Why secular culture can't deal with acts of terrorism

The Manchester attack was the latest act of terrorism to shock us in its sheer barbarity. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families and everyone else caught up in the chaos caused by this pathetic act.

We do also have to try to understand and deal with what has happened, though. There is no good time to do this. Waiting a day, a month or even years will never be enough to distance whatever is written from the pain caused by such terrorism. Children have been lost, and will be missing as long as those who knew and loved them live.

A title like that is also going to get me into trouble. I'm talking about a vast number of people, of all kinds of backgrounds and beliefs and in doing so, I'm going to make broad generalisations - it is impossible not to when assessing large groups. There will be many exceptions to the points I make. And I do not judge those who fit my description. I want to hold out an alternative to the culture they are living and breathing.

So here are three problems with current western culture - specifically, atheistic, postmodern, secular culture - when it tries to respond to these sorts of events.

1. It can't account for evil

The vast majority of people in the UK are, functionally, atheists. They may be cultural Christians, they may technically be deists, or pantheists but for regular day-to-day life, they act as atheists. We've been persuaded that we are nothing but biological machines, in charge of our own lives and responsible for creating the meaning and purpose in our lives.

One critical weakness with this position is that there is no objective source for morality, for right and wrong. If we are all meant to create the meaning and value in our own lives and to pursue our dreams, those dreams will inevitably clash with other people's dreams. Your values will clash with other people's values and you will have no objective way to determine who's right. You may sign up to a particular moral code but why should anyone else?

Yet, when something horrific like this happens, we can't help but deny our moral relativism. We must say that it is wrong. We can't help using words like 'evil'. 'Misguided' or 'uneducated' or 'unfortunate' just won't do as words to describe these actions. There is no room to make excuses for the perpetrator(s) of these attacks.

The reality of objective morality - found in God's revelation (general and special) - leaks out at such moments. Terrorists are wrong - they're not merely choosing different ethical codes to us. Our culture cannot make sense of this.

2. It can't handle suffering

The suffering at such times as these is very real, and very severe. Thinking about my kids I can only imagine how horrific it would be to lose them in such circumstances. Where is God in such situations? How long, O Lord?

People think that Christians are on the back foot when it comes to suffering. Why would God allow something so terrible to happen? This is a very real question, which the Bible very much encourages Christians to grapple with. The book of Job, many Psalms, Lamentations and many other parts of the Bible work through these issues. This is why many Christians are tremendous examples of enduring through bereavement, horrible illness and other kinds of suffering.

I'm not here to give trite answers, and the way in which the Bible answers these questions is as important as the answers themselves. But, briefly, suffering is personal (it is happening to real, significant persons), purposeful (it ultimately achieves good), temporary (it will one day end), and God promises to be present in our sufferings to help. Compare that to some vague wishy-hopey spirituality or the cold determinism of consistent atheism ("you're just a bunch of cells, get over it”). 

Again, people's better instincts come out at such times as these. People who live otherwise faithless lives offer their prayers for the victims. We have compassion towards those affected, not because it benefits us but because we recognise them as God’s image-bearers. Secular culture cannot account for this.

3. It doesn't understand religious motivation

We are all baffled at how someone can attack children in the way that happened in Manchester. But many in our culture can’t believe that genuine religious conviction could possibly lead to such an atrocity. Many can’t even imagine why someone would ever die for their religion, let alone kill for it.

This is secularism’s misunderstanding of the nature of religion. Secularism argues for a sort of safe space in society where everyone drops their religious reasoning and motivation, in order to build a society where we can all get along.

It sounds like a very appealing and reasonable idea until you realise all that it simply isn’t compatible with many belief systems. Islam makes specific claims about how society should be formed. Jesus Christ claims to be King of Kings and Lord of Lords – a political claim. Such beliefs do not fit into the secular model of religious neutrality in public life.

Secularism doesn’t understand this. And as its influence has grown in the UK, there has been a diminishing understanding of centrality of religion in believer’s lives. Freedom of speech and freedom of conscience make no sense to secularism, because secularism believes that religion is an optional extra that can be tacked onto the side of an otherwise secular life.

Christianity (and religion as a whole), to secularism, is a hobby, like going to the gym or playing bridge. It’s inconceivable to secularist culture, that someone would have such belief in their religion that it would affect every area of their life. That holds true for genuine Christians, who are punished for being consistently Christian in the workplace, as well as for Islamists, who believe that violent Jihad, including suicide bombings, is a legitimate means to advance the Caliphate.

Every conceivable motivation has been suggested for such attacks: grievances with foreign policy, trouble finding a romantic partner, getting high on marijuana, famelust – even climate change. For a lot of commentators and politicians, the idea that allegiance to God (or, in reality, false gods) could be the predominant motivating factor is inconceivable. Again, secularist assumptions are stopping people from naming the problem, which means they will also give the wrong answers.

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Secular culture can’t account for these realities. As these sorts of attacks inevitably continue, people will grow increasingly tired of secularism’s answers. I hope and pray that they will turn to the Christian answer – which is both true and beautiful.

Why I am observing Lent

It’s been trendy in recent years to write and share articles about why Lent is really rubbish and why not to observe it.

And there’s a lot of good wisdom there, that you can glean from the likes of Dan Hames (at the time of writing, I can’t find his annually posted article!*) and James Cary.

But I differ, and without telling you what I’m doing, I’ll tell you why I’m doing it.

1)    It’s a historic Christian tradition. Tradition is not necessarily a bad thing. Dry, heartless religiosity is no good but good traditions and structures shape us in helpful ways.

2)    I am in more danger of lawlessness than legalism. Our culture, as a whole, is certainly the same. You may be morbidly introspective, and Lent may not be helpful to you. But that’s not me.

3)    I can commit periods of my life to losing weight, training for runs, and improving my chess or guitar skills – why on earth would I not work on my walk with God?

4)    Lent and joy are not incompatible. Jesus wants those who fast to be joyful as if they weren’t. Even more so on Sundays, which trump fasts anyway.

5)    Jesus expected his followers to fast. If not Lent, when? When’s better?

6)    Other people are fasting. So Lent, done right, is corporate faith, not individualistic piety.

Anyway, that’s why I’m observing Lent this year. Call me out if I go on about it.

*Incidentally, the Dan Hames liturgical blogpost calendar goes:

Feb/March: Why no Lent

Sometime in Autumn, I forget when: Happy birthday Jesus
Oct 31st: Something Reformationy
Advent: The lyrics of Come Thou Long Expected Jesus

Detectives and stuff

I go through periods of listening to some of the crime dramas which Radio 4 Extra faithfully plays for the nation’s entertainment. In some cases, these have led to me reading some of the books associated with those same authors and characters.

I have observations on these authors and characters. They are unlikely to be original. They are not profound. But I feel the compulsion to share.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes

Recommended reads: The Hound of the Baskervilles (novel), The Red-Headed League (short story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes)

By a long way, Holmes is the most well-known, iconic detective in English crime history. He is the model for many other detectives that followed, and not just in crime fiction. The TV series, Sherlock – not to mention Elementary and the recent films – are not the only Holmes stories. House was Sherlock Holmes in a hospital. Bones, Numb3rs and a great number of other series revolve around a somewhat-condescending genius solving mysteries with a sidekick. Not all Sherlocks smoke pipes. Jonathan Creek wears a duffel coat.

Of course, there are different details – even within the official Sherlock Holmes stories. But give Sherlock Holmes the relevant jobs in each of these series, and the stories would basically be unaltered.

We are drawn to the autistic savant. I wonder why. Is it that we can comfort ourselves and our lack of intelligence/learning by the fact that we are at least human, and better relationally?

Or perhaps it simply lends itself to good explanatory dialogue. The Watson is the voice of the reader, keeping the story grounded, the Holmes is the voice of the author, driving the explanation.

That’s all without mentioning one of the foremost Sherlocks:

Agatha Christie/Hercules Poirot

Recommended reads for Poirot: The ABC Murders, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Recommended reads for non-Poirot: And Then There Were None, The Witness For The Prosecution (both of which have been skilfully, albeit humourlessly adapted for TV recently)

Christie herself fully recognised that she was writing within the tradition of Holmes style stories. A moustache instead of a pipe, and pomposity instead of opium, but with a similar role in the stories, a similar sidekick, wise observations and ingenious deductions.

My observations about Poirot are more my observations on Christie. Her novels generally (and thir adaptations) are machines. It seems to me that Christie decided the unique twist for a story (often an unlikely method of murder, but also unlikely culprits (e.g. And Then There Were None, Crooked House, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) and then worked her way out from there, complicating the story to mislead the reader in as many ways as possible.

With Christie, everything serves a direct storytelling purpose. Virtually every character will have the suspicion of guilt cast upon them.

This helps keep the story moving but limits the emotional impact and longevity of the story. Roger Ackroyd’s twist may have readers skimming the story again but there’s little pull to re-enter the imaginative worlds of even the most atmospheric of her stories. Once you know the answer the joy is mostly over.

I do not mean this as criticism – the stories are tremendous fun and there are certainly moments of humour along the way. And Poirot himself is the embodiment of that – although he’s colourfully described, and has his own cute catchphrases (‘the little grey cells’), his function in the stories is quite straightforward.

She wrote prolifically and her non-Poirot stories are often a little more interesting in my view. But this is largely to compare the alpha-male detectives, like for like – such as our next detective:

Dorothy Sayers/Lord Peter Wimsey

I must admit to not having read/listened to as much Wimsey as the others in this list. But The Nine Tailors is fresh in my memory from a recent read and the contrast to a Poirot story is noticeable.

The Nine Tailors has a longwinded joy about it. Its heart is a theme – of bellringing – used throughout the book in different ways – not just mechanically, for the mystery, but to introduce the reader to a whole type of British life that may be unfamiliar to many.

I grew up in a rural Church of England church, was briefly a verger there, and have a campanologist father. To me, it felt like home. But even for me, the details of water drainage and canals were an unfamiliar diversion. There is plenty in the book that does not directly serve the plot or the mystery, but speak to the broader person. The book isn’t filled with red herrings.

A Christie novel is like an architectural plan, sticking to the essentials. Sayers is more like a painting, highlighting the meaning of a story.

Wimsey himself is the personification of this. He gets involved in stories largely through curiosity, as a pastime. He isn’t driven, with a great sense of urgency, but plods slowly through his “detectin’”. Bunter is not much of a Watson, because Wimsey is far more personable in the first place. Wimsey is less a copy of Holmes, and more of a Jeeves/Wooster hybrid. Well-meaning and aristocratic like Wooster but with the genius of Jeeves.

I will certainly read more Sayers, and perhaps the Nine Tailors is an outlier. But I want to comment finally on the terrific…

Francis Durbridge/Paul Temple

To clarify, I mean ‘terrific’ in the sense that it is so dreadfully written it instills terror.

OK, I’ve only listened to the radio series. And they have royally entertained me, largely through being so bad they become good again.

Where to start with Paul Temple? OK, the cliffhangers. The writing is like Dan Brown raised to the power of Left Behind. Constant mystery, cliffhangers and clichés. Except, unlike with Agatha Christie, they are not even remotely resolved. Although the final episode will have twenty minutes or so of explanation, it will be so full of holes you could stick it in the Algarve and call it a golf course.

The characters act nearly entirely illogically. Paul Temple, the genius detective, stumbles from incident to incident, being deliberately mysterious and private about his thoughts for no reason, and getting him and usually his wife (Steve!) into mortal danger. The evil drug gangs that are behind each ‘affair’ (for that is what they are typically called) usually have some totally pointless distinctive calling card (like custom-made cocktail sticks) which serve no purpose to their gang but give the story a mysterious flavour.

The characters themselves are nearly entirely unlikeable; in particular, Paul Temple. He is more condescending than Moriarty falling down the Reichenbach Falls. I am no feminist but his patronising attitude to his wife is deeply off-putting. But worse still is their joint attitude towards Charlie, their butler(?) – who is ridiculed at every turn for no good reason other than to put the less fortunate in their place.

These points, and the one-dimensional characters, would be forgivable, were it not for the seemingly complete lack of self-awareness evident in the writing.

Despite all of this, I somehow like the series. The crisp accents, the hammy plot devices and the vintage music somehow compel me to listen to each series – in the hope that there will be a satisfying ending to a mystery.

The others

It would be fun to look at many more detective shows, and books to see how they’re written, how their characters are developed. Father Brown would be an interesting study, as would some of the more modern detectives like Morse. But that would take much more watching, listening and reading on my behalf.

So over to you… tell me about your favourite detectives and how they are written.