Weekly Thoughts

Perhaps you watched the recent serialization of William Golding’s novel on BBC1. I did, and now I am hunting along my bookshelves to try and find my copy of the book. Golding wrote the novel, his first, while working as a teacher. You can picture him looking over his desk at the boys he was teaching and wondering how they would do if, like the schoolboys in the novel, they found themselves fending for themselves on an uninhabited island. The most famous novel of this type “Coral Island” shows the castaways behaving with typically British phlegm and self-control. Golding disagreed he had a very different view of human nature, informed by his experiences in WWII. In the novel the boys soon descend into tribalism and savagery; two of them are killed and a worse disaster is only averted by the unexpected arrival of a rescue party.

Real life sometimes supports the traditional view. In September 1966 six boys aged 13 to 16, were discovered living on an otherwise uninhabited islet off the coast of Tonga, they had been wrecked there 15 months before. There they had established a settled community and even successfully cared for one of their number who had a broken his leg. In total contrast to the boys in Golding’s novel, they had formed themselves into a self-sufficient community. They had resolved never to quarrel and took time out if disputes developed. So, who was right the novel or real life? 

Our conviction as Christians is that men and women are made in the image of God and should be respected as such. However, in circumstances of danger, fear, or oppression that image can be overlaid by a dreadful mask of hatred. That was what Golding saw in the atrocities of WWII and we saw in the Israel/Palestine conflict in Gaza and we may see in the present Middle East War. The mask may be placed there by external circumstances or, more dangerously, we may place it there ourselves because we feel threatened or afraid. There are always people who are not like us be they travellers or immigrants or even people whose opinions we do not share. All are candidates for us to put masks on to obscure their Godlike humanity, to project on to them our fear and hatred.  Golding was an unhappy misanthropic man, and he projected that on to the boys in his novel. 

If a large group of preadolescent boys were stranded on an uninhabited island I would expect that the outcome would be somewhere between the two extremes of Lord of the Flies and the Tongan boys, who were older than the boys in the novel and also fewer in number, they were also accustomed to living on a tropical island. In real life good and evil are all mixed up together even in each one of us. That is something to reflect on as Lent progresses.

READINGS AND PRAYERS

8 MARCH – THE THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT – John 4.5-42 – Jesus meets a Samaritan woman – for the gift of the Holy Spirit to inspire and energise us 

9 MARCH – Monday – 2 Kings 1-15 – Elisha heals Naaman the Syrian – all who seek healing: spiritual, mental and physical

10 MARCH – Tuesday – Matthew 18.21- end – the virtue of forgiveness – for grace to forgive those who have hurt or offended us

11 MARCH – Wednesday – Deuteronomy 4.1,5-9 – observe the law diligently – for grace to love all people

12 MARCH – Thursday – Jeremiah 7.23-28 – they will not listen to you – that our ears may be open to the voice of the Lord

13 MARCH – Friday – Mark 12.28-34 – the new commandment – that we may love God as God loves us

14 MARCH – Saturday - Hosea 5.15-6.6 – on the third day he will raise us up – for all the faithful departed