On Monday night, Arsenal scored one of the loveliest goals I’ve ever seen. And I say Arsenal, not Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, because practically the entire side made it: a team of specialists contributing to a sublime whole.
I work with specialists. Universities are full of them. Not one of them has a right foot like Aubameyang’s but we academics are all pretty focused. Too focused. People say that we learn more and more about less and less until eventually we understand absolutely everything about absolutely nothing.
But if I understand nothing, it is equally true that no one understands everything. You all know that your input is only part of the show: Craig – divine dancer, stage carpentry not so much; Steve – guitar yes, piano no; George and Kathryn – all of the singing, none of the oboe. Thing is, one specialist is never enough.
To solve a difficult problem, score a sublime goal or make a radio show requires a team, people who are not self-reliant but reliant on each other.
Christians believe in a God who is like that – a God who is three people, a parent, a child and a transforming spirit: a collaborative God. God, if you like, as a team.
The problem with this idea is that when you really get into it, it’s mind-bendingly, punishingly complex. So how do we deal with that?
One answer is to ignore it and pretend that God is just flowers and kittens. But if faith is going to be useful, it must think hard about hard questions. And one of the hard questions is about the complexity of God.
We can’t answer it alone. I reckon that to understand God we need each other’s experience, insight and intellect. Which is precisely why faith in the world, whether you’re a Jew, Hindu or Muslim, a Buddhist, Sikh or Christian, is worked out in community. It’s why we go to church or temple, mosque or synagogue. Not because we’re dumb but because we’re just about smart enough to recognise that we need each other. We need a team.
In a team, anything can happen. Which means I can sustain the fond fantasy that if only I’d found myself in the right team at the right time then I could have scored that goal on Monday night. It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds.
No. You’re right. It is.
Friday again, this time with Seasick Steve, Craig Revel Horwood, Kathryn Jenkins and Boy George. It is always weird.
The image is a detail from Andrey Rublev’s Icon of the Holy Trinity or The Hospitality of Abraham when visited by three angels at the oaks of Mamre the Amorite (c.1425; see Genesis 18, 1-15)