Michael Ramsden: Eradicating Western victim mentality

we're now into possibly was what's going to be the single most challenging thing I'm going to share with you to think about and then we will move straight from that into some form of response otherwise it's all problem and no solution I think one of the challenges that could be fairly at given against us as Christians sometimes is that we love fighting last year's battles rather than thinking about next year's and so in that sense we're always arguing about things which have already gone and are in the past rather than trying to look ahead and say where's all of this going and what does it mean so there was a huge need for us from time to time to try to draw a line the trajectory of where this is ultimately going to then figure out how we can position ourselves to properly engage now there has been a huge shift in our in global cult right when I first are thinking about this about five years ago I can remember thinking it was a particularly uk-us problem and then I talking maybe it's a Western problem and then what I'm about to outline to you I can be utterly shocked when I was in Asia speaking to a group of political leadership from across Asia and senior business leadership and literally been mobbed afterwards by CEOs of huge companies together with people involved in leadership in their country politically saying this is our number-one problem how do you know so much about it and then being even more surprised when sitting down at a table with some of us were one of the main main leadership groups a group of people involved in leading across Africa and I was meant to be having 20 minutes and we ended up having a three-and-a-half hour breakfast that eventually became lunch which is my favorite type of breakfast as they this then said this is this is how do you know where we are and I suddenly realized wow this is much bigger it's more global than I had ever imagined or thought my thoughts about this work were partly driven by an article I read in The Times years ago so obviously this must be true because I read it in The Times and it was telling the story of a student up in Scotland who was in the National Union of Students debating chamber and she was being criticized for failing to respond to have national criticism that had been published against her in the press and she was being criticized for not having published a response back and falling silent and she raised her hand in the debating chamber to make a point and the point she wanted to make was look I've actually reached I've written personally to the person who publicly attacked me because I'd like to talk to them privately rather than publish you know like an open letter back and so she wanted to do that when she raised her hand in the debating chamber the proceedings in the debating chamber were chopped stopped and an emergency motion was debated about whether now this woman should be thrown out of the debating chamber for having violated the safe space thing that they've implemented a few months earlier the debating chamber a few months earlier had decided that the debating chamber needed to be a safe space and they had banned all forms of hand gesture that denoted disagreement and thereby raising her hand to make a point she was denoting disagreement this therefore made the space fundamentally unsafe and the meant nerve there the person therefore was felt threatened and therefore she should be thrown out for having violated safe space I'm not sure what to say about it Professor Richard Dawkins commenting on something like this basically said that any group of people who think like this are so stupid they shouldn't be let into the university in the first place and it may be one of the few times he and I strongly agree as these kinds of incidents that can totally year-after-year reinforce my pet personal theory that the total amount of intelligence in the world is fixed but the population has been steadily growing now the here's but here made me try to take you on a bit of a journey just to explain where I think we are classically when we analyze culture we would often contrast honor cultures with Dignity cultures now honor cultures were seen where honor was central and was the guiding principle and dignity slightly different the easiest way to imagine this is imagine you've been critiqued you've been attacked and in an honor culture if you have been attacked your number one priority is how do I defend my honor how do I respond with honor that my sense I have to protect my honor and I have to respond with honor and that's what we look for in our leadership that's what we esteem that's what we admire that's what we look up to that's what we praise that's what we hunger for we hunger to see people who conduct and live their lives with honor and when we don't see that we feel disappointed and even when you're critiqued what is the honorable response now we would contrast that with a dignity based culture and a dignity based culture when you're critiqued the question is what is a dignified response now in an honor based culture your response is normally public but in the dignity based culture often your response is private you may say nothing publicly at all about the argument you may reach out privately to the individual sit down in a room with them sorted out come out and say to everybody everything settled now we've worked it through and that would be a dignified response and in dignity based cultures you look for in your leadership that kind of dignity now the Western world as we think of it and tend to define it is a blend of those two cultures honor and dignity and we see elements of both but this is now increasingly being changed in our culture with what some sociologists are calling a victim culture now in a victim culture the argument goes something like this everything I do and say is only motivated by love but anything you do or say if you dare critique me is only explicable through hate which means if you disagree with me the only explanation is that you hate me so therefore you must be racist or you must be war whatever it is that makes sense whatever I represent which makes all form of disagreements in a victim culture impossible it means that we therefore silo ourselves into little groups and so therefore what you end up with is everybody in a little group united by their sense of victimhood about whatever it may be and if you want to join that little group you and be co-opted in you have to advocate their complaint more militantly and more vociferous Lee than them and if you do that in an unqualified way you're taking on the inside but if you ever disagree in any way you're thrown out again for hating whoever they are now the trouble with this therefore is it means you end up with a political economy when when people are running for office they calculate the number of victim groups in their electorate they advocate their complaints in a militant and unqualified way and if they get the mathematics right they will win every single time which means we now see culture locked in a political vortex of grievance where we're constantly spiraling down and down and down and hatred seems to become the prime motivating factor to explain everything that's going on everywhere and it's disastrous at every level it affects us all of the time it means therefore that we start to breed a mentality where we become obsessed with thinking about things in the wrong kind of way normally when we bring up children if they're having a dispute in the playground the way that you would often coach the child as you'll say well what can you say to them you know what how can you act different is that make sense even if your child is innocent and they're in a difficult situation people are calling them names being mean to them you know or whatever or even threatening them you don't automatically step in you know then I sense into the playground the next day with a knife and try and take out the children that were trying to hurt yours you coach them how do you handle disagreement how can you turn this around how can you engage what is the honorable and dignified way to try and overcome this you only step in in an extreme circumstances if you suddenly discover that these other children are pulling a knife on your child and are even now trying to stab them now you step in extreme circumstances require third party intervention otherwise you try to help them grow through it to become adults to learn to think you're gonna have to deal with this all of the way in other words it's a it's an adaptation of that old saying you don't prepare the road for the child you prepare the child for the road this is what life is going to look like you need to learn how to emotionally intellectually in every other way cope with this but now we want to go the other way in a victim culture normally everything is everybody else's fault because everything you do is motivated only by love and all those enemies were coming against you and if you've ever seen two friends get into a bitter divorce you would have seen this you meet with party a and party a if you listen to everything they say you have to conclude that they married some kind of evil witch who has no desire than to make their life utterly miserable you talk to party B and you have to conclude that they married some kind of mad psychopath and it has who wants to kill anybody that comes in their way and if you don't take their side if you don't hate the person they hate well you're the enemy it's the only option you're given I'm being oppressed they're the oppressor if you love justice you will unite in your hatred of them with me and if you don't join them they write you off some of you would have been put in that pressure where you feel like you're being asked to take sides and you somehow are desperately enough to bring them together but the narrative actually prevents that from happening and this drift now into victim culture has become almost universal almost every country I go to everywhere I speak whether it's China Hong Kong Malaysia Australia New Zealand the Middle East right across Africa Europe North America South America almost everywhere I go you start talking about this and people come up and they go this describes so much of what's happening in my business in my family in my culture in my politics what can we do about it it's one of the largest shifts the older generation think the younger generation are nuts for thinking this way the younger generation feels so strongly wedded to this because it's always presented them as a justice issue I think the older generation don't care and they're part of the oppressive framework anyway and there's this huge mismatch there's no coming together and the loss of statesmen has become chronic if those of you who were around 40 years ago and interested in politics if I said to you who were the Statesman who are the state's women who were the people who rise above the political immediate and can speak into broader issues to both sides who are those people you could have named them to me and in times of difficulty they'd step in and they'll say to party a what happened to you is wrong and that's terrible and we're going to address that we need to fix it but that doesn't justify you doing this terrible thing to them and they speak both ways they rise above the immediacy of that political dispute but if I were to ask you to name the state's people today from whatever country you may be from or represent how many names could you reel off many of us now struggling to think of one and so now we have nobody who is able to take somehow the heat at the political temperature and actually forge away together we're becoming basically countries or of autonomous individuals all of us narcissistically obsessed all of us the center of our own play where the hero in the story in our own life that we tell and anyone who stands in our way must somehow therefore be against us there's no the sense of trying to lay things down and sacrifice in order to come together to find a common cause it's becoming increasingly rare and I'm not sharing this with you because of the current brexit negotiations I'm making no comment on that whatsoever although maybe I am now as this mentality takes over there's a huge danger in the church to the danger in the churches what we think everyone's against us we're being victimized so we argue reverse victimization you think you've been victimized because you come from this poor country and you're from this ethnic background well now I'm feel reversed victimization because I'm from this ethnic background and I'm you know lily-white a middle class so now I'm part of a minority we're all trying to out victimize each other I don't have any of you seen how many of you have seen the original Superman movie 1980s put up your hand if you've seen that don't be ashamed shame on you you you shouldn't be wasting your time watching that rubbish I only watch movies like that because I do a lot of cultural research and analysis and I have to think about now let me ask you this what were the original Superman's weaknesses and the answer is apart from kryptonite nothing else morally perfect rationally perfect physically perfect cool calm collected trustworthy he reminds me of myself in so many ways have any of you seen Man of Steel the Millennial Superman remake how does that movie stop Superman is on a boat in the middle of nowhere enough for fog he feels cosmically lonely cosmically abandoned betrayed by his parents betrayed by his culture misunderstood misrepresented unable to deal with the pressure put on him even Superman needs a victim narrative to be a superhero today and if you're into superhero movies just think about it every single superhero Marvel movie every Marvel superhero you watch on the screen every single one of them has a victim narrative they've all been used abused betrayed hurt whatever it is even Captain America the most boring superhero ever concerns conceived of in the entire universe even when they have to make part two of his movie he needs a victim narrative betrayed by his friends betrayed by his country misrepresented stabbed in the back even Captain America can't be a superhero without a victim narrative it's become one of the things that we aspire to and therefore we hold on to our pain rather than letting go well let me just say something really briefly about this I don't if you've ever read 1 Corinthians chapter 1 very carefully but if you read the first verse of it it was fascinating because it says Paul called to being a possible of Jesus Christ by the will of God and our brother Saul Sinise now when's the last time you heard a sermon preached on who on earth is souls Denise because that's a very interesting question of all the people who could be listed in Scripture what's he doing here in the beginning of the letter to the church in Corinth and the answer is when the Apostle Paul went to Corinth and preached the gospel Christus the leader of the synagogue got converted and he and his whole family gave their life to Christ while the people were really angry and really upset so they elected a guide called Sosthenes to now become the new ruler of the synagogue and he now led a political charge against the Apostle Paul and he tried to use the force of the state to shut down his speaking and his sharing and so poor so Sosthenes bought a court case before galio Gallio was one of the most powerful judges in the ancient world one of the two most powerful judges actually legally speaking think of him like a super Supreme Court justice and his brother was a tutor to the Roman Emperor Nero so this guy now has a direct line to the Emperor so you talk about political power I mean this guy's of significant power and influence and sulfa knees now tries to bring his law case before Gallio and Gallio won't even hear the case he throws it out and when he throws the case out the mob are now so angry with solsa knees that he lost they turn on him and they beat him to a bulb now I'm looking at you and you're saying Michael this is all very interesting how'd he get out of 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 1 and the answer is it's all in Acts chapter 18 read the second half of Acts 18 that tells the ontology story that's what happened the question is what happened next well let me suggest to you is it too difficult to believe that the Apostle Paul after the mob had left Sosthenes for dead on the steps of the imperial court when over are now reached out his hand of friendship and comfort and now picked it up this his enemy took him home fed him clothed him and led him to Christ and now Paul's writing to the Corinthian church a few verses later he's going to say to them my brothers and sisters I hear there are quarrels amongst you that's a very mild English translation the Greek word there is direct is derived from Ares eros was the goddess of war he literally says my brothers and sister sisters the goddess of war has been released amongst you and you are literally at each other's throats it's a very strong image and he says and I appeal to you I'm appealing to you in the name of the Jesus Christ that you come together and you love one another and you'll be of one mind and one heart and because that seems so impossible to them he starts off his letter to them by saying peace and grace from me in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord and Sosthenes in other words he's saying to them do you remember Sosthenes you remember soles knees who hated you despised you used every trick in the book he could to get a shutdown and in prisons and he even brought the court case against us before Gallio remember he sends greetings to the one who once hated you and despised you he is a brother now - and he sends his love his peace and his grace to you also we desperately need to rediscover as Christians what it means to be peacemakers in a split and divided world we are the most forgiving people on the planet we should be the most forgiving we where we go it should be marked by the fact that we can build bridges and establish and build peace where we go it's something that we're actually called to do and lay down our life for it's incredibly costly is incredibly difficult but an increasingly victimized culture where we suffer real injustice real pain real hurt but don't know how to respond to it properly the church has to model something different and we can we say at first in the person of Jesus Christ who has in that sense completely innocent of all charges with all of that hatred poured out against him what does he cry from the cross Father forgive them they don't know what they're doing and began to walk all together a disunited group of people into a small band of disciples and with that when to change the world and that is what we're going to be looking at next thank you you

Channel: Everything Conference

Views: 7,003

Keywords: everything conference, everything conf, everythingconf, culture, cultural renewal, church, christian, andy crouch, david stroud, christ church london, london, hillsong, htb, leadership conference, focus, alpha, hillsong spheres, culture change, creation, calling, purpose, Michael Ramsden, Eradicatevictimmentality, victim culture

Id: WsGSvtPYTg4

Length: 17min 31sec (1051 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019