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llevronbelac · 3 years

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Short Summary of Theological Conditional Immortality

Within orthodox Christianity there are three major views on the nature of Hell: Eternal Torment (ET), Conditional Immortality (CI), and Universal Reconciliation (UR). While since the time of Augustine ET has been the most prominent view of Hell, both CI and UR have existed since the foundation of the Church and have experienced ebbs and flows of influence since then. These views of Hell are seemingly gaining influence in the Church as of the past few decades which many who hold the ET view find concerning. This essay is a short summary of the Biblical arguments made in support of CI, and against the most popular view ET.

There are four major points of argument that are made in support of CI, each of which can stand on their own but together make for the most complete and powerful argument for the nature of Hell among the three views.

1. Biblical Language of Destruction

In almost every instance of the Bible describing the fate of the wicked or unsaved, it describes it with the language of destruction. They die, perish, burn up, and are destroyed (Psalm 1:6, Malachi 4:1, Matthew 7:13, Rom 9:22, 1 Timothy 6:9, 2 Thessalonians 1:9, Hebrews 10:27). There is very little language within the Bible that describes the fate of the unsaved as unending torment, just one verse to be precise.

This language can be both metaphorical and literal. Both the consequence of eating from the prohibited tree and the description of the Prodigal son is said to be death as a metaphorical description of the separation from God. Famous verses such as Romans 6:23 and John 3:16 both describe the fates of the saved and the unsaved as life versus death. These descriptions are more ambiguous about how literally they are meant to be taken. While one of the more literal verses that supports the view of destruction is Matthew 10:28 which says that God can destroy both body and soul in Hell.

The strongest support of eternal destruction comes from the temporal judgements God inflicted upon the wicked as described in the Old Testament. When describing His second coming, Jesus uses two Old testament judgements to illustrate this point: Noah and the Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah, where Noah and Lot are representative of the remnant spared from destruction (Luke 17:26-29). The most clear and direct comparison comes from 2 Peter 2:6: “by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.”

2. Conditional Immortality of the Soul

The Bible teaches that the body and the soul are not inherently immortal but rather gifts of God (1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 2 Tim 1:10, John 3:36,1 John 5:11). In order for the unsaved to be tormented forever in Hell as ET purports, God would need to sustain their life after the resurrection, effectively granting them immortality. This contradicts what scripture teaches on who will receive life in the resurrection.

In the beginning of Genesis, God breathes life into man. Life is a gift from God both bodily and spiritually. When man ate from the forbidden tree, the gift of life, both bodily and spiritually, was forfeited and God banished man from the Garden of Eden to prevent them from eating from the tree of life so they wouldn’t live forever. In Revelation the tree of life makes a reappearance for “death will be no more” and “there will no longer be any curse” (Revelation 22:1-3). The tree of life is a symbol for the eternal life that the saved will partake in in the eschaton. It is both a bodily immortality and a spiritual immortality just like the revocation of access to the tree in Genesis is both symbolizing bodily and spiritual death

3. Atoning Work of Christ

Most christian theology would describe the atoning work of Christ to be that of a substitutionary atonement. Wherein Christ bore the punishment that the saved would have born and which the unsaved will bear in the final judgment of God. He substituted himself in the saved’s place so they wouldn’t have to pay the wages of sin themselves. The wages of sin is death, and Christ did indeed bear that punishment on the cross when he died (Romans 5:6-8, 1 Corinthians 15:3, 2 Corinthains 5:15). This was a literal, bodily death that he bore on the saved’s behalf (1 Peter 3:18, Hebrews 10:10). There is little indication that this is a bodily or spiritual suffering that he paid the price for. It is much easier to see the atoning work of Christ on the cross, where he died, to be a substitution for the death that awaits the unsaved in the final judgement.

4. Just and Holy Nature of God

The nature and character of God as revealed in the Bible is much more fully expressed with a view of the nature of Hell as one of destruction and not unending torment. While it should be plainly seen that God’s mercy, graciousness, and love would be more fully expressed in the destruction of His enemies rather than the unending torture of them, these arguements are fairly simple and lend themselves towards supporting UR even more so than CI. The attributes that are most pertinent to this discussion are God’s Justice and Holiness.

The Old Testament Law is the most comprehensive descriptor of the just character of God. Within it the punishment for a variety of sins is described. The punishment for sin is evenly weighted against what was committed, the penalty for theft or arson or damages to another's property was not death but rather paying back what had been stolen in full. Likewise, little partiality was given between who was committing the sin and against whom it was committed. The punishment for killing a slave is described to be the same as killing another man, there is not a distinction made between the punishments based on status. It can be assumed that the justice God will exhibit in His final judgement would be at least as fair as the laws He gave to the Hebrews in the Old Testament. Finite sins committed by finite creatures shouldn’t require a punishment of infinite torment no matter how infinite the receiver of the sin is, to say otherwise is more feudalistic than it is Scriptural.

Lastly, the holiness of God separates and distances Him from sin and evil. This holiness would prevent God from letting sin continue to persist in the eschaton after His glorious victory over it. Because of God’s omnipresent nature, sin will never truly be out of His presence for as long as He allows for sinful creatures to continue to live. While by relinquishing His gift of life from the unsaved and extinguishing them from His presence, the victory over sin is truly comprehensive and enacted in full. To supernaturally keep sinful people alive for all eternity so as to let them continue to sin does not suggest a complete victory over sin and does not suggest God and His people’s complete separation from sin in the eschaton.

#Hell #christianity #the bible #bible #christian #faith #annihilationism #conditional immortality #calvinism #church #catholicism #God #jesus #jesus christ

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diamondnokouzai · 4 years

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talking abt the visual novel characters under the cut <3

mayhart player character. red-haired human commoner, youngest child of her family, last child born of her mother before mother died and father remarried. shorter than average (5′2″ as female, 5′5″ as male) named mayhart because she was born on the fourth of may. wild & uncontrollable, bearing a rage that she herself doesn’t even understand. grew up a commoner alongside her childhood friend yerick. widely rumored in town to be a changeling- she doesn’t act the way a normal human should, never knowing when to leave well enough alone or how to calm down and settle for her lot in life (the number of times when she, accompanied with yerick, has been chased back to town by some beast she provoked in the woods is uncountable). was recently conscripted into the army and adopted by the duchess koballe after her latent magic appeared. one of very few people who can use offensive magic and not purely reconnaissance/traveling magic. finally has an outlet for her rage, and somewhat hates the things she does. wears standard military uniform but badly- doesnt entirely understand how all the straps & bindings work and will not learn :) as the player character, she can be male or female. as a male, his rage turns inward, and as a result he is less open with his own emotions and keeps all his feelings hidden within himself. openly contemptuous of the war, but far more polite than his female counterpart. neither version holds any respect for anyone who hurts the weak. neither can hold their liquor either. 21 in human years

demavieve eldest princess of the draconic realm- as such, the future sovereign. the draconic realm is the only country allied with perine in this war which makes several people very nervous (its like if the us allied with luxembourg in a war against belgium france germany & the uk excep the us was the only country with nukes). demavieve has a very strong sense of honor though so constrains herself to a human form along with swordplay. this is less dangerous than it seems because if demavieves human form dies then she just turns back into her draconic form. her human form also has red hair, but its far more tameable than mayhart’s. she wears it tied back in a ponytail in general. she wears a perine knight’s uniform with vestments from the draconic realm to signify that she is (a) a foreign-lent soldier and (b) a commander. her human form is muscular and about 6′6″. hot and well aware of it.arrogant but also very friendly about it- ‘you love me? haha, of course you are! you seem great too!’. kind of sees this whole thing as a game- dragons live a lot longer than humans, and something like this is just a blip on her radar. very low empathy until someone she cares about is hurt at which point everything goes out the window (and she cares about pretty much all the perine soldiers- not in a very respectful way, but she loves them all and she goes apeshit sometimes). very friendly with serenina. can absolutely hold her liquor. only romanceable as f!mayhart. 23 in human years, ~150 in real time.

serenina the only princess of the former emperor and empress. i spoke about her in more detail in another post so this is gonna mostly be glossed over. wears her hair in afropuffs cause she does her own hair and shes proud of it. temporal (reconnaissance) magic. desperate to please. legally only friends with demavieve, although also friendly with yerick. about 5′0″ although she desperately wants to grow taller (unlikely). her eyes look like theyre black but if you look closely (which she probably wont let you do) theyre actually purple/indigo. is completely out of touch with the rest of the world because shes a princess but she is also very sincere and tries her best to be helpful when she can. very expressionless and sensible. not very well-liked as the former princess of the warmongering emperor and empress. actually very touch starved. does not wear standard military uniform outside of mage’s robes, which she wears over tea dresses (which is another reason some soldiers dislike her) is kept away from alcohol as much as grayson can and as such will get drunk off half a cup of wine. sleepy drunk. 18 in human years.

grayson the bastard son of the former emperor, sereninas older half-brother. grew up as a commoner in the same area as serenina & yerick until he was brought into the royal castle at age 9. fiercely protective of serenina. faux affable- you know the ‘expressionless smile’ princes from otome games/manga always have? thats graysons face pretty much always. legally not eligible to the crown (due to some religious issues with committing patricide & stepmatricide) but like. like hes already doing everything? yk how it is. highest commander of his troops attempting to broker peace with the other countries perine was at war with (most noticeably alloue, nawolem, & farik in order to attack caledonia, which was the puppeteer behind the former reign) but is not above underhanded methods/tactics including attacking noncombatant targets (they dont even have geneva). very intelligent & very calculating- consistently calculates highest reward/lowest risk maneuvers and has them executed flawlessly. his own cunning scares him on occasion, but he mostly locks that away- theres no time for those kinds of feelings in war. a foil to f!mayhart- she is wild, he is restrained; she shows her true feelings regardless, he always acts at a happy neutral; mayhart confronts her uncomfortable feelings, grayson hides them from everyone. about 5′11″, has long dreads that he keeps tied back. dressed in perfect military regalia, including commander’s cape & military crown (basically just a circlet). also cant hold his liquor- hes nearly as bad as serenina. 25 in human years.

izyn the son of count dau claire, the only noble house in perine that has been loyal to grayson since before the deaths of the former emperor and empress. very quiet because he has social anxiety. completely brainless. very friendly but his height (6′4″) and imposing aura (he gets nervous) means that the only people who can easily communicate with him are yerick and grayson. black hair, cropped short, and green eyes. skilled swordsman, mid-commander. will get trapped in an unwinnable situation which yerick needs to save him from. wears his military uniform right but...........not really? he wears the base uniform right but always forgets his commander’s cape. has a dedicated fanbase that came about when he did his training shirtless. literally doesnt think that any of his problems are that deep (honestly doesnt think anything is that deep). suffice to say, theres a reason why count dau claire never shows up and doesnt seem to be involved in any of the decision making of the count’s matters. very protective of yerick (younger brother). is the most visibly affected by the war- as the one who is usually in the center of the violence and doesnt have a survival cheat like demavieve, he has pretty bad ptsd which coupled with his anxiety issues make him a hot mess. his hobbies include hiding in dark rooms that have been reinforced to the point where literally only yerick can get in. despite his size he gets drunk very easily- not as bad as grayson & serenina, but 1-2 mugs of beer puts him out. 26 in human years. only romanceable as m!mayhart

yerick adopted son of count dau clarie. childhood friend of mayhart. born an orphan, an old woman took care of him til he was 4 and she died. stuck around mayharts town cause their family would give him food whenever he stopped by. still ended up fairly malnourished. small but vicious- hes screamed at mayhart lots of times for the stupid shit they would get him into and is not afraid to smack some sense into them. however he is not a good fighter because hes physically very weak- most of his energy in developing went to his magical capabilities, which came to fruition when he was 6. about a year after that (with a great deal more shunning from the townsfolk besides mayhart), he was adopted by count dau claire. was sealed with a subordination seal (used in order to ensure compliance with reasonable requests as long as a reasonable argument is made) for a year to ensure that he wouldnt run away. izyn liked him right away, but it took about 18 months for yerick to not be completely vicious whenever he was approached. as of the modern day of the vn, yerick is as protective over izyn as izyn is him- yerick has seen some of the worst of the world, and in his opinion izyn has not (this is despite the fact that izyn helped overthrow the royal family at age 15 but in fairness to him izyn told yerick none of this) so he wants to make sure his big brother stays happy. yerick holds absolutely no loyalty towards count dau claire or even to grayson- he is loyal to his own needs first, with a decent second being izyn and an even further distant third being mayhart & their family. very prickly & well acquainted with the fact that most people are inherently selfish and would turn away from an orphan on the streets. abandonment issues. his spatial magic is mostly used on rescue ops (mostly mostly getting izyn out of situations where hes surrounded by enemy soldiers but this extends to other perine soldiers). wears his uniform properly, including mage’s robes & commander’s cape over the standard perine uniform. hates to ever appear weak ever, so when he has to go to the medical tent izyn has to either force him there or pretend to be tsundere and throw bandages at him. izyn desperately wants to dote on him but that is one of yericks Hard Boundaries. theres like ONE time when yerick falls asleep because of arcane overexertion and izyn piggybacks him back to camp and yerick acts like its the most shameful secret in the world. foil to m!mayhart- very open with his anger & feelings and shows when he is angry and accepts that part of himself, open with his loyalties and doesnt give a fuck about it, doesnt like the war but does respect it. despite his size, it takes easily 3 barrels of alcohol to even get him tipsy, izyns lack of alcohol tolerance pisses him off cause he has to walk him back to his tent. 5′4″ and wants to grow taller but has accepted his fate. 19 in human years.

eliya legally not a combatant. former princess of caledonia, was discovered at 12 to hold the power of the divine will and so was sent away from her mother and father (who she perceived as loving) to be raised within the church as a holy sacrifice (those who hold the power of the divine will release a huge psychic shockwave when theyre killed, so she was basically raised to be a holy tyke bomb). has a lot of religious obsession, prays 3x a day and has been brainwashed into believing in the power of holy judgement- essentially, her church handler (aka the deacon of the church where she was raised) has raised her to believe that if she commits a sin she’ll be killed so she has a LOT of anxiety over doing the right thing.at the same time shes been brainwashed into believing that doing anything in the service of the throne of caledonia is morally & theologically correct. shes also had occasional contact with her parents (like a yearly dinner or smth) and so still has a lot of loyalty to them due to how they manipulated her and her relationship with her little siblings (7 yrs younger x 2, 2 yrs younger, 13 yrs younger). completely devoted to her church, would gladly martyr herself for them (however this wouldnt trigger the shockwave needed by the army). is loyal to her parents, the deacon, and then the church. is captured by the perine army after a raid on a noncombatant area and spends a lot of time figuring herself out. foil to serenina (esp in terms of loyalty & parents/siblings, emotions (eliya has a lot of them and shows them, serenina is the opposite), their royal treatment, their relationship with trust (serenina doesnt, eliya does and worringly easily). long golden hair, light blue eyes. wears neither a military uniform nor a priests’ uniform, instead wears a one-piece white ‘dress’ (really more a tunic/oversized shirt) & is barefoot. desperate for attention, praise, love, etc. widely disliked due to her POW status but she really thinks shes making all these friends. has quite literally not been able to make her own choices since she was 12 years old. above average alcohol tolerance but nowhere near yerick. 19 in human years.

#.din #.txt #my ocs #im warming up to the title smile⭐smile⭐smile also but it also kind of seems stupid? idk #anyways. eliya was originally a male character but i hate hate hate when one gender has more characters than the other #also yes demavieve & izyn are both gay but all the other characters are bisexual.#also yerick & demavieve are both trans but im allowed to wog that because im also trans.#i also see both mayharts as trans but like it wont come up in the vn again im allowed to do this because im trans #also my favorite characters are yerick & eliya. grayson & serenina are close seconds followed by the mayharts.#after that would be demavieve and then izyn sadly comes in last i still like him but its like i can trust him alone yknow #like leaving a 10 year old home alone while i run errands i dont think izyn would blow up the house. all the others would immediately.

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bk-lostintranslation · 4 years

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Review: The Bhagavad Gita & Personal Choice

At once a down-to-earth narrative and a multifaceted spiritual drama, the Gita bears a concrete timelessness, with its magnetism lying in the fact that it is a work not of religious dogma, but of personal choice.

For years, the Bhagavad Gita has distinguished itself as a masterpiece of spiritual and philosophical scripture. Beautifully condensing Upanishadic knowledge, the Gita traverses a number of subjects – from duty as a means toward liberation (moksha), to the risks of losing oneself to worldly temptations, to the dichotomy between the lower self (jiva) and the ultimate, eternal Self (atman) – as well as detailing a vast spectrum of human desires, treating them not as one-dimensional abstractions, but as the complex combinatorial dilemmas they are in real life. Written in the style of bardic poems, the Gita bears a concrete timelessness, with its magnetism lying in the fact that it is a work not of religious dogma, but of personal choice.

Recounting the dialogue between Arjuna, the Pandava warrior-prince, and Lord Krishna, his godling charioteer, the text covers a wide swath of Vedantic concepts which are then left for Arjuna to either follow or reject. This element of personal autonomy, and how it can lead to self-acceptance, environmental mastery and finally the spiritual path to one's true destiny, is an immensely alluring concept for readers today. But Arjuna's positioning is the real crux of the Gita: his conflicts between personal desire and sacred duty are the undercurrent of the tale, and the text offers equally spiritual and practical insights in every nuance.

The Gita begins with two families torn into different factions and preparing for battle. The sage Vyasa, who possesses the gift of divine vision, offers to loan the blind King, Dhritarashtra, his ability so the King may watch the battle. However, Dhritarashtra declines, having no wish to witness the carnage – particularly since his sons, the Kauravas, are arrayed on the battlefield. Instead, the sage confers his powers to Sanjaya, one of Dhritarashtra's counselors, who faithfully recounts the sequence of events as they unfold. From the start, readers' introduction to the Gita is almost sensory, with the battlefield stirred into action by Bhishma, who blows his conch horn and unleashes an uproarious war-frenzy, "conches and kettledrums, cymbals, tabors and trumpets ... the tumult echoed through heaven and earth... weapons were ready to clash." These descriptions serve as marked contrasts to the dialogic exchange that follows between Arjuna and Krishna, which is serene and private in tone, the two characters wearing the fabric of intimate friendship effortlessly as they are lifted out of the narrative, suspended as if in an aether where the concept of time becomes meaningless.

Arjuna – whose questions carry readers through the text – stands with Krishna in the heart of the battlefield, between the two armies. However, when he sees the enemy arrayed before him, "fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons, grandsons and friends," he falls into the grip of a moral paralysis. His whole body trembles and his sacred bow, Gandiva, slips from his hands. He tells Krishna, "I see omens of chaos ... I see no good in killing my kinsmen in battle... we have heard that a place in hell is reserved for men who undermine family duties." As Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton remark in the book, Altruism in World Religions, "To fight his own family, Arjuna realizes, will violate a central tenet of his code of conduct: family loyalty, a principle of dharma." The concept of dharma holds an integral place in Hindu-Vedantic ethos, with Sanatana Dharma (eternal and universal dharma) regarded as a sacred duty applicable to all, and Swadharma (personal and particular dharma) sometimes coming into conflict with the former. It is this inherent contradiction that catalyzes Arjuna's self-doubt. "The flaw of pity blights my very being; conflicting sacred duties confound my reason."

It is Krishna who must inspire him to fight, through comprehensive teachings in the essentials of birth and rebirth, duty and destiny, action and inertia. There is an allegorical genius here that will appeal tremendously to readers. The military aspects of the Gita can easily serve as metaphors for not just external real-life battles, but internal battles of the self, with the two armies representing the conflict between the good and evil forces within each of us. In that sense, Krishna's advice to Arjuna – the seven-hundred slokas – becomes a pertinent, pragmatic guide to human affairs. With each verse, both Arjuna and the readers are offered perspectives and practices which, if followed, can allow them to achieve a robust understanding of reality.

With the spiritual underpinnings of the wisdom known as Sankhya, Krishna explains different yogas, or disciplines. Readers slowly begin to encounter all the components of humanity and the universe, through the lens of Arjuna, whose moral and spiritual weltanschauung undergoes a gradual metamorphosis – from, "If you think understanding is more powerful than action, why, Krishna, do you urge me to this horrific act? You confuse my understanding with a maze of words..." to "Krishna, my delusion is destroyed... I stand here, my doubt dispelled, ready to act on your words."

We are introduced in slow but mesmerizing detail to the wisdom within Arjuna himself; an omniscience that eluded him because it was hidden beneath illusion, or maya. Indeed, Krishna makes it clear that the very essence of maya is to conceal the Self – the atman – from human understanding by introducing the fallacy of separation, luring individuals with the promise that enlightenment springs not from within but from worldly accouterments: in sensual attraction, in the enticements of wealth and power. However, Krishna makes it clear that the realm of the senses, the physical world, is impermanent, and always in flux. Whereas he, the supreme manifestation of the divine and the earthly, the past, present and future, is there in all things, unchanging. "All creatures are bewildered at birth by the delusion of opposing dualities that arise from desire and hatred."

Although these themes are repeated often throughout the Gita, in myriad ways, not once do they become tiresome. Although Krishna's role in much of the Mahabharata is that of a Machiavellian trickster, invested in his own mysterious agenda, he does eventually reveal himself to Arjuna as the omniscient deity. Yet never once does he coerce Arjuna into accepting his teachings, though they are woven inextricably and dazzlingly through the entirety of the Gita. Rather, he gives Arjuna the choice to sift through layers of self-delusion and find his true Self. This can be achieved neither through passive inertia, nor through power-hungry action, but through the resolute fulfillment of duty that is its own reward. In order to dissolve the Self, the atman, into Brahman and achieve moksha, it is necessary to fight all that is mere illusory temptation. Just as Krishna promises Arjuna, victory is within reach, precisely because as a Kshatriya-warrior, it is his sacred duty – his destiny – to fight the battle. More than that, the desire to act righteously is his fundamental nature; the rest is pretense and self-delusion. "You are bound by your own action, intrinsic to your being ... the lord resides in the heart of all creatures, making them reel magically, as if a machine moved them."

Although the issues that Arjuna grapples with often become metaphysical speculations, never once does it dehumanize his character. His very conflict between the vacillations of the self and sacred duty assure his position as something greater and more complex than a mere widget fulfilling Krishna's agenda. It is through the essence of Arjuna's conflict that he grows on a personal and spiritual level. Conflict so personal and timeless is inextricably tied to choice. In Arjuna's case, the decision to shed the constraints of temporal insecurities and ascend toward his higher Self – freed from the weight of futile self-doubt and petty distractions – rests entirely in his hands. Krishna aids him through his psychospiritual journey not with a lightning-bolt of instantaneous comprehension, but through a slow unraveling of illusions so that Arjuna will arrive at a loftier vantage, able to reconnect with his true Self, and to remember his sacred duty. The answers are already within him; the very purpose of Krishna's counsel is merely to draw it out. "Armed with his purified knowledge, subduing the self with resolve, relinquishing sensuous objects, avoiding attraction and hatred... unposessive, tranquil, he is at one with the infinite spirit."

At its core, the Bhagavad Gita is timelessly insightful and life-affirmingly human, an epic that illustrates the discomfiting truths and moral dilemmas that continue to haunt modern-day readers. Despite its martial setting, it is fueled not by the atrocities of battle, but overflowing with the wisdoms of devotion, duty and love. Its protagonist is inclined by lingering personal attachments, but compelled by godly counsel, to surpass both the narrow private restrictions of self-doubt and the broad social framework of family, in order to reconnect with his pure, transcendental Self. However the Gita does not offer its teachings as rigid doctrine, but as a gentle framework through which readers can achieve a fresh perspective on the essential struggles of humankind. At once a down-to-earth narrative and a multifaceted spiritual drama, the Gita bears a concrete timelessness, with its magnetism lying in the fact that it is a work not of religious dogma, but of personal choice.

#essay #academic writing #bhagavadgita #hinduism #religion #krishna #philosophy #review #book review

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kirstymcneill · 7 years

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Scotland and our movement moment

This is the text of a talk I gave at the Adam Smith Festival of Ideas, first published on Global Dashboard on the 19th of March 2017.

This weekend was the inaugural Adam Smith Festival of Ideas in Kirkcaldy and I was asked to speak about how Scotland could change the world in the years ahead. This is what I said.

Our world needs movements – and movements need Scots

I want to tell you a story about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we could go. A story about the Scotland we could become – if we first understand who we are.

I came of age politically after the fall of the Berlin Wall and during the highpoint of a global order based on shared rules and human rights. From the Arms Trade Treaty to the responsibility to protect doctrine to the cancellation of third world debt, I got kind of used to the uninterrupted march of global justice.

And then the darkness descended.

Just take the last three years.

2015 was the year of the refugee, with global refugee figures reaching their highest point since World War Two.

2016 was the year of populism, with surging support for nativist political forces across the Western world.

2017 is set to be the year of famine, with more than 20 million people at risk of starvation across Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia in the worst crisis of its sort in more than three decades.

Something has gone very very wrong and I’m here today to ask you to join me in helping to put it right. My argument today is three fold.

Firstly, that this particular moment in history is a ‘movement moment’ – it demands of us a willingness to join movements in unprecedented numbers, because the problems cannot be fixed by politicians, public policy or public institutions alone.

Secondly, my argument is that Scots in particular have special responsibilities here, because we believe in cooperation not only in our communities and in our country, but across the world. And thirdly that Scots not only have a duty to be involved in global justice movements, but actually have a very distinctive contribution to make, by virtue of the quirks of our historical experience.

A movement moment

Let me begin by saying a bit more about where we are, and why I think this is a movement moment.

By day I work at Save the Children and each day I try to remind myself of the good we have done together. Since 1990, we have halved the number of children dying before their fifth birthday. Anybody who has ever suffered any form of bereavement knows that each loss is shattering, leaving a hole in a family that can never be filled. That we have halved the number of families experiencing the depths of that sorrow is a good reason to get up in the morning. And if you’ve ever given to an international charity like Save the Children, or happily pay your taxes and support that money being spent on aid, then these are your achievements and you can be very very proud.

But at the same time I cannot say, hand on heart, that I am optimistic about the way the world is moving. I despair every time we release a new report charting the catastrophic failure to protect the children of Syria. Last week we published a report in which a child said “when friends die my chest hurts and I can’t breathe so I sit alone because I don’t want to scream at anyone”. These are words that no child anywhere should say.

In the report before that parents in a besieged area of Syria told us what it was like to raise children in a town where all the doctors had fled or been killed. They had resorted to taking their little ones to the vet when they got sick.

All across the world, from Paris to Mosul, ordinary families are terrorised by extremists and a medieval barbarism is encouraging people to target and torture those who disagree.

Meanwhile here at home the mood has soured and something ugly and sinister is on the march. Jewish friends receive abuse from the swamps of history, Muslim friends report a surge in the most vulgar and blatant Islamophobia, while my friend Jo Cox was murdered doing her job.

Behind all these trends is the same basic story: frightened and frightening people are obsessing about what divides us. We have lost the art of seeing each person as precious and unique, as an irreplaceable and perfect version of themselves, without whom our world would be irrevocably impoverished.

None of these are problems which politicians, however honourable or gifted, can be expected to solve on their own. If we want a different kind of Scotland, Britain or world, we’re going to have to get involved.

For me movement thinking is exactly what we need now because we live in what I call a 3D world – a world characterised by distrust, division and disruption.

Distrust, of both the motivations and the competence of institutions. Division, between people of different backgrounds and opinions. And disruption, of old ways of thinking, doing and being. Those 3Ds all add up to people feeling overwhelmed and alone, and movements hold out the prospects of an answer.

A movement can be the answer to distrust – because movements are strengthened by their perceived authenticity. And it can be the answer to division, because by definition movements involve more than one person (there’s never been a movement of one). And it can be the answer to disruption, because movements are defined by being for change, but giving us the sense that we’re more in control of which change we choose.

This word movement gets bandied around a lot at the moment, so I want to be really clear about what I mean by it. To me a movement is not the same thing as an organisation. To me a movement is a tribe – a really, really big tribe, but a tribe nonetheless – which coalesces around a shared view of how the world could be and which commits not simply to taking one action but instead to a lifetime of service to an ideal.

My friend Alex Evans has just published a book in which he quotes an American organiser as saying ‘what makes a movement is simply enough people feeling part of it – sensing a shared culture, and forcing those watching to take note and take sides’.

That seems about right to me, because movements do force us to take sides, and decide where we stand on the big moral questions of the day. This isn’t a new thing – we’ve had movements for the abolition of slavery and for women’s suffrage and for civil rights. But just because we’re sympathetic to the most famous movements, we shouldn’t assume that movements are always the good guys. There’s a global far right movement too. And a global jihadi one.

So there’s nothing new about movement thinking, and nothing inherently honourable about it either. But my argument today is that there is nonetheless something about it which makes it uniquely well suited to the demands of the hour.

Scots as movement-builders

So why am I talking about this here in Scotland, and suggesting that Scots have a special obligation to fight hatreds which seem so much bigger than us, so big in fact that they could overwhelm the world? My answer is a simple one: Scots have a calling now, because we know better than anybody that none of us have to be put in boxes not of our choosing.

For three centuries we have been simultaneously Scottish and British and there are plenty of people who want to campaign for us to be Scottish and European. The fluidity of our identity is why we can talk of people being Scottish by birth, choice or aspiration – because we have long accepted that there’s nothing binary or closed about being a Scot.

And so my second argument today is that there is such a thing as Scottishness and that it leaves us well placed to be the movement builders that this movement moment demands of us.

The nature of Scottishness has obviously been a source of some controversy, so let me share a little about where I’m coming from.

Given the mesmerising range of choice – the grandeur of our Munros, the mysteries and histories of our lochs and the breathtaking beauty of our islands and our glens, it might surprise a visitor to Scotland to know that two of my favourite sights here are stones. They are both small, both plain and both can be seen within an hour of where we are now.

The first is the one bearing a circular inscription on the floor of the National Museum in Edinburgh, the one which says ‘Scotland to the world to Scotland’. The motto is chiseled in a circle so that, depending on how you look at it, it either says ‘Scotland to the world’ or ‘the world to Scotland’.

The second is embedded in the wall of St Giles’ Cathedral and says simply ‘Thank God for James Young Simpson’s discovery of chloroform anaesthesia in 1847’.

It seems to me that it is in these two small slabs – even more than in our poetry, plays, novels, songs or political speeches – you find the essence of the Scottish national character.

In the National Museum stone, you learn of our sense of Scotland the Good Samaritan, unwilling to pass by on the other side. There is much to be proud of here, from the disproportionate numbers of Scottish volunteers in the International Brigades to the phenomenal demonstration of people power on the eve of the 2005 Make Poverty History summit in Gleneagles. Whatever our views on the constitutional question, we can be proud that both nationalists and unionists, Yes and No supporters are united in their support for Scotland fulfilling our obligations to those beyond our borders who need our help.

In the St Giles’ Cathedral stone, you see a very Scottish combination of intense pride in our temporal talents, combined with a beautifully understated trust in providence, and a reminder not to get too cocky – it’s all very well being the most inventive people on the face of the earth, but don’t go thinking you did it on your own. The reason I love this stone so much is because it really encapsulates what I feel about my obligations as a campaigner – life isn’t about being ‘nice’, about having good intentions but not a real strategy for change. On the contrary – life is really about each of us straining to fulfil our potential so that the talents of each of us are used for the benefit of all of us. Our time on earth is supposed to be a succession of periods of hard thinking followed by periods of hard work.

We don’t have a Scots word or phrase that describes precisely this mix of social duty and determination to apply rigorous thinking to big problems, and the best I’ve come up with is ‘strategic service’.

I should say at this point that I don’t consider these national traits of ours an unalloyed good. The same overwhelming sense of obligation which can lead us to great acts of courage and self-sacrifice can tip all too readily in to an oppressive puritanism and self-righteousness. So I’m not suggesting here that Scots are superior to other peoples, just that we’re not entirely in the wrong when we ask ‘wha’s like us? Damn few’.

Movement thinking

So my second argument today is that to be a Scot is to have a particular take on the world, bound up in our sense of connectedness to other peoples and also in our obligation to give the best service it is in our power to give. It is for historians and anthropologists to tell us how we came to be this way, and for the philosophers to tell us if the downsides I have just described are a price worth paying for our gifts, but for our purposes today I hope we can take it as a starting point that there is something real about Scottishness, and our cultural distinctiveness is to be found somewhere in this area.

My third and final argument is that – if I am right, and our world needs movements and, if I am right that Scottishness is characterised both by its richness as a porous identity and by its internationalism and sense of strategic service, then Scots have a particular contribution to make to building movements in the years ahead.

Let me just say a little about what that would look like.

Firstly, great movements don’t buy great man theories of history. That doesn’t mean movements are leaderless – it means they are leaderful. Just think about Black Lives Matter, or the women’s marches on the inauguration weekend, or the refugees welcome movement. I don’t know who is in charge of any of these things, because nobody is in charge of these things. They are full of leaders, people who identify themselves through action.

And that brings me to my second point about movements. Movements are only as good as the activism they inspire and that should be our aim – providing inspiration, not giving orders. Brilliant movement builders rally people around a vision and then let people decide how they are going to contribute, creating the space for a whole range of creative tactics to emerge.

If we take a look at just the refugees welcome idea for a minute, it is clear that no one person could have come up with the range of activities people have done. Let me be clear here – I’m incredibly proud of Scotland’s response to the refugee crisis, just as I want to celebrate the contribution of communities across the UK. But I’m not naive – my point is not to suggest that everybody is welcoming or that Scots are inherently more progressive on these questions than folk down South.

But I do want to look at how people in Scotland were able to link up with a wider movement in a way that should make us all proud.

To take just two examples. How brilliant that ordinary folk from Glasgow set up Refuweegee, a charity which offers new arrivals to the city not just essentials like toiletries and nappies, but ‘letters fae the locals’ introducing what we love about our city and explaining treats like In Bru and Tunnocks Tea Cakes.

Or when Syrian families were first resettled in Bute, how amazing that locals went to speak to the church about giving a space for Friday prayers and to the local co-op about making sure they had halal meat for sale.

All of these things were just people finding different ways to contribute, the same way a QC in London decided to set up the billable hour campaign where he encouraged all his pals from chambers, and then all the solicitors they worked with, to each give what they would bill in an hour to Save the Children’s child refugee appeal. All at the same time as Belle and Sebastian decided to put on a gig for us, and Caitlin Moran organised a single, and a member of the public set up a petition which ended up forcing David Cameron to agree to take 20 thousand Syrian refugees, while another ordinary woman invited a few of her friends on Facebook to a protest and ended up leading a march of 10 thousand people through London.

There wasn’t a mastermind behind all of these things – but there was a movement, and the movement is delivering real change, right now.

And here’s the final point I want to leave you with, and it brings us full circle as to why we’re talking about this in Scotland. Being a movement builder means connecting with people on the very deepest level of their values and their identity. Something can have mass participation and still not be a movement – after all nobody says they are part of the movement for iphones, or converse shoes or AirBnB. These communities are all massive, but they are just organised around things we use, they don’t represent who we are.

Likewise even if we feel a very strong attachment to one political party or one charity, our loyalty to the movement of which it is part tends to run even deeper. Nobody has a twitter bio saying ‘supporter of the Fawcett Society’ – we say feminist. We don’t say ‘Hope not Hate donor’ – we say anti-fascist. And we don’t say ‘Amnesty member’, we say human rights defender.

And that, of course, is the same idea we started with. My experience of being Scottish – in part I am sure because it’s been an experience of being Scottish and British, not Scottish or British – has made me feel incredibly comfortable with the idea that I’m part of more than one community of action, of mutual obligation, and of identity.

Movement thinking is a new buzz phrase around the world, but it’s actually something Scots do instinctively, because whether we like it or not, duality is part of who we are. There will be plenty of people here – and there are certainly plenty of people among my own nearest and dearest – who want another referendum, and will use it as a chance to vote for independence.

It isn’t my place to pass judgement on that one way or another today. But I hope it is my place to ask you to weigh very carefully whether the rich, multi-layered nature of Scottish identity is something you value and, if it is, whether you’re prepared to put that special perspective to good use in this movement moment.

Over the course of this weekend and in the months and years to come the status of Scotland in the Union will no doubt continue to dominate. But if that is all we talk about I fear we are missing the chance to make our mark on questions of truly global and historical significance.

Scotland’s national question is a complex one, but my argument today is simple: our broken world needs movements, movements need Jock Tamson’s Bairns and they need us now.

#Scotland #campaigning

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