JESUS THE ORANGEMAN?
Picture the scene; you’re stretched out on a golden beach, the soft breeze in the palms, the gentle lapping of the waves and the cry of a lone seagull carry you off to a distant sleepy paradise. Suddenly your serenity is shattered by a bloke with a ghetto blaster who sprawls on the sand not six feet from your left ear. You complain, you demand your right to peace and quiet, but he’s entitled to lie down wherever he likes, playing the music of his choice. The answer to the underlying question; where does one man’s freedom begin and another’s end, is to be found by negotiation, but if both parties are intransigent there will be no prospect of resolution and the inevitable result is the politics of the megaphone, or violence, or a compromise imposed by a higher power – a so-called peace-line.
I often discussed the Drumcree/Garvaghy Road impasse with my late friend David Ervine, whose starting point in the art of conflict resolution was to ask the question, ‘Do you think this argument will still be running a hundred years from now?’
Most reasonable people would answer no; ‘So there is a solution!' he would say. 'Then let’s find it!’ And he was right, however, my suggestion in an article I wrote in the heady days of 1998 was to pose a different question. ‘What would Jesus do?’ To me it was obvious that if Jesus lived in the Garvaghy estate there’s no way he would support a blockade to restrict the freedom of others. He is not territorial; his kingdom is not of this world.
Similarly, in the unlikely event of him being a leader of a Loyal Order, can you see him demanding his rights if it meant trampling over someone’s strongly held beliefs, or the tradition or culture of his fellow citizens? But when I asked the question of a chap I knew, who was a man of the cloth, he surprised me by saying, ‘Actually I think Jesus would be quite comfortable at the head of such a protest march’ – and my mind flashed back to my old friend David – ‘Maybe it’s rash to assume that this argument won’t still be rattling on a century hence.’
But now a voice of reason has broken out, and from a most unlikely quarter. Jackie McDonald, one-time Brigadier of the UDA; ‘Walk away from Garvaghy Road,’ he advises. In the titanic struggle between an old immovable object and an irresistible force, something has finally given – or maybe not. My suspicion is that the ex-paramilitary leader will be sidelined, accused of going soft, by small minds that strain to believe God is a Prod and is on their side, and once again the words of Voltaire spring to mind; ‘In the beginning God created man – and man hastens to return the compliment.’
However, the god of their creation is a reflection of themselves; mean, critical, intolerant, sectarian, vindictive; while the true God of unfathomable love and grace and mercy and peace, weeps again for all his people.
