When the Wolves Were Running

I suppose on a personal level I should be grateful to the White House Deputy Chief of Staff Mr Miller, who over recent days has provided me with material for a Facebook post, a newsletter article, a sermon, and now a blog entry. That’s good going for the following few words, spoken to US TV channel CNN in reference to recent events in Venezuela:

The US is operating in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world from the beginning of time.

Generously, you could say, yes, they are. International relationships are indeed shaped by balances and imbalances of economic and military power and, as the Lord himself said, if a king goes to war with another king he first decides if he has enough resources to do so. Any nation must have the wherewithal to defend the things it holds important from those who would destroy or steal them. In World War Two the Allies did many immoral things to secure our way of life, ranging from simple deceit to the mass killing of civilians. We know this is the case.

But ‘securing our way of life’ is the point here. Then, we deployed strength, force, and power to defend a state of living which, however imperfectly, said it valued every human being as an individual, which recognised their worth and dignity, and which was expressed in a political and legal system which the human race has, over centuries, devised to protect the ordinary majority from the powerful, the cruel and the violent: the psychopaths who believe there’s nothing wrong with the rule of strength and force. We call it ‘democracy’, and it includes not just periodic elections (tyrants are content with those as they are so easy to manipulate), but limited, accountable government as a whole; free exchange of ideas; universal free education; security of property; and equality before the law. You know full well that this is not what the current US administration intends its strength, force, and power to defend. Instead, they are the kind of people that system is designed to constrain, the wolves it attempts to defang. That’s something of an injustice to wolves, but you get the point. And you know, too, that when they call strength, force, and power ‘the iron laws of the world’ they don’t just apply it to foreign adventures: the world is the whole of life. It’s why, in this view, it’s right not to allow extra support for the poor or marginalised, why law doesn’t matter, why the deaths of small people don’t matter, why there’s no problem with the powerful doing what they like. That’s just the way it’s always been.

By coincidence (or providence) tomorrow is the Feast of the Baptism of Christ; the Old Testament lesson set for the day is Isaiah 42.1-9, which describes the character of the Messiah: ‘a bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out’. He will not crush the weak, because they are children who can yet grow Godwards. Such bold restraint, such heroic tenderness, is what we are summoned to as well if we are baptised into his death and resurrection. And remember: the world was made through the Word, and ultimately it stands under the hand of God. He is in charge of it, and the Christ shows how he works. The laws of the world belong to him, not the apes and the wolves.