All posts by Alan Storkey

Alan Storkey has stood in two elections as a Christian candidate, was Chair of the Movement for Christian Democracy, has written "Jesus and Politics" and has helped shape recent Christian political thought.
General

MIGHT IS NOT RIGHT 2 AUTOMATED KILLING

Elbit Systems, an Israeli company with a UK subsidiary, has been given a  US$137 million contract by the UK Ministry of Defence to provide the British Armed Forces with the future target acquisition solution for Joint Terminal Attack Controllers and Fire Support Teams under the Dismounted Joint Fires Integrators (D-JFI) program. It is a five year contract.

That means it will find the enemy and provide the information to attack and eliminate the enemy, either through explosive wipe-out or precision fire. We do not know if it will make mistakes. It has already been tested by Israel, so it must be all right. It contains a grammatical mistake, for we are told that it has a technology called ”the Hattorix system for undetectable generation of high-precision targets”. Readers will have worked out that if the targets are undetectable, they will not be targets. But the point of the system will be to kill people automatically through artificial intelligence probably using drones and without putting our soldiers in danger, though the friends and relations of those killed will probably retaliate and take revenge in other ways.

Your Government thinks this contract is a good idea and a good way to spend your money.

General, We Can Disarm the World

MIGHT IS NOT RIGHT – MILITARY BASES AND PROJECTING POWER.

The UK has a load of military bases and theatres of activity around the world. They include, I think, the following. Afghanistan, Ascension Islands, Bahrain, Belize, Brunei, Canada, Estonia, British Indian Ocean Territory, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Falklands Islands, Germany, Gibraltar, Iraq, Kenya, Nepal, Norway, Oman, Qatar, Singapore, UAE and the US. We are told their purpose is to project power. Most of the time they just sit there, costing a lot, projecting power and making sure we can’t fund the NHS. Sometimes they might be useful, if disasters occur. Often they are sowing distrust around the world. Mainly, they are political vanity, so that the UK can continue its quasi world empire role in international affairs. Do we need to be “mightier still and mightier”? or can we be like aggressive like Belgium. We could usually give them to the countries concerned and use them when we have anything good to do.

General, We Can Disarm the World

YOUR CONTINUOUS AT SEA NUCLEAR DETERRENT

Oh, ho, ho ,ho, we still are great.

For we have nuclear subs.

They are continuously at sea

while you are all in pubs.

Yes, they protect you ‘gainst the foe,

in China, North Korea.

We are your guardians, keep you safe

when you have diarrhoea.

So have a good time; do not think

what nuclear weapons do.

For they are constipated up

and do not drop as loo.

We will not use them, we tell you.

But evil rulers know

that we will use them just before

they let their missiles go.

When theirs are flying through the air,

and have not landed yet,

they will be blown to smithereens

and we have won the bet.

And we will celebrate the win

While theirs are in the air.

And when theirs land we’ll think,

that they did not play fair.

The End.

Politics

THE WORLDWIDE STATE CORPORATIST MODEL

We all need to understand State Corporatism. It is the system in politics where the State interlocks with big corporations, or companies, in running the nations. It has been about for a hundred and fifty years, or more if you think of the East India Company. It is as least as important as Socialism in world history, but few are aware of it, or even know of its existence. You could say it is world dominant, but unnamed.

For example, Russia since the USSR, has had Putin working with the oligarchs to ensure his and their position. Similarly, China since Mao has moved on from State Socialism to one where companies have a co-operative relationship with the State and more billionaires than any other country in the world. The United States has long had the idiom of “What is good for GM is good for America.”  Now Trump says it all – what is good for business is good for America. He fuses business and politics, but we ignore what he represents. In the UK, since Thatcher, it has been dominant and Johnson fits the same model. Most dictatorships involve these cosy relationships between big money-making companies and dictators who benefit from them. If it is such a dominant politico-economic model, it requires more thought.

It’s central commitment is simple. It is if I scratch your back, you will scratch mine. Think Thatcher travelling around to sell arms and Mark Thatcher becoming a pathetic arms dealer in on a contract. It is anti-Socialist. The wages of the workers need to be kept down so that company profits stay strong. Broadly speaking, if the major corporations work with Government and vice versa, they are together able by laws and controls to keep the workers under control and wages down. It has a long history.

Companies became big enough to be influential in the early 20th century in oil, arms, automobiles, food, shipping, retail, farming and other manufacturing. They faced pressure from unions. Socialism and the vote were arriving about the same time, and there was a polarisation between socialism and right-wing corporate state models trying to keep the workers in their place. In the USSR the revolution actually took place. In Germany violence suppressed the workers. In the US they had a Red Scare. In Britain Churchill and others defeated the National Strike. In the 1920s in the States big company barons began to have a world-wide impact and ran US politics until the Wall Street Crash. Elsewhere, Fascism became the violent, militaristic edge of State Corporatism. When it was defeated in 1945 a greater degree of egalitarianism opened up and many countries nationalised industries putting them under the supervision of the state, so that they would act in the national interest and not exploit monopoly power for profit. Joan Robinson and other economists had pointed out the economic inefficiencies of corporate monopolies. Railways, postage, utilities and many other industries were more efficient, because they required national systems of operation. Health, education, welfare, transport and other areas of life became public, for the common good, rather than run by monied interests. All had fought in the War and all should benefit. For several decades this ethos was more dominant.

Yet, gradually, the big corporations crept back into the picture. All kinds of new monopolies appeared. They lined up to provide government with services. Many, especially arms, heavy engineering, transport, finance and other areas found links back into government. Banking had always, through national debt, a link into the State. But the real change came in the West with Reagan and Thatcher. Thatcher sold off, usually cheaply and to her mates, a vast array of national assets worth hundreds of billions. They allowed taxes on the rich to be cut and new areas of corporate profitability to emerge. Reagan spent money hand over fist setting up big corporate profitable contracts, especially in the arms industry, and both deregulated banking and other sectors so that they could reap national and international profits. Off shore tax havens guaranteed the world dominance of vast corporate wealth. Sadly, it took the world several decades, and another banking crisis fuelled by greed, to recognize the problems of this great corporate wealth. The oil and transport corporations denied global warming for decades, pushed militarism into a world-wide destabilising industry, and created a world financial system which is now acutely unstable and unfair.  

          Of course, these are judgements which the corporate groups would question in a variety of ways, but they represent evidence on a vast scale – whether it is clearing forests in the Amazon, a trillion dollar Pentagon expenditure on a US fighter plane, or allowing minimum wage infringements. Let us look at two further examples. Reagan as President backed a military programme called Star Wars, based around the idea that thousands of incoming nuclear rockets could be taken out by interceptor missiles and blown up. All serious military experts said it was unworkable – shooting a bullet with a bullet was the quick dismissal – but it became a gravy train for a number of big arms companies. In the UK with Coronavirus a number of big contracts for PPE and virus tracking were handed out to companies with links into Government. Those were state corporatist. But they are just the froth. What is actually happening is that Corporations have moved in to run vast areas of public life – prisons, buildings, the military, care, educational provision, railways, airports, utilities, public buildings and more. The contracts are secret. Corruption may abound. Public money is spent profligately. There is little accountability under the law. When companies fail, it is quickly glossed, and really the corporate system is in charge of the State and the politicians are mere puppets. The corporate system through rubbishing reformers, funding their own parties, and controlling political processes run the show. Johnson and Trump, contrary to what they might think of themselves are mainly puppets, keeping the system in place. The State Corporatist System is so fully in place, it thinks it is unshakeable.

This pattern is replicated, with significant variations, around the world, but it is not named, even at the basic level of public discourse, partly because it has learned to hide. It is time now to understand State Corporatism, see how it plays out in various industries, open up the secret areas of the state, and address its injustices and dominance. Hopefully, this short essay sets you on the path.

Big Picture Christianity, General

PROPHECY RECONSIDERED

The Bible offers us God’s reflection over centuries, cultures and empires on our political ways and miseries, especially through the prophets through to Jesus. It is time to revisit prophecy, away from the recent selection by some Christians in the States of an idiot as Superman. Prophecy addresses the big sweep of human political fallibility. With a bit of cultural transposition it gives us views of where we are. It truly locates us again in humble, law-abiding living and politics before God.

In the US we are watching the partial downfall of a superpower, or as Toynbee would call it, a civilisation. It is not necessary or automatic, but the centre is rotten and our responses before God need radial rethinking which the prophets help us to do.

Here, in brief, are some of the woven Biblical messages from the prophets which it is not difficult to relocate to the world situation today.

  1. The Centre demands praise, even worship, as Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar and Caesar were to be falsely worshipped. But God will have them in derision. Carrying these false idols about is burdensome..
  2. The Centre collects wealth from the economic colonies through patterns of enslavement and taxation. They become centres of useless luxury and self-obsession centred on entertaining trivia, sexual predation and performance. But God will free the slaves and the centre, without repentance, will collapse in its own inefficiency.
  3. The Centre will become a source of oppression and destruction, even when it believes it is the world’s saviour. This lack of self-awareness will be its undoing, unless it looks to God and humbles itself.
  4. The Centre will become a law unto itself and believe it has the right to overrule God’s laws for humankind. It believes that might is right, when precisely, might is wrong and swords should be ploughshares.
  5. The Centre that has preyed on others will find a bird of prey from a far off lands who will fulfil God’s purposes in judgement. Trump is the opposite of “Cyrus”. Judgement is coming down the track from other places.
  6. God is sovereign over all nations and the basic laws for the good of all humanity must rule in all states and nations. You do not kill, steal, lie, misrepresent, covet or close down neighbour love. There is no exceptionalism.
  7. Fighting and war bring intrigue, power battles, domination and destruction. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and that is an urgent warning..
  8. The judgement for imperial arrogance and super-powerdom is often war and destruction. Can the Mighty not see that their might destroys them?
  9. There will be false prophets who will often say what the ruler wants them to say, so they can have their place in the system, and people will go after them. They get “peace” wrong and compromise the truth.
  10. The captives carried to Babylon, or the slaves transported to the US, will become the prophets- political commentators and even Presidents of their new homes.
  11. Like Nebuchadnezzar the self-worshipping ruler will become mad until he faces the real eating grass humility of his place before God. “Is not this the great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power and the glory of my majesty?” Well, No. You have been blessed by God and extorted from others. You claim credit for what is not yours.
  12. The little people, the small nations, have their problems too. The failed self-righteousness of the self asserting great must not be transferred by antithesis to the little peoples.  They, too, must reform before God.
  13. Restoration is always possible. It involves repentance and the end of self-rightness. We were wrong, we must love enemies, focus on justice for all, die to selfishness, banish false idols and open up to God for what is good and blessed.
  14. Then there is the gentle Kingdom of God which deconstructs the destruction of the mighty and self-worshipping, and insists on bringing down the mighty from their thrones. Jesus gently and firmly insists on the Government of God and demotes all other would-be rulers. To him the little people of all the nations will flock. His Kingdom is one where the first are last and the last first. His burden is light. He gives us peace and requires we love our enemies. He sees the destruction of the citadels of power. He heals the sick and raises children in status. He loves and deconstructs self-righteousness and self-rightness. His kingdom testifies truth and the power of service.

Becoming renewed students or disciples of the Christ requires a lot of rethinking, especially in the States and its poodle, the UK.

The big picture of prophecy, often read too tightly, puts world politics down in its place as we wrestle with the failures of modernist arrogance.

Big Picture Christianity

A CHRISTIAN WAKE UP CALL.

Things must change in British politics and public life. But why are Christians incapable of doing it? During the Evangelical Revival they ended slavery, provided education for the nation’s children – largely from scratch, tackled gross overwork, provided housing, extended the vote, ended most alcoholism and child labour, sorted sewers, addressed mental ill-health and reformed much of British life with principles of justice and human care. Why are British Christians largely incapable of doing anything coherent today? Surely, we should be examining our Christian attitudes with some urgency. Here’s my list of why we do not move. Of course, there are exceptions, but few of us are not dressed in these

  1. WE ARE REACTIONARY. Some conservative Christians are busy defending their Christianity against other Christians fighting battles of the past as though God needs defending. Their categories are culturally dead.
  2. WE MARGINALISE FAITH. Most Christians imbibe 40-90% of contemporary culture (usually from mass and social media and education) and leave their faith peripheral.
  3. WE ARE SACRED/SECULAR. Most Christians have bought into the Sacred-Secular distinction which limits their faith to cultic activities and excludes it from life. The Secularists in the BBC, Politics, media and Capitalism encourage this.
  4. MOST CHRISTIANS ARE CHURCHY. Their faith is ecclesiastical. It hangs around church events, vicars, bishops and the ecclesiastical year and is evacuated from life. New Testament Christianity is obviously life, not ecclesiastical. We do not see faith in work, education, family, city, community, markets, education and more much of the time.
  5. ESTABLISHMENT RULES. Anglican Christians are, on the whole, establishment, the more so the higher up. They will not stand against Government policies or for reform, because it is not nice and rocks the boat. We have no nonconformist backbone. Most nonconformists, (except Ron and some others) have no nonconformist backbone.
  6. THEOLOGY IS UP A CREEK. Theology became a small discipline in public thinking. It sits outside science. It edges the physical and human sciences. Its language is rationalist, often academicized and introverted. It has lost the big picture. It has departed the public stage, except perhaps in Scotland.
  7. CHRISTIANITY STRAINS AT GNATS AND SWALLOWS CAMELS. We fit exactly Christ’s warning. We swallow Individualism, Consumerism, Populism, Capitalism and the Selfish Society and choke on whether women should be bishops, gay relationships should be recognised in church services and what the liturgy for lockdown should be. We do not see the Big Picture.
  8. WE HAVE NO CULTURAL CRITIQUE. That the Individualism/Ego culture, Consumer Capitalism, State Power Systems, self-contained understandings of Science and Technology might be wrong are not considered by Christians. We are shallow enough to be taken in by charlatans. We are still on the train of Progress waving out of the window shortly before it crashes. Time for radical critique.
  9. WE ARE UNEDUCATED IN THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW. The Christian understanding of Creation, human stewardship, the norms of life together, the centrality of God for all of life, the forms of sin and human evil, the Christian science of the natural world, the evils of political power, militarism, mammon, self-righteousness, human tribalism, the character of the gentle Kingdom of God and God’s victory over the cross and human sin and evil and the calling of Christians is lost to many Christians. We have the world’s greatest teacher, but are uneducated.
  10. WE DO NOT ACT TOGETHER. Christians are a body headed by Christ. We act like ants attacked by an anteater – incoherently and in suppressed panic. We do not see what we could do together. Two billion plus around the world can move quite a few mountains at once, but we do not even see the possibility. A thousand people, really working together, are formidable.
  11. WE DO NOT LIVE BY FAITH. We are so entrenched in our present lifestyles, especially in the “west”, that we do not see that we are not living the lives and the way of Christ with any integrity. We, almost all of us, are deeply compromised.
  12. WE DO NOT WORK OUT HOW TO MOVE MOUNTAINS. Jesus said it. If you are fighting a war, plan it. He did not mean a military war – different kit, different end, but you have to know where you are going. I’ve spent twenty years on this one, and you can’t do two until you’ve done one. Good honest non-individualist Christian strategy is needed.

We can, with some changes of heart and mind, address these issues. They have been around much of our lives and God might be asking us to take them on…

TPNW

THE TREATY FOR THE PROHIBITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS 2.

LAURA KUENNSBERG: Prime Minister, it is good of you to have this impromptu interview.

BORIS: No, don’t mention it, Laura. The British public  deserve to hear me as leader of our leading country.

LAURA: It is about the TPNW, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which becomes international law in three weeks. Will we obey international law, duly passed through the United Nations, or ignore it?

BORIS: Er. That is a bit of a stinker, Laura. As you know we lead the world in upholding international law, except when we owe Iran £400 million which we do not want to give them because they will just buy more weapons from Russia to replace the ones we did not supply. And I, more than anyone else, am sorry for Nazanin. Where was I? Oh, International Law. Er, I L, as I call it, has changed. We do I L through America. That’s not just me. Tony did it with Doublja on Iraq and Teresa sucked up to Trump. So, we Nuclear Weapons people have decided to ignore International Law, or I L as I call it. We half ignore it. We accept the nuclear weapons bit and ignore the prohibition, and we don’t talk about it, like I am trying not to talk about it now.

LAURA: But a hundred and twenty nations signed up for it at the UN. They can’t all be wrong?

BORIS: No, Er, Laura, it is not wrong for them. That is why they do not have nuclear weapons. We have them, at great cost to ourselves, and our nucleah weapons protect them. We have backed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as we said at the Foreign Office, which prevents THEM becoming US. We uphold that international Law and not the new one, which is too new.

LAURA: But the NPT required us also to divest our nuclear weapons. We have ignored what we signed up to there. The NPT aimed at prohibition.

BORIS: But you do not have to obey all the law, as I frequently say to my Cabinet, especially, if you see a better way and keep it quiet. And really, these other countries are jealous that we have nucleah weapons. We have them and they don’t, and they are jealous, because that makes us a superpower on the UN Security Council and helps us lead the world.

LAURA: Prime Minister, perhaps these other countries think we would all be more secure without nuclear weapons, threats and the worldwide escalation of arms sales.

BORIS: It must be difficult for you to understand, Laura, but this nucleah deterrent stuff is all a question of balance. It needs two sides and each side must keep its finger near the button. I practice with my thumb actually. And then we keep you safe. We are defending the United Kingdom, and it will be forever united while I am Prime Minister, and you, even you, are grateful when I keep you safe. Oh, you are so cute, Laura, when you smile and frown at the same time. And Putin is a Chelsea supporter, so we have got it all covered. We superpowers are just going to keep schtum over the next few weeks and let the international law thingy pass over. We must be villagent and we will win through, and lead the world. There, what an ending. Thank you, Laura.  

General

“THIS INTERVIEW DOES NOT EXIST” (TREATY ON PROHIBITION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS – TPNW- 1)

BORIS: So, hello, this is my TV appearance for today. Thank you for submitting your questions early so that Dominic could think about them. Oh, Dominic’s gawn. Who did this? Laura, ask your question for the BBC. Speak up. Oh, silly girl, switch yourself on. I have the question here. It is WHOM would we attack with our nucleah weapons. Which university did you go to? Did they not teach you about the Accusative? Sometimes it is put in front of the verb. Never mind if you are a bit backwards, because we are in charge.

Oh so, it says here, you aim nucleah weapons, but you do not attack. The point about nucleah weapons is they don’t attack, but deter. So, the question is not about attack, but about aim. And our folks have led the world in solving that one. If you aim, you can miss, as plebs do when they try that double top thing in their pubs, though they mustn’t go to pubs because we must keep the thingummy down below one, even in pubs. So, we do not aim. Instead, Laura, we have a batch of nuclear warheads in the same wocket, and they spwead out and wipe out the whole area, say Russia, China or North Korea over the other side of the big map. So, we have solved the aim pwoblem, and do not need to attack. Do you understand that, Laura?

LAURA KUENNSBERG: Yes, Prime Minister. Do Russia and China have the same spreading warheads?

BORIS: Of course, they do. We lead the world but others follow. You have a bit of a German sounding name, Laura. I hope you have a visa. You remember, although you are a bit of a young thing, that the USSR threatened us, because they were Communist and Socialist and against the Free Capitalist Democratic World such as us, like Corbyn, who was really in favour of nucleah weapons, because he was Communist, though he said he was against them. Oh where was I, or am I, as they taught us at Eton, Ego sum or sum ego or something.

They have spreading warheads. One of theirs could wipe out London and the Home Counties. That is why we let Russian oligarchs buy a lot of big mansions and football clubs in London and the South East. They are not goin’ to wipe out their own properties with a big nuclear flattener. It stands to reason. So, London and the South east is safe against nucleah attacks, and it only cost a few stately homes.

LAURA KUENNSEBERG: What about the North, Prime Minister?

BORIS: What what about the North, Laura. It is up there at the top, and it is susceptible to nuclear attack. Note the word, susceptible. Not that people in the North use the word “susceptible” you understand. For people in the North and other places – don’t ask me where they are – we have our Continuous At Sea Nuclear Deterrent, as my valet taught me to say, but not after drinking. This is always ready with a full-out nuclear stwike anywhere, anytime when I press the button and it is this which keeps us safe. That is why everyone should vote for us because we keep you safe, especially in the South East, with Chelsea Football Club, where we are doubly safe.

LAURA: Does that mean Russia would not attack us? I understand they donate to the Conservative Party on a big scale.

BORIS: All kinds of people recognize what a great Party we are. In this great City of London we have persuaded a lot of Russians  to bank over her in our great banks so that they will not blow up their own bank accounts. So, Russia is only an official enemy. We need enemies. Our system of Defence depends on it. We are their enemy and they are our enemy. We help their defence department, their wicked Kremlin, spend money, and they help us. We spy on them and they spy on us. It is too complicated for your tiny mind, Laura, but Yes, Russia would attack us. They are a big threat. Although not to Donald, but Donald is gawn. So they are our enemy and dangerous. They could nuke all of us tomorrow and we would just be a hole in the North Sea. That is why we leave Russia to the US, and Biden will be Anti-Russian and all will be well.

LAURA: So, Prime Minister, are you saying that our Independent Nuclear Deterrent is not aimed at Russia because it is too powerful for us and donates to the Conservative Party?

BORIS: Good Lord, No, Yes. Did I say that hole in the North Sea thing? Blimey. People, the hoi poloi, as we say, will think this is dangerous. They must just think we are safe. We are so grateful that Boris makes us safe and Corbyn will kill us. Cut. We must cut this interview, or I will abolish the BBC and send you back to Bongo Bongoland, Laura Kuennsberg. Good Lord. People will start thinking about nucleah stuff and is it good for us. This is dead. This interview does not exist. Russia is Communist. I am not here. This interview must be destroyed.

Christmas is Political

1. JESUS – GOD’S WORLD RULER

First, the central truth that Jesus is God’s World Ruler. We know it opened up in Isaiah 9 and throughout the prophets.

“For to us a child is born, To us a son is given, And the government will be on his shoulders. He will be called the Wonderful Judge/Prime Minister, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and right judgement from that time on and forever.”

Less it is observed how Jesus, while fully taking on the title King of the Jews (even to the extent of insisting on the title to Pilate when it would kill him) also avoided being merely the Jewish national ruler. He acknowledged himself as Messiah to the Samaritan woman, but damped it within Jewish situations. He turned down the national insurrection move of the five thousand crowd in John 6 15. He relativised the Temple, the Jewish national symbol. God’s ruler of all nations could not be nationalist, or nationally focussed, to the exclusion of others.

Paul understood that Jesus was Messiah , the Christ, of all Nations, especially in Romans 15 and quotes Isaiah, “the root of Jesse will spring up, one who will arise to rule over the nations; the Gentiles will hope in him.” The Christ of all Nations is the ruler of all. The Orthodox understanding of Pantocrator is the Almighty, the ruler of all peoples.

My understanding would be that western culture now is so dominated by the political rule as control, the will of the people or the elite, and military conquest – as it was in the first century – that it cannot understand and get inside the kind of rule which Jesus insists on – humble, service, disarming, for the weak, for all, law abiding, not domineering or aggressive and self-effacing. But we have allowed this rule to be sentimentalised and locked inside church, rather than being political, as it is in the New Testament.

Jesus is Son of David, King of the Jews, Son of Man (the vision given in Babylon), Son of God and Messiah or Christ. You don’t get much more political than that. Recognising Jesus political rule is the sticking point for the existing powers and the greatest challenge for humankind. To understand and submit to Christ is to open up the political healing of the nations we so obviously need.

Of course, the obvious Christmas expression of the rule of Christ over all nations is found in the fact that three kings turn up at his birth in homage with gifts. With God’s guidance they understood that the baby was king of all nations, the ruler of all, even though the jealous Herod the Great, probably creased with bowel cancer, did not. And so we bring our gifts to God’s ruler of the nations.

Apologetics

GOD AND PROVIDENCE.

PROVIDENCE. A long standing Biblical and Christian understanding of the stuff around us is that God provides and we receive. Christians give thanks and are grateful for all that is provided because they believe that to be the true response to what we receive. They say grace before meals, because receiving food is far more than just eating. It is various kinds of nutritious food, the conditions for their growing and the work of farmers and retailers which brings food to our tables And it is far beyond that to the created provision of this food. One grace is especially naff: “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful, Amen.” Requiring the Creator to evoke our gratitude, if providence is true, is especially flaccid; gratitude should be the response to what has actually happened. But has it? Is Providence a compelling argument? It can, of course, merely be an emotional bias. When something nice is provided, it is providence, but when things go wrong, it is not.

But even this response is wrong. Providence is not about things happening. It concerns what, if anything, is provided. “Provide” is prepared beforehand.  It is already there. Someone has provided the toilet paper – Good. It involves a prior independent act by Someone which has now realised its benefits. It must not be accident, coincidence or happening, but foresight -something seen before. which has now come to pass. It differs from emergence in quite a striking way. Emergence emanates from what was before. It is contained in it. Superficially we say the butterfly emerged from the chrysalis. Partly, this is because we do not know the chrysalis well enough – the genetic code, the growth process, the effects of weather and so, but it does emerge. It comes from within. It follows from. Providence does not follow from. It is provided by an Other. So we are looking  for foresight and non-emergence. The problem seems to be that the more we understand, the more compelling, and intriguing, the possibility becomes.

                We are provided with water to run our bodies, oxygen to breathe, the right level of gravitation to become featherless bipeds, a climate that suits us and food which comes in a variety of forms which are accessible to a herbivorous and carnivorous mammal. But say that is just the result of a whole load of highly unusual conditions which happen to occur on our earth among a lot of galaxies, stars and planets where other outcomes are the case, and it occurs by chance, and not through the Creator? Notice the chance reference says nothing. God may have designed a universe where the possibilities of human life are very rare; yet we are here but not “by chance”. Indeed, the design of a universe where these possibilities of providence occur anywhere may require the hand of God rather than, I was going to say, “mere concatenations”, but the chaining of events underlines our problem. Chance involves no chains. Chance is the old non-explanation. Yet, let us, for the sake of considering the depth of the problem allow that a whole load of basic things for our benefit could happen and through a long process of evolution be accommodated into our lives.

                Consider, for example, food. Living things eat in increasingly complex ways and most animals, including ourselves, have learned to absorb these aids to energy and growth. The menu is now vast. It includes corn, caviar, carrot, coffee, chocolate, cauliflower, cheddar, camembert, crab, clam chowder,  cream, celery, chicken, cherries, chives, cabbage, chips, cantaloupe, cranberry and many other Cs. Some of them are as given. Some have been developed through plant and animal breeding, and some focusses around food preparation. God, or Chance, is not directly responsible for Cheddar or Chips. But that is not Providence. That is what goes before. What goes before is millions of years of species development. It is the long process of laying down fenland soil, of glaciating rock into soil, of changing the atmospheric content, temperatures and sea levels. In this sense most of world history has been preparation for a cabbage a chicken or a crab. The question is whether this is Provident, what would happen now has been in preparation across the aeons, and God said, “Let it be and it was so”  eventually, or whether all this food just tumbled out without rhyme or reason.

There is an issue in the scale of what has been provided. Above we just looked at the C foods, but the full provision picture will be ten to fifteen times that. And, the issue is bigger than food. Providence is vast in scale. There are ordinary things – stone for building, slate for roofs, wood for furniture and clay for bricks. There are the old discovered things like glass for windows, wool and cotton for clothes, leather for shoes and wine to drink. Then consider all the other things which have been discovered as useful recently, but which had no use-meaning through most of human and world history. We have coal and oil, buried until later industrialisation. We have iron ore and steel, silicon and silicon chips. We have superconductivity, which must have been set up in the early quantum development of the universe. This is not biology, but the things built into the physical structure of the universe which are for us, which provide.. We, of course, in our arrogance focus on the science we have discovered, and seem not to see the extraordinary extent to which providence is there, for plants and animals and us. Really, most of what we use in our daily lives for everything – machines, power, heat, clothes, artifacts, furniture, technology and travel has been provided down the aeons. We are mere waiters, carrying the food to the table.

In the past the carpenter reverently ran his hand along the piece of oak he had been given to use. Now that process is machined down to a selfish act of consumption, without awe, respect for the provenance of all things or an awareness of how slight our contribution is. Yet it remains true that most of what we receive is provided by God, previously beyond our comprehension, but now increasingly understood. Sadly, we are now in the business of destroying a lot of it, the opposite of Providence, the great long-term God denying impoverishment.  Our first step to preventing roaaring away global warming is to acknowledge and study what we have been given for our good. When we see that, we will love God and truly see God’s creation for the act of love it is.