WHICH SPIRIT?
I'm going to try to hit this once more. Because I keep wondering why no one will speak plainly.
I have recently both seen and heard a minister at a lectern say that we must arm ourselves spiritually.
Spiritual rearmament, she calls it.
The room nods, the word lands softly, and no one raises their hand to ask the obvious. Because we have agreed that "it sounds right" - and agreement has a way of making us deaf to precisely what we just agreed not to hear.
But there is something I would like explained, quite calmly and quietly, by someone who knows better than I do.
Because rearmament requires something to rearm with. You do not, for example, rearm a void.
And if it is the spirit we are to strengthen, then surely we must be able to say - that is, put clear words to - which spirit we are talking about?
This is where it becomes strikingly quiet.
The silence practically roars.
We use the word spirit as if it were our own, as if it had always just been there, neutral and freely available.
But the word is not neutral. Is it?
We still count the years from a birth in a stable outside the city. We still have the day off at Pentecost, the only public holiday named directly after a spirit - that being the Holy Spirit, in case you didn't quite catch it in religious education at primary school - and we have forgotten it so thoroughly that it is now just a kind of extended weekend in May.
Grundtvig raised an entire people on that word, spirit and life, the living word, and we have inherited the house apparently without ever having read the deed?
So I ask honestly, because I simply want to know.
Which spirit is it we are to rearm, if not the Christian one?
Is it -
The socialist?
The Islamic?
The zeitgeist?
That is, more LGBTQ++, Climate and NetZero?
The hedonistic?
The capitalist?
The militarist?
The humanist?
The relativist?
The nationalist?
Which spirit, a bit more precisely, are the ministers talking about?
I wait for the answer, and while I wait, I wonder if the silence itself is the answer? We dare to call to arms. We just dare not name the banner we once marched under.
The strange thing is perhaps not that the answer is difficult. The strange thing is perhaps that it is so easy that no one dares say it aloud?
Regardless. And every minister must take note of this.
You cannot rearm a spirit you have spent half a century disarming.
Can you?
And if it is the Christian spirit being spoken of - and that would be gratifying - then surely you cannot do this without speaking directly about and taking God and Jesus and the rest of the Story into your mouth? Perhaps even into your Heart?
Can you?
Will someone kindly tell me - which Spirit are we talking about?
🤓🤷🏼♂️
