17 DECEMBER 1983, Page 3

The slogan and the Word

Despite the disappointments and the horrors of political society in the pre- sent age, there has never been a century

when so much hope has been vested in political action, especially in violent change. The revolutionary spirit combines an absolute contempt for whatever institu- tions and customs exist with an absolute op- timism about what can replace them; and in its purest form, it is undismayed by prac- tical failures or by suffering and death, since it attributes them not to any fault in itself, but to the malice of reactionaries. The Bolsheviks who had promised bread to the peasants of Tsarist Russia deliberately organised famines after they came to power.

More lucky and more sensible, Britain never worked herself into the same frenzies of rage and hope, but even she was affected by the rising expectations of politics. Here, as in other democracies, the work of government grew, claiming a new scope for the moral competence of the state. Men whose grandparents had been missionaries secularised and therefore vulgarised the desire to improve the lot of mankind, and exchanged the less tangible promises of salvation for the concrete though in fact elusive offers of social progress. Nationally and internationally, the winds of change were loosed, and so exciting was the tumult which resulted that people cared less whither the wind went or whence it came than that it blew so strong.

Perhaps in recent years, people have come to think slightly less of politics. The 20th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination is a reminder that we no longer believe that politicians, even if they are handsome and under 50, can order a better world with their smiles and speeches. But the reaction against the claims of politics and politicians has often substituted one naivete for another and produced a desperate and shallow pessimism. People despise existing arrangements — the family, for instance, or the rule of law — and think that their contempt shows moral courage. The women of Greenham Common and other 'peace' protestors not only do not propose anything resembling a policy, but actually believe that they would com- promise their integrity by doing so. Support for 'peace' is a grand sentiment of outrage • against the world as it is, morbidly inviting the fulfilment of its own worst fears. If politics are no longer Utopian, then they must be Apocalyptic.

Both extravagant devotion to and revul- sion from the capacities of political society are not only evil in their effects on others: they also make their adherents miserable. People who often set out inspired by generous feelings towards their fellow-men become impatient at their unresponsiveness and embittered by the practical difficulty of things. People absorbed in doctrines which have no space for the individual lives of those they affect become bewildered at the loss of their own individuality. The person and the idea are made opponents — the result of their battle is either solipsistic self- expression or empty ideology.

What makes the waste of it all so poig- nant is that, in the middle of this winter as of hundreds before it, an event is com- memorated in which the person and the idea were reconciled. Psalm 85, traditional- ly appointed for Christmas day, says, 'Mer- cy and truth are met together: righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall flourish out of the earth: and righteousness hath looked down from heaven.' Qualities between which there is a natural tension are made harmonious, and not in some abstract sphere, but in the world. And they are not united by a con- ference of moral philosophers or a summit of the great powers or even by political vi- sionaries; they are embodied in the birth of a child.

The fact of that birth makes it clear that the process of God-becoming-man was not some man- or rather supermanlike way of subjugating His own creation. Greek gods often took the shape of men to get what they wanted — no doubt the God of the Jews could likewise have sprung into the world full-grown and scattered His enemies. Instead He was born in uncomfor- table and inconvenient circumstances when those who would care for Him were trying to pay their tax, and He lived the life of men not only in its maturity, but in the humility of its beginnings. His arrival on earth could have been a demonstration of power, but in fact it was an act of love.

If that act could be understood 'there would, among other things, be no women of Greenham Common, and no missiles either. But the full history of Christ's life on earth shows that His own to whom He came did not receive Him: indeed, they demand- ed His death as fiercely and unreasonably as any revolutionary mob.The political con- vulsions of the last 200 years have taken dif- ferent and sometimes more horrible forms than their predecessors, but they have not invented a new evil, and it is certain that the old evil will persist until the world ends. What the world also has, however, is the remembrance of the events which the celebration of Christmas each year ensures. The world may be disposed to reject that story, but it cannot altogether forget it. And anyone who reads it cannot avoid noticing that he is not reading a mere political manifesto. In an age when most in- toxicating ideas take the form of competing slogans, and language, half-dead from ex- haustion, only twitches its limbs, the history of the Word made flesh speaks as if it were new.