Fifty Years On

Letters From Behind the Lines

Enemy-occupied territory – that is what the world is. … When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.

- C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity, II-2

Fifty Years On

One of the features of the world today is that Christians in the First World have little choice about coming to terms with is that they are not in friendly territory. This is hardly the first time in history that Christians have had to face that hard reality. Nero, and a few other choice Roman emperors were pretty in-your-face with their hostility to Christianity. The difference today is that this reality is just as real, but much less immanent, than it was for those heroes of the faith awaiting destruction in the arena. It is a very open question how much longer that degree of difference in imminence will remain at the level it is today.

The Christian apologist and scholar Professor C.S. Lewis wrote the quotation I use for the theme of these essays in 1952. Since that time, there is ample evidence that the Western world has moved well past the point of simply being “occupied.” It’s been gradual, but lately it’s been picking up in tempo. It has also been subtle, so subtle that sometimes, we have to stand back and look carefully to notice it. In Lewis’s time, for instance, wishing someone a “Merry (Happy, he would have said) Christmas” was so expected during the season that a failure to do so would doubtless have caused a remark or two. Do it in season today, and that will cause a remark or two. Most can connect to the reality of a change like that. But there have been other changes that seem to have just slipped by.

While still thinking of Christmas, is it not an easy matter to recall over past seasons how the society and its organs have, without fail, produced objections to anything that at all alludes to the Christian origins of the occasion? If you haven’t noticed, next season try and put up a manger scene anywhere in public space, and watch what happens. You will get more attention than forgetting to pay a bill, and it will no doubt be every bit as nasty. The argument against you will focus on the fact that there are some who may be “offended” by your blatant display of Christian witness. No such displays, in our day and age, you will be told, are appropriate. But that will be a lie, and part of what I’m trying to do in these pieces is expose the lie for what it is.

Moving away from Christmas now, let’s consider every day. As you go into work every day, do you expect, given the norms of the day, to see a wall-high crucifix, or menorah, or crescent when you walk into the entrance hall of your building? Well unless you work in a cathedral, synagogue, or mosque, probably not. Would you expect to be confronted by something like this:

This is an inlaid stone sculpture -- African wonderstone, Portuguese marble, Mexican onyx, whale tooth ivory, U.S.A. catlinite -- by a Canadian Eskimo - Abraham Anghik. Commissioned by John W. Adams, 1981, it is a pictorial representation of the ancient and traditional system of Inuit belief dealing with the spiritual sphere or experience.

It pictures the universe on three horizontal planes or cosmic regions – earth, sky, and netherworld - inhabited by spirits of dead souls, helping and harming spirits, all represented by animal forms.

Secondly, it depicts the shaman, the larger human figure, who through magical powers, mediates on behalf of the earthbound people with the spirits on the planes. The shaman is engaged in dialogue with his apprentice, each linked to his personal spirit helper overhead.

More to the point, would you expect to find such a religious-based depiction of a world view imposed on everyone, when the depiction of a manger scene is a definite no-no? If you wouldn’t, you might like to come to work with me some day, because that is what greets me every time I walk through the doors and head to the elevators (there’s no route that bypasses it) to get to my desk. Of course, it might be argued, that is just my interpretation of a beautiful (and the adjective would be apt) piece of art. Yes, it could be, except that the three paragraphs preceding this one, that describe the sculpture, are the text on a large brass plaque mounted beside it. (Well, actually, “Portuguese” is misspelled on the plaque.)

One might ask, “How can this be?” How indeed. I have seen many a crucifix and manger scene that are, if taken as merely pieces of art, also aptly described as beautiful. But of course, they would never be where that sculpture is – in the entrance foyer of a building owned by a major professional society, with the space rented to the federal government. The answer to the “how” is a insightful. This, we are told, is not a religious work at all. It is a cultural depiction. It is even a depiction of an indigenous culture. It celebrates the diversity of the country we live in. And you can be sure that it would be made very clear that if you didn’t see that, you were some kind of very abnormal and undesirable quantity. Now, you know how.

It is situations like this that prompt me to undertake these essays. There are many situations, and I intend to document as many as come to my attention, and time permits me to write about. Why, you might ask? If you have a copy of Holy Scripture that includes the Deuterocanonical Books/Apocrypha, then turn to the 6^th chapter of 2 Maccabees, and read it. You will read about the historical imposition of pagan cults on the Jewish people, and about what can happen when the people who follow God do not go along with the plans of the powers that be in “occupied territory”. And if you think it couldn’t possible come to that here, in these times, just think: Can you identify anyone, powerful enough that you would not wish to offend them, that you would hesitate to wish a “Merry Christmas” next December, because they might indeed take offense, to your detriment?

Maybe, just maybe, facing some of these things that are going on will prompt you to pay more attention to the messages from our “friends” the next time you are in church. It may prompt you to reflect on just who your friends really are in the world today. And if you haven’t been to hear the message from our friends lately, you might consider whether or not it’s time to go hear it.

I’m writing this in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where at present, the dividing up of the telephone directory into five parts, and only giving subscribers the part where their name appears, has caused great consternation and escalation of the matter to the federal regulators. It will be interesting to see whether the attacks on Christianity will, when identified, cause consternation among those who claim the title for themselves.