ANOTHER VOICE

Finding something of Jesus in Addis Ababa

MATTHEW PARRIS

Most of us who do not believe in a Divinity would call ourselves moral rela- tivists. We doubt whether there is any eter- nal and immutable standard of goodness; we suspect that individuals and the civilisa- tions of which they are a part establish their own rules of right and wrong, and that these may change over time or between cul- tures. The good and the right cannot there- fore be laid down as a matter of objective fact, but are subjective judgments — as questions of beauty and taste may be.

That is not to say that reaching an ethical judgment feels, as reaching an aesthetic one may, a matter of caprice: chacun a son goat. Relativists accept that moral 'values' are transfused mostly unwittingly from fam- ily and society, and implanted deep and early in the child. Our ethical compass feels as innate as the confidence that we will stay warmer wrapped in a blanket: knowledge, experienced as common sense, which is, in fact, learnt.

The relativist case is easily advanced and (it is probably fair to say) has in Britain generally had the better of the argument, at least since David Hume's day. Those who have resisted it most stubbornly have been theists; Christians, Jews and Muslims who, though not agreed on what objective moral- ity does teach, agree at least that, whatever it is, it has been imbued in right-thinking human beings by their God. A theist is handicapped in making this case not by any inherent impossibility in the argument itself but by the fact that, unless the Divinity has also been revealed to one's audience, the moral absolutism which may flow from it cannot be persuasively urged upon them.

One or two souls — Hume's contemp- orary, Bishop Butler (1692-1752), the most attractive among them — have tried to argue the other way round: not that the existence of a Divine Arbiter proves the objectivity of morals, but that an insistent human consciousness of good and evil is evidence for the existence of a Divine Arbiter. In his sermon on shame he remarks that 'a man can as little doubt whether [a sense of shame] was given him to prevent his doing shameful actions as he can doubt whether his eyes were given him to see with'. Drawn to Joseph Butler when I was at college — not least by his limpid prose style — I was in the end not convinced. But do read (for example) his Fifteen Sermons.

I was not thinking about Butler's sermons three weeks ago when the taxi in which I was travelling was set upon by a mob in Addis Ababa. We were travelling from Zanzibar to London: this involved a four-hour stop-over in Ethiopia. Rather than hang about in the dull transit lounge at Addis, four of us decid- ed to see what we could of the capital by taxi. After lively negotiation we agreed a price — about $10 — with an enthusiastic little chap who promised to drive us around the city and to the top of Entoto, the moun- tain behind, and return us to the airport in time for the next leg of our flight.

I recommend this. Addis is lively, dusty, high, cool and very poor, but with a strong spirit of its own. Apart from some Coptic churches there's nothing much to see, but you can buy paintings, rugs and coffee- beans, or pass the time in a pastry-house. Ethiopians are sparky and interesting peo- ple, with obvious character, and (so long as you keep away from the war-front) Ethiopia is safer than many African coun- tries. From the top of Entoto we looked happily out over the eucalyptus groves, the city and its million smoking morning fires spread out beneath us, glad we had decided to escape transit-lounge purgatory.

Then we set out back down the moun- tain. The road was dreadful. Probably Mus- solini's was the last administration to tar it; now it is pitted with holes and tougher going for a little Datsun taxi carrying five people than the grassy surface of the field through which it led.

So our driver chose the field. Even at the time I thought this a mistake. A football game was taking place on it, and I could see that the players had tried to discourage drivers from spoiling their pitch by placing rocks across the tracks.

Our driver ignored them. Within sec- onds, as we drove along the touchline, a crowd of footballers was running at the car. He stopped. A huge, wicked-looking yob lunged from the crowd and took a terrific kick at the driver's-side wing, staving it in. We were surrounded. It was very sudden. Truth to tell, I was not very scared. One could sense at once that the African mob's anger was with the African driver, not his white passengers. But when the yob wrenched open our driver's door and pulled him out, we became seriously alarmed for his safety.

Maybe even his life? Such things have happened. I asked myself whether jumping out and remonstrating with them on his behalf would help, or only inflame things. By now the yob was preparing to take a swing at the driver, urged on by his team- mates. What should we do?

The question was overtaken. Through the crowd walked another player, slighter in build, unthreatening yet confident in demeanour. He put his arm on the yob's shoulder, standing between the driver and his assailant.

I had only seconds to see him, yet could at once form an impression. This was a good man. Something in his eyes, some- thing in his face, said so. He spoke quietly to the yob, firmly to our driver, then, putting an arm on the driver's shoulder, moved him back towards his seat. The mob seemed to respect this decision and drew back. Our terrified driver started the car.

Then — and this was extraordinary — the man said something gently to us, and though we could not understand Amharic we knew what he had said: that we should not be afraid. He leant through the window and patted our driver on the arm.

In any age, in any civilisation, among any race, he would have been a good man. His goodness transcended systems of morals. His goodness had about it that arresting quality which, I imagine, impressed those who met Jesus. To remark on this in someone is not to endorse his opinions or even commend his actions; it is simply to describe the reaction he produces in us. Something in us is recog- nising something in him. I am very far from arguing forward from this to any eternal set of moral commandments, or any Being com- petent to command, but I do recognise — or recognised then — a quality not easily explainable by the cruder forms of moral rel- ativism. Bishop Butler would have recognised it too. There, are good men, and the quality they possess is not a matter of opinion.

We drove off.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.