This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
In the last few months I have visited parts of the world where life was very quickly up-ended in the most violent ways. Last June I went with a colleague to Sudan; a couple of weeks ago I was in Northern Iraq to meet political and religious leaders. And while questions of peace were being opened up regarding Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo exploded into yet more violence and hopelessness.
It isn’t a pretty picture. Human beings naturally crave order and predictability. When disorder and uncertainty together disrupt what we think of as ‘normal’, it is not surprising that fear grows and hope for the future diminishes. Just look at the news.
For people we met in Iraqi Kurdistan these experiences weren’t just about macro political developments; rather, they were deeply personal. They held the line where the political ambitions of some collide with the personal vulnerabilities of others.
We visited the memorial in Halabja where in 1988 Saddam Hussein dropped over 400 chemical weapons on a small town, killing nearly 6,000 people. We met a man who lost his entire family in a moment and who has devoted his own life to not letting the story be forgotten. We met Yazidis who had faced genocide at the bloodied hands of Islamic State. We saw a Saddam torture prison in Sulaymaniyah and photographed the toppled statue of the toppled dictator.
Two thoughts dominated during these encounters: first, the transience of power – Saddam is gone, but Halabja is still alive; and, secondly, hope must be driven by a vision of a future that is responsive to immediate need.
For the Christians we met who had come face to face with ISIS only a decade ago, they were rooted in a story in which violence and destruction did not have the final word. The biblical stories that fired their imagination and commitment told of oppressed people being liberated in the Exodus and, after enormous loss, from exile in neighbouring empires. Easter is defiant – resurrection after unjust suffering powerful beyond words.
I think every human being needs a personal narrative that drives or draws them into creating a future. Perhaps it begins with seeing uncertainty and insecurity as the norm, not the aberration? As I reminded clergy during the Covid lockdown, the biblical authors did not write their texts in 21st century England, but in contexts such as Iraq or Sudan.
Perhaps hope lies not in predictability and certainty, but in navigating the un-chosen circumstances life throws up.
