2011-10

As I write this introduction to Impact, many cities in
England are in disarray as rioters and looters burn
buildings and smash shops. No-one understands why
they are doing this, and it would seem that many of the
looters themselves don’t really understand what they are
doing. Some are not even stealing but are simply taking
televisions and smashing them up.
A common refrain from those being interviewed seems
to be “it’s a laugh” or “it seems funny.” These don’t
seem to be riots about race or even deprivation (though I
suspect that these always lurk in the background). They
appear to have at their heart human greed and a thrill of
being caught up in the experience.
We live in a culture that prizes experience above
everything else. Wealth is no longer prized just for the possessions that
it can buy us but for the experiences that it can bring us. Every product
now seems to be marketed not simply for what it can do but for the way it
can make us feel or the experience that it promises us.
There is of course nothing wrong with experience. Our enjoyment of
our surroundings, our senses and the pleasures of our world are part
of what it is to be human but there is the danger of jumping from one
experience to another without reflecting on what that experience tells us.
There is also the danger, as we’ve seen in the recent riots, of experience
and thrill simply being the end in themselves. The human consequences
of looting and criminal damage simply don’t matter to those engaged in
them.
The poet T.S. Eliot once wrote that we have had the experience but
missed the meaning. Our experiences, whether they are good or bad,
should be a way of putting us in contact with the rest of our world and
our society, not a way of retreating from it or ignoring it. I don’t want to
live in a world of virtual reality where the only experience that counts
is something that happens inside my head. I want my experiences to
be shared with others and to be full of meaning. Above all I want my
experiences to be part of a building-up of society and community and not
a means of pulling them down.
I believe that in these strange and troubling times that our world is
going through, the Christian faith offers us a way of understanding and
interpreting the experiences that we encounter. God himself chose
to become part of our world, to undergo the experiences common to
humanity and to redeem them. It is in him that I am trusting at this time.
Rev Toby Hole,
Vicar,
St Chad’s Church,
Woodseats
Experiences
St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats
Church Offices: 15 Camping Lane, Sheffield S8 0GB
Tel: (0114) 274 5086
Page 3
email: office@stchads.org
website: www.stchads.org