The Nanny God?

 

Texts: Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

 

I don't know who first coined the expression 'the Nanny State', but whoever did, I wish he or she hadn't.  Along with 'P.C. nonsense', it is surely becoming the most over-used, and therefore virtually meaningless saying of our time.  Why can't people just indicate that they disagree with a particular policy or decision, and argue against it?  Why this character-assassination of all those responsible for the new policy?  Whatever happened to Big Brother State, by the way?  How come Big Brother became a Nanny?  Am I being too cynical in suspecting that this change, at least in our country, has something to do with the rise of women into leadership positions?

 

We had a classic case of this last year with the so-called anti-smacking Bill.  Of course, there was room on that issue for a genuine difference of opinion.  I found myself in the curious position of being opposed to a piece of legislation that I personally agreed with.  I know a bit about the law, in this country as well as a number of other countries.  I know that there are many modern and reasonable countries that never had in their law the sort of provision we had in the Crimes Act; and if we had never had it, very few if any would have argued today that we should have it.

 

The problem was, we did, and its repeal therefore would have changed the law, has changed the law.  But to abuse those who were in favour of its repeal as servants of the Nanny State interfering with the rights of parents I found highly offensive.  And hypocritical.  What is the cry as soon as a child has been abused by its carers?  Where was CYFS when that was going on?  Where were the Police or the school or the health authority?  What is the Government doing about it?  No mention now of the Nanny State – that child should have been removed from those monsters and…and…looked after properly by…?

 

The point of this rave is not to re-open last year's debates but to draw attention to the fact that in our human nature we have a very ambiguous attitude to the law.  If Parliament passes a law that we agree with, all well and good, but if we don't agree with it then the fun starts.  And the word games.  Despite the fact that only Parliament can pass laws, and despite the fact that most of the laws that we get most agitated about are passed on a so-called free vote, we blast the Government of the day, or the Nanny State.

 

Well, maybe I was part of the system for too long, but I remain of the view that virtually all the laws that are passed in this country are passed with good intent.  The proponents honestly believe that the laws they are proposing are in the best interests of the country – which, of course, means, in the best interests of you and me and everyone else who lives here.  Of course, that doesn't mean that I agree in every case – but I do contend that the vast majority of them are passed with good intentions.

 

Perhaps the greatest areas of contention – apart from spectacular one-offs like the anti-smacking stuff – comes in the field of health and safety.  We have amazing battles over alternative therapeutic products.  We are adults, what we put in our bodies is our own business and the Nanny State has no business trying to regulate them or limit our choice in some way.  And, of course, any attempt to tax food products according to their potential to injure our health – don't even go there.  Look at the tuck-shop wars in the U.K., with parents infuriated at the suggestion that school tuckshops should only stock healthy food for their children.  So what if there's an obesity problem among children, or a looming diabetes epidemic, or rotten teeth in our five-year-olds?  The Nanny State should not dictate to us what we can and can't eat, or feed to our children.

 

All of which gets us, of course, to Adam and Eve.  For today's story centres around food – it's about appetite – and about wisdom and, yes, obedience.  The whole of this chapter 3 in the Book of Genesis is worth studying in detail; and I find that the longer I spend with this ancient story, the more modern it seems to be.  It's a classic human dilemma – precisely because it plays to that element of our human nature that I mentioned earlier – that ambiguity towards any form of authority, however benign.  As the story goes on it comments on other things as well, but it starts with this simple issue.  As a human being, as an autonomous self as we post-moderns like to think of ourselves, should I be free to eat whatever I damn well please?

 

One of the great subtle elements in this story is found in the description of the fruit.  (Please note, incidentally, that we are NOT told it's an apple!)  The author of the story is very clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with the fruit.  On the contrary, "the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom".  That's quite a fruit we've got here!  Who wouldn't want to sink their teeth into it?  And why shouldn't we?  Is this bureaucracy gone mad?  Is this yet more P.C. nonsense from tree-hugging greenies who think the Garden of Eden should be left in it's pristine state and human beings should take their carbon footprints elsewhere?  Is this the Nanny State telling us what we can and can't eat?

 

Well, of course, it's none of the above.  If we have to have a bogey target, it can only be the Nanny God we claim to worship.  Only we don't usually address him in that way.  But perhaps we should.  Our Jewish cousins in the faith tell us that the Torah, the Law of God, which fills much of the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament, is a gift of love from God to his people to tell us how to lead long and healthy lives.  This Nanny God claims to know better than ourselves what is in our own best interests.  And at the heart of that Law are all sorts of highly detailed rules and regulations about food.  It sometimes appears that God is most actively concerned with us human beings at mealtimes.

 

And not only in a negative sense.  Think how much good stuff happens around meals in the gospel narrative.  And think about the meal we will share together here shortly.  Why bead and wine, and not locusts and honey?  Because God in Christ decreed that this is what we are to share together as his followers. Why?  That is the question we are not permitted to ask: even to ask it is to give ourselves the right to stand in Eve's place – to question God's decrees, to decide for ourselves whether or not we will accept the intervention of this Nanny God.

 

Look at how the tempter proceeds with Eve.  First he tries to sow doubt in her mind as to what God has actually said.  That fails.  Eve is clear about the prohibition – in fact, she even extends it.  She says they are not aloud even to touch the fruit, much less eat it.  So far so good.  Eve knows the word of God.

So the tempter moves to the second stage.  He persuades Eve that disobedience will not bring the consequences she fears.  This time he succeeds.  Eve decides to eat some of the fruit.  In other words, once she loses her fear of disobedience, she is free to disobey.

 

What is missing here is love.  If she truly loved God she would have obeyed willingly, as a consequence of that love.  Her obedience would have been an act of love – a denial of self and an offering to the Other.  That's what Christian obedience is all about – not slavish adherence to a set of rules out of fear of hell and damnation for disobedience.  That gives us a terrible image of God.  If we believe that God is love, if we believe that everything he asks of us is for the best, then disobedience is the ultimate foolishness.

 

Contrast this with the encounter between the tempter and Jesus in the desert.  Here we never get to the second stage.  The debate is entirely about the word and will of God.  There is no consideration of possible consequences because there is no possibility of Jesus choosing to disobey the Nanny God whom he preferred to call Abba.

 

As we enter Lent, let us see it as an opportunity to love God more fully, not to fear him more greatly.  It is a time of self-denial – a time to remind ourselves that our Nanny God knows best.  Amen.