Biggar is White. I iz Bleck. He belongs to the Established Church. I am a howling heathen kept busy kowtowing to the elephant god and the monkey god and my neighbour's cat which might well be the vahana of Goddess Shashti. The only thing Biggar and me have in common is pride in British citizenship and love of England's sterling qualities and traditions. In my case, I suppose, my present enfranchisement was purchased by a racial and religious humiliation accepted by my ancestors. Biggar's, more honourably, was purchased by blood, sweat and tears. We both have good reason to condemn what was bad about the British Empire. Biggar probably lost family members to Pyrrhic battles that would not have been fought, or would have been fought very differently, but for the Fata Morgana constituted by the delusive chimeras of Imperial military doctrine & the mischievous chrematistics of Imperial Finance. But, precisely because we have both paid an eusebiac 'price of admission'- id est our sense of filial piety must reckon with the sorrows and sacrifices of our forebears- it follows that there is a univocal 'separating equilibrium' here based on an ancestral 'costly signal' we both ought never to forget. It would be dishonourable to suggest that Biggar's 'costly signal' was 'subaltern'- I'm certain his ancestors, of whatever class, thought it sweet and decorous to die for Britain whereas mine considered any service to the Raj only justifiable in so far as it benefited Indians or India- but it would, in an opposite manner, be vainglorious to suggest that some superior dispassion or transcendence of thymos animated my ancestors such that I can imagine my grossly ignorant and Falstaffian self, mutatis mutandis, univocal in Britishness with this slim, sober, savant.
There is a notion that Christianity is a 'narrative'. It isn't. It can't be. The deeds of the risen Christ, over a space of 40 days, were such that if they were all written down, Holy Writ were more voluminous than the World. Yet, as- of all people!- Oscar Wilde pointed out- there is one 'ipsissima verba' of the Judge of Judges which is also a 'hapax legomenon' such that the synoptic Gospels are a fractal Yoga Vashishta- not a narrative, but a knight's tour of all possible narratives, a Borgesian book of sand which can never fall open on the same page twice. Christ is the Living Word because the Bible has infinite apoorvata.
In particular- the Lord's Passion is both subaltern- that of the patient, suffering, khorban or pharmakos- as well as a more Knightly vigil than that of all save who harrows Hell, overturns Law Minded Yama's primordial Kingship, so that the great crowd of our ancestral dead too, in our merely kairotic sortes Virgillianae, learns a King of Kings.
Biggar has now been denounced as a bigot.
His thought crime is 'parrhesia'- a Christian duty, a British reflex of 'fair play'.
No one is saying his statements aren't alethic.
No evidence has been offered that he has some dismal agenda.
But he is guilty nonetheless.
Why?
The man thinks there is a difference between Good and Evil!
That's jus' ignnirint, innit?!
Good and evil may be meaningful terms of analysis for theologians. They are useless to historians.Geography is about maps. History is about chaps. Maps don't care about Good and Evil. Chaps do. A good historian of Imperialism needs to understand Geography- because that's the fitness landscape for Empires. A bad historian of Imperialism needn't bother because he can just gas on about how good historians have a duty to tell stupid lies so as to prevent Nazi Zombies from the centre of the Earth rising up and grabbing power disguised as Narendra Modi or Donald Trump or Angela Merkel.
I know Biggar has received a lot of support from Black and Asian British people. The trouble is some of these people may be homophobic. To be frank, I was a homophobe myself. Why? Au fond, homophobia is a misogyny. Women have to sleep with men so babies can be born. If men sleep with men they are no better than women. I think my attitude only began to change when I saw women priests leading Churches and Synagogues and (to a much smaller extent) working as Hindu priests in Scandinavia (a boy from a good family known to me, went to Sweden to have a Hindu marriage to a fellow Doctor. Only a woman priest had the courage to conduct the ceremony.)
Okay, I agree that I'm a bigot. But, Biggar isn't. We should listen to what he has to say if for no other reason than that he is British and proud of it. He is Christian- not some wishy washy irenicist but a full blooded Theist- and, quite rightly, proud to be so. No doubt, that pride is riding for a fall. His Church- like a prostitute to her pimp- is most beloved to her Lord when/ most open to all manners of all men. That's the problem with being proud to be British or Anglican or whatever. This 'fex urbis' Curry & Chips Cockney legitimises the 'lex orbis' of both Church & Crown in the eyes of their Creator.
God must fall.
But first we must deal with Love.
That tramp!- don't you see, we've gotta do it for her own good!
Beeyatch be hooked on Truth.
These dyspeptic post Xmas days are a good time for the cold turkey treatment.
Do it now.
Who knows what will happen as this new Millennium gains Majority?
No comments:
Post a Comment