Every time a journalist phones me I remind myself of Oscar Wilde’s warning, “the difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read”.
I find that I can’t break the habit of trying to explain to journalists that there is more to the question than they have as yet seen. But it can get you into trouble.
Last Lent a nice lady from the Daily Telegraph phoned me to ask about hot cross buns. My day had been a little boring up to that point and I found myself a little over-exercised by the challenge of explaining not so much why hot cross buns mattered, but why the cross they carried on top mattered.
She wasn’t really interested in the symbolism of Christian devotion. Instead she was focussed on the full fat cream, maple and chocolate filings that had become the new hot cross bun supermarket vogue.
I wanted to explain about the cross – and that may be where I lost her attention and interest, until I began to quote Anselm on the metaphysical struggle and I could sense that I had her attention again.
I’ve noticed that telling people about Jesus doesn’t always have the impact I hope it will have, but the moment you mention the devil, they perk up instantly.
And so it was with the Daily Telegraph lady. And my lecture on metaphysics got reduced to a panic piece on Satan and the corruption of Lenten comestibles.
The Daily Star loved this so much that the devil and I had their front red top page all to ourselves, albeit I was in a photo and he was reduced to a cartoon.
Anselm was the good literature that is hardly ever read, and the journalist had gone for the soft entertaining under-belly rather than the more serious point.
So when the Telegraph phoned again this week and asked for more theological comments on Advent calendars I wondered if discretion was after all the better part of valour.
But what happens if we stop trying to explain our faith? We can hardly complain when no one knows anything about it.
As it was, I learned something from our conversations. In the first one the Telegraph journalist informed me that Advent calendars had been taken over by high-end fashion and filled with the most expensive chocolates, perfumes and other consumables the richer end of the high street could offer.
Our conversation reflected on how Advent and perhaps Advent calendars constituted a spiritual discipline which was designed to help us clear the clutter from our lives. But under the influence of secularisation and an uncontrolled market, this has been changed into a consumerism that instead increased our lower appetites.
It seemed to me really quite theologically interesting that a spiritual discipline that was intended to capture the Christian imagination, with symbols and stories that prepares us for Christmas, instead become a box of treats to titillate our tongues, mouths and stomachs.
Advent for the Catholic is primarily a time of renewal. As St Augustine put it in one of his sermons:
“Now is the time of mercy, for us to correct ourselves. The time for judgment has not yet come. There is no need to despair. Because of our human, pardonable, and more trivial sins, God has established in the Church set times for requesting mercy.”
And as the days grow shorter we take the opportunity of noticing that so do the number of days left to us; the four last things – death, judgement, heaven and hell – give us a fresh focus for what really ought to matter in our lives.
As we get ready to prepare for a fresh apprehension of the incarnation some element of decluttering needs to take place.
In our struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil, we will always find something of each creeping in to subvert our discipleship. It’s not only houses that need spring cleaning, but also minds and souls.
The reminder that even the rather sweet and inoffensive spiritual discipline and education provided by advent calendars was not free from either subversion or perversion was a reminder of how serious and demanding the spiritual struggle really is. The move from fasting to extremely expensive perfumes or whisky is probably only to be expected by the unrestrained imagination of capitalism and a culture fixated on pleasure.
But the second conversation with the journalist took us to an unexpected place.
After our first conversation which was about excess and the subversion of decluttering, he came back with a fresh phone call after having done a little more research. He had found himself astonished that the advent calendar market had not only been infiltrated by excess, but also by what he quite rightly described as vice.
It turns out that pornographers had got into the advent calendar market and were using it to develop their own market of hyper-sexualisation.
The thin end of the wedge and slippery slope arguments are often misused in debate. But they remain perpetually true for the journey of the soul – in the spiritual life and journey.
To be a Christian and to follow Christ is not only to be improved, but also to be saved. And sometimes it is only the outbreak of vice that reminds us how serious the stakes are.
The journey from virtue to vice is a shorter one than most of us would like to imagine.
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