Richard Littledale's
Views on the News: August 2003

Linguistic evolution?

It is often noted that scientific and even medical progress rides on the back of war's chariot. Great advances in these fields often come in times of war when apparent inability gives way to urgency. However, a feature of the recent hostilities in Iraq has been its bequest to the English language. We have learnt that cities can be "neutralised" instead of invaded, young men can be killed by their own allies in "blue on blue" incidents, and that vast amounts of munitions can create an environment of "shock and awe". The latter phrase has already crossed the boundaries from military briefings to ordinary parlance.

The phrase "collateral damage" is from a bygone era, from the days when a nuclear detonation could rain untold destruction down in a single "hit", and civilian casualties were inevitable. Reading the descriptions of Dr David Kelly's last few hours, especially his "pursuit by dark powers" which hounded him to his death, it is hard to avoid seeing him as "collateral damage" in a clash of two particularly powerful titans. Like a civilian caught in the cross fire, he is just another casualty of war.

By the time the 'truth' is decided about who told what to whom and where, Dr Kelly will be buried and his family will have started the long uphill struggle of grieving. The verdict will make little difference to that struggle, and is likely to be a mixture of claim and counter-claim, spin and anti-spin anyway. Cynicism about the 'truth' and those who tell it to us has become part of our national psyche.

Why do Christians persist in laying claim to absolute and exclusive truth in an environment such as this? Shouldn't they read the signs and abandon their definite language for a middle way of "possibly's" , "maybe's", and relative absolutes? If they do, they fall far short of their founder's own words, who described himself as "the way, the truth and the life". But such definite claims are made palatable only if there are actions which back them up. It is Christians who live as if Jesus and his commands were all that mattered to them whom one is inclined to believe.

Editorials on Dr Kelly's story have brought another old-fashioned word back into play - "decent". After passing out of fashion as a relic of Victorian virtue, and then a brief return in teenage street vocabulary it had disappeared from view. It has returned now as the description of a man whose conscience led him into trouble and whose public service dominated his life. Let's hope for more decent Christians!