Thought for the Day, 22 October 2007

The Rev Roy Jenkins

It would be comic, if it hadn't been so potentially catastrophic. A B-52 bomber carrying missiles armed with nuclear warheads was flown across the United States - by mistake: the crew had no idea that they had such a deadly cargo on board. Embarrassing for the US Air Force, for sure, and this weekend they announced that three colonels, a lieutenant colonel and 66 others have been disciplined because of what the deputy chief of staff described delightfully as an "erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards".

Quite so.

The idea of nuclear weapons going missing as if they were a few suitcases taken by mistake from a carousel and loaded on the wrong holiday flight leaves us somewhat twitchy. We might not like these things, but at least we want to know who has them and where they are. Hence the flurry of speculation that Iran might be planning a tougher stand on its right to acquire such weapons; and the regular reminders that the nuclear secrets of an unstable Pakistan have already been shared in defiance of international agreements.

But what's to be done? We can no more uninvent this technology than we can uninvent the internal combustion engine. Getting rid of it altogether is on the agenda only of the idealists, accused of accepting unnecessary risks as they reject notions of deterrence. So the talk is of limiting, controlling, scaling down.

Even among many who see such weapons as a curse, who lament the massive swallowing of resources which keeps the arsenals updated, and regard their effects as obscene, the practical commonsense argument wins the day. People of all faiths and none have to deal with the world as it is, not as they might like it to be.

Yet I'm not convinced that the appeal, "You know it makes sense" has ever been a proper invitation to the way of Jesus Christ. Much of his teaching and example made no sense at all by generally accepted standards of his own day. It's hardly more appealing in ours. Losing your life in order to find it, loving enemies, the meek inheriting the earth - common sense says "Dream on..."

Jesus knew well how radical all this was, and how hard it could be to take it on board. Indeed, he told an enquiring religious leader, "I am telling you the truth. No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again", or "born from above".

You don't begin to live the life God intends, he's saying, unless you are allowing him to make you new in a way which will touch your thinking about absolutely everything. And more - you don't even recognise what's really going on in the world, unless you are open to this re-creation: you literally don't see it; it doesn't make sense.

Pretty scary that can be, because there's no end to where it can take us. But it hardly seems more dangerous than a world where nuclear weapons just get put on the wrong plane.