Hamas has paraded four coffins through the streets of Gaza as though they were trophies. Men brandishing their rifles, flagging Hamas regalia while masking their faces, cheered and accompanied four black coffins carrying four Israelis who had been taken hostage on October 7 and murdered subsequently. The 4 coffins included an elderly man, Oded Lifshitz, 83, the two little Bibas children, and their mother, Shiri.
The remains of these 4 human beings were then presented on a stage wrapped in anti-Israel messages and weapons to threaten.
Once the bodies were handed over to the Red Cross and eventually returned to Israel, propaganda was found stuffed inside the coffins. If such insult and injury were not more than the grieving could cope with, it turns out Shiri Bibas was not among the dead. Hamas had placed the body of another woman inside the coffin.
We ought to feel sickened inside at the pictures being shown around the world; I am. I will not show the footage here. Instead, here are Israelis lining the streets as the coffins are driven by.
To humiliate the body of the deceased is to move into a new level of hatred. It is to join the ranks of cultures who abused flesh and bone to humiliate and cripple them in the life to come. This is the action of a deranged and evil group. Sadly, we can already imagine the excuses and justifications being uttered in Hamas’ defence, such are the times we are now living in.
Criminals are afforded a proper burial. Even in war, the dead are respected by the enemy. Mustafa Kamal famously said of the Anzacs buried at Gallipoli,
You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
The human body matters, both in life and in death. Our physical being is part of who we are. God has made us with body, mind, heart, and spirit. Harming the body is an affront to human dignity and life. Mistreating the remains of the dead signals a level of disdain both for the dead and for those who are left behind that is inhuman.
A human body is treated with such respect because the life of the human being is of incalculable worth. To return the wrong body and to return bodies with ignominious glee and to stuff coffins with propaganda is unspeakably shocking.
God values the human body so much that his only Son took on human flesh. He became incarnate, a man. When Jesus was crucified he was buried. When God raised the same Jesus to life, he was resurrected, that is with a real physical living heart beating body.
There is so much evil in our world. It has been this way since the fall. The hubris of the optimist believed that with advancing science and technology, and with prosperity winning globally, the world will enter a new age of progress and even ‘the end of history’. This is not utopia. Recent years have taught us that humankind is bent on repeating history.
It is an evil world. Ours is a beautiful world with much to love and enjoy, and yet from the human heart spawns tremendous wickedness. It is astonishing that God should show such patience and grace.
Here is what my Bible reading was this morning, and frankly it is not what we deserve and it cuts against even how my own society often thinks of the human body, and yet it is profoundly good and light and life. In death and life, while enjoying the warmth of the sun or sitting in the darkest place, here is God’s promise,
“Listen, I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. For this corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body must be clothed with immortality. When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place:
Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15:51-57)
“When you give up Christian faith, you pull the rug out from under your right to Christian morality as well. This is anything but obvious: you have to keep driving this point home, English idiots to the contrary.” (Nietzsche)
Richard Dawkins is now a self professing, “cultural Christian”.
Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous atheist of my lifetime. He is a noted scientist, author of the best-selling book, The God Delusion, and fanboy for many an ardent God nonbeliever. For more than 20 years, Richard Dawkins has provided millions with reason not to believe, and with an ammunition dump of rhetorical flares for dismissing theism, and especially Christianity.
“You know I love hymns and Christmas Carols. I feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense”.
The new atheism, like earlier thought movements and ones yet to come, arrived on the scene, peaked, and is now crumbling. There will be devotees who will hold onto splintered rocks as they come hurtling down. Dawkins, however, seems to have jumped.
Okay, ‘jumped’ is an overstatement, but Dawkins’ version of atheism seems to have changed tack, and in a positive way (or at least in this interview). He has left behind the stinging attacks and is gently embracing the world that Christianity has provided.
To some, Dawkins must have suffered a brain aneurysm.
Aaron Bastoni tweeted,
“Bizarre from Dawkins, who wrote a book called ‘The God Delusion’ claiming religion was a deeply malevolent, dividing force in the world.
Now he’s calling himself a ‘cultural Christian’? Find it odd to use religion to extend your secular political points.”
In comes Tom Holland, the super historian to the scene of the crime.
“Not really, because secularism & Dawkins’ own brand of evangelical atheism are both expressions of a specifically Christian culture – as Dawkins himself, sitting on the branch he’s been sawing through and gazing nervously at the ground far below, seems to have begun to realise.”
Holland is spot on. My initial response was this,
“Richard Dawkins wants to keep the fruit of Christianity while rejecting the beliefs of Christianity.
Of course that’s not logical or desirable. Nonetheless, is Richard Dawkins moving away from his past rhetoric and a priori assumptions?”
The fruit of Christianity, the ethics and architecture, the music and its role in shaping political theory and the marketplace, all have an origin story in the Bible and especially in the God-Man Jesus Christ. The fruit comes from somewhere and that somewhere is more audacious and stunning than 21st Century observers realise.
The claim of Christianity is that there is a God behind all the fruit we taste and eat and enjoy. He is not an error or grumpy old jack-in-the-box who loves to surprise us with horrible things.
Dawkins admits that the social good has an origins story and it is integrally tied to the Christian faith, although he is still unwilling to believe in the Divine.
“There is a difference between being a believing Christian and a cultural Christian”.
Yes, there is one who enjoys the fruit and gives thanks to the giver, and those who eat and have their fill while not giving thanks to the provider.
Dawkin’s admission is an intellectually and morally honest one. Read Holland’s, ‘Dominion’; or Glen Scrivener’s ‘The Air We Breathe’. For those who wish to press more eagerly into the bedrock that gives our culture form and substance, read Dr Christopher Watkin’s masterpiece, ‘Biblical Critical Theory’.
The beautiful and the good, the necessary and the true, haven’t altogether disappeared from our culture. And while these depend upon a God of such quality, excising God has not yet fully removed them from the scene. Chris Watkin notes,
“religious and theological ideas have not been threshed away from society, nor have they been abandoned in a general disenchantment. They have merely migrated within society, moving away from God and attaching themselves to other ideas and institutions (primarily the nation state) where their influence is still profound. “
Watkin develops what he calls, the ‘migration thesis’,
“For the migration thesis, secular late modernity relates to Christianity neither as an antithesis nor as a carbon copy but as a parody: “The city is a poor imitation of heavenly community; the modern state, a deformed version of the ecclesia; the market, a distortion of consummation; modern entertainment, a caricature of joy; schooling, a misrepresentation of true formation; liberalism, a crass simulacrum of freedom; and the sovereignty we accord to the self, a parody of God himself.
What all these instances of migration share is a desire to appropriate the goods and benefits of God while ignoring and excluding God himself, a move I have elsewhere called “imitative atheism.””
In other words, Richard Dawkins is admiring and eating the fruit of Christianity. He is happily tasting the sweetness and embracing the aromas and feeling the textures of the fruit, but he still denies the reality of the living tree from which the fruit has grown. The tree is no more dead or invisible than is the fruit we eat.
If you are looking for a ‘right now’ example of where both the root and the fruit of Christianity have been severed, look no further than Matthew Parris and his Easter edict in The Times. In ‘We can’t afford a taboo on assisted dying’, Parris says the unspeakable, euthanasia should not be limited to those with terminal and imminent death, but open to all who are a ‘burden’ on society.
“Let’s acknowledge and confront the strongest argument against assisted dying. As (objectors say) the practice spreads, social and cultural pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths so as “not to be a burden” on others or themselves.I believe this will indeed come to pass. And I would welcome it.”
The elderly, the mentally unwell, the sick, and the poor, should all have death presented to them as a viable option, to stop their lives from being a burden to others.
“Often not for the final years of these extended retirements, often characterised by immobility, ill-health and dementia: and typically wildly expensive, cornering resources to fund our health and social care sectors. This imbalance helps explain governments’ desperate reliance on immigration — to the rage of electorates who won’t face the fundamental question: how are our economies going to pay for the ruinously expensive overhang that dare not speak its name: old age and infirmity?”
Parris is willing to throw away both the fruit and the tree. What remains? It’s every man for themselves. It is self-interest and self-preservation. He isn’t utilising the more carefully constructed argument of how euthanasia is an act of love for the sufferer. No, he preaches that those who weigh down society with cost and time and energy, are a problem to him and his own flourishing.
For all the double-speak about equality and human rights, the logical endpoint of secular humanism is mass selective death: death of the vulnerable, the aged and infirmed, for the sake of the fit and strong.
Australia’s Peter Singer has been singing this tune for decades, following his mate Nietzsche. He has been lauded in the halls of our ABC and presented as a voice to listen to. Universities pine for opportunities to hear him espouse his liberation to death sequence of ethics. And now, voices like Matthew Harris are deemed important enough to have their vision of death published in the United Kingdom’s most famed newspaper.
The irony of the timing. Easter has been and gone, but the reality of the Easter event remains constant and ever relevant.
God hates death and so should we. His Son endured death on our behalf. The resurrection of Jesus says that every human life has value. Death is a great enemy. How different is the Apostolic testimony to Matthew Parris. Which resonates more? You are a burden, so die! Or the words of the Apostle Paul,
“I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”. (1 Corinthians 15:50-57)
Going back to Dr Dawkins, perhaps we have entered a ‘watch this space’ moment.
We can only eat the fruit of Christianity for so long before the season runs out. Then, we will either go hungry and starve, or we will repent and return to the source and cry out to God for food to eat and enjoy.
MurrayCampbell.net 