So the schools are now back after the long summer holidays. Children who have been mostly in the care of their parents and other carers are now mostly in the hands of their teachers. The regimes are different but one thing that trained teachers and competent loving parents have in common is this. They seek to turn the children in their care into self-confident individuals, building their self-esteem and affirming them. This is high on the list of priorities of parents and teachers alike. Those of you (not me!) who are Archers fans have been listening in horrified fascination the story of a young woman who was systematically undermined by a controlling and manipulative husband with disastrous consequences. In a human being, self-confidence is essential to flourishing. Too much and you can have a megalomaniac – too little and you have an individual who withers and does not flourish, who is unable to achieve their potential.
What I’d like to talk about today is self-confidence in both individuals and in societies and to see what it’s got to do with the Kingdom of God. And it’s an issue of enormous topical importance.
So that you can quickly see my point, compare these two stories:
First, the story of King Cyrus the Great which we heard in our OT lesson this evening (Ezra 1). Cyrus was an astonishingly successful King and over his 30 year reign he conquered three kingdoms, becoming ruler of the largest empire the world had ever seen, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Indus River in the east. He is well attested in secular history and in the amazing Cyrus Cylinder which you can see on display at the British Museum just 25 miles from here he modestly describes himself as “Cyrus, king of the universe, the great king, the powerful king, king of Babylon, king of the four quarters of the world.” To say the very least, he had enormous self-confidence. Was that necessarily a bad thing? Well, one effect of his great self-confidence is recorded in our OT reading today. His conquest of the Babylonian empire had brought the Israelites in exile under his control. For 70 years the educated and artisan classes of Israel had been under a kind of house arrest in Babylon following the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. They (or at least many of them) yearned for their homeland. Cyrus, no doubt for a whole host of motives, is sufficiently self-confident – sufficiently comfortable in his own skin and unafraid of the Israelites – that he feels able to free those who wish to go home. What’s more, he finances the rebuilding of the Temple and returns huge quantities of plundered treasure which had been sitting in the Babylonian coffers for 70 years. His self-confidence is so great that this foreign religion holds no fears for him and great magnanimity is possible. Incidentally, Judaism repays these gestures by describing this pagan king (Isaiah 45: 1) as a “messiah”.
Second story. A terrorist drives a lorry into dozens of innocent people on a seafront in Nice in the South of France. The trauma is deep and terrible. Individuals are emotionally scarred and so are the communities in which they live. Security is understandably and I would say rightly tightened up. But the corporate loss of self-confidence goes far beyond increased security. Mayors of a number of traumatised communities seek to introduce restrictions on beachware hoping to ban the so called burkini. Although it’s not particularly in their sights, such laws would require a nun to strip off on the beach as well. Within days, photographs circulate around the globe showing policemen, for men they were, ordering a Moslem woman sitting quietly on a beach either to remove her clothes in order to reveal bare flesh or to leave the beach. Result: huge hurt and bitter division heaped on top of the deep trauma still raw from the original terrorist outrage.
The comparison between these two stories (the edict of Cyrus and the edicts of the French Mayors) is, I think, clear and revealing. Self-confident societies can afford to be liberal in outlook and tolerant of religion and they frequently are. Societies which lack self-confidence fear diversity of religion and invariably suppress it to some extent and sometimes to a very large extent.
And the fact is, British society is not as self-confident as it was. It remains to be seen what the impact of Brexit negotiations will be on our national self-confidence. But we are told by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner that when it comes to terrorist attacks on our country, it is a matter of when and not if. In our society as much as in France, a loss of self-confidence is likely to follow from terrorist attacks and religious freedom is likely to pay a price.
So that’s all about the self-confidence of societies. That’s all well and good, you might say, but what are we supposed to do about it? It’s surely far beyond the ability of those of us sitting here this evening to influence the mood of nations.
Well, yes, to a point. But of course, the mood of a society comes from the mood of the people within it. The starting point is to ask how self-confident are we as individuals – how comfortable are we in our own skins as Christians? How secure are we in acknowledging Christ as the way, the truth and the life? That, it seems to me, is where the self-confidence that I am talking about essentially springs from. If we are steadfast in our faith – confident that we rest in God’s loving arms and that in all respects that matter, we are cared for, then a woman wearing a burkini on the beach hold no fears for us.
And the fact is, people all around us are thirsty for self-confidence of that kind. People we work with, our neighbours, people we come into contact with day by day. They are thirsty for meaning in their lives and for the self-confidence which faith can bring to them. My home group this week considered how we might approach making new disciples. We were informed by an improbable mixture of a papal encyclical on evangelisation and a business tool used to enhance corporate brands. I think our conclusions were that, at least for us, making new disciples is not about thrusting religious tracts into the hands of startled people. For us, we concluded, it is to be about four things:
First, letting slip to all that we are Christians, so that everyone we come into contact with knows where we stand and they know that we are ready to share our faith with them if they want us to.
Secondly, being attractive. By which I mean letting our joy in faith and our love for each other be visible and infectious.
Thirdly, walking alongside them, or as the Pope puts it, making sure we “smell like the sheep” in our interactions with all. We are not remote from their lives, their challenges, their temptations. What we offer in faith speaks to them because we are one of them.
And fourthly, being ready to share our faith when their interest is piqued or some life event makes them spot an emptiness in their lives, offering a simple and compelling account of our faith prepared for sharing.
These four steps, it seemed to our home group this week, are a realistic approach to evangelising for us, confident that the Holy Spirit will do the rest. That way, when we pray “thy kingdom come” we will have done what we can to make that happen.
And how will we know it is happening? We will see it as our society becomes more comfortable in its skin – more self-confident and more mature. An edict by a Pagan king, Cyrus, was hugely important in the life of God’s people in earlier times. And paradoxically, perhaps a sign that Jesus’ kingdom of self-confident joy in faith is growing nearer will be the sight of birkini clad women on French beaches sitting undisturbed by police officers.