Christ-like gentle insistence

Michael Hampel makes interesting use of Dorothy L. Sayers' The Mind of the Maker in his profile of Paul Mealor in today's Guardian:

"Theologians have chewed over the question about what it means to be made in the image of God for some 3,000 years, and it took a writer – a detective novelist indeed – to come up with the most useful answer. Dorothy L Sayers, never shy of cutting through the brambles of theology to talk realistically about God, took a close look at the verse in the Book of Genesis that claims God created humankind in his image (Genesis 1: 27). She spotted that all we know of God up to that point in the Bible is that he was somehow responsible for creation, and so she concluded that to be made in the image of God means that we are most like God when we are being creative. She set about working out how to apply this theory to the creative impulse in her most significant piece of popular theology The Mind of the Maker (1941), a book that still today has a lot to say to us about how we resist the culture of instant gratification that has been more destructive of humankind and its environment than any world war.

The encampment outside St Paul's Cathedral has held a mirror up to society – and the church, too – but its mirror is part of a culture of blame designed to make people look ugly. It's asking questions that mustn't be shirked, but it was gentle insistence that was the hallmark of Jesus's ministry, and his persuasive personality was the thing that gave him the authority that made people wonder at him. Art has a role to play in challenge, but it's the gently persuasive kind that stands the test of time and works its way into the soul, winning hearts and minds for something better than the status quo.
For people of faith, that something better is God. Dorothy L Sayers insisted that the work of the human maker had to be worthy of its role to reflect – however dimly – the work of the divine maker: "No crooked table legs or ill-fitting drawers ever, I dare swear, came out of the carpenter's shop at Nazareth. Nor, if they did, could anyone believe that they were made by the same hand who made heaven and earth."

There's a challenge to the destructive culture of instant gratification if ever there was one. It takes me back to my school motto: Age quod agis ("Whatever you do, do it well.") Paul Mealor has heard that challenge, but his music makes a challenge of its own to the church: that gentle insistence and calm persuasion are more Christ-like than the arguments of synods."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Mealor: Stabat Mater.