Trinity 13
The majority vote
“The truth” Cardinal Ratzinger once famously said “is not decided by majority vote.”
When the future Pope Cardinal Ratzinger said those words in 1996, he was head of the Inquisition- yes it still exists and don’t say you didn’t expect it. Now I’ve quoted it, it would be no surprise then if those of a nervous disposition are making sure they know exactly where the exit doors are so they can a quick run for it. When religious people start to talk about ‘truth’ it is not uncommon for other people to feel a tad nervous. Talk of truth always seems to carry with it the faint but unmistakable whiff of burn-the-heretics and hunt-the-witches, at least when those of a religious orientation talk in that way. Fear not. This is the 21st century and, at least in the Church of England, our heretics are more likely to be promoted than burned. Still. ‘The truth is not decided by majority vote’. It is a worrying thing for somebody to say. It would not be quite such a worrying thing to hear were it not so undoubtedly true.
Now majority vote is quite likely the best way we know to select a government, though, given what we usually end up with you could be forgiven for wondering, if that’s the best way to do things what on earth would the worst look like.
But we instinctively go for the majority vote. Maybe it’s the ancestral pack instinct: you never know Darwin might have got the right theory and wrong ancestor. Humans, evolved not from apes but from dogs. That would make the ‘man’s best friend’ bit suddenly more explicable. And the propensity to eat dodgy kebabs under the influence of alcohol.
We have the majority instinct. Let me illustrate. If you are in an unfamiliar situation and don’t know what you are supposed to do but you know not doing anything would be the worst possible option, what do you do? It’s usual here to suggest the situation of being desperate for the loo in a place where someone has written the signs on the doors in a local and incomprehensible language- Welsh say- or perhaps obscured the ladies and gents signs with graffiti. It’s a choice of wet yourself or 50/50 chance of someone screaming and a visit from the constabulary. However, we’re all sensible people and went before we sent off so let’s go with what, for some, might be a much a more immediate experience. Howsabout, you are in a church. It is clearly one of those high church places where there is a lot of standing, sitting, kneeling, crossing yourself, beating your breast, sometimes swinging incense and ringing bells. Everybody else seems to know what they should be doing at any given moment in this complex and intricate holy choreography and you don’t. Sound familiar? What do you do? Unless you are a very brave and supremely self-confident soul prepared to brazen it out, or are clergy, which amounts to the same thing, you copy someone else. It just makes sense. Probably many cherished high church rituals have their origin is somebody sneezing at the wrong moment and everybody else copying them. This is of course why the front rows in Anglican churches are almost always empty. Sit there and there’s nobody in front to copy.
Now the twenty-first century conception of truth is that we make our own truths, though truth be told, we’re not always confident enough in our truth-making abilities when presented with blank toilet door signs or religious ritual. But, if we make our own truths, does it not make sense then that the more people who believe a particular thing to be true, the more true it is? That makes sense. Make your own truth: the more people that make it, the truer it is. Stands to reason.
Pope says no. “The truth is not decided by majority vote.”
Nowhere is this more the case than when we come to consider the truth of what is morally right and wrong. Naturally, we usually behave as though precisely the opposite is the case, that what is right and wrong is decided by majority vote. Am I doing the right thing? Well, what is everybody else doing? Is what I am doing wrong? If I can’t get away without being noticed doing it, well, what is everybody else doing? We default to majority-vote morality. Perhaps this is why, instinctively, we make such dreadfully unoriginal sinners. Like most other things in life, our sins are usually plagiarised, copied from somebody else. At the very least, sins, or at least many of the more interesting ones that obsess Christians, involve at least two people, who of course have at least tacitly to agree that it probably isn’t a sin, before they do it. The road to hell, paved with good intentions, and much of that road a dual carriageway.
Ask a hundred people who will not normally be in church on this or any Sunday what church is all about and, well what would they say? Songs of Praise devotees will say hymns. Those who have watched too much Vicar of Dibley, might say chocolate and pet services. Those who watched Fleabag will have an implausibly optimistic if highly inaccurate view of clergy. Those who have watched too much Father Ted would say something unrepeatable from the mouth of Father Jack, but Fr Ted obsessives usually tend to be priests anyway so they don’t count as people who would not normally be in church. I would hazard a guess that the biggest chunk of our un-churched, if asked, would say ‘Church? Oh well, that’s all about sin isn’t it?’
If you are one of those who hold this view then you may be feeling a little smug at this point. “Didn’t take ‘im long did it? 5 minutes in and he’s banging on about sin. Told you. They’re always telling you off, holier than thou. Church is all about sin”
No it isn’t. Now you might think I was being just slightly disingenuous here: or if you’re a more forthright type of person, being barefaced. Most church services involve us making confession (of our sins), most involved Bible readings (often about our sins), and I’ve just after much beating around the preaching bush got to sin in this address. I hope I got the punctuation right there.
But still, I insist. Contrary to popular belief or even appearances Christianity is not about making you feel bad about yourself: in fact exactly and precisely the opposite- the main reason for being a Christian is to be happy. Christianity is not ‘all about sin’: Christianity is not about sin at all.
Christianity is about release from sin, Christianity is about transcending sin, Christianity is about breaking the mould of monkey-see monkey-do morality. It is surely about doing the right thing; not about obsession with the wrong thing. The language of baptism, the first step of any and every Christian journey is that of the washing away of sin. Washed away. Gone. And so all Christians must concentrate on, is the goal of our journey, not the mud, the muck and the mire we must wade through to get there. It is undoubtedly useful to occasionally glance at the conditions underfoot but it is no use at all to stop, sit down and start poking around in the squelchy stuff. The destination is the thing, the end of the journey is the heavenly vision, the prize, to see God face to face. That is not pie in the sky or jam tomorrow any more than the mighty oak is pie in the sky to the acorn or the butterflyis jam tomorrow to the caterpillar. It is the end of that pilgrims journey that starts with the splash of water.
Do you have the courage to leave the pressures of the pack, to exchange safety in numbers for the pilgrims road, to ignore the majority vote and find the truth?
I think you do.
In this country for decades now, the majority vote has been against Christianity. It’s long gone past the time when the majority vote was to come to church on a Sunday morning.
But here you are.
Another minority membership to add to your collection.
Being in the minority goes against some of our most basic instincts. We’re pack animals: we know that safety comes in numbers; we know the dangers of casting out on your own, we know the likely fate of those who get separated from the herd.
But here you are.
Don’t be discouraged.
The truth is not decided by majority vote.
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