Stories of hope must be stories of hope for us all
On Saturday my regular newsagent asked me where I had been? I informed him that I drew up a pact with myself that I would not buy a newspaper until I had finished all of my previous purchases that filled my car and the gap between my favourite chair and a set of drawers. Today though I would buy as I had deposed of what I had in the recycling.
It takes me a while to finish a paper and ‘The Long Read’ in Saturday’s Guardian is usually a particular challenge. Not so this week as although Dina Nayeri is Iranian and I, Northern Irish we had a faith and particularly the Book of Revelation in common.
Nayeri in the 1980s accompanied her mother to Protestant Evangelical Church meetings in Iran. It was after the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which meant that any Christian converts were in danger, the church met in secret in a basement.
It was as she wrote on describing how ‘The Rapture’ would relieve them from the threat that I detected a familiar story was being told. The Rapture is a Christian theological belief that before the end of the world true Christians will be raptured, taken from the earth to their heavenly home.
Events in Tehran were interpreted through that most famous book of Revelation. You may be familiar with the Omen films which did a pretty good job of Holywoodising the story. It scared the life out of me as a kid. I was only comforted by knowing I was on the winning side!
The trailer below is of a 2006 remake.
The book is written in rich symbolism for the Christians of the 1st century as they endured persecution from the Romans. It foretold in code apocalyptic events that would happen before Christ would return offering hope in times of terror.
Christ did not return, as far as we know, in the 1 AD which has meant subsequent Christian generations have applied it to their time as in Tehran and for me in Northern Ireland.
Somehow as a child, I absorbed the story that we, the Protestant people of Ulster, were the last true Christians upon the earth. We were God’s chosen people and that was the reason the Irish Republic Army (IRA) was trying to obliterate us. Martin Luther, the 15th-century Protestant reformer, it was said believed the Pope was, to use imagery from Revelation, the Anti-Christ.
Somewhere in the troubles of Northern Ireland the idea that the IRA was acting as the Army of the Roman Catholic church got into young minds. Like the secret Christians of Tehran, there was for us a fear though also an excitement that we were indeed the people foretold in the Book of Revelation and God was on our side.
The real danger in N. Ireland was that some would act as did Peter in the garden of Gethsemane and take up arms against the army of the Antichrist.
I hear echoes of radical Islam though extremism can exist if any faith or any group that believes a narrative where they are the chosen ones, the superior ones and the defenders of truth.
Nayeri does go on to say that she detects similar hopes of an apocolypse and a rapture in the voting trends for Trump and Brexit, a return to the past when things were better.
I sense a caution in our storytelling that a good story could be corrupted to engender fear and not hope at least not hope that includes us all.
g.
