Bandwagons

In the light of the atrocities in Paris this week, I entirely want to associate with the French people, and with all who have suffered from terrorism.

We are the same. We stand together. We are human beings.

But forgive me, I want to stand with people and with those who grieve, and with those who are bewildered. I don't know a whole lot about a specific French satirical magazine, and I'm not sure I want to stand with the viewpoint that says (as was expressed on the BBC during the week) "We should be free to criticise who we want to".

I'm just not sure about that.

In my job I come across a lot of grief, and there is often a tendency for grief to be dishonest. Death can change how people felt about those who have died; death can make people better. At least, it can if you believe everything you hear. Personally, I often feel tempted to take a pinch of salt with me just in case I need it when I'm about to listen to stories of the newly departed.

Perhaps it is because in our grief we are predisposed to forgive more those we have lost. Perhaps in our grief we realise we will never again be able to work through the ordinary conversations of life and grant to our lost loved ones the benefit of the doubt we sometimes doubted they deserved when they lived. It's just human.

Still: no-one deserves what happened in that magazine office this week. I don't need to have read a copy of Charlie Hebdo to know that. None of us need to have read it to know that what happened was terribly, terribly wrong.

Perhaps however we do need to have read it through before we take its name. Otherwise, it runs the risk of becoming a slogan, a sledgehammer, or (worse) just the opposite of what we intended - a statement of division, not solidarity. Satirists don't need bandwagons; nor do they need censorship; most of us make mistakes when we hold their barbed humour too close or too distant. We just stop seeing the truth either way, and that's the biggest mistake of all.

Jesus asks us to love our enemies, not laugh at them. If we are to laugh at anyone, it is ourselves. I don't know about "je suis Charlie" - "je suis un right Charlie" a fair bit of the time. So many of the cartoons following the attack have pens and pencils facing off automatic weapons, but the point of them is that they too are weapons. If you want to throw the first stones, says Jesus, or draw them, go ahead; sinless people first.

Or do we become (again, with the excuse of grief) ruled by a mob mentality? In Britain at the moment, the Ched Evans story is a perfect example of this. The BBC news stories about his attempts to renew his footballing career after being released from prison all begin with the words, "Convicted rapist Ched Evans". The stories could begin, "Former Welsh international footballer Ched Evans". Do you think the stories would sound different that way?

Our culture has made sex its god, and sex crimes its blasphemy. No wonder those Islamist extremists critique us. Poor Ched; whatever did or did not happen that distant night, like so many young people it happened when he (and all the others there) had had far too much to drink. And so he is trapped in an eternal purgatory of being described by a sin he denies, without any other past or any future at all.

Poor Ched?

It'll be a while before the #jesuisChed hashtag gets going. It'll be a while before the stones stop being thrown. There are so many sinless folk around it seems. It's such a fun bandwagon to aim from.

And again I ask your patience, as I close where I started. For I want to stand with all who suffer. All. We are the same. We stand together. We are human beings.

Loved by God, thank God, and (wonderfully) forgiven, if we'll have it.