EGN NEWS DESK
On 26 September, British journalist, Jon Sopel, launched his guide Strangeland: How Britain Stopped Making Sense. Sopel was motivated to write down this reflective and private work upon returning to the UK after eight years as a world correspondent within the US. The Britain he present in 2022 was not the nation he had left in 2014, ‘This was a Britain that whereas I had been away had charted a brand new political and financial course for itself with the referendum to go away the European Union.’
I doubt many individuals would query that the EU Referendum of 2016 was a seismic occasion that despatched shockwaves throughout the nation, by our cities, countryside, friendship teams and households, together with my very own. At the time, my uncle, Paul Brannen, was a member of the European Parliament for North East England and, standing resolutely behind him, we grew to become significantly attuned to the rift that was quickly rising between those that wished to stay within the EU and those that wished to go away.
A bodily illustration of this division was performed out throughout a church service at my native CofE in Northumberland, because the vicar requested your entire congregation to take part in a social train. Said train concerned roughly fifty to sixty individuals lining up alongside the size of the church, with ‘Remain’ voters standing nearest the font and ‘Leave’ voters nearest the altar. Unsurprisingly, I made a beeline for the wall behind the font and pressed my again defiantly towards it, obtrusive down the aisle at my opponents. ‘What on earth is flawed with them?’, I bristled internally, ‘How may they probably vote for Brexit? Bigots, racists, I’m proper and so they’re flawed!’
Then, one thing highly effective occurred. The vicar urged us to kind the road right into a circle, forcing me on the one excessive to carry arms with a staunch Brexiteer. As I took the lady’s hand in mine, I realised I knew her. She was the mom of a woman within the junior choir that I helped to guide and, so far as I knew, a superbly good, type, extraordinary human being. I started to understand that this lady didn’t deserve my enmity. As a lot as I’d disagree together with her political opinions and selections, she was definitely not the evil, prejudiced, antagonist that I had constructed up in my thoughts. Was it potential that, because the late Jo Cox mentioned, ‘We are way more united and have way more in frequent than that which divides us’?
Eight years on from the referendum, polarisation in international politics is rife and nowhere is that this extra evident than within the turmoil surrounding the upcoming US election. Individuals on each side of the divide are fast to anger, chastise, demean, and unwilling to enter into precise conversations. In the echo chambers of social media, it’s far simpler to shout and fail to hear. Brexit, the Scottish Independence referendum, the Covid-19 pandemic, and 4 normal elections within the area of 9 years have all proven us that we’re definitely not immune. If solely there was a vaccine for such animosity.
As Christians, we’re known as to reside our lives within the likeness of Jesus, and to ask ourselves what he would do when confronted with such trials. In Luke 10:25-37, an obvious ‘knowledgeable within the legislation’ (10:25) asks Jesus what he should do to inherit everlasting life. Jesus, in flip, asks the person how he interprets God’s Law, to which the person responds, ‘Love the Lord your God with all of your coronary heart and with all of your soul and with all of your energy and with all of your thoughts; and love your neighbour as your self’ (10:27).
Jesus praises him for answering appropriately however the man wonders who his neighbour is (10:29). Usher in ‘The Parable of the Good Samaritan’, the story of a Jewish man who, after being crushed and robbed, is helped, not by these paragons of morality, the passing priest and Levite, however by a Samaritan.
In the 1999 retelling of the Easter story, The Miracle Maker, we get some concept of what Jews and Samaritans considered one another. A bunch of kids reply to the parable in shock, as one cries, ‘Samaritans throw rocks at us’, and one other, ‘I spit at them. I hate them!’ However, the gang is clearly humbled when Jesus says, ‘So, you inform me, which one in every of these three males proved to be the person’s neighbour?’. ‘The one who confirmed him such love,’ a remorseful man replies. And so, Jesus instructions us to ‘Go, and do likewise’ (Lk. 10:37).
Let me take you again to the transformative, post-Brexit church service I participated in. It so occurs that the sermon included a rendition of this very parable, with the roles of the Jew and the Samaritan changed by a ‘Remainer’ and a ‘Brexiteer’. It was not solely our hand-holding train that helped us all to start to see ‘the opposite’ as somebody not so totally different from ourselves. It would not take a lot creativeness to see that the opposing events may simply as simply be represented as Labour and Conservative, Democrat and Republican; the metaphor needn’t even be confined to politics. Wherever such division lies, Jesus’ message absolutely applies. He has known as us all to think about who our neighbour is and the way we are able to put apart our political variations to like them properly.
