Whose side are you on
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Mark 1:21-28
In the radio programme and podcast The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed, Simon Armitage, the Poet Laureate, interviews someone in the public eye. In a feature called One or the Other, he presents binary choices to an interviewee. Here are the questions he asked J. K. Rowling when she was a guest:
Day or night?
Spring or autumn?
Witches or wizards?
Museum or gallery?
Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Slits? [Punk bands from the 70s]
Passenger seat or driving seat?
Middle Earth or Narnia?
North or south?
Lightning or rainbow?
JRR Tolkein or CS Lewis?
God or no God?
Ruth Rendell or PD James?
Ghosts or no ghosts?
Wine or whisky?
Dog or cat?
Arthur’s Seat or Glastonbury Tor?
Washing up or drying?
Immortality or omnipotence?
The interview is on BBC Sounds if you are curious about her answers. But when a poet is asking such binary questions you have to wonder if binary thinking is on the rise? Yes or no? Are we increasingly seeing issues as having only two sides, an either/or, with a demand for certainty in our choice.
There is evidence suggesting binary thinking is more prevalent. Current political figures are undoubtedly polarising – from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, from India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a certain Boris Johnson, still lurking around British politics. Social and political issues are often seen as yes/no, for/against questions from Scottish independence to trans; Israel/Palestine to abortion. As we know well, disagreements on these issues are hugely divisive, with massive online pile-ons around binary differences. Pretty much anyone in the public eye will speak privately of the virulence of the attacks that come their way on social media: it’s love or hate out there.
It seems as if we need to make our choice over every issue which confronts us. One or the other. Whose team do you support? Whose posts will you like? Whose side are you on? Even in St Andrews, there are binaries: Arts or Science? Hall or flat? East Sands or West Sands? Main Library or staking out a corner of Pret? Spiced pumpkin latte or London Fog? Avocado on sourdough or meat feast from Dominos? In final year and know what you’re doing next, or in final year with no idea what you’re doing next?
This may be a growing phenomenon but it’s not new. The past has its own polarising figures from Alexander the Great to Joan of Arc; Napoleon to Margaret Thatcher, who, 40 years ago, divided the country over a coal-miners’ strike. And in 1931 in the midst of another miners’ strike in Kentucky, Florence Reece, wife of the local union organizer, wrote a song called Which side are you on?
We set out to join the picket line
For together we cannot fail
We got stopped by police at the county line
They said, “Go home boys or you’re going to jail”
Which side are you on, boys?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on, boys?
Which side are you on?
There have always been binary choices before us. Us or them. Whose side are you on? Maybe it’s just the way I’m made, but I always feel uncomfortable with this kind of binary thinking. The more I reflect on an issue, the more it seems that it’s more complicated than a single choice, a yes or no. Either-one-or-the-other seems oversimplified, unable to capture the many-layered complexity of the questions, the people involved, the possible outcomes. It also seems to close off curiosity, further learning, or changing our minds.
What of faith, of Christian faith in particular? What relationship does Christian faith have with such binary thinking? On the surface, it seems that faith is all about choice, either/or, being on one side rather than the other.
God or no God?
Jesus – divine or merely human?
God or the Devil?
Believe or disbelieve?
Follow or rebel?
Whose side are you on?
This has been put clearly in a hymn from 1877 by Frances Havergal:
Who is on the Lord’s side? Who will serve the King?
Who will be His helpers, Other lives to bring?
Who will leave the world’s side? Who will face the foe?
Who is on the Lord’s side? Who for Him will go?
By Thy call of mercy, By Thy grace divine,
We are on the Lord’s side; Savior, we are Thine.
For Havergal’s hymn, the Lord’s side is not the world’s side. Serving the King means facing the foe. Being a Christian means being on the Lord’s side.
Today’s readings are not obviously about such duality, but it is implied, not far below the surface. In Deuteronomy, Moses is speaking to his fellow-Hebrews in the wilderness. He tells them that a prophet like him will arise and that they shall heed him. God gives a warning – if they do not heed this later prophet, he will hold them accountable. And there is a further warning for anybody claiming to be a prophet, to speak in God’s name but with a message which is not from God – that prophet shall die.
There are clear binaries in this passage:
to heed God’s prophet or not to heed
God or other gods
The Lord’s word or not
Life or death.
The Gospel reading features Jesus, whom Christians believe is the prophet like Moses whom God promised. Jesus encounters a man filled with an unclean spirit in Capernaum. This spirit seems to speak through the man: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” And the answer may well be yes – for Jesus, full of God’s Holy Spirit, casts out the unclean spirit. Now, another time, I’d be happy to explore how best we can understand this language of spirits, so different from the ways we approach people’s psychology today. But the central point remains the same. Jesus, throughout the gospels especially Mark, encounters and overcomes opposition. There are stark binaries laid before us, the readers:
Clean or unclean.
God or the Devil.
Good or Evil.
Authority or powerlessness.
The world’s side or the Lord’s side.
All through the Bible, we are presented with these alternatives, and we are invited to choose. Which side are you on, friends, which side are you on?
What are the consequences of this for the life of faith? In some ways, I think it’s led Christians and the church over centuries to a particular mindset – a binary one:
Do you believe or not?
Do you have faith or not?
Have you received Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour – or not?
Have you received assurance of grace – or not?
Are you a Christian or a non-Christian?
Are you orthodox or a heretic?
Is this action sinful or not?
Are you going to heaven or hell?
Who’s in and who’s out? Often, this binary thinking led to people being outside the church’s community, the world’s side rather than the Lord’s side: for example, people, often women, accused of witchcraft, followers of other religions, and LGBT people.
Even today, many people find life a lot more comfortable in this binary set-up, with clear distinctions between what to believe and what to cast out. In my lifetime, I’ve seen the Christian churches becoming increasingly polarised and popular – Catholic, evangelical and Pentecostal churches have largely moved to firmer positions, defining themselves in binary terms, for the Bible, for authority, counter-cultural, taking a stand against eg women’s ministry, and LGBT acceptance. Mainstream churches which have tried to work through these differences, remaining broad places of complexity and variations in thinking – these churches have become less popular, stranded as the tide has gone out. An article in the Financial Times last year makes this point really well, including interviews from me and from Jared Michelson, who preached here last week.
And yet, for all the popularity of either/or Christianity, it seems to me to have the same problems as binary thinking everywhere: Either-one-or-the-other seems oversimplified, unable to capture the many-layered complexity of the questions, the people involved, the possible outcomes. It also seems to close off curiosity, further learning, or changing our minds.
And so, I hold out for the possibility of a full-spectrum faith. The really interesting questions in faith are multi-layered, with overlapping perspectives, and require us to keep listening to new voices, open to evidence from science, experience, the arts, alongside scripture and theology. These are questions like – How do we live in the midst of climate change? How do we respond to the changing experiences people have of gender? How do we find ways to foster peace in places of deeply contested convictions? How is God active in the world? What does it mean to be saved? When should we make sacrifices for God, for others? What do we hope for? And there are hundreds more questions which require resolutely non-binary approaches.
Yes, there will be disagreements, in a shared full-spectrum faith. But disagreeing doesn’t have to mean disdaining the other, demeaning them or debarring them from fellowship. You are welcome to disagree with what any preacher says here; you can follow that up indeed with an email, or a conversation. That’s all right. That’s how faith engages with God’s extraordinary world, and changes and grows.
And yet, that’s not quite the whole story. There is a deep truth in the words of Moses and the response of Jesus to the unclean spirit. There are times when the binary matters, when it is a bedrock conviction in which the choice has to be simple.
God or not God. Good or evil. God’s Spirit or not. Life or death.
I believe in God. Creator, lover of all that emerges from his generosity, companion of the world, forgiving presence, destiny and hope for all. That belief, if I allow it to, makes all the difference to pretty much everything.
I believe in Jesus, who was opposed to the hateful and the hurtful, the spirits which oppressed a man in Capernaum and countless others, and who offered belonging in God’s kingdom of compassion and goodness.
And I believe in the Spirit which opens our eyes day by day to the possibilities of life, who guides us in the responsibility of our freedom, and who unites us to God.
It’s that binary choice – faith in God who faithfully accompanies the world in grace and mercy – which allows the full-spectrum of response to God’s beautiful, fragile, extraordinary creation. Whose side are you on?