Conversations with my Internal Hopeless Romantic

“Yes, I get in a dating state, but that’s boarding school for you – starved of male company for years, still now, when a bloke says ‘hi’, I think, nice spring wedding!”

Miranda S1 E5, ‘Excuse’ (2009)¹

 

Nice spring wedding. Disclaimer: wedding may actually be in summer, autumn, or winter; nothing in the picture makes the season at all clear.

Her:     So, I gots a proposition for ya…²

Me:      Oh no, really? Another one?

Her:     Just hear me out, OK? What do you think of … this particular male human of roughly your age with whom you are vaguely acquainted?

Me:      Um. Well, I suppose he seems all right based on the limited information I’ve been able to gather from our vague acquaintance – though ultimately the answer to the question of what I think of him is best characterised by the fact that I don’t think of him very much.

Her:     That’s something I can rectify.

Me:      It’s not something that needs rectifying, actually. I have no need or desire to think about this guy with any more regularity than I do already.

Her:     I disagree. Look, let’s face it, honey, you’ve only ever been genuinely romantically attracted to one guy in the whole of your life so far, and I’m afraid that that’s just not normal or healthy –

Me:      Assertion! On what do you base this outrageous claim?

Her:     On almost every piece of popular media you’ve been greedily consuming since you were old enough to know how. I’ve done digging, honey, and that seam of understanding – that regularly forming romantic attractions towards other humans, at least until you’ve managed to attach yourself to a specific one by means of formal commitment, is simply The Done Thing – extends way deeper down into your consciousness than you like to admit. It constitutes a large part of the reason why you ever pay me any attention.

Me:      I have no need or desire to ever pay you any attention.

Her:     I disagree. And anyway, tough cookies. You can’t shut me up, and besides, this is for your own good.

Me:      For my own good? All you ever do is try to occupy my thoughts with romanticky notions about guys I don’t actually feel romantically attracted to. The whole thing is just a complete embarassing waste of my time. How on earth can that be construed as for my own good?

Her:     Because, as I say, you’ve only ever had one real crush in your twenty-two years of life – and even that one came crashing all the way down to nothing within mere days of it becoming clear that there was no chance of anything happening between you – and, as we’ve established, that’s just not normal or healthy, and so logically, honey, the only plausible conclusion is that you need just a little bit of help in this sphere.

Me:      You really think what you do is a help to me?

Her:     Yes, I do, and one day, when I have at last succeeded in my purpose, you’ll recognise as much too. The ugly truth is this: in order to stand even the slimmest chance of ever having a romantic relationship – which, might I remind you, is something you have never had one of in your sad little life – it is an unavoidable necessity, according to the customs of this day and age, that you are going to have to form a genuine romantic attraction to another human being. And if I might extrapolate from your life so far, you seem to form such attractions of your own accord less than once per decade,³ which is not a rate that looks particularly encouraging as far as your chances of not remaining single your entire life are concerned. Therefore, my poor little pumpkin, I have taken it upon myself to help you by trying to build the occasional romantic attraction. You’ll notice I only pick ones that I think could stand a chance of growing under their own steam if the circumstances were right. I never suggest anyone who isn’t a Christian, for example. All I’m trying to do is give your natural ability to fancy people – which is, as has been proven, there, if generally very inactive – a little bit of a boost. A kick-start. A catalyst, if you like. I provide a question with different parameters – not ‘do you fancy this guy?’, but ‘could you imagine yourself ever fancying this guy?’, and lo and behold, the activation energy needed for a positive response plummets.⁴ From there we can start building.

Me:      Except that I don’t want to start building. Even leaving aside the stupidity of your solution, what’s more to the point is that it’s completely unnecessary. You’ve concocted a bad remedy for a problem that isn’t even a problem.

Her:     Gosh, your hypocrisy is frustrating. There you are insisting that your perpetual singleness isn’t a problem, but don’t forget, honey, I know you better than that, because I live in your head, and in truth, you really like the idea of having a romantic relationship. You long to be uniquely special to someone in that way. You’d love to have someone to be yours and to be with you in everything, to have a kind of claim on that sort of devotion from someone and to give it in return. The Christ-and-the-Church commitment of marriage makes you go all gooey inside. And let’s not forget that you’re very curious about sex.

Me:      Fine. I can’t see the point in trying to deny any of that.

Her:     There! You admit it. And do you see the disparity here? You harbour a desire for a romantic relationship, but you’re not prepared to invest any special effort in achieving the sine qua non of ever having such a relationship, namely a sense of attractedness to a specific human being.

Me:      Do you really think that’s something you can artificially construct?

Her:     Honestly, I don’t know. But to put it bluntly, we won’t know unless we try, and I can’t see a whole lot of other options, can you?

Me:      Not if I accept your premise that it’s more desirable to be in a romantic relationship than not to be.

Her:     Were you paying attention just now? You literally just admitted that you find the idea of being in a romantic relationship desirable.

Me:      That I grant you. But I think you’ll find there’s a very significant facet of this issue to which you haven’t been paying any attention.

Her:     Oh? Pray tell.

Me:      The idea of being in a romantic relationship is an appealing one, certainly – but so, and no less so, is the idea of remaining single my whole life.

Her:     You must be having a laugh. Nobody thinks that.

Me:      Maybe nobody in all that popular media you were talking about earlier thinks that – see, I was paying attention – but you know I try to shape my way of seeing the world after more reliable sources than popular media. One more reliable source in particular.

Her:     Not going to work, honey. We both know that my end-goal is valued as highly in Christian circles as anywhere else – in some ways more so. The kind of romantic relationship you harbour a longing for is, after all, an inextricably Christian one.

Me:      I said one source. Go on, have a look:

I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion … If you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a maiden⁵ marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that … I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or maiden is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord … So then he who marries his maiden does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.⁶

That’s a few chunks scooped out of 1 Corinthians 7. I think it’s pretty obvious here that Paul considers singleness a more desirable option than marriage, don’t you?

Her:     That’s not how people talk about it in church, though, is it, honey?

Me:      Not usually, no. I’ve met a number of people – all of them, if I recall rightly, married, interestingly enough – who would claim that Paul actually describes the two options as equally desirable. But frankly, I can’t see that in this passage. Obviously Paul’s keen to stress that marrying is no sin, that it’s better to marry than risk falling into sexual immorality, that one who marries does well – but then he explicitly states that one who refrains from marriage does better. And why? Because not having a significant other frees up the time and energy and mental preoccupation which one would – rightly – spend seeing to said significant other’s wellbeing, so that it might be spent instead on doing the work of the Lord.

Her:     Well, that’s all very worthy, I’m sure, but can you honestly say it’s a prospect that actually appeals to you?

Me:      You know what, I can. Suppose I never have a romantic relationship –

Her:     Do I have to?

Me:      Yes, because despite your best efforts – most of them rather misguided – it might well actually happen. Suppose I never have a romantic relationship: just think of the worldly anxieties I’ll be spared. I’ll always be able to make decisions about my life by myself, without having to consult this other person all the time; I’ll be able to choose what I do and where I live and so forth without having to allow for how it fits in with my significant other’s life. I’ll always be responsible for myself and myself only, with no awkward extra layer of concern and authority hanging about between me and God. I’ll always be able to pour all my time and energy and mental preoccupation into serving Jesus, more and more so as the Spirit shapes me after his likeness and I get better at it. Just think of what good use I’ll be able to make of what God has given me if I remain the only one who can really claim a say in what I do with it – if pleasing him, and no one else, is increasingly my sole priority. You know I’m not lying when I say that such a prospect really does appeal to me. It’s a very exciting one, actually.

Her:     I’m confused. Earlier you admitted that you’d really like a romantic relationship, and now you’re saying you find the prospect of functional nunhood an exciting one.

Me:      Of course you’re confused. You represent one aspect and one aspect only of what goes on in my mind and heart. You can’t grasp the notion that I might harbour two totally contradictory desires which both genuinely appeal to me, though with varying strength at different times.

Her:     That doesn’t make any sense, honey. What about the whole ‘each has his own gift from God’ thing? I mean, do you have the gift of singleness, or not?

Me:      Today I do. Every day I wake up single I do.⁷ The notion that every human has inherent within him- or herself a gift of singleness or marriedness, regardless of whether said human is in actual fact married or single, strikes me as a load of rubbish, frankly. I seriously dislike this whole idea of the category of the ‘not-yet-married’ that they talk about a lot over at Desiring God.⁸ For one thing, it (at least implicitly) places this ludicrous expectation on God, which I have in fact seen explicitly articulated elsewhere,⁹ that if he’s caused someone to have a desire to be married, he will consequently cause that desire to be fulfilled. I mean, that’s just silly: one could say the same about any desire. I have a desire to continue to live in Exeter for a long time, for example, but it would clearly be inaccurate and sinful to claim that God somehow owed me the fulfilment of that desire. He never promised that. And likewise, he never promised that everyone who would like a romantic partner will get one. Consider what Paul says about widows, that they’re better off staying single as much as maidens are. I have no idea how people who understand singleness and marriedness as inherent qualities square that circle: is the death of her husband proof that the young widow was really destined for singleness all along, or something?

Her:     Well, that’s a nice gift for God to give you, I’m sure: singleness, whether you want it or not, and then potentially at some stage in the future – I’m holding out hope, whatever you say – marriage, whether you want it or not.

Me:      You know what’s a really nice gift God’s given me? The certainty that whatever happens, it’ll be for my good and his glory.¹⁰ And so I do not need your so-called help to attempt to engineer things one way or the other. In a way, the fact that I don’t form romantic attractions easily is a little gift of its own; it spares me a good deal of annoyance and heartache and means I can put up with singleness a lot more easily than many people.

Her:     It has a lot of disadvantages too.

Me:      So does almost every gift, from a worldly perspective. But the fact remains that each has her own gift from God, and for each of us, what God gives us will turn out to be exactly what best facilitates our sanctification. And let’s face it, honey: that’s better than anything you claim to be able to do for me.

Footnotes

¹ Thanks to Springfield! Springfield! for the transcript I consulted: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=miranda&episode=s01e05.

² I consider this expression to be a Fairly OddParents reference (the episode in question being S4 E11, ‘Shelf Life’), but I suspect that’s probably not its ultimate origin.

³ My Internal Hopeless Romantic here allows for my childhood as time during which she wouldn’t expect me to be forming romantic attractions. Generous of her.

⁴ If you need a quick reminder of how catalysts work in order for the metaphor to make sense, BBC Bitesize has you covered: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/triple_aqa/calculating_energy_changes/energy_from_reactions/revision/5/.

⁵ The ESV translates παρθένος (parthénos) as ‘betrothed woman’ here and throughout the chapter. They most likely have very reasonable grounds for such a translation, but since I can’t see any such grounds myself – see also the relevant LSJ entry, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=parqenos&la=greek#lexicon – I’ve decided to substitute ‘maiden’, meaning a woman who is not and has never been married. I prefer this to ‘virgin’ because it makes it about marriage rather than purely sex, and much as I think the two ought to be inextricably connected, the fact is that in the society in which I live, they aren’t understood as such.

⁶ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians+7&version=ESVUK.

⁷ I here owe thanks to the friend who first brought me firmly round to this way of thinking about a year and a half ago.

⁸ For example: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/single-satisfied-and-sent-mission-for-the-not-yet-married. I don’t think it’s a bad article overall – indeed, no negligible amount of the advice it gives about how to spend one’s time as a singleton well is expressive of why I find singleness exciting – but I reject the idea of the third category.

⁹ Assuming I recall rightly, a response to such effect was made by the owner of the Dirty Christian Facebook page to a comment someone had made on one of his posts. Said owner is currently taking a break from social media, but you can still view his previous posts: https://www.facebook.com/thedirtyxian/.

¹⁰ Romans 8:28. Obviously.

In Actual Fact: Thoughts on Ignorance

French squire:  And most importantly, because the Pope himself is French.

Roland:              Well, the Pope may be French, but Jesus is bloody English!

A Knight’s Tale (2001)

Indulge me a moment. I’m irritated and feel like a bit of a rant. Said rant’s key content is probably not news to my aware and astute readers, and I hardly think myself a solitary voice in stating it – but equally, what exactly is the point of maintaining a weekly blog if I can’t make use of it on occasion to unburden myself of the odd irritated rant?

What birthed my irritation was an article published this week on the Independent website, bearing the headline ‘Christmas 2017: One in five Brits do not know Jesus Christ born on 25 December, study finds’.¹

 

Your typical reconstructed nativity scene, with anachronistic electric fairy lights and everything.

Yes, you read that right. “Is this a spoof?” asked someone in the comments, and I thought, you might well ask. Apparently, the Independent would have us applaud the remaining four in five for apparently believing that the reason why the twenty-fifth of December was designated as the feast day for the birth of Jesus was because that was the genuine calendar date of his birth. Hint: it wasn’t. The date of Christmas was selected by Pope Julius I in the mid-fourth century, presumably in an attempt to fashion a smoother tradition to Christianity from pagan religion. The Romans celebrated the Saturnalia from 17^th-23^rd December, and further north, Germanic tribes marked the winter solstice with the festival of Yule. Even today ‘Yule’ occasionally shows up as a synonym for ‘Christmas’ – troll the ancient yuletide carol, fa la la la la et cetera – and a number of customs associated with these festivals persist in today’s Christmas traditions as well, such as the exchange of gifts and the decorating of houses with evergreen foliage. Julius I held the papacy some years after the reign of Emperor Constantine I – whose conversion to Christianity and subsequent decree of religious freedom spelt the end to state persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire – but prior to that of Emperor Theodosius I, whose Edict of Thessalonica established Christianity as the state religion; this, then, was a period in which Christianity was advancing and paganism receding, and making sure that converts would still get to enjoy their midwinter festivities after they forsook the gods to whom said festivities had historically been dedicated, in favour of worshipping Christ, was bound to ease the process. (What you think of that as a strategy for mission is your call.)

Still, even if the average Brit can hardly be expected to know about Julius I and all that – and I’ll freely admit I had to look up the details² – it seems pretty ludicrous for the Independent to marvel in such fashion at the supposed ignorance of this twenty per cent, when the fact of which they are accused of being ignorant is not, in actual fact, an actual fact. And it only got worse for the rest of the article:

“10 per cent were unaware he was born in a stable.” That Jesus was born in a stable is affirmed nowhere in the Bible. I had a peruse of the survey from which these statistics had been gathered, and one of the other possible answers to the question of where Jesus was born was ‘in a cave’, which is actually a well-attested early tradition still going strong in certain branches of the global Church today³ – but of course it flashed up as a wrong answer when I gave it a curious click. We know he was laid in a manger after he was born,⁴ but the stable is pure speculation. Frankly, I’m more concerned that ninety per cent of Brits would affirm its existence than that ten per cent would deny it.

“While 85 per cent believe Jesus spoke Hebrew, just three per cent were aware that he is also said to have spoken Greek.” O my dear Aramaic, how neglected you are, poor thing! I’m not pretending that there isn’t substantial debate still churning about the exact relationship between Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek in the Israel of Jesus’ time – though the distinction between Hebrew as belonging to the sphere of religion, Aramaic to that of practical matters like trade and law, and Greek to that of government, seems as useful a delineation as any to start from – but of the three, the one we have the most evidence of Jesus having spoken in certainly Aramaic. The gospel accounts we have are in Greek, but on a number of occasions the writers make a point of recording Jesus’ words in Aramaic (or rather the best transliteration thereof they could manage). Example one: to Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5:22 he says ταλιθὰ κούμ (talithà koúm), a transliteration of the Aramaic טליתא קום (ṭalīthaʾ qūm), which is a feminine form of an adjective meaning ‘young’ followed by a part of a verb meaning ‘stand’, yielding the meaning, ‘young girl, get up’. (In his version of the story, Luke gives Jesus’ words in Greek: ἡ παῖς ἒγειρε (hē paĩs égeire), which is, similarly, a word meaning ‘child’, specified as feminine by the form of the definite article preceding it, followed by an imperative from a verb meaning ‘get up’.) Example two: the nickname he gives his disciple Simon in John 1:42 is Κηφᾶς (Kēphãs), that is the Aramaic (not Hebrew) word כיפא (kēphaʾ), meaning ‘rock’; it’s just had a Greek masculine ending stuck on it so that it declines nicely within the Greek text. The other gospel accounts, of course, skip straight to the Greek-translated form of the name, Πέτρος (Pétros), from πέτρα (pétra) meaning ‘rock’ (hence ‘petrify’ and other delightful words), which comes out in English as Peter, but references in Paul’s epistles tell us the Aramaic form was commonly used to refer to Simon Peter while he was alive.⁵ Example three: perhaps most strikingly, the words Jesus speaks on the cross in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 - ἠλὶ ἠλὶ λεμὰ σαβαχθάνι (ēlì ēlì lemà sabakhtháni) in the former and the slightly differently rendered ἐλωῒ ἐλωῒ λεμὰ σαβαχθάνι (elōḯ elōḯ lemà sabakhtháni) in the latter, meaning, as I’m sure you know, ‘my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ – look pretty dang Aramaic, despite the fact that he’s clearly quoting the opening of Psalm 22, which is of course written in Hebrew. The verb meaning ‘you have forsaken me’ used in the original psalm is עֲזַבְתָּנִי (ʿəzabhtānī), from the root עזב (ʿzb), a nice Hebrew root for ‘forsake’, whereas the verb Jesus uses is from סבק (sbq), a root totally absent from the Hebrew Bible but very common in Aramaic with the meaning ‘forsake’ (among others). In other words, he’s quoting an Aramaic translation, or Targum, of the psalm.⁶ There are more examples I could discuss, but I’ll spare you any more linguistic minutiae and wrap up the point by noting that surely the only plausible reason for the gospel writers to switch from Greek into Aramaic for certain of Jesus’ sayings would be because they wanted, for whatever reason, to record the words that actually came out of his mouth in these instances, rather than a Greek translation of them? Granted, there’s also good evidence of Jesus’ familiarity with Hebrew and, to a lesser extent, Greek,⁷ but that he spoke Aramaic is clearest of all. So why, when I ticked the box marked ‘Other’ as well as those marked ‘Hebrew’ and ‘Greek’ in answer to the relevant poll’s question as to which languages Jesus spoke (there was none marked ‘Aramaic’), was I told I was wrong?

“One in five had no idea that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were four of [Jesus’ twelve disciples].” Well, call me illiterate, but I can’t seem to find a mention of any Mark or Luke in any of the lists of the twelve given in the gospels.⁸ So again, I’m more concerned about the supposedly clued-up majority here than the supposedly ignorant minority.

“The research, carried out via OnePoll.com, also revealed just three in ten learned their knowledge of Jesus and his story from The [sic] Bible itself.”

Oh. Well, that explains a lot.

Folks, I beg and implore you – don’t believe that things you hear about Jesus are true just because everybody else seems to think they are. God didn’t give us the scriptures so that we could stake our understanding of who he is on tradition and hearsay.

“Oh how I love your law!

It is my meditation all the day.

Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,

for it is ever with me.

I have more understanding than all my teachers,

for your testimonies are my meditation.”⁹ – Psalm 119:97-99

The route to having understanding better than that of the fantastically learned, is to obsess over the Bible. Read it. Dwell on it. Wrestle with it. Let it be your constant preoccupation. And test everything you hear people say about God against it. It’s one thing to belong to the minority who are genuinely clueless about what the Bible says on a particular topic; it’s more dangerous, I’d argue – more falsely secure – to belong to the majority who think they know what it says, but turn out to be not much less ignorant. According to the poll cited by the Independent, seven in ten Brits would say they have a good knowledge of the story of Jesus. Perhaps they have a good knowledge of a story of Jesus – but unless it’s the one the Bible tells, that honestly doesn’t count for very much.

I started with the intention of indulging in a rant. I seem to have ended by making an exhortation that applies as directly to myself as to anyone: there’s still way too much in the Bible that I haven’t ever taken the trouble to meditate on, let alone doing so all day, and I don’t doubt there are questions regarding which I still belong to a falsely-secure ignorant majority, thinking I know what the Bible says about the topic at hand, because that’s what everyone else seems to think it says, without actually having read and understood the relevant portions of it for myself. My friends, let’s make the scriptures our obsession, because when we love them such that they are our meditation all the day, God will begin to grant us wisdom and understanding surpassing that of those who oppose us and those who instruct us. Let’s not be content with anything less.

Footnotes

¹ No kidding – here it is: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/christmas-jesus-christ-birthday-25-december-brits-ignorant-nativity-christianity-bethlehem-a8094496.html.

² Not that that involved anything more stunningly intellectual than a bit of online searching.

³ For further details: https://www.christianpost.com/news/christmas-history-was-jesus-born-in-a-cave-111405/. “The idea that Jesus was born in a cave is simply based upon tradition and does not come from the Bible,” quotes the article at its end. True, I grant you; the same may be said for the idea that Jesus was born in a stable.

⁴ That fact is a fairly big deal in the first part of Luke 2: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+2&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Paul refers to the man in question as Κηφᾶς (in English translations, Cephas) eight times, in 1 Corinthians 1:12, 3:22, 9:5, and 15:5; and Galatians 1:18, 2:9, 2:11, and 2:14. By contrast, he only calls him Peter twice, in Galatians 2:7 and 2:8, so in the same chapter in which he calls him Cephas three times.

⁶ A surviving Targum known to the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon uses the exact same form of the verb that would seem to be indicated by the Greek transliteration of what Jesus said, סבקתני: http://cal1.cn.huc.edu/showtargum.php. The same Targum also uses a different expression for ‘why’ to what Jesus said, namely מטול מה (meṭūl māh), literally ‘on account of what’. לָמָה (lāmāh), the word Jesus used for ‘why’, is less frequently used in Aramaic than in Hebrew, but is nonetheless good Aramaic that could quite happily have been used in a Targum.

⁷ I know one very clever and godly person who thinks the beatitudes were originally delivered in Greek, on the grounds of the alliteration that appears in them; see point 10 in this article: https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-reasons-pastors-should-study-the-bible-in-its-original-languages/. Although, you know, the rest of the article’s worth a read too.

⁸ You’re looking at Matthew 10, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+10&version=ESVUK, Mark 3, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+3&version=ESVUK, and Luke 6, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+6&version=ESVUK. Some of the twelve are identified by more than one name in the different accounts, but we still don’t have any Marks or Lukes.

⁹ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+119&version=ESVUK. I won’t tell you to read all of it, but you could check out the מ (mem) section from which I took my three-verse extract, maybe?

Let the Challenge Begin

“May the luck of the raven’s eye be with you. Let the challenge begin.”

Raven (2002-2010), passim

Rejoice, all ye noughties kids. Glad tidings I bring: Raven is back.¹

 

A raven (unless it’s a crow; I can’t tell) in a suitably fantasy-ish landscape. Apparently the raven who plays Raven’s raven form in Raven is (or possibly was) called Jake.

Probably the finest bit of children’s programming ever produced by BBC Scotland, Raven originally ran for ten series from 2002 to 2010, won two BAFTAs, and spawned three spin-off series.² Few programmes, I think it fair to assert, are so heartily beloved by Brits of my generation as this one: bring up Raven in any nostalgic conversation about the television broadcasting we used to enjoy, and you’ll almost certainly be met with a wistful grin and an enthusiastic exclamation to the effect of, “I loved that show!” from more than one quarter. The fact that it has retained a major cult following to this day and been one of the programmes most frequently requested for relaunch³ was undoubtedly a key factor in why the powers that be at CBBC have decided to gift the world with an all-new series beginning this coming Monday. I am, I confess, extremely – perhaps disproportionately – excited.⁴

The thing about Raven is that much as it is, at the end of the day, a gameshow – a mere kids’ gameshow with nine-to-thirteen-year-olds competing against each other to win a prize in the form of cash or a holiday – it never felt like one. It wasn’t so much that it called us to suspend our disbelief as that it seized our disbelief under the arms and dangled it helpless from the rafters without our consent: the whole idea of the programme was to maintain this pretence that Raven’s ‘young warriors’ really were inhabitants of this land of myth and magic, competing to prove their worth in the battle against the forces of darkness. No hint that they were in fact just ordinary schoolchildren being supervised doing outward-bound activities somewhere in Scotland was allowed to reach us. Even the charade of scrambling selected letters of the competitors’ given and family names to produce vaguely fantasy-esque pseudonyms by which they were known throughout the duration of the tournament, contributed: this was not some kid called Jamie Woods, this was Jaddo, Ultimate Warrior, bearer of the emblem of the mountain, wielder of his rightfully earned Staff of Power.⁵

I have always felt that the marginally similar outward-bound activities I was forced to do on various school trips would have been far more exciting if the instructors had taken a leaf or two out of Raven’s book. On such trips, I recall, I was presented with rocks to climb and lakes to canoe in and high-ropes courses to complete without there being any apparent reason for my doing so other than that that was what the activity organisers had arbitrarily decided my group was going to be doing that afternoon. If only they had told me that at the top of the rocks lay a portal through which I would need to pass in order that the evil Nevar might be defeated; or that the lake was my only route of access to a hoard of the gold rings I might later desperately need to replenish my ‘lives’, the feathers atop my standard, should I fail in too many challenges; or even, from a slightly different angle, that by completing the high-ropes course even though I was finding it seriously scary, I would be proving my valour, and that if I tried and failed I would depart with honour – heck, if I had been addressed as ‘young warrior’ one single time, or even if the activity had been launched with a dramatic, “Let the challenge begin!” – I would have had so much more motivation to complete these tasks. If only there had been some grand inspiring storyline, however vaguely sketched, behind my being charged to complete them. If only they had been presented as a chance to strike blows for the right side in the ongoing struggle of good against evil. If only there had been a sense that this was about something worthier and weightier than my mere little self.

 

We were canoeing on Lake Windermere, which is of course a bit less impressive than Lake Louise if this lovely shot is anything to go by. Frankly, Canada, I’d say you’re rather showing off at this point.

I once came across one of those Tumblr posts that regularly make their way over to Facebook in screenshotted format, in which a blogger was suggesting that the way to increase one’s enthusiasm for mundane, everyday tasks is to pretend that they are not in fact mundane or everyday, but rather mighty challenges of the sort with which our favourite fictional heroes are typically faced.⁶ Consider washing the dishes to be preparing your armour for battle. Consider homework assignments to be top-secret research vital to the cracking of a tough case. Consider that long journey you really don’t want to have to take to be the next leg of the route to Mordor to destroy the One Ring. Clearly, then, I’m not the only one who thinks it would be easier to do the tasks set before us if we could successfully kid ourselves that to do so was to contribute to some grand inspiring storyline, to strike blows for good against evil, to do something worthier and weightier than our mere little, mundane, everyday selves.

But suppose we didn’t have to kid ourselves. Suppose it were true.

Paul’s letter to the community of believers in Christ living in Ephesus is structured as follows. The first three chapters are basically a splurge of doxology where Paul richly enthuses over the amazingness of the gospel from a few different angles, also expressing his prayer that the Ephesians would come to understand said amazingness more comprehensively. To God be the glory forever and ever, amen, and then we’re on to the second half of the letter, which kicks off with a meaningful ‘therefore’ before outlining what it looks like to conduct oneself in a manner worthy of the amazingness of the gospel by which one has been saved, in various different contexts. The section, and indeed the letter, is wrapped up with the following famous passage (not counting the few verses of final greetings at the very end):

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.⁷

There’s plenty going on in there – enough to fuel several blog posts, not to mention a very entertaining session of constructing a labelled cardboard panoply⁸ in which to deck a willing volunteer as a visual aid (my secondary school CU was a scream) – but my point today is this: all the things Paul was just talking about in the second half of Ephesians, all those mundane, everyday behaviours of bearing with one another, and letting go of our anger before the end of the day, and avoiding sexual immorality and covetousness in our conversation, and singing hymns in one anothers’ presence, and giving due respect to our parents – all of those things are the way we wage war against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. In fact, take a look at that sentence again: we are called to wage war against the cosmic powers over this present darkness. Just you try to tell me that doesn’t sound more like something Raven asks of his young warriors than a guide to appropriate behaviour for professing Christians.

So yes, the armour thing is a metaphor, but the battle is a real one. Spirit against flesh. Good against evil. We don’t have to motivate ourselves to complete the mundane, everyday tasks in front of us by kidding ourselves that to do so is to contribute to some grand, inspiring storyline; on the contrary, adelphoi, we’re kidding ourselves every time we get it in our heads that it’s not. If we think we’re to conduct ourselves the way the Bible tells us without there being any apparent reason for our doing so other than that that’s what God has arbitrarily decided we ought to be doing, then it’s surely no wonder that we lack enthusiasm for such an endeavour. But the reality is that every time we choose obedience over disobedience, however seemingly minimal the issue at hand, we strike a blow for the right side in the ongoing struggle of good against evil. Every resentment we refuse to allow to settle, every covetous comment we catch and do away with before it escapes our lips, every word of encouragement sung in the hearing of our comrades-in-arms – every such action is about something worthier and weightier than our mere little selves. There is a grand inspiring storyline behind the tasks with which we’re charged, and at its climax stands the cross on which the very Word of God gave himself over to the full force of his Father’s righteous anger in order that we, the worst sort of traitors, might receive mercy; he won the victory over all wrongdoing and corruption and decay, and invites us to share in the spoil – but more than that, to share in the battle. Our Captain calls us to arms. He calls us to wage war against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, not by our own power but in the power of his Spirit, with perseverance and prayer, conducting ourselves in a manner worthy of our calling. He calls us to take up the whole armour of God and stand firm.

Let the challenge begin.

Footnotes

¹ I kid you not. Extended trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3j9TYqu0Ek.

² If you have a hankering for more facts, then I have to say that as thorough profiles of television programmes go, this one from UK Game Shows ticks a lot of boxes: http://ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Raven.

³ As stated in this interview with the new series’ producer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/mediapacks/raven/gunaydin.

⁴ As you may, if you know me well or Facebook thinks you do, have spotted from a certain status I posted a few days ago. Ahem.

⁵ Jaddo was the winner of the third tournament (‘tournament’ being, in Raven’s case, essentially a synonym for ‘series’). Some sweet and creative human with plenty of time on his or her hands has created cute little icons of all the Raven warriors ever: http://miniravenwarriors.webs.com/ravenwarriorarchive.htm.

⁶ I’m afraid I can’t reference it because I can’t find it. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

⁷ Here’s the whole chapter, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+6&version=ESVUK, but you’ll gather from my remarks that I’d really rather you gave the whole book a quick skim than only the verses I’ve quoted and the few packed in around them.

⁸ ‘Panoply’ (Greek πανοπλία, panoplía) is in fact the word translated ‘whole armour’ in the ESV. It comes from a combination of the words πᾶς (pās, ‘all’) and ὅπλον (hóplon, ‘tool, implement of war’), and refers to the whole equipment of the ὁπλίτης (hoplítēs, ‘hoplite, heavy-armed foot-soldier’), not just the wearable defensive bits but the weapons as well, hence the slight discrepancy between the set of items Paul includes in his description and what we might conceive of as a suit of armour: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=panoplia&la=greek#lexicon.