Isolation and the desire for new toys
"Don't you say a word against the 'Swiss Family Robinson,'" cried Innocent with great warmth. "It mayn't be exact science, but it's dead accurate philosophy. When you're really shipwrecked, you do really find what you want. When you're really on a desert island, you never find it a desert. If we were really besieged in this garden, we'd find a hundred English birds and English berries that we never knew were here. If we were snowed up in this room, we'd be the better for reading scores of books in that bookcase that we don't even know are there; we'd have talks with each other, good, terrible talks, that we shall go to the grave without guessing; we'd find materials for everything— christening, marriage, or funeral; yes, even for a coronation— if we didn't decide to be a republic."
G. K. Chesterton, Manalive, p20
It is, by my calculations, about halfway through week 4 of the lockdown imposed as a consequence of the Coronavirus pandemic, and the UK government is poised to announce another three weeks of the measures. We are required to stay at home, leave the house only for necessities and as infrequently as possible, work from home, and homeschool our children. For me, currently on Sabbatical from my wonderful job as Associate Pastor of Moorlands Church, this is something of a joy. We don't have any particular financial concerns, we have enough garden space to get a breather from being cooped up inside, we generally like each other as a family, and I get to read and write without any pressing demands on my time (except the aforementioned homeschooling, which I am very much enjoying). The sun is even shining. I know that for many this is not the case - the bereaved, the lonely, those who struggle with mental health issues, those with acute financial pressures, those in hard home situations. And sin continues to bedevil me and my family as we live together, even with the pressure off. I'm not being Pollyannaish about the current situation - just acknowledging that, for the moment, I'm in a fortunate position and a happy frame of mind.
Which is why it's particularly galling that I find myself still drawn to two survival tactics, two coping mechanisms in times of high stress, which as a Christian I don't need. Perhaps you recognise them in our world and in your heart too.
Tactic #1: Find something to distract you
As I write it has just been reported that shares in Amazon have reached a record high, further cementing its CEO Jeff Bezos's position as the richest man in the world by some distance. Amazon customers spend $11,000 a second on its products, with a huge spike during the Coronavirus lockdown. Netflix, too, is reporting record stock prices; and hundreds of entertainment providers are rushing to give away thousands of hours of free content.
None of this ought to be surprising. We have lived for many decades in the West almost completely shielded from the reality of death - by our advances in healthcare, by our high standards of living, by our wealth. Of course death, the great enemy, overwhelms all of our defences in the end. But the pandemic has suddenly removed the thin gauzy veil that we have been accustomed to draping over death's face, and confronted us with something that was true all along - that we are mortal. We are going to die.
And that terrifies us - not just the fear of pain and the fear of loss, but the fear of death itself - because it forces us to reckon with the truth that there is a God who made us and demands an account from us. As Paul argues in Romans 1:18-23, we all know this deep down, and suppress the truth rather than face up to our sin; which means we also suppress the truth that we're going to face the wages of sin - death, and the judgement to follow. This fear of death, as the author to the Hebrews teaches us, keeps us in slavery (Heb 2:15). We are utterly unable to come to the God who would grant us forgiveness and freedom and future hope, and so we spend our entire lives avoiding thinking about death, (or trying hard to arm ourselves against it - more on that later), leaving us utterly unprepared to meet our God when we do inevitably die.
Which is where distraction comes in. As Blaise Pascal put it: "Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and misery, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things" (cited in Os Guinness, Fool's Talk, 100). Peter Kreeft comments further:
We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.
Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans, 158.
So what happens when the spectre of death becomes unarguable, when many people die all at once, when we're told to take drastic measures or else we'll all die ourselves? Answer: new shiny toys!
I've noticed this in my own heart too. Ironically enough, my temptation is to spend lots of money on new books. Now, these are good books and helpful ones - there's nothing wrong with buying and reading them as far as I can see. (One of the books I'd particularly like to get is Jay Kim's Analog Church, about how churches need to embrace analog(ue) reality in a digital world, which seems particularly timely. Ironically enough due to the current crisis it's pretty much unavailable in the UK at the moment - except on Kindle.)
But I ask myself - why do I want these new books? As I look round my study I see dozens of books I haven't read, and hundreds I haven't read in a long time and have pretty much forgotten. How much of my desire for new books is a genuine desire for new learning, such that I might grow in knowledge of Jesus - and how much is just a desire to be distracted with new things?
Two considerations ought to make me pause.
The first, as Chesterton's Innocent Smith makes clear in the quote at the top, is that there is practically infinite joy and interest to be found in the things I already have. For those who believe in a good God who gives good gifts to his children, who has created a richly varied and glorious world, and who has done this despite us resenting and rejecting him - why do I feel I need new things to distract me when my small world is utterly full of wonder? As Chesterton wrote four years before Manalive:
It is a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the book-case, and think how happy one could be to have brought it out of the sinking ship on to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise still to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape: everything has been saved from a wreck. Every man has had one horrible adventure: as a hidden untimely birth he had not been, as infants that never see the light. Men spoke much in my boyhood of restricted or ruined men of genius: and it was common to say that many a man was a Great Might-Have-Been. To me it is a more solid and startling fact that any man in the street is a Great Might-Not-Have-Been.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
But an even greater consideration is that, because my Lord Jesus has died in my place, paying the wages of sin for me, and risen from the tomb, death need no longer hold any fear for me. If and when I die - from Covid-19 or anything else - I will meet my Maker not as an angry judge delivering righteous condemnation, but as a loving Father who will graciously say to me: "Well done, good and faithful servant... Enter into the joy of your master" (Matthew 25:23). So with Paul I can say "to die is gain" (Phil 1:21) - and so I don't need any new toys to keep the reality of my death out of my mind.
Tactic #2: Find something to depend on
I'll mention this tactic only briefly now - there is much more to be said, but I'll return to it another time perhaps. This one aims to arm itself against death by being prepared. We've seen it during the current crisis in panicked bulk-buying of food, toilet roll, and hand-sanitiser; and in our desperate devotion to the NHS as the agent of our salvation. It is striking how often religious language is used when we talk about the NHS - language of trust, and faith, and dependence; we are constantly enjoined to praise the NHS, such that we even have a weekly ritual (the 8pm clap) to do so.
To be clear, I'm very grateful for the NHS - my wife is a hospital pharmacist - and I see it as one of the means of common grace God has kindly provided us. I'm also very grateful for food, toilet roll, and hand-sanitiser. They are good gifts, to be received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:4). But it is a grave and common mistake to move from gratitude to dependence. We are to enjoy these gifts, but we cannot rely on them. To do so is to lose our confidence on God to deliver us and give us a good future, and instead to rely on what we can do for ourselves. Ironically enough, as O'Donovan says, that proves that we are spiritual beings, aware of the passage of time and the coming judgement exactly as Paul says we are in Romans 1:
"Worry about material goods is the surest proof that we are spiritual beings, for it is a fortress set up to exclude the demand that time makes on us as spirit, a fortress constructed of immediate objects of sense that can be held onto. The goods of food and clothing are imaginative surrogates for the spiritual courage of endurance. Lacking a sense of God's provision for the future, we cannot think of what is permanent and enduring about ourselves, so that in the passage of time we see only transitoriness and loss."
Oliver O'Donovan, Finding and Seeking, 174.
I see this in my own heart too, even in the slightest of wobbles as we start to run low on milk - despite the fact that we have ample food to see us through, due to my wife's foresight and good house management. But again, this is not a fear a Christian needs to give into. In Christ we have the God of the universe as our Father. As the old hymn has it: "This is my Father's world; why should my heart be sad?" Or as Jesus taught us:
"And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom."
Luke 12:29–32