John Wesley’s Journal, like everyone’s, has no entries for that period, and resumes on Thursday 14 with the comment: ‘So we must call it now, seeing the New Style now takes place’.  Can we detect some disapproval on Wesley’s part at having lost time? He was, after all, a believer in redeeming every fragment of time and not wasting time. Some modern spiritual guides give the impression that it’s a sin to daydream and that all time must be purposively filled. This can appeal to driven psyches. But it can also prevent people from being fully present (to each other and God) in the here and now. Using time wisely in 2012 could mean spending every leisure moment checking your work emails; it could mean continually looking over your shoulder at your achievements or ahead to your life-goals. Or, alternatively, might the best use of time in 2012 be to live fully in the God-given present?

The classical liberalism of 17th and 18th century was driven by vision of the dignity of the rational person and a desire for human freedom, unrestrained by church or state. But with the 19th century economic liberalism of Adam Smith such unrestrained liberalism handed social vision to the markets. Religion was relegated to personal or ecclesial concerns, far removed from political and economic vision.

After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Roosevelt judged that, ’Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. … The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.’ (Inaugural address, March 4, 1933) Modern social[ist] liberalism was born of a Keynesian critique of laissez faire economics (1938): rather than let the markets govern society, the state took control, with such interventionist policies as Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ (1930s) and British welfare reforms, as imagined by The Beveridge Report (of 1942). Beveridge’s moral ideals led him to address the five ‘Giant Evils’ of ‘Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness’. Yet the 1980s saw a neoliberal return to laissez faire economics, not only limited to Regan and Thatcher. Unrestrained liberalism handed social vision to the emerging global markets, while retaining western protectionist trade barriers. 

As UK politics became less ordered by ideological or theological vision, and more by the political pragmatics of personality and opinion polls, the British electorate became disengaged from politics. The churches were too concerned with internal issues and human sexuality to motivate greater political involvement, except for the successful Jubilee Campaign. But another banking crisis and stagnant economy has given rise to another voice of protest, like Roosevelt’s, which calls for the casting of the money changers from their thrones.

At Christmas we read in Luke’s nativity a voice of protest against the imperial political theology and economics of his day. He presents Jesus as the divine emperor of God’s reign in a socially liberating vision, which we might miss in our sweet but saccharine carols. There is a yet greater vision in eco-theology, which views economics within God’s new creation, if only we could raise our eyes from our anthropocentric perspective, even beyond the temple of our civilization. The churches need to engage such theology and political vision again, for ‘without a vision the people perish.’ (Proverbs 29:18)

For more on the politics of Christmas, see http://campaigndirector.moodia.com/Client/Theos/Files/ThePoliticsOfChristmas.pdf

What would Jesus do – it is both a vital question and, potentially, a dangerous one. When the church loses sight of the question it is liable to lose sight of its very purpose. It is not difficult to point to times in the history of the church when this has happened. Erasmus of Rotterdam (a Humanist scholar who lived through the early days of the Reformations) once commented on some of the monks of this day, whose orders competed with each other, that they were more interested in being unlike each other than they were in being like Christ. On the other hand, neither has it been good for the church to be too sure of the answer; the basic flaw in the question is that I can never fully know because I am not Christ. He left us an example of outraged anger in the clearing of the Temple, but no easy rules to identify absolutely where the Temples that need clearing are today.

What would Jesus do? He would undoubtedly protest injustice and stand up against the Pharisees. He would care for the weak and the oppressed and, yes, I think he would be with the protesters. Undoubtedly also, Christians need to ask ourselves if we are doing enough to follow this example.  But I also need to seek the wisdom to be as faithful as possible to Christ’s example without ever believing that I have fully understood him or his calling on my life.

As I work on the amplifier, I wonder whether this principle can also apply to people? Our lives are like complicated electrical circuits with all sorts of different energies flowing through different parts of them. But is there one ground point to which they all refer? In the guitar amplifier, one connection point to ground removes all the noise and distortion that is present when there are many ground connections. It does this by preventing the eddying of energy in one part becoming disturbing noise in all the others.

If ‘groundedness’ is a metaphor for ‘being connected with’ or ‘attentive to’ something, I ask myself what I am connecting or attending to? Am I connecting all over the place? There are many things going on in my life, but can I refer them all to one single ultimate point of contact?

An ‘alternative spirituality’ web article on “The Art of Being Grounded” speaks of the need to be connected to ‘ourselves’, and later to ‘the universal energy flowing around and through us’. Yes, that’s getting there. But an early Christian writer is more specific and poetic: “… I bow my knees before the Father, ….  I pray that, … you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. … so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3).

Father, Spirit, Christ. The love of Christ should be my ground point. Only grounded there can I/we be safely charged with all the fullness of God’s power and purposes for me/us.

Web reference: http://newconnexion.net/articles/index.cfm/2003/05/warner.html