In Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel, Men at Arms, our hero, Guy Crouchback, finds himself out of step with his time and the children of his time; they were not simpatico:
He was accepted and respected but he was not simpatico. Gräfin von Gluck, who spoke no word of Italian and lived in undisguised concubinage with her butler, was simpatica. Mrs. Garry was simpatica, who distributed Protestant tracts, interfered with the fishermen’s methods of killing octopuses and filled her house with stray cats.
Guy’s uncle, Peregrine, a bore of international repute whose dreaded presence could empty the room in any centre of civilization—Uncle Peregrine was considered molto simpatico. The Wilmots were gross vulgarians; they used Santa Dulcina purely as a pleasure resort, subscribed to no local funds, gave rowdy parties and wore indecent clothes, talked of “wops” and often left after the summer with their bills to the tradesmen unpaid; but they had four boisterous and ill-favoured daughters whom the Santa-Dulcinesi had watched grow up. Better than this, they had lost a son bathing from the rocks. The Santa-Dulcinesi participated in these joys and sorrows. They observed with relish their hasty and unobstrusive departures at the end of the holidays. They were simpatici. Even Musgrave who had the Castelletto before the Wilmots and bequeathed it his name, Musgrave who, it was said, could not go to England or America because of warrants for his arrest, “Musgrave the Monster,” as the Crouchbacks used to call him—he was simpatico. Guy alone, whom they had known from infancy, who spoke their language and conformed to their religion, who was open-handed in all his dealing and scrupulously respectful of all their ways, whose grandfather built their school, whose mother had given a set of vestments embroidered by the Royal School of Needlework for the annual procession of St. Dulcina’s bones—Guy alone was a stranger among them.
I can sympathise with Guy’s plight: in fact, as soon as I begin to feel the mildest bout of simpatico insinuating its way into my psyche, a vague sense of unease descends upon me. I freely admit it’s my fault – although, I confess, accompanying the heavy burden of this particular guilt is a profound indifference to it.
Not so for Bishops Bird and Ingham: they are entirely simpatico, united, according to Ingham, by the “shared .. contempt and opposition of the fearful” – otherwise known as people who disagree with them.
From here:
No surprises, either, came when Bishop Ingham acknowledged that the two men also have shared the contempt and opposition of the fearful. The two dioceses, so similar in ideals, face the same challenges of change and adaptation to an emerging world.
At this point Bishop Ingham described the shift in relevance from a time when the church was at the centre of political and national power to the era of Post-Christendom. The next change, the one we are experiencing, is away from the old evangelicalism, liberalism and catholicism. It will not be shaped by the old culture wars that we continue to fight, even, and perhaps most pointlessly, against each other. The future church holds some surprises for those of us so involved in present difficulties that we do not see where we’re going.
I’d like to end on a point of agreement: the last sentence, in this case. They really don’t know where they are going.
Talking about the contempt and opposition of the fearful, back in the late 1990s I had a notable three-cornered conversation with Michael then our bishop and Roger Simpson then our rector. We at Holy Trinity Vancouver had been grilling +Michael. I said to our bishop’s face, “It is not possible that in First Century Judaism Jesus of Nazareth could have tolerated, taught, or practiced homosex.” The reaction was to say, in tones of contempt, “First Century Judaism!” and to walk away.
!!!
“But you’ve never asked me what my paper is about! I’m taking the text about growing up to the measure of the stature of Christ and working out an idea which I feel sure you’ll be interested in. I’m going to point out how people always forget that Jesus (here the Ghost bowed) was a comparatively young man when he died. He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he’d lived. As he might have done, with a little more tact and patience. I am going to ask my audience to consider what his mature views would have been. A profoundly interesting question. What a different Christianity we might have had if only the Founder had reached his full stature! I shall end up by pointing out how this deepens the significance of the Crucifixion. One feels for the first time what a disaster it was: what a tragic waste … so much promise cut short. Oh, must you be going? Well, so must I. Goodbye, my dear boy. It has been a great pleasure. Most stimulating and provocative. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.” The Ghost nodded its head and beamed on the Spirit with a bright clerical smile–or with the best approach to it which such unsubstantial lips could manage–and then turned away humming softly to itself “City of God, how broad and far.”” [Part of the conversation with the Episcopal Ghost in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.] Lewis, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
” . . . living at this hour, all of us [not just England] have need of thee.” It wouldn’t hurt to have Dorothy L. Sayers too. Good comment.
“I’m going to point out how people always forget that Jesus (here the Ghost bowed) was a comparatively young man when he died.”
This blatantly denies the Divinity of Jesus, for it portrays Him as only mortal. Fact is that Jesus is (not just was) far “older” than all of us due to the reality that Jesus is God the Son, and thus co-eternal with God the Father and God the Holy Ghost. Jesus was not a “comparatively young man when he died.” Jesus is forever.
” He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he’d lived.”
Again a denial of His Divinity. Beneath these words lies hidden a belief that the experiences of this world, including interactions with us mere mortals, somehow have an ability to change God. It completely ignores all of the evidence within the Holy Bible that God does not change. As we so often do not perceive our own changing we end up thinking that we witness God changing. Instead the truth is that His plan for us progresses as we mature, but the plan remains constant.
“…the significance of the Crucifixion. One feels for the first time what a disaster it was: what a tragic waste…”
Oh where to begin?! Yet another denial, this time of our own sins, the consequence (or price of sin) being death, that our Savior died this horrific physical death so that we would not have to suffer the eternal spiritual death of condemnation to the fires of hell. Does this person have even the most rudimentary Christian understanding of any of this?
“At this point Bishop Ingham described the shift in relevance from a time when the church was at the centre of political and national power to the era of Post-Christendom.”
May I ask, under who’s watch did this shift occur? And why did this/these person(s) allow it to happen?
Michael Ingham thinks that because he can speak well, he must be speaking the truth. He is thus the epitome of “a legend in his own mind.”
When he became a Hindu-in-Christian-vestments, as described in Chapter 1 of his book Mansions of the Spirit, he lost his Christian moral anchors and accepted the Zeitgeist as his lord and saviour. His golden voice got him elected bishop, but gave him no moral foundations, so he dragged people from their churches, sold property, and is now retiring with diocesan finances in shambles.
Halfway through his bishopric, he used his golden voice to promote a Zeitgeist theology of sex, in which among other things he praised the pornographic rock-carvings on Cambodian temples and offered Cambodian culture as a good role model, ignoring the fact that Cambodians sell pre-school boys and girls as prostitutes by the thousands. He recommended that Christians abandon the concept of “covenant” and rethink sexual relationships as more flexible. Predictably, he retires with his own personal life in shambles.
I pray that, before he dies, he will return to the real Saviour who died for him.