A semi biblical book review
It was my birthday last Monday. Woohoo! And my lovely man got me some lovely books. Well done to him.
Gifts mean the world to me, and among the many different categories of things that I enjoy, second hand books have to be pretty close to the top. Fiction in particular. Something I can temporarily lose myself in, with no real consequence other than stretching of my concentration again, past the three second facebook reels that manage to so constantly shrink it. And the first of the bunch was ‘How to Stop Time’ by Matt Haig. A really grounded and interesting read, if anyone wants to borrow it, I have a second hand copy!
Obviously I’m not here to ruin the whole book, but it says it in the blurb, so I feel confident to share the premise. The protagonist Tom is aging at a decelerated speed, to which fifteen years counts as one for his aging. The book finds him in the modern day, looking to be in his forties and actually having lived for four hundred odd years. And over his fictional four hundred years that travel true to our actual history, one of the most interesting tangents for me was chewing over the concept of the Witch Hunts of the 16th century.
Left field I know.
It has had me quandering over how little everything really ever changes.
“Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless!”
The musings of the Great Teacher in Ecclesiastes.
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
I was astounded by the consideration of how fear and the struggle for power has, throughout all of recorded human history, caused us to scapegoat and call names and just generally impose the concept of ‘evil’ onto another human being in the name of self-righteousness. To be able to punish that ‘other’ person, creates a sense of rightness within ourselves. That we have been able to right a wrong with our actions and somehow, incorrectly, make the world a better place in the doing so.
Ben wrote last week about reflecting the Creator God through our own humble pursuits to create. Something that is a difficult and life-giving pursuit. And yet interestingly, throughout history, we have managed to try and reflect aspects of God’s nature that we were never meant to aspire to as well. God is judge, perfect judge, and to judge in His place has caused so much pain it is truly unspeakable.
I think mainly in the present with the ominous battle against the ‘other’ of the refugee, and the riots that are erupting around our nation. Issues that are so multifaceted and complicated that no single blog post from me will shine any real light on them. Yet it has made me stop and think this week, about how wrong we, as a people, as a church, as supposedly Jesus loving people, have historically been when it comes to executing judgment over others, and how our calling was in fact the complete opposite.
Do not get me wrong, I am all here for a healthy boundary, but that is a different blog post. To actively judge, and create an ‘other’ out of another human being is a sad thing indeed.
I would like to think we have moved on from hunting witches, but I think the same evil may have just shifted faces.
I want to add some conclusionary sentence here, about taking this thought away this week, taking it for a proverbial walk around the park, and figuring out where we can fight to be the change in our own spheres of influence.
And yet I think instead, I am just left poignantly saddened. Saddened that we still seemed to be getting it so very wrong. And once again I am just left in that place of lament, crying out for the Saviour to come and set it all right.
Please.
