Portrait of Handel, by Balthasar Denner (c1726–1728)
Handel with care: Bob Johnson listens in
‘Just why do the nations so furiously rage together?’
I love Handel’s Messiah – most of it. The rich sounds, the ebullient energy, the familiar soaring melodies, all contribute to a wonderful evening. The words are edifying too – mostly. Perhaps it’s the glimpse into how Christianity looked in 1741. But sometimes they grate, even bringing a catch to the throat. Just why do the nations so furiously rage together? And why do the people imagine a vain thing?
When David composed Psalm 2, from which these two pressing questions come, human beings were just as beastly to each other. That was thousands of years ago. What have we learned since? We still can’t stop the raging. We propagate more vain things around the clock than ever.
The rage between nations afflicts us domestically too. Since 1945 we’ve acquired enough thermonuclear equipment to put an end to all life on this beautiful planet. What is it about us human beings that stops us enjoying each other, instead devising ever more effective ways of making things worse? And, given that it keeps happening everywhere, and all the time, does it really make any sense to hope for better?
To crown it all, the vain things the people do now imagine erode the central message of most of the world’s religions: be more sociable, get on better together, it pays you to take care of one another. It’s as if, since purgatorial hell is no longer there to deter the anti-social, the psalmist’s highly relevant challenges have taken second place. Religions used to offer relief. What stops them doing so today?
Well, for me, Quakerism hasn’t stopped. It keeps blossoming. The more I reflect on it, and the more I learn about it, my appreciation of it, and gratitude for it, grow. For me, where many religions remain shackled to old-style thinking, such as walking on water, or turning water into wine, Quakerism soars. Instead of telling me what to believe, Quakerism advises me to live life experimentally. In place of written beliefs, it offers me Testimonies. And what Testimonies they are. So tight. So relevant. But (it has to be admitted) so counter-cultural.
Take just two: the Peace Testimony, and the Testimony for Truth. The first is portrayed as weakness, capitulating to wrong-doing. The second sounds like whistling in the gale of today’s fake-news. Our cultures seem to be marching ever more determinedly in precisely the contrary direction.
They bring me comfort because they do. The more I learn about that ineffable mystery, the human being, the more I value these Testimonies. Simplicity too is at a premium. To me, every ‘enemy’ that ever was is also, at heart, a human being – and no human ever existed who did not also have inside them a spark of the divine, however you care to define that.
It’s up to you to believe this spark is there, to seek it out – indeed to ‘weary it out’, as James Nayler said. More, it pays you to make the effort, however counter-cultural it seems. Once you do, the rages fade, beliefs in vain things recede, allowing real peace to come to all.
