Responding to a 'permacrisis' 

What word would you use to sum up 2022? And how does it relate to the Christmas story? By Nick Megoran

Each year Collins dictionary publishes a list of its top ten ‘Words of the year,’ that tell us something about the past 12 months.

The entry at number ten on Collins list for 2022 is ‘vibe shift’, a change in how we think. One vibe shift is that due to the Covid-19 pandemic people are less work-obsessed, leading to ‘quiet quitting’ – not actually leaving a job or refusing to do something, but just doing the bare minimum.

Maybe we ‘quiet quit’ to watch football – I’m sure many readers enjoyed Newcastle United’s success this year, or went through the usual ecstasies and agonies of following England at a football tournament. Was this spoiled by the knowledge that it was all part of another word on the list – ‘sportswashing’ – spending loads of money buying a football team or staging a world cup to cover up human right abuses?

The oddest word for me was ‘splooting’ – according to Collins, this is ‘lying flat on the stomach with your legs stretched out’ and apparently it’s become a thing this year. My black Labrador Molly does that but I don’t know why people would.

Half the words on Collins’ list are about how bad 2022 has been. ‘Partygate’ was a scandal over government ministers telling us all to stay indoors while they were having a whale of a time with wine and cheese parties, suitcases full of booze, and Christmas quizzes. Because of both the awful war in Ukraine and poor government policies at home, we’ve got a cost-of-living crisis, so the term ‘warm bank’ entered the dictionary. It’s a heated building where people can go if they can’t afford to heat their own homes. Like many churches, we at Wallsend Baptist Church have started opening our doors once a week to welcome people into our warm building for a cuppa and chat.

All these crises – war, politics, poverty, pandemic – led to the number one word of the year, ‘permacrisis,’ meaning lots of crises going on together that never seem to end. It’s an apt word for how life feels at the moment. Maybe splooting does make sense after all.

Permacrisis is also a very good word to help us understand the Christmas story.  The gospel writer Luke opens his account of the first Christmas with the words ‘At that time Emperor Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Roman Empire.  When this first census took place, Quirinius was the governor of Syria’ (Luke 2: 1-2). These Roman names are meant to sound jarring after we have just read, in chapter 1, a vignette about Jewish worship in the temple of Israel’s holy God. It is under enemy rule. The Romans had invaded and occupied Jesus’ homeland. They were making people desperately poor by stealing their money in taxes. Their oppressive policies led to numerous uprisings, which were put down by Rome’s ruthless legions leading to further resentment, and more uprisings. New Testament scholar Richard Horsley describes this as a vicious ‘cycle of violence.’

The Romans, like all occupiers, rewarded collaborators. Their local henchman, King Herod, was a particularly nasty piece of work. Because he saw the baby king Jesus as a threat to his rule, he ordered all baby boys in Bethlehem to be killed – adding genocide to war, poverty and oppression. This was a permacrisis.

What, according to the Bible, did God do about that? Did he send a new prime minister (or three), an Elon Musk-type techie-businessman-saviour, or shipments of high-tech weaponry to arm the brave resistance? Those are the sort of solutions we turn to, as 2022 has shown. But they don’t solve the permacrisis – so often they even exacerbate or prolong it.

No, that first Christmas, God himself stepped into our world as the baby Jesus. He didn’t leave us alone to suffer. Instead, because of his great love for each and every one of us, he came into our world, lived amongst us, taught us how to live, and that first easter died on the cross and rose again to forgive all the bad things we’ve done, wipe the slate clean, and reunite us to God. All who receive him now can live a new life, knowing his life and love in our hearts every day and living under his counter-cultural rule of peace, forgiveness and love. At the end of time he will come back and will remake the universe, ending the permacrisis: there will be no more coldness, fear, exam-stress, poverty, bullying, disease, oppression, war, tears, loss, or death.

And that’s why Christmas is such good news. It shows us that there is hope, that life is rich with meaning and is worth celebrating, and that everyone is loved by God. It tells us that life can be lived differently, that we can cast off the dreary logics of calculation, achievement and retaliation and embrace instead the reckless abandon of gracious generosity. So Christmas parties, jumpers, movies, dinners, gifts and carol services are good and hopeful things to do. They remind us of Jesus’ first coming, and also point forwards to his return. Celebrating Christmas is just so much better than ‘splooting.’

Therefore, even in 2022, even in a permacrisis – especially in a permacrisis – we can join with the angels, and Mary, and the Shepherds, and the wise men, and with all the saints of every nation who have gone on before us and all who will come afterwards, and say, happy Christmas, peace on earth, goodwill to all.


Image | Freely
  

Nick Megoran is minister of Wallsend Baptist Church and Professor of Political Geography at Newcastle University

His latest book Big Questions in an Age of Global Crises - Thinking about Meaning, Purpose, God, Suffering, Death, and Living Well during Pandemics, Wars, Economic Collapse, and Other Disasters is published by Wipf and Stock


 

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