Scotch College

Two Thousand Years On or 'half a lifetime': Still Your Choice.

I keep seeing people talking on hand-held mobile phones while driving. It makes me angry because it is both dangerous and illegal. I read that this is considered a factor contributing to a recent increase in road deaths. 'How crazy is this?' In Christian Education, at years 9 and 10, we try to educate boys to make wise choices when confronted with harmful options. We expect boys of 15 and 16 to see clearly, to get the message. Yet so many adults flaunt stupid behavior.

I suppose talking on the phone while driving is just one recent option thrown up by the communication revolution. Other current social trends have been identified. 'Cocooning ourselves in our homes and cars' we are 'obsessed with privacy and security', while restricting most of our communication to 'pathways of electronically "mediated" information'. Remember the Tandberg cartoon of a restaurant full of people, one per table, all talking on mobile phones?

Hugh Mackay's recent book, Turning Point, builds on such current Australian social trends to project scenarios into the first quarter of the 21st century (The Age, Saturday Extra, Oct 30, 1999). In one nightmare scenario 'elites have emerged. The most powerful ...control the flow of information,...the illicit drug trade; the "spin doctors" who create the political and commercial myths and images that lull the rest of us into believing that life is "fun", that everything will somehow be alright, and that this week's "celebrity" is a worthy focus for our dreams of a better, more fulfilling life'

The Byzantine Empire was almost unimaginably different from our Commonwealth of Australia, yet it was the developed and sophisticated society of its day. When it was undergoing its own mini-holocausts and ethnic cleansing, a travelling monk named John Moschos sought to gather the Christian wisdom of the 'desert fathers, the sages and the mystics, before their fragile world finally shattered and disappeared'. His book, The Spiritual Meadow, was published around 615 AD. It was a smash hit and was soon translated into Latin, Georgian, Armenian, Arabic and several Slavonic languages.

In 1994 William Dalrymple retraced the steps of John Moschos and recounts the tale in his own brilliant book. From the Holy Mountain (Flamingo, 1998), also received rave reviews. I was recently given a copy and agree the book 'makes a profound impression' (TLS). One aspect of this is the insight it provides into a culture long since gone. Where today are the Assyrian, Syrian Orthodox, Armenian, Maronite and Coptic Orthodox communities? Check your local telephone directory for any one of a number of Christian communities that once dominated the Byzantine Empire. To us they are the tiny minorities that gather at the odd shaped and ornate churches in ethnic enclaves around the city. Except for these expatriate vestiges flourishing Christian communities have disappeared. How did they become vulnerable? How does a society 'decay'?

The answer is not simple. Dalrymple helps one grasp some of the complex external and internal issues. But the reality is that societies can and do decay. In Mackay's scenario of a highly stratified Australia, there are 'stark and unbridgeable divisions between rich and poor. The rich are feeling smug and superior, if a little nervous; the poor are angry and increasingly prone to violent expressions of their envy of the rich'.

Incisively he notes 'There's nothing wrong with a bit of material comfort and prosperity, as long as you don't expect it, alone, to bring you happiness. If you do you might discover what late-20th-century Westerners have been discovering in droves: that when materialism is unrestrained, when it is enshrined as a core philosophy, it rots the soul but it might take half a life time to detect the smell.' This vision is of a vulnerable society, of decay.

Happily Mackay is also able to see an alternate and more hopeful picture of Australia's future. This is a society that has rediscovered community, with 'surrogate "extended families" and more communal space... taking "social capital" more seriously'.

The society our children and grandchildren inherit will depend on the way we manage our technology, reinvest in social capital and enshrine core philosophies. Our choices now will determine which society eventuates. Their future will reflect our decisions in the face of wise or harmful options. Don't be misled, we reap what we sow.

At the end of this year we celebrate the passage of two thousand years since the birth of Jesus Christ. May we have the wisdom to enshrine him as the One who alone is the 'worthy focus for our dreams of a better, more fulfilling life' (compare John 10:10). May our core philosophies be shaped by His words 'abiding in us' (John 15:7).

Rev Graham Bradbeer