|
 Dr. Chris Watkin, post-doctoral tutor in Continental Philosophy, at Cambridge University, reflects on Obama's inauguration speech.
The faintest tremble of emotion in Jim Naughtie’s voice, the hesitant to-ing and fro-ing between BBC correspondents unsure of their next line, the pounding waves of background cheering: There is something both electric and frightening about anticipating the moment when the hopes of a nation are about to fall upon the slender shoulders of one man...
When expectation finally gave way to realisation, it was hard to resist soaring on the Obama cadences, on their peculiar blend of high rhetoric with an ultimate, almost anticlimactic detachment. But it was also easy, all too easy, to dismiss the ‘historic moment’ as journalistic hype, discount the rallying-cries for change as so many well-judged catchphrases generated by a slick marketing machine, and write off the already threadbare phrase of ‘a black man in the White House’ as mere empty symbolism. But neither an unthinking embrace nor a cynical dismissal constitute a worthy Christian participation in these events. A characteristically and distinctively Christian way to receive the spirit of the inauguration is perhaps better captured in a four-stage process: ‘we want’, ‘we can’t’, ‘he did’, ‘we can’. ‘We want’ is an affirmation, standing shoulder to shoulder with the adulating crowds, of all that is good in the aspirations of the new administration. As Christians we affirm that it is good to desire a solution to a health-care system that all too often neglects those who most need it, that it is good to seek peace and to hold out the hand of friendship to all like-minded nations, that it is good to oppose intimidation and ideological bloodshed, and that it is good to desire the safeguarding of livelihoods and the ‘remaking’ of a country facing a financial crisis the full horror of which is yet to be fully revealed. Let us not miss this opportunity to affirm, along with all those who are willing, that we want these good things. Let us affirm the goals and aspirations of the new administration, wherever and however they coincide with the character, will and actions of God. Yet any serious ‘we want’ must be brought back to earth with a sober ‘we can’t’. Our affirmation must open its eyes to a hard-bitten scepticism, a scepticism not about the aspirations themselves, but about the inability of this or any administration, this or any nation, to achieve them. Why not? Because they will not work hard enough? Because the Obama bounce will give way to Barack blues? Because of the unrealistic and unrealisable weight of expectations being placed upon the new Head of State? No, our scepticism is deeper than that. It is not simply that Obama and his team will not achieve the wonderful goals they have set for themselves. It is that they cannot. Christians trace the crises and challenges that face us to their source in the human heart, an organ impervious to the finest words and most heartfelt of intentions, immune to all the levers and mechanisms of government. Can lasting peace come to the Middle East without a radical change of heart on both sides? Can we address the problem of greed that provides the oxygen of our market system without a profound renewal of the hearts of those who run it? Levers of government—pull the other one. Yet this combination of affirmation and scepticism is, by itself, not yet distinctively Christian, for just as we looked beyond the grand aspirations of ‘we want’ to the realism of ‘we can’t’, we must also see past the world-weariness that seeks to tear down all hope and all desire for change. We look beyond to see one who did embody and stand for the change we all want, who reached over barriers of class, wealth, gender and race with a message of hope that knows no distinctions between persons, who was genuinely and unostentatiously free from greed, and whose steady opposition to illnesses and maladies of all sorts, combined with his unheard-of power to heal, was acknowledged even by those who opposed him. Can one man carry the hopes of a watching world? Can one man embody the idealistic aspirations of society in need of being remade? The Christian response is to overcome both idealism and cynicism with the example of Jesus Christ. Not only could he live a life in which all our good aspirations are gathered, but ‘he did’. And yet, once more, our response cannot stop here. The same God who provided the only credible life-long embodiment of all that this or any administration strives to put into words is the same God who brings about radical change today, the most radical change of all, the transformation of the human heart. What we cannot and could never do, he can do in us, transforming us from one degree of glory, from one degree of Christ-likeness to the next. We may be the most sober, most sceptical students of the recalcitrant human heart, but we are also the most up-beat, most change-thirsty worshippers of the God who transforms hearts in the image of his Son. We are those for whom hope is not merely audacious, but the very living milieu into which we have been born again. Yes we can change, in a more profound, more life-affirming and more socially beneficial way than we dare dream, through the change not just exemplified by Jesus’ life, but also enabled by his indwelling. So far from pouring cold water on the political rhetoric of hope, we should challenge its parochial vision. And far from meekly pleading with the sceptics to show a little good will we should throw out the challenge that their scepticism is not deep enough by half. For the hope that is our daily experience is no dream parcelled up in well-chosen words, but an in-breaking reality secured on a bloody cross and sealed with a triumphant resurrection. With this exhilarating context of unstoppable transformation we can meet both the chattering chorus of excited optimism and the cynical column-inches of weary pessimism with a distinctively Christian cry that takes full account of them both and yet remains satisfied with neither. The Christian ‘we want’ identifies with the hopes of those around us. The Christian ‘we can’t’ trumps even the weariest cynic and voices the truth that many dare not face. The Christian ‘he did’ points to a Jesus who not only spoke the language of change but also lived its reality. And the Christian ‘we can’ is therefore born not of an arrogant self-belief but of a trust in the change-enabling God. For our message of hope reaches as deep as the agony of the cross and soars as high as the victory of the resurrection. We proclaim Jesus: ‘Change? Yes we can!’
|
