The Wisdom of Restraint

The Wisdom of Restraint

Nearly forty years ago I was in Detroit and I remember an old priest beginning his Christmas homily with the words, ‘the world is a far better place than it was on that night when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.’ It struck me at the time and it strikes me still. We are not used to hearing good news; that the world is getting better. The cycle of wars in Arab lands, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, the outbreak of new deadly diseases and the dangerous warming of our planet all feed into a view that the world is getting alarmingly worse.

Yet two anniversaries recently do support the view of the old priest. 2014 is the anniversary of the outbreak of the greatest war in history that involved every continent and which one renowned historian, Eric Hobsbawn, believed only ended in 1945. So this year is a sombre centenary but we can say with a high degree of confidence that war on that scale is unlikely to ever happen again.

The other anniversary was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, twenty five years ago. Through the restraint of the president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, this event was allowed to trigger a succession of events which led to the collapse of the ‘iron curtain’ and the independence of all the republics then under Soviet rule. We hardly noticed it at the time, so occupied were we with our own affairs, but it was a truly astonishing series of events all unaccompanied by bloodshed.

And today, everywhere you look people are straining for greater freedom in their countries; they hunger for justice in economic activity, accountability in financial institutions, a level playing field in elections, freedom of access to information, respect for minorities and so forth. The list is long but people are passionate about the agenda. There is a colossal momentum for improvement.

There is a shadow side of this optimism with many dark influences and threats and much evidence to suggest that even in ‘developed’ countries the quality of life is falling. The rapid abandonment of traditions, built over centuries, has left a vacuum in people’s lives no amount of IT can fill. But the overall verdict has to be that the old priest is still right.

Nothing can prevent Zimbabwe being caught up in this momentum. People may hold congresses and do much talking and rearranging of the places at the top table but there is an energy moving in our society that is unstoppable. The becalmed nature of our society cannot last indefinitely. What we can pray for this Christmas is that when the moment comes there will be some Gorbachevs around who will exercise restraint and not try to stand in the way of history.      

Christmas 2014