Saint Augustine’s Church (on the Wall), Londonderry, Northern Ireland
I’ve often said the existence keys is the best evidence we live in a fallen world. Keys are necessary to unlock locks, and locks are only necessary because people steal.
In terms of such evidence city walls run a close second. We’ve seen many examples of city walls in our travels: Jerusalem, Istanbul, Vienna, York, Dubrovnik. Today we added Londonderry to that list.
Londonderry’s famous walls
The irony is in Londonderry the walls could not defend against what threatened to tear the city apart following the Reformation. That threat culminated in “The Troubles” of 1968 through 1972, and more acutely on Bloody Sunday (January 23, 1972), where 13 civil rights demonstrators were killed by the police.
St. Columba and St. Patrick would have been shocked to hear “The Troubles” framed as a religious dispute amongst Christians. It was more political and cultural than religious. I never heard the leaders of the opposing sides debating salvation and the merits of monergism or synergism.
Our tour guide was careful to make clear that his use of the name “Derry” (the Irish Republican designation) instead of Londonderry (the UK/Unionist name), was not intended to be a political statement but a more convenient name for the city we were touring today. Fortunately, things have quieted down here since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and we no longer associate Northern Ireland with bombings and the IRA.
Key in bringing about that 1998 peace agreement was John Hume, a devout Christian who attended St. Columb’s (Columba’s) school, and St. Patrick’s College, where he studied for the priesthood before choosing a career in education and ultimately in politics.
Northern Ireland can be thankful Hume chose a career in politics rather than the priesthood, and more importantly that he choice to be peacemaker.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Matthew 5:9.
When we act as peacemakers, we are imitating our Father. Like father like son. The Apostle Paul spoke of this imitation of the Father when he told the Galatians that those who are lead by the Spirit of God are the children of God. Galatians 8:14. When we are led by the spirit, we imitate God, Who is spirit.
When I was a teenager, we were at the end of the period of domination of television in the US by the three major news networks. While they all leaned left of center, they ostensibly strove for the standard of accuracy, independence, and impartiality. That standard was exemplified by the likes of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and David Brinkley.
Those days are gone now, buried under the buffet of cable and streaming news channels, many of which are committed to delivering an unapologetic ideologically or politically driven view of the world. Do you want a liberal view of the day’s events? MSNBC is at your service. Do you want a conservative view? Try Fox News. Do you have a taste for hard right conspiracy theories? Try Infowars or Breitbart News.
As a result, now you can choose to hear only what you already believe. You do not have to suffer the angst of having your beliefs questioned or hearing those who disagree with you.
This ability to listen only to those with whom we agree, provided to a people who have seemingly choose not to exercise that choice irresponsibly, has resulted in the unprecedented political polarization we are now experiencing. The plurality of opinion in the marketplace of ideas has become merely hypothetical if we choose to hear only the opinions with which we agree.
The Bible warns of the danger of hearing only one side of any argument:
We are in the middle of a political season, and I already feel sick to my stomach.
When I went to the polls to vote in the primary a few weeks ago, I was so disappointed with the choices I was given I jokingly told my wife I felt disenfranchised. In reality, I was just sick of politics, I didn’t like being drawn into it, even for the ostensibly virtuous act of voting.
The current rancor though in politics is nothing new. I recently read biographies on Cato and Cicero and was shocked at how vitriolic the political debate of first century B.C. Roman politics had been. Personal attacks on one’s political opponent and the demonizing of an opponent’s policies was all par for the course.
When I recently read Aristotle’s Rhetoric, I should not have been surprised to find he advocated ad hominem arguments in politics; apparently, anything to win was justified when it came to political argument.
What disappoints me is that we are nearly two thousand years into the manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth, and the rancor and demonization of one’s opponents so popular amongst pagan Romans seems to be alive and well amongst Christian Americans.
It’s election season again in the USA, and while anything can happen, it certainly appears it will be Trump v. Biden, round 2.
If you bump around on the internet, it’s easy to find blogs by well-meaning Christians telling Christians why they must vote, many even quoting Scripture, as if Moses came down from Mount Sinai with ballots instead of tablets.
But what do you do if you can’t stomach Donald Trump’s narcissism, name-calling, or have a general objection to your Commander in Chief bragging about grabbing women “by the p****y”? But on the other hand you cannot in good conscience vote for Joe Biden, who continues to support a woman’s right to kill her unborn baby or a man’s right to use the same restroom as your wife or daughter? What do you do?
Some people will tell you that sometimes you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. If someone tells you that, ask them for a Bible verse. I don’t know when the Bible ever says we must choose evil. In fact, the Bible says just the opposite, promising the Lord will provide you “a way out” so you do not have to choose evil. I Corinthians 10:13.
