This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
How do you go from being a spy to being a vicar?
That is probably the most frequently asked question I get when people know that my first career was at GCHQ in Cheltenham. Having joined with a degree in German and French, I trained to be a not-very-good Russian linguist specialist during the Cold War. After a few years I moved on to a theological college before being ordained in the Church of England. The rest, as they say, is history.
So, I understand the surprise about my unusual career change. But, looking at the underbelly of the world’s politics and military is not a million miles from doing pastoral work with individuals in a parish. Whether I was dealing with the Soviet military in Afghanistan or having a cup of tea with an elderly couple in their home, the questions are basically the same:
• What is the meaning of my life – my living?
• What is the meaning of my death – my dying?
• What is the meaning of history – and where do I think it began?
• Where does morality come from and why does any of this stuff matter anyway?
Now, these are classic world-view questions; but, whatever fancy label we give them, they go to the heart of most of our self-reflection and our assumptions about the stuff going on around us in the world at the moment.
For example, the ways I see yesterday’s anniversary of the slaughter in Israel and today’s focus on the slaughter across the Middle East; or my recent visit to Sudan, where friends have been displaced and dispossessed, threatened and, in some cases, killed; or the family funeral I did a few days ago as we mourned our loss and contemplated a changed future in a changed world.
I say this because, basically, theology – that is, my understanding of God, the world and us – has to make sense of the whole of reality in this complex world, not just bits of it. If my faith only works in Wimbledon and not in Baghdad, then it isn’t worth having – and there are better things to do with my life than getting ordained.
Every human being makes assumptions about why the world is the way it is and tries to shape life accordingly. It is the lens behind the eyes that filter how we think and see reality, the decisions we make and the meaning we give to them.
And this is why respectful listening to the perspectives of others really matters -that we are open to looking through the eyes of someone else and understanding why they are the way they are. It’s not about agreement, but about learning to live with difference.