Whitney Wisdom IV - Houston, We Have A Problem

I am engaged in a long running battle of wills with my iPod. For several weeks now I've been trying to persuade it to play Sweeney Todd. Easy, of course, when you can use your hands, but the battle always takes place when I'm cycling, and at such times I prefer to keep my hands on the handlebars, so voice control is the order of the day. Maybe it's the London traffic, or maybe it's my peculiarly dulcet vocal style, but voice control when I try it is not like in the movies. Let me furnish you with a sample transcript:


Me: Play Sweeney Todd.
(pause)
iPod: Playing songs by Stelvio Cipriani.
Me: Who?

3.5 minutes later

Me: Play album Sweeney Todd.
(pause)
iPod: Playing songs by Clodagh Rodgers.
Me: Eh?

3.5 minutes later

Me: PLAY SWE-ENEY TOD-D-D.
(pause)
iPod: Shuffle on.
Me: PLAYSWEENEYTODD
(pause)
iPod: Playing play list "Songs to listen to while cutting your toenails."
Me: SWEENEY TODD! SWEENEY SWEENEY SWEENEY SWEENEY SWEEEEEENEEEEEYYYYYY!
iPod: Playing Whitney Houston.

Although I have yet to hear Sweeney Todd, I have listened to a lot of songs I didn't know I had, and, last week, my iPod's triumphant clincher was indeed Whitney, which served as a timely reminder that I have yet to finish the great Whitney Houston essay I started writing way back in December. So here it is, Whitney Wisdom Part IV. (And I promise I didn't start this whole series just as an excuse to use the 'Houston, we have a problem' line. Honest.)

In case you are late to the Whitney Wisdom party, here is the story so far. (Don't feel you have to read them all, it'll take forever.)

Whitney Wisdom Part One - In Which The Author Reveals How He Made A Tit Of Himself, And Introduces The Concept Of His Top Ten Heretical Pop Song List.

Whitney Wisdom Part Two - In Which The Author Talks At Length About His Getting Hit In The Nuts With A Music Stand, And Expresses His Belief That The Assertion Made As To The Nature Of The Greatest Love Of All In The Song "The Greatest Love Of All" Is In Point Of Fact Deeply Heretical.

Whitney Wisdom Part Three - In Which The Author Rants About How Loving Yourself Is Not, In Fact, The Greatest Love Of All, But Is An Impotent Solution To The Problem Of Self Worth And An Open Invitation To Toxic Levels Of Narcissism.

So finally we arrive at Whitney Wisdom Part Four - In Which The Author Reveals What The Bible Says Is The Greatest Love Of All.

Ready? Right. Here it is. The Greatest Love Of All, according to the Bible:

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

Or, as the Apostle Paul puts it:

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 8:8)

Okay, it doesn't scan as well as Whitney's version. It's not quite as punchy. And it's got odd words in it, like "propitiation" and "sinners". So permit me now to attempt to explain why the greatest love of all is the greatest love of all.

Quick, get me two more idiots in shiny suits and a giant ball, and
let's play ten pimp bowling.

Back in Part Three I introduced two characters, representing, if you will, the two extremes of the self-worth spectrum. In the blue corner, Melody Hossaini and everyone else who has ever appeared on The Apprentice - the mouthy little idiots whose reality-divorced levels of self-deluded confidence make for such compelling car-crash TV viewing. In the red corner, Frank Spencer and his poor pusillanimous ilk, who struggle through life beneath the crushing weight of their own fractured self-image.
Both these groups of people have a problem. One group needs some serious encouragement. The other group needs a good slap upside the head. What to do?

I ranted at some length in part three about how 'fridge magnet apophthegms like "Learn to love yourself" just pour water on the burning oil of such problems, because if you don't value yourself, you won't value your own love, and if you already value yourself too much, then "love yourself" just means "carry on being an ass". If learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all, then the Beatles were totally wrong when they sang "All you need is love"*.

The Bible's definition of love, on the other hand, provides both the huge encouragement and the stinging slap in the face. In fact, the two are inseparably entwined. If you take away either part, you are left with nothing. Nothing good, anyway. You can't know the love if you don't feel the slap. So let's look at the slap.

The Slap

It's Britney, and she's slapping some guy for being a womanizer.
That'll learn him.

How do we typically demonstrate our affections? A box of chocolates and a bottle of wine are good fall backs. Maybe a nice card. Possibly some random Cath Kidston thing, if it's for a girl. It doesn't matter what, as long as it has that irritatingly ubiquitous Cath Kidston flowery design all over it. Girls love that. So how does God show his love for us? Like this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. A bit unconventional, that. An odd way to say "I love you". In fact, there's only one way it makes sense...

and that is if we actually deserved to die.


Slap.


In Britney, Booze and the Bible III I talked about the human heart, and how there is something deeply wrong with it. Mine, yours, Britney's, Mother Theresa's, they are all skewed, distorted, pointed in the wrong direction. When we're told to do one thing, we automatically want to do the other. It's human nature... but there are consequences to it. Especially if it is God who we are disobeying.

The Bible calls it sin.
And the punishment for sin is death.

Just look at our contribution to the greatest love of all:
"Not that we have loved God" - because we didn't.
"The propitiation for our sins" - because we are not innocent.
"While we were still sinners" - because our hearts are messed up.

God is doing all the loving. We are doing all the hating.


Not exactly a crowd-pleasing revelation, right? I had the choice of writing this post, or publishing my list of The Top Ten Dowdy Nightdresses In A Movie Musical Number, and I was very tempted to go with the nightdresses - partly because I know it will cement my standing as a Guru Of The Internet, and send my blog stats rocketing into the realms of super-stardom, but mostly because I don't really enjoy saying hell-and-brimstone things like "We're all sinners and we all deserve God's wrath."

But look what happens if we rewrite it without all the disturbing sin stuff:


"In this is love, that we loved God and that he loved us and sent his Son to do something we had absolutely no need of."
"God shows his love for us in that while we were definitely not sinners, Christ died pointlessly."


This isn't a demonstration of love - this is a demonstration of Lynchian levels of insanity. This would be like me trying to prove my love for Britney by sending a team of petticoat-clad dwarves to assemble cheap flat-pack furniture outside her house. Actually, it's worse (that would be kinda cool, after all). If God sent Jesus to die for no reason, then he's either an idiot or a monster. Not really the behaviour you'd hope to see from the guy who is supposed to be in charge.

As I pointed out in part three, it is nice to feel loved... but only if we value the love of the lover. The love of a loser, an idiot, or a psychopath, is not especially encouraging... and if we adopt the box-of-kittens God-is-love-and-we-are-fine approach, then that's all we are left with - the love of a loser.

That's the slap.

The Love

Nothing says "love" like a smothering avalanche of grotty plastic tat
coated in seizure-inducing pastel floral patterns.

Now, assume that the Bible is right about the human heart: let's say that my heart really is evil. (Probably not hard for one half of the population to believe, after my comments on Cath Kidston). Let's say that, by nature, my heart hates God. That I'm his enemy. And let's assume that this really is a crime that is justly punishable by death. Now read this again:

"In this is love, not that Dave loved God, but that God loved Dave and sent his Son to be the propitiation for his sins."
"God shows his love for Dave in that while he was still a sinner, Christ died for him."

An innocent man dying to save a guilty man who hates him? Impressive.
God dying to save a guilty man who hates him? There's your demonstration of the greatest love of all.

Dwarves, petticoats and flat-pack furniture

Let's finish with a quick look at what this means to our friends on the edges of the self-worth scale - and to everyone else in the world, who, I'm sure, find themselves bouncing around between the two.

The Angel Of Music. (Yes, I went there.)

To the Frank Spenceresque self-loathers:Yes, you suck. But you are loved. And this is not the love of a loser, this is the love of someone who, according to the Bible, can hold the oceans in his hands. Someone who can fling stars into space. Someone who could, quite literally, bring you the moon on a stick. Though let's hope he doesn't, because it would play havoc with the tides. And this is not a passing-infatuation beer-goggle one-night-stand love. This is the love of someone who would actually die for you.


To the Apprenticesque self-lovers:God doesn't love you because of your incredible business acumen. He doesn't love you because you are a field of ponies, or because you give 110%. He doesn't love you because you look good in heels, because you had a scholarship to Sandhurst, or because you work with the understanding that there is a purpose greater than yourself.** Get off your onanistic little podium. If Sir Alan can see right through all that, God certainly can. God sees the rot in our hearts. He loves us anyway.

So.
That, poorly and roughly explained, is the greatest love of all. It is both really good news, and really bad news. It can help the afflicted, it can humble the proud. It lies at the very heart of Christianity.

And you can opt in or out of this love.
If you like the sound of all this, and you haven't done so already, maybe you want to opt in. A few chapters after Paul's definition of love, he goes on to say that "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9). Have a read through one of the Gospels - Mark would be a good place to start - and see if it gives compelling evidence that Jesus is indeed Lord and that God really did raise him.

On the other hand, if it all sounds like total hokum and hogwash to you, then you have opted out. Fair enough. But I'd politely like to caution against opting out through apathy, ignorance, or arrogance. The Bible can't easily be dismissed as myth or mistake. The death of Jesus was a historic event, well testified to by reliable witnesses. The Bible's explanation is that it was God's great act of love, to rescue a guilty people who otherwise face punishment... Don't opt out unless you have a better explanation.

And whether or not you think I'm a crazed Bible-thumping imbecile after all this stuff, please do come back for the next post, which will be the long-awaited top ten dowdy nighties list. It was unbelievably difficult to compile, so don't miss it.


Good night.

Possibly not what Stuart Baggs meant, but I could no more pass up this
opportunity than I could pass up the "Houston we have a problem" line.

* Also, semolina pilchards have never, to my knowledge, climbed up the Eiffel Tower.
** Isn't it amazing how, with just ten minutes of googling, I can give the impression that I've actually watched the Apprentice?

Britney, Booze and the Bible III - Don't You Know That You're Toxic?

I have a crippling fear of twigs.

That's not actually true. For reasons that will soon become apparent, I'm not going to tell you what I actually have a crippling fear of. For the sake of this story, it's twigs. Twigs freak the hey out of me. I don't want to see them, I don't want to touch them, I don't even want to hear the word "twig". I especially don't want you to poke one in my face. Sometimes I wonder why no one else in the world is bothered by twigs. How is it that I, alone out of the whole human race, have been burdened with the knowledge of how terrifyingly, contaminatingly repulsive these things are? How does the rest of the world spin blithely on, oblivious to the twiggy terrors slowly accumulating all around them? How do they accept the presence of twigs in their lives with such seeming equanimity, for all the world behaving as if these things aren't actually toxic, deadly, and bent on our execution?

Sometimes, in my fear-crazed loneliness, when my dreams have been filled with the eldritch tappings of wood on glass, and the darkness outside the window seems to be poised, waiting for me to blink so it can send its clutching oaken fingers smashing through the pane and into my face, in those chill moments I seek solace in a close friend and try to share the truth with them. To confess my phobia and hear words of understanding, agreement and encouragement. And I've found that when I do so, no matter how close the friend, no matter how kind, no matter how understanding, loving, empathetic and loyal they may be, it always ends the same way:

With them poking a bloody twig in my face.

Fun fact: if you tell someone you have a weird phobia, their first instinct is to test it. And when they discover that you are, indeed, mortally afraid of whatever weird thing you are mortally afraid of, their second instinct is to keep poking it in your face so they can laugh at your ridiculous over-reaction. Their third instinct is to tell all your friends, so that everyone can share in the hilarity of poking you in the face. And it will never cease to be funny to them.

So this is why I'm talking about twigs, and not my actual phobias. (I realise that some of you probably know my actual phobias, and are right now contemplating how funny it would be to write them in a comment. I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN. I don't care if you comment anonymously. I'll find you and I'll make you eat your keyboard. Without ketchup.)

At least I'm not terrified of chairs, like poor Britney.

Anyway, you might be wondering what a fear of twigs has to do with Britney, booze and the Bible, for yes, that is where we are today. This is Britney, Booze and the Bible Part Three, no less. In part one we looked at some of the negative things the Bible has to say about booze. If you are new to this series, part one had the most nudity, incest and murder, and is probably therefore the most fun to read. Part two looked at some of the positive things the Bible says about booze, which was generally a little less colourful, though there were some slightly raunchy bits. What, you ask, is there left to discuss in part three? Well, let me answer that with a question. Imagine for a moment that you've just moved into an amazing enchanted castle. There are talking candlesticks, dancing tea-cups - a culinary cabaret, in fact, that is prepared and served with flair - and you are allowed to go anywhere, do anything - the whole place is at your disposal. There are friendly singing wardrobes full of sumptuous ball gowns (or nice tweed suits, if ball gowns are not your thing), and you can basically live like a Princess. Or a Prince. There is only one teeny tiny restriction: The west wing is out of bounds.

So.

Where do you want to go?

Let me ask you another. You are in paradise. This is not just a flying visit on some fortnight's tropical holiday - you've just been given paradise to live in. It's perfect - completely unspoilt by ugly 60s architecture, pylons, elevator music, Simon Cowell, death or disease. You don't have to work behind a desk all week for a stupid or mean boss, you have no predators, the lions and tigers are all friendly, food just grows on trees - even chocolate, and it's no longer bad for you - the climate is so good you don't even need to wear clothes, and it's all yours to do with as you will. You are in charge. Oh, and the love of your life is right there with you. No catches, no small print, no contractual obligations - except one. Everything in the whole world is yours, except for the fruit of one particular tree. Out of the billions of trees around, precisely one is forbidden.

Let it sink in... and now:

What do you want to eat?

Or back where we started: You're holding a twig. Your best friend has just told you he has a mortal fear of twigs. His face is about a twig's length away from you. He looks unsuspecting. What do you want to do?

Be honest. Who hasn't just mentally poked me in the face with a twig, grabbed the forbidden fruit off the tree and run into the west wing?

It's human nature, right?

Human nature... is broken.

What girl can resist the lure of a floating glowing magical rose?

If you are still with me, be warned: things are going to get ugly. The Bible has some controversial stuff to say about human nature. Way more controversial than all the tired rumblings about women bishops, gay marriage, Catholic condoms, evolution, and whether or not reading Harry Potter will turn your children into satanists. What the Bible says about the heart is so counter-cultural that there should be cries of outrage on the front page of every newspaper. I've never seen it on the front page of a newspaper. I've never seen it anywhere in any newspaper. This could be because I never actually read the newspaper. But I think it is because no one in their right mind would print it. So I present a challenge: if you run a newspaper, here's tomorrow's headline for you:

"Human heart is evil", says Bible.

Are you a human? Do you have a heart? The Bible says it's evil. Your heart, my heart, Britney's heart, Mother Theresa's heart... evil, evil, evil, evil.

If you are normal, your reaction to that is probably along the lines of "Tosh, what nonsense! Evil? My heart? Damn your eyes for your impudence, by jove!" The Bible's clearly wrong - our heart tells us that. Of course, if the Bible's right, that's exactly what our heart would tell us...

Anyhoo, to flesh out our front page story, here's a quick summary of the case for the prosecution, in the form of a rapid whizz through Bible history, from Genesis to Mark.

It's as if she knew that one day I'd want to write a blog post in which I
tenuously linked her with the whole Garden Of Eden serpent thing.

Adam and Eve we already covered with the whole forbidden-fruit-in-paradise question, so let's skip on a few generations. We probably remember the story of Noah's Ark from Sunday School, or from watching Evan Almighty, or from that song that goes "Two by two by two by two by two by two by two" etc*. Here's God's verdict on mankind shortly before the flood:

"The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually". (Genesis 6:5)

So God gets Noah to build an ark, the flood happens, there's a rainbow, and everything is spiffing and jolly again, right? Wrong. Here's God's verdict on mankind shortly after the flood:

“I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth." (Genesis 8:21)

Not "The problem is fixed, so I don't need to flood the world anymore." Man's heart hasn't changed. The thing that has changed is that God has made a promise. The human heart is still evil.

Moving on a few hundred years in Bible history, to God's chosen people, Israel. Have you ever found yourself cycling through Stamford Hill, and seen all the Hasidic Jews out a-walking? (If so, was there a little part of you that wanted to join them, dress up like them and start singing Fiddler On The Roof? No? Just me?) Well, have you ever wondered why they have tassels dangling from their clothes? Those things are called tzitzits, which is my new favourite word of all time. According to the Bible, they are there as a reminder:

The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after." (Numbers 15:37-39)

Every time they get dressed, every time they get a tassel caught in a revolving door or a toaster or the office photocopier, every time some idiot on a pink Brompton cycles past and starts singing "If I were a rich man", they are being reminded that following their heart is going to lead to what God rather emotively calls whoredom.

Brit's Tzitzits.
(By the way, don't try googling for "Britney tassels")

On another few generations, and we get to the prophet Jeremiah. Has the situation improved? No. Here's what Jeremiah had to say:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)

Not a terribly encouraging diagnosis, but let's keep going. Final stop - whizz forward to around 30AD, and here's what Jesus has to say:

And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:20-23)

If this isn't bleak enough, let me just add that, in Jewish culture, the heart wasn't just the warm squishy bit that houses our emotions. It was the seat of intelligence - the place from which we make decisions. Heart, mind, soul, our inner voice, our id, however you want to define it... according to the Bible, you can not trust it.

"I can't trust it? Really? You mean its advice to stand in the middle of
the road, in my underwear, in the rain, might not have been sound?"

When I first learnt this, I freaked out, and instantly tied myself in knots. You know that thing where someone says "Everything I say is a lie", and then your head explodes as you try to work out whether they are telling the truth or not?*** Like that. If my heart is deceitful above all things, then how can I ever make a decision? An abyss of uncertainty opened up beneath my feet. But the heart doesn't lie all the time. The Bible is also full of examples of people acting out a heart desire to do good things. In the course of writing this post, I read through about four hundred references to the heart in the Bible... in some cases, the heart inclines in the right direction. In some cases it inclines in the wrong direction. And in some cases God instructs his people to educate their hearts, to guard them, to steer them in the right direction. I think the Bible's teaching can be summarised like this: the heart is an unruly child - capable of good things, but if you leave it to its own devices, you will be in a pickle.

Can you see why I said this should be the mother of all controversies? Can you see the monumental collision between our culture and the Bible here? From the day we are born, we are being taught to follow our hearts... it is an all-pervasive message. Just for the fun of it, let me share a small selection of my favourite follow-your-heart things:

In pop music:

Roxette - Listen To Your Heart - I love love love this song.
Reba McEntire - The Heart Won't Lie - the queen of country music tells it like it isn't.
Britney - Heart - from the good ol' days when Britney wore more clothes and sang about innocent things like high-school romances and how people needed to hit her baby one more time, which, come to think of it, doesn't sound all that wise. Anyway, in this song she claims that her heart will always be her friend. The Bible, of course, claims that we're often at war with our hearts.
Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye - Stop, Look And Listen (To Your Heart) - funky rhythms, a nice key change, heretical lyrics - this song has it all.

There are millions more, of course.


In books:

Paulo Coelho - The Alchemist
Apparently Russell Crowe said this: "When I'm on the set with young actors and sometimes you meet people in life who you feel they are a little confused and they want to be re-centered, there are two books that I always recommend. One of them is Siddhartha, and the other is The Alchemist."
I don't really want to pick a fight with Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius (though I already picked a fight with Marcus Aurelius), but if you want to be re-centered, don't go to him for reading advice. The Alchemist is a gorgeous, gorgeous fable, and I really enjoyed it, but it's based on the premise that your heart is a truthful, wise thing that will lead you right if you just listen to it closely enough. Which is just guff, according to the Bible.


In children's songs:


Thumbelina - Follow Your Heart - "You are sure to do impossible things, if you follow your heart". Um, no, because impossible things are impossible to do, no matter how much bad advice you listen to...

But here's my absolute favourite, because I listened to it as a child, and I've only met (so far) one other person who has ever heard this... For some inexplicable reason, someone managed to crowbar this song into a version of Beatrix Potter's Tale Of The Flopsy Bunnies (If I got this embedding thing right then the YouTube clip should be queued up for the song. If not you'll need to skip ahead to 2:11... or just listen to the whole fabulous thing. We don't care, we don't care, we don't care a fig...)

Well, by now you are probably giving serious consideration to grabbing yourselves a twig and poking me in the face with it, so I won't bother listing all the movies that in some way base their premise on the innate goodness of the human heart. Instead, as an exercise to the reader, I challenge you to keep an eye out, the next time you watch something with the kids, to see how much of what is being fed to them is based on this assumption. If you don't agree with the Bible, of course, then this needn't trouble you, except to say that it doesn't leave much room for the argument that this country is basically Christian. Orthodox Christian belief and the message our culture teaches our kids are two fundamentally opposed things. Pick a side.

I don't know why I'm arguing that point, since I don't actually have any kids. Maybe because I've been up for twenty hours and I'm starting to hallucinate. So let's draw this to a close.

What does all this have to do with booze?
Simple.
I used to drink, like many, to lose my inhibitions.

Anyone who has seen a horror movie will tell you that you do not open a mysterious looking door until you know for a fact that there is nothing nasty waiting to come out.

If the Bible is right about the human heart - and I believe it is - then there are some doors I think are best left closed.

The End.

*I met Joseph Horovitz** once. He seemed like a very lovely man. He said "Hi, I'm Joseph Horowitz." I said "Ah yes! Two by two by two by two by two by two by two!" Sadly we did not become the best of friends.

** An important and serious composer of many things, only one of which is Captain Noah and His Floating Zoo, featuring the song that goes "Two by two by two by two by two by two by two..."

*** Captain Kirk frequently used this technique to destroy enemy robots. I was always a little sceptical. I do not believe this method would have stopped The Terminator.