ANOTHER VOICE
If you seek alone for Jesus
you will get lost
CHARLES MOORE
For seven years on The Spectator my most arduous labour was the production of the annual leading article about the True Meaning Of Christmas. Easy enough to write 900 words telling Mr Gorbachev how to reform the Soviet Union or the states- men of the West how to ensure world peace, but I always, presumptuously, wor- ried that while the highest authority in the universe would happily let such things pass, He might look for a moment at the cuttings file of True Meaning articles hand- ed Him by His press secretary and be wrathful.
So I was not pleased when my successor told me that, since he did not propose to explain the True Meaning himself through the usual channel, the task fell to me again. I propose more or less to shirk it, however, and proceed instead as follows. It is often said that most people in the West are at least vaguely Christian. The majority tell opinion polls, for example, that they believe in God. They also say, in Britain, that they trust and admire clergy- men more than almost any other profes- sion. Most parents like the idea that their children should know something of Christ- ianity, and extremely few, unless they are members of other faiths, prevent their children from taking part in worship at school. In her Christmas message, the Supreme Governor of the Church of Eng- land usually sticks in something about the baby in the manger, and this meets with approval. This is surprising, for it seems to me that most people in the West actually hate Christianity (and the other great proselytis- ing religion — Islam), and are merely too polite to say so, or even to admit it to themselves.
They may like some of the things the religion has said — about being kind to one another, for example — or the beauty of the objects created in its devotion, but they hate the thing itself. They hate the two essentials upon which the survival of the religion depends — the Catholic idea of a Church and the Protestant idea of Scrip- ture. It is heresy to the modern mind that there should be an orthodoxy (though naturally that does not stop there being, in fact, a great many modern orthodoxies), that there should be a stated collection of words which contains all things necessary to salvation and a human institution which declares that it is the authority empowered to interpret these words. Respect for au- thority and, indeed, respect for words are taken to be signs of personal inadequacy. What matters is personal fulfilment, get- ting what is right for you, discovering yourself.
That is the assumption behind the Romantic movement and the recourse to psychiatrists and the yuppy desire to 'Go for it', and the stories in the tabloid Sunday papers about pop stars or footballers who have left their wives. Religion may contri- bute some sublime notions and thrilling feelings to this quest for fulfilment, but if it claims more than the role of handmaid to the self, it is angrily slapped down: let me get married in church, because that is more charming, but don't you dare tell me that I do not have the right to kill the baby in my womb.
There is a form of religion, however, which remains popular, indeed which is growing. This is Christianity outside the mainstream churches — 'house churches', charismatic Christianity, all sorts of move- ments in which one has to be born again. It would be nice to think that this represented a spiritual revival — and it certainly does reflect the spiritual tepidity of the Church of England — but I fear the reality is more depressing.
Fundamentalist Christianity appears to accept the idea of authority. In fact, it is a version of the modern craze for personal fulfilment. Everything is based upon the believer's own experience of 'Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour'. The signs of such experience are things like speaking in tongues while waving one's arms about. The point of it all is feeling good, not understanding the truth.
What a strange and dangerous idea it is that one can set out alone to try to meet Jesus. It is easy to see why the Roman Church used to forbid the faithful to read the Bible. I find that when I read the New Testament as an ordinary book, that is to say, suspending my acceptance of the doctrine that it is divinely inspired, I form an unfavourable impression of Jesus. He seems to me like one of those American Jewish ideologues whom I have met at various conferences — brilliant, original, tiresome, strident, sharp but fundamental- ly humourless. The only sane man in the entire book is Pontius Pilate. He is a decent, shrewd, mildly cowardly Foreign Office type, wanting to avoid trouble and fed up with the incomprehensible religious enthusiasms of the natives in his charge. I fear that if I had seen Jesus walking towards me along a dusty road in Galilee I should have done my best to pass by on the other side.
By the same token, I am sure that I would have despised and rejected him and the claims made for him if I had been alive in first-century Palestine. Release Barabb- as, I would have said, and kill the danger- ous one, the one with the ideas. As for the events of Christmas, if the shepherds had told me that they had just been to see the new-born Redeemer of the World in a stable, I would have smiled at their clown- ish credulity, and given them a coin with the image and superscription of Caesar on it to get rid of them. The visit of the Three Wise Men would have impressed me no more than that of a modern Eminent Persons Group, or the pilgrimages of Messrs Benn, Heath and Brandt to Bagh- dad.
I would not have found Jesus then, and if I speak of any personal communication, I do not find him now. Whenever I pray, I never receive an answer which I feel is addressed to me. Sometimes this makes me sad and like Hopkins . . my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away.
But usually I recognise that this absence is simply the condition of most people and I am more grateful than I can say that we have been given a Church and a Book which makes the absence bearable, explic- able and, in the end, superable.
It is rightly said that Christmas brings Jesus closer to people because it is the moment when God became man, and man in a form in which other men are most likely to love him — a baby. This must be why children, in particular, like the story of Christmas. But although it brings closer, it does not explain. It only makes the mys- tery deeper. Why that baby? Why there? Why then? The mystery still does fascin- ate: people retain that religious sense. But there is such unwillingness to accept that the individual is almost perfectly incapable either of elucidating the mystery or of protecting it. The Christian religion is now treated like a garden in which every visitor ignores the 'Keep off the grass' sign and is then surprised when the gardeners despair and the greenness turns rank and brown.
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