All that glisters is not gold

There’s a good deal of optimism amongst “conservatives” (a euphemism for “Far Right Thugs” to Mr Starmer, of course) about the breakneck speed of the turnaround under Donald Trump. I share it, and yet I wonder why I still seem to feel these are “bad times” rather than “good times,” and still less the start of a “Golden Age” as per the President’s inaugural rhetoric.

One reason, of course, is that little of the benefit is as yet overflowing into this land of gloomy Marxism, where the prevailing doctrine is still impossible Net Zero to reverse invisible “Climate Collapse” and so on. The Guardian headlines today are still about how Trump and his policies are being condemned (passive voice – by whom, you may ask). But I would have thought the increasingly loud public murmurings against all the uneconomic policies and wokery would give me at least a lukewarm glow. Yet such seems not to be the case, and I’m hesitant to blame the weather, which is actually quite exciting just now, if you avoid the falling trees.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my problem is that what brings a sense of overall societal well-being is not so much political change as the cultural renewal that can follow it, and that is still very much in the future even in the USA. Here, we are surrounded by anti-culture. This was exemplified in the news today, where we learned that “No.10 invited trans activist drag queen who criticised J.K. Rowling to Burns Night celebration.” It’s not so much that the invited drag queen waved the trans flag, but that any Scot wanting to celebrate Robert Burns would think that a drag queen was the way to do so. It’s depressing to think that our political leaders are so intellectually impoverished that that’s the best entertainment they can aspire to.

Switch on a TV play, and it will be all about race, and gender – as will the advertisements breaking up the action.

Go to see a classic play or film-remake, and it will be a litany of intersectional ideology imposed upon the original.

Try to discuss some great literature with a young adult fresh off a university English course, and they’ll only be able to critique the colonialism and male whiteness of the author. And the chances are if you buy a copy “it will have been”culturally problematic” passages will have been edited out without telling you.

The same short-shrift will be given for the builder of a National Trust property if you follow the guide-book also written by recent graduates.

Go to your parish church and, if you’re lucky enough to escape an ill-informed lecture on the slave trade, the cultural heritage of two millennia of hymnody and liturgy will have been expunged in favour of what sells CCM albums to the American market.


But I’m not pessimistic, actually, if Trump is channeling, as I have long held, the role of King Jehu in the Bible. Jehu was the political outsider promised by God to the prophet Elijah on Mt Sinai, and anointed by the prophet Elisha. His God-given task was to purge Israel and Judah of Baal worship, and this could only be achieved, it seems, by the slaying of Ahab’s entire family in Israel, and of Judah’s apostate king, and of the whole priesthood of Baal, and of anybody else who got in the way.

If you read chapters 9 and 10 of 2 Kings, you will realise that this process, which successfully and permanently destroyed Baal-worship in both kingdoms, was very far from a Golden Age. It takes little imagination to imagine the violent unrest of those times, and the discomfort of two nations that had, for the most part, happily embraced or at least acquiesced in the assimilation of Yahweh’s covenant into the regional idolatry.

It would have been little better for the seven thousand who, as many a sermon on Elijah for beleaguered believers reassures, had not bowed the knee to Baal. Times of civil war, or even of radical reform short of civil war (think of the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth century England), are turbulent times for all. Those seven thousand would have been the target of hatred from the majority who had bowed the knee, for being shills for Jehu who had brought all this trouble on them. And given that Jehu, by God’s inscrutable will, was far from a role-model of piety and “did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat which he had caused Israel to commit – the worship of the golden calves of Bethel and Dan,” it is likely that the faithful were being persecuted on behalf of someone they hadn’t even voted for. From the human point of view, Jehu’s reign was not a Golden Age but a bloodbath.

Yet in God’s economy it was necessary. And the fruit came with the re-flowering of godly religion and culture in both nations, but of course particularly in Judah. Just as it was subsequent to the first upheavals of the Reformation that the best Protestant theology (and science, and political, educational and social progress) emerged, so it was only as the zeitgeist of Israel returned to Yahwism (albeit it imperfectly) that the people of God could once again rejoice at peace in their temple-worship and their culture.

If God is gracious, the times when all the news seems to be bad news, even when it’s political good news, will eventually give way to times when it is easy to be a Christian in one’s own land, supportive of and edified by one’s culture, more likely to be blessed by a church service than scandalised by it, and optimistic about one’s children’s future. That’s cause for hope, “for in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?” (Romans 8:24).

That quote is rather out of context, I confess, although still applicable. For the hope in which we are saved is not temporal reform, but cosmic transformation. Even if Trump’s “Golden Age” were to turn out, as no doubt any Christian Guardian readers fear, to be the tyranny of antichrist, we know from Scripture that that worst final turn of history is the promised harbinger of the return of the Lord. And that, indeed, will be some cultural revival!

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About Jon Garvey

Training in medicine (which was my career), social psychology and theology. Interests in most things, but especially the science-faith interface. The rest of my time, though, is spent writing, playing and recording music.
This entry was posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology. Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to All that glisters is not gold

  1. Robert Byers says:

    i’m glad the other one was defeated and trump says great and good things about issues I vare about. he does some action. However presidents don’t matter. what matters is great numbers of people determined to change conclusions and use the political power to that end plus they must persuade more and more people as to the right conclusions. the next Democrat simply will reverse things. My sude, the right, must persuade people more just like in how everyone is not a captiliist, eve china, and everyone against the commies. now all agree the soviets were bad. WE must assert our liberties and rights before we assert power after some election. RTrump sull is a eastern liberal in many ways. not bery prolife and fine with legal immigration and feminism and other things. prsidents don’t matter. Great things in English civilization must come from great numbers determined to fight for conclusions that endure.

    • Avatar photo Jon Garvey says:

      Significant truth in there Robert: to a large extent nations get the governments they deserve by their votes/consent/acquiescence. If nothing else that tells you that the people of the US have, so far, awakened from torpor a lot quicker than the UK or Canada.

      What politicians ought to provide is that intangible quality of leadership. Even my vehemently anti-Trump friend admitted to me yesterday that he has that quality that is so lacking in Starmer (and his Conservative predecessors) or Trudeau.

      So the worst danger is when peoples go mad (as they are wont to do) and install mad leaders. Teach your kids that God wants all Jews dead and you end up living in a wasteland under Hamas. Spend your lives in resentment of those with wealth and you end up oppressed by communism. And so on.

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