Is it only me? Or is this new policy of throwing away the sentencing guidelines incredibly dangerous and utterly pointless?
Don't get me wrong, I was appalled as anyone by the violence and looting during what are now christened 'The August Riots', but the response to it seems to be just as out of proportion as the original act, so any moral high ground is slipping away.
I singularly fail to understand why we have the mentality that says everyone who does something we don't like has to be locked away, preferably for a long time. Agreed, those who consistently indulge in violence against other people do need to be removed from society for everyones good, but most of the others, the vast majority, need to be dealt with in other ways. Why on earth have the people arrested during the riots simply not been made to clean up the mess they made?! Line some of them up to clear the rubble from the site of the furniture shop in Croydon; make them clear the streets of the bricks and glass that they put there.
Most of the young people who get involved in gangs do so for security, status and something to do. We can't always blame the families - many of them are desperately trying to hold things together in a state of poverty, and no parent, working or otherwise, can be in sight of their teenage children all the time, nor should they be. It is wholly wrong for the chattering classes to blame parenting when they don't know where little Tarquin is all the time either. 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone' comes to mind.
The gang is there when the kids need it to be. Being part of it gives status on the streets, where they live - carrying the badge means you are somebody, not just another statistic. The gang, often controlled by criminals in their late 20's for personal gain, gives them things to do, even if many of those things are illegal and often violent. They get money and can get the 'stuff' they constantly being told that they need in order to be fulfilled.
The advertising industry is constantly looking for more and more ways to get into everyone's lives. Nothing, no social network or simple game, can be developed without the marketers looking for an angle, so we can't be surprised when the first thing they did was to acquire the things they had been told they needed.
There is a bigger picture and it is true that they have no hope. Nobody wants to educate them properly - they are forced to follow a middle-class 'National Curriculum' that does nothing to prepare them for work, and, at the higher level, prices them completely out of the market. As a result, nobody wants to employ them - employers seems to be obsessed by overstating the paper qualifications required, probably because the mass migration to University has cheapened all the qualifications down the line.
Sending them to prison for a few weeks/months can only have a negative effect. They won't receive any education or remedial support in there - they aren't there long enough to qualify, and anyway, the Prison Service is being cut to such a level that the service they provide is rapidly disappearing backwards beyond the Victorian establishments. What benefit is it to take a young man and coop him up for 23 hours in a 3m x 4m concrete box? How will that benefit him and the society he inevitably has to return to? All that will happen is that a large group (gang?) of very angry people, with a lot of pent-up energy and emotion, will be released back into the very place that they came from. I suppose that, by then, the media and politicians will have moved onto something else and won't be bothered.
We have a cultural 'to-do' list of jobs - hedges that need trimming and laying, instead of smashing up with primitive mower blades, canals that need clearing up to make into attractive and positive resources, general weeding and litter-clearing from our towns and villages. Jobs that weren't done in good times and certainly aren't even considered during these hard times. So many jobs that need doing, and a huge resource of people who need to be made to do something positive.
Giving them stuff to do, and using prisons as 'overnight accommodation' with, perhaps, some form of 'citizenship' education, will stop them hanging around getting into trouble. Being visible to peers and wider society would be punishment enough for image-conscious young people but, more importantly, it would be a positive recompense to the communities they have rebelled against.
By over-sentencing them, there is a danger that the more manipulative among the gang leaders will realise the power they have been given. They can terrorise the communities and society at large by simply inciting kids to throw bricks at the Police and smash a few windows. Their power will grow at every incident and the young people will look to them for guidance, instead of the preferred options. These kids look at the Police and Government and read about phone-hacking, expenses-fiddling, stories of abuse and privilege and they wonder why this is being promoted as the right way to live. If everyone is trying to get their noses in the trough, then why shouldn't they?
We have to look at another way of enabling these kids to have respect for the authorities and an understanding of the citizens place in a reasoned and democratic society. Firstly we have to make these institutions worthy of respect. All we seem to do is to recycle the same old arguments over and over again, and the young people feel more and more alienated from a greed-based society that they can't access.
Thursday 18 August 2011
Wednesday 1 June 2011
The Holy Spirit
I have been convinced that the person of the Holy Spirit should be referred to in the feminine, due to Her position as the life-giving creative force within the Godhead.
Scripture is fairly clear on this as, in the language that Jesus spoke, Aramaic, the word for Spirit is ‘ruach’, and is feminine. It is also feminine in Hebrew and in Greek the equivalent word is neutral. It is only the later translations, in a male-dominated society and church, that all three persons of the Godhead are addressed as male.
God, when He became aware, begat his Will, which we call the Son, and that which was the Life of God, we call the Spirit. We see this reflected in the conception of a child. At first it is one mass of cells – body, mind and spirit are completely one – the closest we ever are to the true likeness of God – then it separates into mind and body, permeated by spirit and becomes aware.
If Man is made in the image of God it is not unreasonable to extrapolate backwards to get an idea of what God is like. We are all made up of a balance of masculine and feminine. The balance is more one way in men and a different way in women.
Given that we are spiritual beings, inhabiting a physical body, the deep-seated understanding of God has been there throughout all our generations and from the moment of conception. People throughout the ages have ‘instinctively’ worshipped the creative life-force, an innate understanding that we came from somewhere for a purpose. All cultures have shown that life-giving creative force as feminine – Earth Mother, Shakti, the ‘cult’ of Mary within Catholicism. It seems completely illogical and unreasonable that we should be different
We have always recognised the creative power of women, it has been feared and revered throughout creation. The feminine is a flow of life, in and around everything, like a river – indeed, we call it the Water of Life – but, like a river, if it is not controlled or kept within bounds, it becomes wild and anarchic and ultimately, self-destructive. The masculine will was put in place by God to place limits and a control on that flow. It’s like placing stones in a river, standing firm and keeping the flow in order. It is the case that women can strike up a common bond between themselves, regardless of culture and background, connecting that flow of spirit, in a way that men are virtually unable to do.
To consider the Spirit as feminine has always seemed completely reasonable and right to me. It makes complete sense of a lot of what I have understood about life. It demonstrates that masculine and feminine, male and female, men and women, are not the same. That they have hugely different and complementary roles to play, all to be played out in a totally self-giving love. Women do not have to strive to be like men, they have a gift that they share directly with God, to create life and love unconditionally. Equally men should not be like women, but can stand in confidence, like the person of Christ, providing a loving security and order on the formless flow of the Spirit.
It explains why God created the institution of marriage, not as a reflection of the relationship between Christ and His Church – marriage existed long before that relationship, although it is a useful illustration – but rather as a reflection of the love of the Godhead. Love that is totally self-giving, love that has to be given or else it becomes a possession and corrupt, that allows the creative force to flow within the bounds, and to create the life - a reflection, albeit slightly blurred, of how the Trinity came into being.
Scripture is fairly clear on this as, in the language that Jesus spoke, Aramaic, the word for Spirit is ‘ruach’, and is feminine. It is also feminine in Hebrew and in Greek the equivalent word is neutral. It is only the later translations, in a male-dominated society and church, that all three persons of the Godhead are addressed as male.
God, when He became aware, begat his Will, which we call the Son, and that which was the Life of God, we call the Spirit. We see this reflected in the conception of a child. At first it is one mass of cells – body, mind and spirit are completely one – the closest we ever are to the true likeness of God – then it separates into mind and body, permeated by spirit and becomes aware.
If Man is made in the image of God it is not unreasonable to extrapolate backwards to get an idea of what God is like. We are all made up of a balance of masculine and feminine. The balance is more one way in men and a different way in women.
Given that we are spiritual beings, inhabiting a physical body, the deep-seated understanding of God has been there throughout all our generations and from the moment of conception. People throughout the ages have ‘instinctively’ worshipped the creative life-force, an innate understanding that we came from somewhere for a purpose. All cultures have shown that life-giving creative force as feminine – Earth Mother, Shakti, the ‘cult’ of Mary within Catholicism. It seems completely illogical and unreasonable that we should be different
We have always recognised the creative power of women, it has been feared and revered throughout creation. The feminine is a flow of life, in and around everything, like a river – indeed, we call it the Water of Life – but, like a river, if it is not controlled or kept within bounds, it becomes wild and anarchic and ultimately, self-destructive. The masculine will was put in place by God to place limits and a control on that flow. It’s like placing stones in a river, standing firm and keeping the flow in order. It is the case that women can strike up a common bond between themselves, regardless of culture and background, connecting that flow of spirit, in a way that men are virtually unable to do.
To consider the Spirit as feminine has always seemed completely reasonable and right to me. It makes complete sense of a lot of what I have understood about life. It demonstrates that masculine and feminine, male and female, men and women, are not the same. That they have hugely different and complementary roles to play, all to be played out in a totally self-giving love. Women do not have to strive to be like men, they have a gift that they share directly with God, to create life and love unconditionally. Equally men should not be like women, but can stand in confidence, like the person of Christ, providing a loving security and order on the formless flow of the Spirit.
It explains why God created the institution of marriage, not as a reflection of the relationship between Christ and His Church – marriage existed long before that relationship, although it is a useful illustration – but rather as a reflection of the love of the Godhead. Love that is totally self-giving, love that has to be given or else it becomes a possession and corrupt, that allows the creative force to flow within the bounds, and to create the life - a reflection, albeit slightly blurred, of how the Trinity came into being.
Thursday 6 January 2011
Twelfth Night
Christmas is over for another year. We mark it with the festival of Epiphany, the coming of the Wise Men to see the infant Jesus, which is one I struggle with. Not that they forsaw the event and recognised it's significance and decided to go, that seems fairly clear-cut. I think the recent BBC Nativity mini-series portrayed that really well.
No, my problem is that we give it the significance we do. Surely it was one of man's great mistakes? I suspect that the writers and subsequent translators have white-washed that part of the story because it involved 'important people', just the same as we tend to do with royal stories nowadays.
The Bible counsels us in several places against astrology, there are verses in Exodus, Kings and Isaiah pointing us away from it but not because, as so many churches preach, it's rubbish and doesn't work. Rather the problem is that it DOES work at a 'global' level, although not necessarily at the 'you are going to meet a tall dark handsome stranger and lead a life filled with love and riches' level.
God created the universe as a whole, as part of Him. It is an extension of Heaven, which is in turn an extension of the Godhead, so it must reflect, albeit in a diminutive state, the perfect and complete nature of God in its structure, from the smallest atom to the biggest supernova. So it is reasonable to assume that if we look into the skies we can see the 'bigger picture'. That's what the Wise Men saw several months before the Nativity actually happened, and the fact that they turned up in the right place at more or less the right time demonstrates that the truth is in the heavens.
I firmly believe that Jesus' birth was planned to be a low-key affair. A baby is vulnerable and the son of God was always going to be a target, as we see from the reaction of Herod, prepared to commit one of the grossest acts of infanticide in history to try to get rid of him. The birth couldn't go completely unrecognised, so the only 'official' announcement of the birth was to a bunch of shepherds on a hillside. No-one respected them and anything they said about the events of that night would be largely ignored by the authorities, but the birth would have been marked, as any child's birth should be recognised and enjoyed as the special act of creation it so clearly is. From then, once Mary had recovered, they would have gone back to Nazareth and led a normal life until Jesus was ready to begin His ministry.
From the moment the Wise Men arrived on the scene, there was trouble. They told the King, with the awful consequences of his advanced paranoia, and had to be warned in dreams not to go back to him to tell him the location of the baby. Their actions meant that the holy family had to undertake the arduous journey to Egypt for their own safety. Because the Wise Men had disobeyed God's guidance they did what anyone who knows the future eventually does, they changed it, and then left others to pick up the consequences of that change.
The giving of gifts started as a recognition of the gifts they brought, so they are also, indirectly, responsible for the commercialisation of Christmas, something that makes it almost impossible to come to the birth of Christ with a quiet humility, in awe at the generosity and vulnerability of our mighty God; after all, there are cards to write and shopping to do, and all the wrapping...
So pardon me if I don't rave about the Wise Men.
No, my problem is that we give it the significance we do. Surely it was one of man's great mistakes? I suspect that the writers and subsequent translators have white-washed that part of the story because it involved 'important people', just the same as we tend to do with royal stories nowadays.
The Bible counsels us in several places against astrology, there are verses in Exodus, Kings and Isaiah pointing us away from it but not because, as so many churches preach, it's rubbish and doesn't work. Rather the problem is that it DOES work at a 'global' level, although not necessarily at the 'you are going to meet a tall dark handsome stranger and lead a life filled with love and riches' level.
God created the universe as a whole, as part of Him. It is an extension of Heaven, which is in turn an extension of the Godhead, so it must reflect, albeit in a diminutive state, the perfect and complete nature of God in its structure, from the smallest atom to the biggest supernova. So it is reasonable to assume that if we look into the skies we can see the 'bigger picture'. That's what the Wise Men saw several months before the Nativity actually happened, and the fact that they turned up in the right place at more or less the right time demonstrates that the truth is in the heavens.
I firmly believe that Jesus' birth was planned to be a low-key affair. A baby is vulnerable and the son of God was always going to be a target, as we see from the reaction of Herod, prepared to commit one of the grossest acts of infanticide in history to try to get rid of him. The birth couldn't go completely unrecognised, so the only 'official' announcement of the birth was to a bunch of shepherds on a hillside. No-one respected them and anything they said about the events of that night would be largely ignored by the authorities, but the birth would have been marked, as any child's birth should be recognised and enjoyed as the special act of creation it so clearly is. From then, once Mary had recovered, they would have gone back to Nazareth and led a normal life until Jesus was ready to begin His ministry.
From the moment the Wise Men arrived on the scene, there was trouble. They told the King, with the awful consequences of his advanced paranoia, and had to be warned in dreams not to go back to him to tell him the location of the baby. Their actions meant that the holy family had to undertake the arduous journey to Egypt for their own safety. Because the Wise Men had disobeyed God's guidance they did what anyone who knows the future eventually does, they changed it, and then left others to pick up the consequences of that change.
The giving of gifts started as a recognition of the gifts they brought, so they are also, indirectly, responsible for the commercialisation of Christmas, something that makes it almost impossible to come to the birth of Christ with a quiet humility, in awe at the generosity and vulnerability of our mighty God; after all, there are cards to write and shopping to do, and all the wrapping...
So pardon me if I don't rave about the Wise Men.
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