Culture in Conflict | Michael Ramsden

[Music] but let me give you just a little bit of background to what I'm going to share with you just in terms of the journey that I've been on in the last five six years as I've thought about some of this and then it would hopefully allow you to particular eyes it into the situation that you're facing right now I'm not an expert on any particular country and so I'm always very hesitant about jumping in and trying to describe when you're coming from outside what it's like actually from the inside but in terms of a global movement we're in one of the most interesting cultural shifts that I think we've probably seen in what I would say not just in our lifetime possibly in the last four to five hundred years and let me explain what I mean by that about five six years ago I was giving some thought to some of the challenges that we were facing in UK and us sculpture and I was very interested in just in the rising sense of bitterness that there seemed to be just within the culture generally and a little while later a few months after I was speaking at a major conference over in Asia with leaders from 18 different countries right across this region and I gave an illustration of saying here's what's happening in the West right now and as soon as I finished that talk I then got invitations from political leaders and CEOs of major corporations from every single country represented in the room to say we're in exactly the same situation you just described will you come and speak in our country will you speak to our leaders to the business leaders so then I can remember thinking clearly this isn't just sort of like a Western issue obviously there's something happening in Asia too well a few days later I was back in my home and a businessman in from Africa was visiting the city at the time he had done a lot of his business empire I think is meant to be like the seventh largest and the entire continent of Africa something like that and he do you wanna turn the lights off and we we we met four we were meant to meet for half an hour and three and a half hours later his response was look I need you to come and meet with me with the various heads of states right across Africa because what you're describing is true for every country in Africa too and it was interesting having just been in South America meeting with some of the Supreme Court justice there the president various of the leaders the the CEO and the chairman of the largest single company in their entire economy also addressing this issue and hearing from other leaders who'd come from right across South America you've just described exactly where we are so one of the challenges of what I'm about to talk to you is that we're in a very unusual position globally in that almost every country of the world that I've been to is wrestling with the same set of questions and the same set of struggles now that's that's very unusual having spent 23 8 years now Criss crossing across the globe and having spoken in so many different countries normally as we move from one country to another to another to another you find that there's this huge variation so the question one of the questions I've been wrestling with therefore is how can so much of the world be locked into the same place at the same time now the reason why it's an important issue is the the issue that I the struggle or question I want to raise with you is one of it's one that can lead a huge global upset and I'll come to that in a moment but let me just start with if I can just a small phrase in the Old Testament that really jumped out to me as I was doing some research into this in the Book of Amos as phrase where it talks about is it possible for horses to run on rocky crags and do you use the oxen to plow the ocean but you have turned justice into bitterness so all your righteousness tastes like poison fruit and that phrase about turning justice into bitterness really grabbed me because we live in a world right now where everyone is talking a lot about justice and what it looks like and the need for it but most of the cries for justice that we have are bit so what the Prophet is saying is if the quest for justice is bitterness even if you get what is just you're still left with the bitterness at the end of it now if the what that also means therefore if it the quest for justice is love and compassion when you get justice what you're left with is love and compassion and those two things work out very differently in any given society in the world now the danger therefore is that with this a bitter quest for justice is that we fool ourselves into thinking when we get what is right then everything will be okay however it's possible to pursue justice in a society whereby even if you get what is right is gonna taste like poison to everybody else in other words you haven't United a society around the quest for justice you've split it not because you were pursuing justice but the manner in which it was pursued has actually caused the division and that's now one of the biggest problems that we actually have we live in a world where people feel justified to go to almost any lengths to get the right result without them ever stopping to ask whether the means by which they're pursuing that justice could actually end up doing more harm than the original offense in the first place now I want to be very very clear the Bible makes it painfully clear for Christians the question is not whether we pursue justice we're not even given that option we have to pursue it and we have to fight for it for the for the defenseless for the widow for the poor for the societies we're in for the challenge of your face we are commanded to engage with that in a way to bring about justice however the motive by which we pursue justice the Bible tells us is just as important and in some cases even more important than the pursuit of justice in and of itself now I'm going to try and just unpack that just a little bit more and then throw this open up for questions for all of you because one of the next questions comes then twofold okay if the quest for justice become bitter one why is it such an important issue and two what does that actually mean for us today how if we ended up there and what can we do about it so let's just deal with question number one first why is it such an important issue well I don't know how much of you are familiar with European history but let me give you a European story now am i I was raised with a lot of my life in the Middle East but we've got 3,000 years of territorial war there so I'm gonna do some picking the European one is I can move from a piece of point of peace to disruption more easily now I don't know how many of you are familiar with a guy called Prince Lazar but Prince Lazar was the ruler of Kosovo from the late 1200 into the early 1300s he was a warrior figure he adopted the title prince than any of the other titles that could have been given to him and he was involved in a whole series of running battles in that part of the world and he was killed during these battles now depending whose history you read he was either killed in prison stabbed in the back or he was killed on the battlefield the people of Kosovo believed he'd been stabbed in the back in prison they were very bitter and angry about the manner in which he had been killed now because he was such a hero to the people they wanted him buried in their home city of Kosovo but because of the military instability in the political instability he was buried outside of the city now the people from that region they sang songs about him there were nursery rhymes about him there were stories told about him as she up until this day you can some of those stories some of those nursery rhymes are still repeated in that part of the world to this day and from that day the that region that part of that world defined itself as a nation in mourning now there are a whole series of moves to try to get the body returned back to Kosovo they all failed in the late 1800s when the austro-hungarian Empire was in charge of that part of the world the cost of Ins made a renu plea a renewed plea to the emperor on the fifth hundredth anniversary of this guy's death to return him to the city so he could be buried it was refused now as they battle towards this fifth hundredth anniversary date a young Kosovan decided that it was finally time after 500 years of waiting for justice 500 years of waiting for this body to be returned that they needed to extract revenge so a young Kosovan guy set out and assassinated the nephew of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and started the first world war some of these historical grievances run so deep and over such a period of time that they can actually plummet the entire world into chaos as the 6th hundredth anniversary of the death of Prince Lazar loomed the then leader of that part of the world a guy by the name of slobodan milosevic announced the Kosovan people that if it was the very last thing he did he would have the body returned and buried in the city well they got the body returned it was toured around the nation every village every town every city everyone came up wearing black because they were a nation of mourners they mourned the loss of Prince Lazar a giant statue of him was erected in the Capitol and almost 600 years to the day the genocide in that part of the world began these long term bitter struggles can have massive consequences for the entire world that's why this issue is so important now we're gonna use a term which I really really really don't like it's a term that came from psychology and social psychology but we've now using it in sociology and for that reason it doesn't translate very well and it causes a lot of defensiveness and ideally I'm looking for a whole new word but I haven't been able to come up with one yet but the psychologists would call this in essence what's called a victim mentality a victim mentality is when you allow yourself to be defined by your historical grievances where your historical grievances and pain and struggle or your present grievance is paying and struggle define who you are and therefore a violation of those things is a violation of your entity of your worth of who you are and therefore you are excused almost any form of measure to bring about the retribution you feel would finally bring you peace now the reason psychologists would use this and talk about trying to get out of a victim mentality because they could see the negative things it would happen now the the easiest way for me to explain this for you would be for you to imagine that you have done that someone has done something wrong to you for victim mentalities to prevail you need real injustice so we're not talking about pretend injustice or pretend wrongs or things that didn't happen that you think that happened sometimes people invent that stuff that's true but we're talking about real deep pain and the question is how will you respond to the pain that I inflict on you so let's supposing I were to publicly insult you and humiliate you the question is how do you respond now in some cultures you will respond very publicly and you would defend yourself because that's what you're required to do but you'll have to do it in a way to defend your honor which would mean you'll have to do it honorably which means if I come after you and attack you in an honor based culture when you're defending yourself you you have to defend yourself in a way in which itself is also seen to be honorable so in other words if you pay someone to come and be nasty to me and everybody finds out that's what happened you lose status in that society as a leader you are demoted down everybody knows that I attacked you unfairly you're not to blame but the manner of your response wasn't worthy of someone who should be esteemed and looked up to and secondly you also have to do it in an honorable way if I attack you and make you bitter at me in an unfair way and you were to stand up and defend yourself and get angry and upset and yell and scream and so on although people may understand why you feel that way that's not an honorable response you lost it literally in every sense of the word and you lose your esteem as a result that's not how we want to see our leaders act now in dignity based cultures if I were to attack you your response is gonna be look very very different and the dignity based culture if I attack you so now you're the victim I and I'm the person who did it you may decide to say nothing about what I've done to you you may be very quiet you may quietly take me aside talk to me and if you can put things right and make peace with me that would be seen as a dignified response you conducted yourself with dignity and you also defended yourself in a way that preserved your dignity now those two responses there's they can be perverted into something which is unhealthy but there's also something within them which can be healthy however psychologists when they talked about a victim mentality and they're talking about something very different so let's supposing a truly terrible situation I attack beat you and rape you now when you go into counseling traditionally the counselors would try to do go through a process with you and at some point they may well train you to say to yourself I am NOT a victim I am NOT a victim now why would a counselor train someone who's been attacked and raped to say to themselves I am NOT a victim they're not trying to get the individual to deny the past that's neither healthy nor helpful they're not trying to tell the person it doesn't matter okay you know just get over it that's neither helpful nor we're gonna do anything at all to help in that person's journey back this event doesn't define you you are more precious than this you are more beautiful than this you are more wonderful than this there is more value to your life than this you cannot allow this to define you if you allow this what happened to you this massive injustice to define you the person who did this to you not only wronged you in the past they are continuing to steal from you in the present and they'll also have control of your future don't give control of that put to that person of your present and your future now that doesn't mean therefore you give up the pursuit of justice that doesn't mean you don't want to see that person pursued punished or any of those things it does mean that inside you no longer want to be controlled by what the Bible would call a root of bitterness now in other words don't fall into thinking like this because even if you're pursuing justice but you're driven by bitterness you're gonna be imprisoned by it now here's the challenge we live in a global culture right day that celebrates the victim mentality now there are a lot of reasons for this and I can unpack them for you a little bit more if you wish but let me just jump into the media side because the media side of things is just it's just everywhere now given the age of many of you in this room I'm assuming like me you can remember the very first Superman movie that came out now if you ask yourself what was Superman's weaknesses the answers are close to zero apart from kryptonite he was perfect morally perfect rationally perfect emotionally perfect kind generous thoughtful understanding caring listening he reminds me of me every time I think of him and that is why he was a superhero he was perfect and he could fly there for someone to be to esteem to to to look up to to want to be like have any of you seen Man of Steel the 2011 remake how does that movie begin well Superman is lost on a boat in thick fog out at sea he's wrestling with his sense of worth he's wrestling with his sense of identity he feel cosmically lonely cosmically abandoned left by his parents left by his culture unable to understand who he is unable to process the weight of pressure put on his shoulders Superman to be a hero today needs a victim narrative I don't know how many of you watch Marvel movies but every single Marvel superhero all of them have been used abused hurt betrayed abandoned they all need a victim narrative to be a hero today so the narrative we have today is you need in order to have status you must be a victim therefore you need to hold on to this historical pain onto this injustice and that explains why they can't form relationships so classic movies about your hero figure whether they're a super hero normal fit hero doesn't matter male/female when they finally find peace when they finally overcome the bitterness they can marry settle down have a family how many movies end like that this day there has to be an on-going narrative because once you've solved it you've lost your sense of identity because you've wrapped yourself up into it but that then means you believe the best way to pursue justice is by therefore stoking the sense of bitterness in 1 Corinthians 13 you have this incredibly well-known passage I remember when I first became a Christian it was one of the first passages I memorized I can remember I said memorizing verses I knew I have I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me you know phrases like that 1 Corinthians 13 was the first chapter of the Bible I have memorized and had only been a Christian for a week and I went to my first at the Bible study and the guy had decided to to study 1 Corinthians 13 in this little Bible study group I just start start it's why I rather amazed this guy when he said would anybody like to read the passage and I said yes sure I will took the Bible didn't look at it and just recited it by heart because I just spent 3 days learning it and I've always been a bit intimidated by that passage because there's so much in it I've always felt scared to preach from it and so it was only fairly recently I actually felt I had the courage to teach from 1 Corinthians 13 in detail because I thought there's just so much here I feel I need to understand better before I start to offer an explanation of it but when I was speaking from it last year I suddenly realized something that I just I'd never noticed before even though for the last 4 or 5 years I've been doing some quite in-depth study through it the way 1 Corinthians 13 starts is it talks about well first of all that we have to have love and then it goes and it says look if I if I can speak in the tongues of angels but I do not have love my voice is merely a clanging cymbal and I have nothing if I have all of the wisdom that this world affords and all of the insight and the kind of faith that can move mountains but I don't have love I gain nothing if I give everything I have to the poor complete 100% sacrifice of myself in service of others but I have not love it amounts to nothing now what I realize is because they haven't paid particular attention to the passage close enough I realized I was imagining it wrong I realized that for the first twenty or so years of my Christian life thirty years of my Christian life what I'd imagined 1 Corinthians 13 was saying you have some really hyper spiritual people they are very very gifted very very impactful but they're not very loving towards other people and you look at them and you think gosh you've got so much you've got so much to offer you're like 80% of the way there if we could just add a little bit of love to soften you up a bit then it would complete the picture or you meet people who are utterly brilliant I mean so smart I mean I listen to some of my colleagues now talk on artificial intelligence I feel artificially intelligent listen to them talk about artificial intelligence they're their genius so you can look at people around the world and think gosh you're so smart but you just don't love people and if we could just add love to your character it would close off the character give you a hundred percent or we look at people who were just out there serving and it's hard sometimes not to get cynical when you're on the front line helping people day in day out wondering if anybody else notices or cares so you can get a bit hard and we see people who are serving in a huge way and we think you know what if you were just loving and more kind to other people so we think they've got 80% and they're missing 20% that's not what that passage is saying at all that 1 Corinthians 13 is saying if you do all of these things but you don't have love you don't have 80 percent you have zero you have nothing you gain nothing it amounts to nothing it is nothing not something not half of it not a percentage of it zero in other words if love isn't driving all of these things it is nothing the the service the leadership the love the sacrifice the giving the theology the spiritual pursuit of God the development of spiritual gifts all of these are nothing without love zero in Galatians five eight it's very interesting if I would say to say to you I want you to imagine a thoroughly uncompromised Christian imagine a Christian who refuses to compromise ever now if you close your eyes I'm gonna close my eyes otherwise I fall asleep on my feet but if you if you close your eyes and I say I want you to imagine a Christian who never ever compromises what kind of image comes to your head well normally it's someone who's quite hard quite steely quite strong bright you know well in the book of Galatians in chapter 5 we're told what the fruit of the Spirit is love peace joy patience you know the list so don't compromise on that be thoroughly uncompromised as a Christian and how you pursue and live these things that's what an uncompromising Christian should look like

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Keywords: michael ramsden, rzim, leadership, culture, christian

Id: DJVv7UcZjcI

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020