Revelations

Premature perhaps. We’ve only just had Easter, when Christ rose from the dead. Alleluia or Bah Humbug, depending on your inclination.

The Book of Revelation is the final book of the Bible (Jesus’s life, death and resurrection are retold at the beginning of the New Testament) and prophesises ‘The End’ and Christ’s ultimate victory over evil. The Book is traditionally attributed to one or other early Christian prophets, John the Apostle or John of Patmos (who might or might not be the same person) and addresses Christians facing persecution and moral challenges, which sounds so 2026.

The title ‘Revelation’ comes from the Greek word ‘apokalypsis’, meaning ‘unveiling’ or ‘disclosure’. Specifically in modern English usage, ‘apocalypse’ means total destruction and the end of the world. The Book’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (not to be confused with the Four Yorkshiremen) represent Conquest, War, Famine, and Death (as opposed to Nostalgia, Deprivation, Exaggeration and Escalation). They are often interpreted as heralds of catastrophic occurrences that precede Jesus’s second coming. What, with Trump and Netanyahu incinerating Iran (what’s taking them so long?), climate change scorching the earth, Starmer burning democracy, and Polanski torching common decency … we’re ready when you are, Lord.

I’ve experienced several Revelations myself recently, of a less terminal nature it has to be said, but together they’ve demonstrated that you never stop learning, never stop discovering, and that maybe just maybe I should push myself to be more radical in my thinking and responses.

I’ll start with my most recent Revelation that transpired during Easter Service at a local church. I walked there as it was a sunny but brisk spring morning. God’s warm-up Revelation – unsubtle at that – was that when one yomps with a bad cold one ends up coughing and one shouldn’t then sing. I made my way through the graveyard, hacking like I’d been on 60-a-day all my life. I turfed upside down my Mulberry handbag (I have standards) until the Strepsils fell out. Thankfully my friend was driving over and was a few minutes away so I had time to regain my composure before we went inside. I wish she’d brought the dog with her, then he could have covered for me.

It’s a cute little church. Even the huge crack running diagonally along the medieval altar wall is pretty, in a poetic, poignant, portentous kind of way. Normally I love singing the Easter hymns, but this year I stayed stoom, mainly because I didn’t want to risk a coughing fit as God had just warned me, but also because one of the hymns I didn’t know at all. Judging by the off-notes around me, neither did anyone else. What was the vicar thinking? I didn’t dwell too much on that question because I was too busy basking (not barking) in the unintended Revelation in the sermon. We were being preached at to follow the path of truth and love, and reject the option of lies and hatred. I’ll let you work out what specifically she was getting at. The problem is, Vicar, those who would have us love and tolerate everyone, no matter what, tell a boatload of lies to justify their reasoning, whereas those who warn that our love is not always returned and we should act accordingly tend to tell the home truths. So, the actual choice is lies and ‘love’, or truth and ‘hatred’. Given that I love the truth and traditional British values and hate lies, liars and those who hate traditional British values, I’ll go with the second option thank you very much. And thank you, God, for revealing yet another flaw in t’other side’s standpoint.

I had seized on a different Revelation a few days previously when my cold was at its worst. I had – against my better judgement – coughed my way up to London to my debating club in Vauxhall. The red wine warmed my throat and almost soothed me into the land of nod, when the proposer of the motion ‘This house believes that there should be no protected characteristics’ delivered a Revelation, or rather a series of Revelations, about the Equality Act 2010, which seeks to protect individuals from unfair treatment based on protected characteristics. Those characteristics include age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Did you know that veganism is a protected belief, but not vegetarianism? Or that the belief in climate change is protected, but climate change denial has not yet been tested in a court of law? How about a belief in Scottish independence being a protected belief, but not Welsh or Cornish independence? Most pertinently for the debate that evening, given that one of the speakers was Maya Forstater of Sex Matters, ‘gender reassignment’ is explicitly included in the Act as a protected characteristic, but Maya had to fight through the courts and go to appeal to establish that being gender critical was also protected. In other words, an abomination of science, Mother Nature and commonsense, and a licence for child abuse, was written into English law, but scientific fact, laws of nature and the vast majority of the population were assumed to be not worthy of protection. Hmmmm.

These nuggets were all Revelations to me, but perhaps the all-encompassing one was that the courts will be excised for evermore by people testing whether this or that characteristic or belief is covered under the Act. Belief in zombies? Dislike of garlic? Menopause? Inability to wear heels? The sub-text of the debate was, ‘the Equality Act is not fit for purpose’. Amen to that.

Perhaps the most profound Revelation made itself known to me the previous evening when I was wondering if this might not be a cold but Covid. I’d logged on for my monthly Plato’s Republic reading group. I had cottonwool brain so decided I’d just sit back with my eyes shut, camera and mic off, wine glass within reach, and let it all wash over me (the discussion not the wine), tuning into the recording at a later date when I was more myself. You guessed it: something brought me back to a state of pseudo compos mentis in double quick time. That ‘something’ was the proposition that trial by jury is not simply a feature of democracy, it is a prerequisite for democracy; it underpins democracy. No jury trials = no democracy.

For some reason that I missed (because I was away with the virus-fairies), the reading group had digressed from Plato to Solon, who held the office of archon (chief magistrate) around the turn of the sixth century BC, about 170 years before Plato was born. According to grandjurymuseum.uk Solon’s reform of the Athenian constitution included the establishment of trial by jury. His court system was a significant step towards a more equitable and representative form of governance. The jury system allowed citizens to participate in the judicial process, ensuring that decisions were made by a body of peers rather than a single authority. This system laid the foundation for the democratic principles that would later be expanded upon by other reformers. Solon's trial by jury was a response to the need for a more inclusive and just legal system, reflecting the democratic ideals of ancient Athens.

This makes Lammy, Starmer, and other reprobates pushing to abolish Britain’s jury trials, enemies of democracy, enemies of the State, enemies of the British people. They would take us back to the dark ages, before Henry II (12th century) introduced juries to This England. It gets worse. Join the dots with Labour’s other policies and diktats during their short, nightmare tenure, and what do we have? Replacement of the British justice system with Sharia Law, perhaps starting in a small number of communities, but we’ve seen where that usually leads.

So that’s three Revelations to little old me over the Easter season:
1. Love that relies on deceit isn't love, actually
2. Equality constrained by social fads and cherry-picking exacerbates inequality
3. David Lammy should be tried by jury for treason.

There’s nothing mysterious in the way God moves at all.