought was entirely right. I could in all probability have an above-averagely-enjoyable life without bothering with any of this Christianity business; having an above-averagely-enjoyable life was never the point of any of this Christianity business, any more than the point of Matt’s insulin shots in ‘Diabetes Intervention’ was to give him the same kind of emotional rush he might obtain as easily from fizzy sherbet. The point of it, as per John 10:10, is so that I might have life, and that’s something I can’t get anywhere else.

I don’t need Jesus to be happy. I just need him to live.

Footnotes

¹ Here it is for your delectation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es2f5MsEWmg.

² This is my attempt to spell a singular form of the apparently plural Pixy Stix. Here’s the Wikipedia article I consulted to find out what such a thing actually is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixy_Stix.

³ See for yourself: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+10&version=NIVUK.

⁴ You won’t have to read far to find it: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+2&version=ESVUK.

⁵ I mean this kind of twaddle: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/101-ways-to-live-your-life-to-the-fullest/.

⁶ Try John 15, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+15&version=ESVUK, and Mark 8, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mark+8&version=ESVUK, just off the top of my head.

The Man for the Job

Blackadder:    Anyway, we are looking for a great entertainer and you’re the worst entertainer since St. Paul the Evangelist toured Palestine with his trampoline act. Nah, we have to find somebody else.

George:           What about Corporal Cartwright, sir?

Blackadder:    Corporal Cartwright looks like an orangutan. I’ve heard of the Bearded Lady, but the All Over Body Hair Lady simply isn’t on.

George:           Willis?

Blackadder:    Too short.

George:           Petheridge?

Blackadder:    Too old.

George:           Taplowe?

Blackadder:    Too dead. Ah, this is hopeless. There just isn’t anyone!

Blackadder Goes Forth E3, ‘Major Star’ (1989)

The inspiration for the following little sketch thingummy is owed to an article recently posted on the Memes for Jesus website;¹ I offer my gratitude to its anonymous author.

 

I suspect that Sira Anamwong at freedigitalphotos.net intended this picture for use in corporate presentations about actual recruitment, but it will do just as well as a cover image for this blog post.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Ah yes, Blenkinsopp, do sit down. I was hoping to review the applications for that preaching job; have you managed to gather much intel on the candidates?”

“Ah … as a matter of fact, sir, I have.”

“Good show. Right, let’s kick off with this Moses character … what do you reckon?”

“Well, frankly, sir, I have a strong suspicion that he was bullied into applying for the job in the first place. He insists that he’s a terrible speaker and at one point actually begs us to choose another candidate.”

“A modest chap, then?”

“Either he’s more modest than anyone else on the face of the planet, or he’s simply telling the truth when he says he’s not right for the job.”²

“A pity. Ah well, next candidate … Elijah the Tishbite. Thoughts?”

“He’s prone to depression, sir. Has been near suicidal, indeed. Plus, he has a habit of aggravating the government.”

“Really? Aggravating how?”

“Mainly by slaughtering large numbers of official prophets … did you not hear about the incident on Mount Carmel?”

“Oh dear, Blenkinsopp. That was our applicant?”

“Afraid so, sir.”

“How did he get away with it?”

“By also slaughtering the soldiers they sent after him. Some new-fangled weapon called fire from heaven, or something.”³

“Oh dear oh dear. Shall we move on? Hosea son of Beeri – thoughts?”

“Hosea son of Beeri who married a known prostitute in order to provide a visual aid for his sermon series? I’d question his judgement, sir.”

“All right, that does sound a bit over the top, but can’t we allow a fellow one poor life choice?”

“He has children whose legal names are No-Mercy and Not-My-People. Also as illustrations for his sermon series.”⁴

“All right, moving on … the next candidate is one Jeremiah son of Hilkiah – hey, is that Hilkiah the high priest who rediscovered the book of Torah?⁵ This guy’s bound to be good!”

“One would certainly have thought so, sir…”

“Oh no, Blenkinsopp, what is it now?”

“Have you heard the stuff he preaches? He predicts exile, desolation, defeat … it’s not exactly uplifting. In fact, there are a good number of people who’d like to see him executed for the stuff he comes out with.”

“Well, that seems like a bit of an overreaction. Is it really that bad?”

“Ahem … and I quote: ‘thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bore them and the fathers who fathered them in this land: They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried. They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth.’”⁶

“Hmm, yes, that is quite … strongly worded, isn’t it?”

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, sir. I’ve got dozens of pages here of similar stuff he’s said.”

“Right. Maybe not, then … Jonah son of Amittai? Another write-off, I suppose?”

“Actually, sir, this one seems quite promising.”

“Really? You’re serious?”

“Certainly. The man once persuaded an entire city of pagans to repent from their sins in sackcloth and ashes, in merely a day’s work.”

“Goodness me, Blenkinsopp, that’s impressive. Let’s call and offer him an interview right away.”

“Unfortunately we can’t, sir.”

“Whyever not?”

“We can’t get hold of him. He seems to have suddenly left the country at short notice. It’s a habit of his, apparently.”7

Was it a whale that swallowed Jonah, or a massive fish of a variety that actually counts as a fish according to modern taxonomy? The Hebrew text allows for either.

“Bother. Oh well, next candidate … a chap called Daniel.”

“Again, could be promising … he’s a capable man, well educated, from a good family, not bad looking – ”

“That’s hardly relevant, Blenkinsopp.”

“Of course, sir, just mentioning it. His references are impressive as well: he’s enjoyed the favour of some of the greatest kings of his era. Admittedly there was a spot of legal trouble to do with a lions’ den at one point, but it’s all been smoothed over now. The only real problem…”

“Oh no, how did I know there was going to be a problem?”

“His ministry is … unusual, sir. He interprets dreams.”

“Oh. That’s a bit … divination-y, isn’t it? A bit pagan. What sort of thing does he preach about?”

“I’m not altogether sure, sir.”

“I thought you’d done your research thoroughly.”

“Oh, I assure you, sir, I have, but I couldn’t make head or tail of what Daniel was saying. All beasts rising out of the sea and horns uprooting other horns and unspecified kings and princes coming to power and particular periods of time.”⁸

“Hmm. Sounds a bit dodgy to me, Blenkinsopp. I’m not sure this chap isn’t one of those crazy types always predicting the end of the world and stuff.”

“I thought you might say that, sir.”

“Moving on, then … next candidate: John son of Zechariah, calls himself the Baptist. What can you tell me about him?”

“Well, he’s certainly got a large popular following.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes. But I’m afraid we can’t give him the job purely for logistical reasons. He insists on carrying out his ministry in the middle of nowhere, and he’ll only accept the job on a temporary basis – no long-term contract or anything – because he’s convinced that someone greater than him is going to show up at any moment and is determined to bow out when he does.”⁹

“Oh dear. We’re nearly at the bottom of the list, Blenkinsopp.”

“Who’s next, sir?”

“Saul – no wait, Paul. It’s been crossed out and rewritten. What’s he like?”

“Comes across very well on paper, sir, very bold and intelligent, but he’s far less impressive in person. And he doesn’t half go on. There was one time he was rabbiting on until literally midnight, and didn’t care that people were falling asleep. One lad was so deeply asleep he actually fell out of the window and died.”

“Goodness me! Why didn’t we hear about that?”

“Oh, there was some sort of cover-up; I think Paul resurrected the kid or something.”¹⁰

“Well, regardless, we can’t be having that sort of nonsense. Oh dear, there’s only one candidate left. What do you think of this Jesus of Nazareth fellow?”

“Well, again, he’s popular. Crowds show up wherever he goes. And he can seriously hold his own in a theological debate: you must have come across that ‘Render unto Caesar’ put-down.”

“Oh yes, I remember! Worth giving him a call, then?”

“I don’t know, sir. The stuff he comes out with … he tells all these little stories about farmers and servants and things like that, all very relatable, except he never explains them. He just chucks them at people and then disappears off with his inner circle – a bit exclusivising, if you ask me. The other day he told the crowd that they had no life in them unless they ate his flesh and drank his blood.”

“What on earth does that mean?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, sir. He lost himself a lot of followers with that one. Wouldn’t take constructive feedback about clarity and sensitivity, though – just asked everyone else if they also wanted to leave.”

“He must think rather a lot of himself.”

“I think he does, sir. He talks about himself a lot. He’s made some pretty outrageous claims about himself, actually – that he can forgive sins, offer people eternal life, that sort of thing.”

“Isn’t that blasphemy?”

“It is, sir. A lot of respected religious leaders think this chap is a full-blown devil-worshipper, actually.”¹¹

“Oh no, Blenkinsopp, what are we going to do? We’ve been through the whole list of candidates and haven’t found one preacher who might be able to do the job.”

“What exactly is the job, sir?”

“Hmm? Oh, well, it’s a preaching job, isn’t it? You know what preaching is – religious oratory, basically.”

“Well, yes, sir, but … what exactly is it that the successful applicant will be able to preach?”

“ … I can’t quite remember. Wasn’t it something about good news?”

“Hang on, I’ll see if I’ve got it in my notes anywhere…”

“Any joy?”

“No.”

“Shame.”

“Sir…”

“Yes, Blenkinsopp?”

“Do you think maybe we ought to have another look at the job description and see what it actually says?”

“Do you know, Blenkinsopp, I think maybe we ought…”

Footnotes

¹ Namely this one: https://www.memesforjesus.com/blogs/community/a-search-for-a-pastor-during-bible-times. Memes for Jesus is all varieties of hilarious and I highly recommend chucking a Facebook like in their direction.

² I here reference Exodus 4 and Numbers 12. Check out the Exodus: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus+4&version=ESVUK. Moses really did not want that job.

³ See 1 Kings 18-19 and 2 Kings 1. I’ll get you started: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+kings+18&version=ESVUK.

⁴ That’s all out of Hosea 1: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=hosea+1&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Hard to believe that a document so utterly critical to the nation’s existence had been lost so as to have to be rediscovered, but there you go: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+22&version=ESVUK. Not everyone agrees that this was the same Hilkiah who fathered Jeremiah, incidentally, hence the slight ambiguity in the way I phrased my little sketch. (I do think about these things, you know.)

⁶ That particular bit is from Chapter 16, which the ESV subtitles ‘Famine, Sword, and Death’, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jeremiah+16&version=ESVUK, but much of the book will give you a similar vibe.

⁷ All right, so the book of Jonah only has him suddenly flee abroad the once, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jonah+1&version=ESVUK, but I had to come up with a reason for sir and Blenkinsopp to reject Jonah and thought that was a moderately amusing one. My point is that Jonah was arguably the most successful prophet in the whole of the Old Testament, despite the fact that he was the most disobedient. God does what he wants, kids.

⁸ I here allude to too many bits of the book of Daniel to pick out particular references, but I’ll give you the first chapter and you can go on a hunt from there if you wish: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=daniel+1&version=ESVUK.

⁹ Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 1 and 3, and John 1 are all relevant here. Have the John, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+1&version=ESVUK, because why not.

¹⁰ I here draw particularly on Acts 9, 2 Corinthians 10, and, for that fun little story about the guy falling out of the window, Acts 20: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+20&version=ESVUK.

¹¹ Allusions in this section include, but are not limited to, Matthew 22/Mark 12/Luke 20; John 6; Matthew 9/Mark 2/Luke 5; and Matthew 12/Mark 3/Luke 11. On the John 6 reference, see also this very good Adam4d cartoon: http://adam4d.com/flesh-blood/. Oh, and before I go I should offer a tip of the hat to the BlackAdder Scripts blog for saving me some hassle with my opening quotation: http://allblackadderscripts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/blackadder-iv-episode-3-major-star.html.