#haveseenmonday: Who Is My Neighbour? Attack The Block Asks Some Questions That Won’t Go Away

Over the last few years I’ve learned about ‘the other’; the person or people we keep at a distance, see as a generic group where the individuals who make up the group all share the same characteristics. These are traits that I don’t like, and they’re almost all people with whom we disagree in some ways. We can ‘other’ (it can be a verb also – like ‘medal’ can be a verb at the Olympics – which is a linguistic development about which I hold reservations) anybody. Take your pick: liberals, conservatives, Leave voters, Remain voters, non-voters, Trump supporters, the EFF, the ANC, whites, blacks, coloureds, gays, women, trans, bi. And so on; all of these and more I see being ‘othered’ in some way. Sometimes by me. It’s a way, I’m understanding, of keeping the challenge the person or group being othered presents to me at a distance; a way of not listening. A way of preserving my comfy echo-chamber (which was a human trait long before social media made it more obvious).

This was what was going through my mind when I revisited the 2011 British science-fiction/horror/comedy Attack The Block. I hold this film in great affection; a film which reminds me of London even more 9 years after moving to Cape Town. Starring a young John Boyega and Jodie Whittaker (they’ve done alright since, haven’t they?), it starts with a startling sequence of a young nurse (Whittaker) walking home from a shift on Bonfire Night. She’s on the phone, walking down a quiet, dark street. As she finishes her call, she realises she’s surrounded by a group of young men (teenagers, led by Boyega), on their bikes, armed with blades. They want her phone and jewellery; it’s a frightening scene, one which will play with familiarity to so many. All of a sudden a parked car next to them blows up as something falls from the sky on to it; there’s something inside the car. Whittaker runs away. The something turns out to be an alien, which the boys kill. As they head back to their home in the tower block (which is also home to Whittaker), the dead alien’s compatriots seek the boys out for revenge. What follows is a funny, violent, at times scare-inducing, play on all sorts of familiar film tropes, with dialogue that expertly picks up the language and intonation of many a South London teenager (or at least it did 8 years ago; in preparation, the director rode the top bus of London busses for a few weeks, listening to and recording teenagers speaking to make sure his film would sound authentic).

It’s no spoiler to say that along with a multitude of nods to influential and cult films and books (I’m not even going to start down that rabbit hole), the film takes us to a place where the nurse and the teenagers who began the film in conflict end up finding each other and working together. Where initially they ‘other’ each other (most notably in a brilliant, breathless, funny scene where they all end up in the same flat together), by the end they’re working for and sacrificing for one another. The boys confess to Whittaker’s nurse that they carry weapons because “we’re as scared as you”, a moment which causes her to pause in the middle of a comedic yet urgent situation. Are we invited to consider that the boys are ‘othering’ the aliens (who are, after all, trying to defend an attack on one of their own); as the boys say at one point “They’re f***ing monsters”, a phrase often heard on the lips of an angry person lashing out a group perceived to have inflicted wrong?

The film ends on a note I’d forgotten, that resonated with and challenged me. Faced with the chance to get justice for the mugging, Whittaker refuses to identify John Boyega’s gang leader. “They’re my neighbours; they protected me.”, she says. For the follower of Jesus, that’s a phrase eerily reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus challenges us to care for the very people we are most likely to describe as enemies, ‘the other’; a parable told in response to the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’. A few hours later I watched this TED talk (click on these words) by a South African journalist who was very public on the receiving end of a social media shaming for a mistake she made, ending with her losing her job. In it she reflects on the costs and consequences of shaming, and how we might go about things differently with those with whom we disagree; I reflect that when I shame someone out loud or in my mind as sexist/racist/whatever it is, I can easily ‘other’ them, the better to shut out any challenge from them which I may need to hear. Not that I excuse whatever the prejudice may be; but the question remains: how do I, we, do this better? And where is that same prejudice prevalent in myself?

Attack The Block appears to be a frivilous, esepecially British, sort of film that is entertaining but forgotten quickly. But it’s hard to forget; not only does it work well because it respects science-fiction, horror and comedy equally; and that it’s simply endlessly quotable, stacked with some great jokes and set-pieces. It’s also hard to forget because it asks me to confront in myself my gravitational pull to ‘other’ all sorts of people who upset and discomfort me; people who are in fact my neighbour; people who I maybe should seek to defend rather than shame.

Which is after all what I believe Jesus does for me.

First Time Friday … Fyre: selling paradise at the price of the poor.

First Time Friday is a new, what I hope will be weekly, series where I write about a film I’ve seen for the first time. That won’t, of course, preclude me from watching films on other days …

It feels like there’s not much left to say about the Fyre festival debacle, the people behind, and even the two recent documentary films trying to tell the story. A con job that was enabled and bought down by social media , now the subject of short notice films that gain traction through … you guessed it, social media.

This film – the Netflix production – tells the story through footage shot for the festival organisers from conception through to aftermath. It was, as is explicitly said in the documentary, an attempt not so much to put on a music festival as to sell a dream; an exclusive weekend on an idyllic island with supermodels, stars and social media influencers, staying in luxury accomodation, eating the best food and partying. It fell apart in real time, finally exposed to the world by a viral photo of a cheap cheese sandwich taking the place of the best in catering.

That just about everybody fell under the influence of the charismatic, persuasive Billy McFarland is a matter of public record. Several things become apparent as we watch this film. One is that, to quote Leonard Cohen, the people involved really don’t care for music, do they? As quoted above, they didn’t care about the music festival; they cared about a buzz of exclusivity, exploiting FOMO, making money by selling an ephemeral dream. That one of the staff involved, interviewed for the film, is wearing a Nirvana t-shirt whilst he talks about the vision of an island paradise makes this point eloquently; the icons of grunge, repackaged as a fashion accessory.

Even as it becomes apparent that the whole thing is a disaster, and the people trying to make it happen are telling the story, they are laughing. Of course, this may be a trick of the director’s editing, or it may be the laughter of regret and disbelief; either way, they laugh as they talk about sleeping on soaking mattresses and the disappearance of vast amounts of money. At no point do these people show concern for the real victims – the local islanders, who laboured hard to build and set up for the festival and received no money; the local club owner who tearfully tells us of the extra staff she took on in anticipation and had to pay from her life savings when promised money never materialised. The locals – many of whom are poor – will never be paid back. Billy McFarland has been convicted, and others too; but what use is that when you’ve worked for weeks without pay, or shelled money out of our lifetime savings? The rich mostly escape, relatively free; the poor bear the brunt (and this divide is also expressed largely but not exclusively on skin colour lines also). It was ever thus, and it’s a failing of the film that it never really gives full voice or the last word to those who suffered most. We get to peak behind the curtain of deception, but the human cost is never really examined.

The problem is that this was a disembodied project from the word go. Relying on the myth of the perfect sun-kissed island and celebrity lifestyle, the myth was sold, and turned out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors. We can blame it all on social media hype; and yes, that was the vehicle used for this con. But it’s really a story as old as time; it’s always just out of reach, around the next corner, as intangible as it is expensive. No one looks behind the curtain until it’s too late; those that do visit the site in advance or raise a warning word are ignored or sacked. It’s an attempt to parachute a paradise into the backyard of some real people; and leave them to pick up the pieces afterwards. And when they do pick up the pieces, they find they have even less than they started with; no one to pay them back, no one to sit and weep with them, no one to help them rebuild.

As a Christian, I can criticise this – and I do. But that’s a dangerous road; how many megachurch or rich foreign, usually white-skinned missionaries have parachuted in to poorer places promising revival and renewal, not sticking around after to remake what they have broken – or to use the language of the moment, ‘disrupted’? It seems it’s in our nature, all of us, to keep our poor and our mistakes as equally out of our site as each other. Embodiment, incarnation, long-term rooting in the one place; such is the way to which we are called.

Leadership Lies: Money Follows Vision

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’m now nearly 17 years into the journey of being paid to lead churches. Over that time I’ve read a lot of books and blogs, listened to a lot of podcasts, and had a lot of conversations about the art of leadership in the context of the local church. Some of those have been helpful, some of them haven’t been; some of those that I thought were helpful at the time turned out not be; some of those that I thought not to be helpful at the time turned out to be rather insightful. I’ve also said and written more than a few things about leadership myself; some of which I still think, some of which I don’t.

Recently I’ve started thinking about some of those things I’ve heard and said myself, and realised that I need to revisit them, take them apart and expose them for what they are. Lies. Well, maybe lies is a bit strong – I don’t think many people actively choose to tell untruths in these matters; but untruths, that like all the best untruths carry an element of the truth in the same way that an inoculation carries an element of the disease it’s designed to protect you against. Hence this series of blogs, of which this is the first. When I say ‘series’, by the way, what I actually mean is more like: ‘One or more posts that I’ll get round to as and when I think of them’. As usual, my writing is more about my own processing of ideas to help me clarify what I actually think – if they help someone else along the way, then so much the better.

So to the first statement with which I wish to raise some issues. Three words: “Money follows vision”. I’ve no idea who first coined it, but it’s prevalent in some circles, and I’ve said it myself. It’s often used when a leader is trying to get a particularly faith-stretching, expensive project approved by the necessary committee. It’s a way of saying – yes, I know we don’t have money for this at the moment, but this a great vision, and God will provide (through His people, of course) because the vision is compelling. The money is duly raised, thus proving that the vision was compelling and from God and therefore God has provided (through His people, and sometimes a bank loan). At core it seems to say: God will provide where the vision is from Him. Hard to quibble with, surely?

No, it’s not. It may carry an element of truth in richer, often suburban areas, where there church members have relatively stable jobs and incomes; but move into poorer areas and the truth is somewhat more complex. For the last eight and a half years I’ve been leading a small-ish church in Cape Town, on the cusp of an urban/suburban divide.  Cape Town, as you may know, is a city of contrasts. It’s often cited as the most economically unequal city in the most unequal country in the world. If you have plenty of money, Cape Town is a wonderful place to live. If you are poor, it’s a living nightmare. My church has people in it who have good, stable jobs; it also has people who live right on the edge of the trapdoor that would send them tumbling into poverty. We have a Thursday night community based around supper, where many of the members sleep outside; for various reasons, the trapdoor opened beneath their feet and they couldn’t cling on to solid ground.

Amongst these groups (those on the edge of poverty, those on the streets, those in informal settlements or townships) I have met many people with powerful, compelling, Godly vision. In a sense, one has to have vision if you live in or on the edge of poverty; avoiding the trapdoor, or surviving once you’ve fallen through, requires nimble thinking and creative action that would shame many leaders and entrepeneurs with more loaded bank accounts. However, money hasn’t followed their vision. It has largely trickled away to the visions of richer, larger churches and projects in safer and more comfortable areas.

If you are trapped in poverty, or in avoiding the trapdoor, your options are closed down. You don’t have the time or the energy to build networks and make connections that might one day yield financial fruit; you’re too busy putting food on the table each day, or making sure there’s enough electricity to keep the lights on in church that Sunday. Whatever great business ideas you may have, whatever creative outreach projects God has laid on your heart, they easily get lost in the daily battle to say alive and just keep a church or a life ticking over.

Here’s a thought. What if the role of the money in the richer churches was to flow towards the vision of those with less? What if, rather than employing another staff member, a church in the safe suburbs walked in relationship with a church in the unsafe inner-city and funded a drug project or a social outreach worker, or whatever God had laid on their hearts?

This is not a new idea; the New Testament seems to suggest it and some churches in different places in the world are doing it. But what if the over-resourced really caught this vision? What if ,instead of planting 50 people into another young adult rich area and claimed explosive kingdom growth instead of actually acknowledging it’s really just sociology, a small handful of people, at the invitation of those in the poorer area, came and walked and worshipped alongside those with less – blessing the church with agenda-free time, abilities and money?

The church I lead was blessed with this around 7 years ago. The people we received were few in number but large in heart and responsiveness to calling. It was – and still is – a hard journey. Some have, for various reasons, found the mess and blurred lines of church amongst the marginalised too much and have needed to return to a context more like what they are used to. This is a calling, a calling that emerges out of agenda-free relationships between leaders, churches and individuals. The question we must face  – especially those of us who lead well-resourced churches – is something like this: ‘Do we give space and time for the calling to be heard? Will we lay down our dream of a church that looks successful for a wider calling of kingdom-shaped fruit to be borne that draws no attention to our own leadership? Will we allow my church’s money to follow a vision in another place? Will we support the social entrepreneurs struggling to survive, the leaders trying to keep the lights on and worried for the house-holds struggling to put food on the table? Will we forego a staff member here to nurture the slow growth of kingdom vision there? Will we die to self, that others may live? Will we respond to the life-giving invitation to take joy in seeing the vision we have flourish amongst those on the margins?’

In the answers to these questions lie the subtle, troubling difference between success and fruitfulness. May those who have ears hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

 

Losing Christian Privilege

I blame Jesus. If he hadn’t said that stuff about being blessed when you’re persecuted, then I don’t think we’d be where we are today. St Paul’s not much better, who made a great show of listing all the persecutions and opposition he faced as somehow ‘proving’ something about his ministry. Yep. It’s God’s fault.

When I was training to be a priest (20 years ago), it was often observed at the conservative college at which I trained that Christians in Britain were too lukewarm; they took their faith for granted, were wooly on some important doctrines, too much drawn to liberalism, weak on evangelism and generally a bit of a let down. What was needed, it was sometimes touted, was a good dose of persecution. Some people even prayed it would be so. People actually prayed that the country would change so much that Christianity would be illegal and that people would die for their faith. It seems an odd thing to pray, to say the least, when this is the daily reality of actual people in some parts of the world, but there you have it.

20 years later, it seems a given in some conservative quarters to state that these prayers have been answered. According to some, the recent court decision in London to put an exclusion zone around an abortion clinic to prevent prayer and protests outside is seen as a threat to religious freedom. The BBC, some insist, is blatantly anti-Christian and – worse, in the eyes of those who protest thus – promoting a gay agenda. Here in South Africa, some Christian groups are loudly defending their God-given ‘right’ to physically discipline children; to disallow that, is to threaten the freedom of the church, it is said. In America the religious right have hitched their wagon to the lucrative gun lobby, and assured anyone who’ll listen that the Constitution’s second amendment enshrines a ‘God-given’ right to own assault rifles.

Pointing out facts is, it seems, unpopular. No one’s threatened with serious trouble over graciously and peacefully (and there’s the key words) presenting a ‘pro-life’ perspective; you don’t have to search the BBC website for long to find stories and programmes which show the Christian faith in a positive and realistic light. I could go on, but the point is probably obvious by now – this isn’t an argument about facts. It’s about perception. Christians feel like they’re losing ground; the Bible shows us we’re blessed if we’re persecuted; look – we’re being persecuted!

The reality is that in all 3 of these countries – and many others – that we Christians are losing ground. And that’s OK. For many years, way before the current generation was born, we were living in a ‘Christendom’ reality. This is the idea that Christianity is assumed as deserving of a preferential hearing. Christianity was the privileged religion, and it was treated as such. These were Christian countries, it was assumed. As the world changes, society is globalised and the influences are more diverse. Suddenly, Christianity is no longer assumed to be primary; it is questioned, in many cases found wanting, and certainly no longer deserving of privilege.

Which is as it should be. Be it in post-apartheid South Africa, levelling the playing field between men and women, or giving other religions than Christianity a share of the platform, the loss of unearned privilege can feel like persecution. But it isn’t. It’s just the lop-sided playing field levelling itself. If the Gospel is as winsome and powerful as we think it is, then this should not worry us and we should not protest it. Jesus and the early Christians were not known for protesting their own rights or demanding a privileged hearing; they were rather more focussed on the rights of others – and in Jesus’ case, emptying himself of all he was really, truly entitled to.

In fact, there’s more to say still. The Gospel tells us that we have no rights of our own before God, but he graciously gives us all things in Jesus. He was all about laying down his rights. If the playing field really is levelling to all religions and world-views, then we should welcome it as a chance to be like Jesus and empty ourselves of all unearned and undeserved power and privilege and see a real demonstration of the power of the Gospel to which we claim to adhere. Further, if we really think we have a God-given right to protest outside abortion clinics or to own a gun or to hit our children (3 very different things, of course), then we need to be asking ourselves some serious questions as to how far we’ve drifted from the Bible we claim to hold in such high esteem.

Maybe, in some mysterious way, God has answered those prayers. He hasn’t given us persecution – though, of course, he remains perfectly entitled to do so. He has simply taken away a privilege that was never ours to begin with; it only ever belonged to him. Let’s let him worry about getting the hearing he deserves; our role is to, like Jesus, empty ourselves of power and simply serve him – where we find him. Which will so often be in the form of the people we were previously loudly protesting against.