On confession

The absence of this understanding makes us naïve and seduces us into all kinds of programs for the improvement of society.

I read recently that at the beginning of his prime ministership Tony Blair was determined to turn around the British school system and proceeded to pump billions into education. Many years later student outcomes had not changed. I notice that our Labour Party has similar inclinations.

My point is that expenditure on education, although obviously important, is not the answer to our society’s failing intellectual life which is caused by carefully rearing our children in a vacuum. They are cut off from even the most basic understandings about themselves which leaves them vulnerable to any razzle dazzle that the great corporations may throw at them. The smart ones resist and become desultory.

Parents in Australia rush to place their children in church schools in the pursuit of academic achievement which they deliver mainly, I suspect, because of the privileged background of the students, not because they teach students who they are in the light of Christ and give them a firm grounding in life. The tragedy is that most church schools, particularly the Protestant, have taken on board the dislike of proselytising much hated by the secularists. They are the last people to teach their students that they are sinners.

At the University of Western Australia our motto is “Seek Wisdom” an irony, since we have carefully excluded any tradition that would inculcate it. In a university that strives to be the biggest and the best, humility is definitely off the agenda. What we have instead is quality assessment and centres of excellence, a sure sign that we must convince ourselves of our grand status.

The season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday at which we turn up to church to have ash marked in the sign of the cross on our foreheads and we hear the words “Dust you are and to dust you will return, repent and believe in the gospel.” In our time this has become a subversive act because it exposes as a lie the human triumphalism that permeates our culture.

All of the billions we spend on health care will not alter the truth of this statement. Neither will all the money spent on armaments to keep us safe alter it one wit. Our accumulated wealth will not touch it nor will our good intentions or our desire to make a difference. There is no humility without humiliation, which is what happens on Ash Wednesday. We are reminded that we are humus, earth, dust and that all our grand plans will come to nothing.

This does not lead to passivity and fatalism but a realistic assessment of our state and releases us from the awful responsibility to be “the best we can be”. For we have fled into a far country in order to be free and to live our lives as we see fit. It is increasingly obvious that we risk starvation in the midst of plenty and that our only hope is to return to the Father.