I have a friend who is passionate about social systems that deliver justice. He has worked in Africa doing voluntary service, and from this experience wonders whether tribal communities that have needed to rely on each other in order to survive value its members more highly and share their resources more evenly.
Perhaps there is a degree of truth in this, but I’m far from sure. I am not an anthropologist, but as a biologist, I have studied animal behaviour enough to know that you don’t want to be on the lowest social rung in a troop of baboons, or in pack of African wild dogs. Communal living doesn’t always produce equality, and I very much suspect that Rousseau’s “noble savage” is myth. Primitive communal living is probably only utopian in the imagination of privileged Western ideologues.
So, is it possible to say what political system of governance is better than another? We are hearing much at the moment about the failure of Western democracy, largely, I suspect as a result of the West turning its back on the Judeo-Christian culture whose values have underpinned it. Unbridled capitalism without Christian moderation is inherently exploitative. So should we embrace neo-Marxism instead and destroy religion, morality and traditional family units? Should we give all the wealth to a central government so that it can meter the little it doesn’t waste back to the workers? Probably not if history has anything to teach us. Marxism has simply resulted in the bloody totalitarianism of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
So, where should we look for hope?
I’ve lived long enough to be convinced that the inherent foibles of humankind will ensure that we will act the same play regardless of the political stage-set we build. If society is to truly find justice and hope, a much more fundamental change needs to occur.
To merely act as our own gods in a way programmed by evolution is, I believe, to be sub-human. It is to be less than we have been called to be. It is to collapse back into the behaviour of the animal world that is, as Alfred Lord Tennyson so eloquently put it, “red in tooth and claw.” Where only the law of the jungle exists, it makes perfect sense to enslave, kill and exploit in order to ensure that you, as an organism, thrive. But is that the best that humankind can hope for?
Of all the beasts alive on the planet, humanity alone has the privilege of escaping the gravity pull of Tennyson’s “tooth and claw” inclination. To us has been given an invitation to be more, to know the mind behind the universe… and be part of a bigger story. But what on earth is it?
Whatever a person’s worldview, three burning questions beg to be answered:
- Why does the cosmos exist?
- What does it mean to be human?
- Do I have meaning?
Personally, I believe God hangs his business card in the cosmos; teaches us his character in Scripture; and comes seeking us in person as Jesus. In other words, he invites usto share in a divine friendship that is as large as the cosmos, as intimate as a child in a manger, and as committed as a man on a cross.
And that’s not a bad hope to celebrate at Christmas, is it?
Happy Christmas.
