Dangerous truth

It’s been said that the Bible should have a safety warning pasted on the front cover. Something along the lines of “Following the God you meet through these pages is usually dangerous!”

Standing up for moral values for example puts you in danger of being excluded and scorned or even executed.

Herod the despot had the power of life and death. Yet John the Baptist was so enraged by his contempt for the moral code that he publicly took him to task.

Herod had married his brother’s wife. As the situation unfolded the lady in question, Herodious, and her daughter Salome, contrived to have John executed. The two had no shame. They relished their positions and abused their power.

Herodious wanted to sin in peace. She resented John’s criticism and his high moral authority. She hated him for it.

But what Herod had done was wrong. John had spoken the truth – it was a dangerous truth but he was compelled to speak up.

In the twentieth century there have been many examples of men and women of faith who have spoken up in the face of wrongdoing, injustice and corruption.

Three come to mind – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German academic who became a pastor in the closing years of the Second World War. He spoke up against the evil of Hitler’s regime and was executed by the Nazis. His murder was more out of spite than anything else, just a few months before the end of the war.

Martin Luther King spoke out against the social injustice prevalent in black communities in America. He was murdered but not before the seeds of his vision for equality and freedom for black people had taken root.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke out against the evils of apartheid in South Africa. His story made headlines as he resolutely challenged the authorities and stood alongside people decimated by poverty and injustice.

Bonhoeffer, King, Tutu and John the Baptist. They all dared to speak up and to stand up and express a dangerous truth. Each in their own way acted like a plumb line showing how crooked things were and what needed to be straightened out.

But we don’t have to trawl through history and pull out famous people to realise that it takes courage to follow God’s way and to stand for moral and spiritual values.

In this very church we have heard young people from time to time tell us about their experiences in school, in youth clubs, among their peers. It can be tough to be a member of the Christian Union or even admit that you attend church on Sundays.

The sense of exclusion and the bullying scorn such a stand attracts can be a truly devastating experience for young people. It can blight their lives and reduce them to misery and heartache.

In these days spiritual values, respect and caring for others, sensitivity and decency, good manners – these are things that are threatened by a raucous culture of celebrity and the outpouring of endless hours of inane television.

Eric Waugh writing in the Belfast Telegraph has highlighted the danger of spiritual ecstasy that erupts around footballers and pop idols. He said: “It is the way of the flawed, big-money world of leisure we now inhabit.”

And he pointed out how television channels are pouring millions into promoting this ‘flawed’ world with its obscene greed and degenerate values.

He said: “The danger lies at the point where following football degenerates into following football alone.”

Of course it’s not ‘cool’ to point out these flaws. It’s not ‘cool’ to walk away from the lifestyles that are flaunted with such vulgarity in the popular media.

But right thinking young people, and hopefully the rest of us, can see through the hype and the glitz and realise what a false and degenerate nothingness it all represents.

The perception is that greed and lots of money spell success. But in truth this culture of selfish ambition, personal prestige and gratuitous self-indulgence breeds failure. It fails the family; it fails the well being of the next generation.

St Paul recognised this failure and warned people not to act “From motives of personal vanity.” He said: “ None of you should think only of his own affairs but consider other peoples interests also.”

It’s in this balance and in the mind of Christ that we may hope to find fulfilment in life.

St Augustine said: “Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”

Today, the way things are, with so much vacuous television and so many icons of dubious reputation, so many false and flawed gods, we need to be angry and we need courage to stand up and say ‘this is not right’. This is baloney – dangerous baloney, damaging baloney.

It’s not about being holier than the next man. It’s about survival and guarding our moral and spiritual integrity. It’s about common decency and dignity. It’s about caring and service for the good of all, not least a new generation that is being sacrificed in the name of profit.

C S Lewis said: “God seems to do nothing of Himself where he can possibly delegate to his creatures.”

God delegates speakers of dangerous truth in maintaining moral and spiritual values.

As any parent will tell you the first steps of the toddler are risky. But there is no other way to learn to walk. In making the effort there is no prospect of immediate perfection but step-by-step the toddler will stand up and make progress. We need to learn to stand up

The composer Stravinsky wrote a new piece that contained a very difficult violin passage. After several weeks of rehearsal the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said that he could not play it. He had given it his best effort but found the passage too difficult, even unplayable

Stravinsky replied: “I understand that, what I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.

We may never achieve what the composer had in mind but we need to try. There is no other way for the Gospel to be heard on earth

The sound of dangerous truths being spoken is a sign of hope

So in the words of the Collect for St John the Baptist Day, we pray for the courage to follow his example, “to constantly speak the truth, to boldly rebuke vice and to patiently suffer for truth’s sake.”

Amen