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Does God watch The Traitors?

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This week, the hit series The Traitors returned for it’s second UK series. It’s described as an ultimate murder mystery game, where more than 20 people compete in challenges to add money to the prize pot, and try to live to the end of the game  to win the money.

The twist – among the contestants, are the faithful – and the traitors. The faithful meet at the round table each day for banishment – voting out who they think is a traitor. Then, each night, the traitors meet to decide which faithful they will murder.

Early on in episode 2 of series 2, while gathering at breakfast, Charlie, one of the contestants is talking about how she dealt with her first night wondering who would be murdered, and says:

“cos I’m a Christian and I’m like please (puts her hands together in prayer). I mean, I don’t know whether God watches the traitors”

Another contestant, “I’m sure he does, or she.”

Episode 2, Series 2, The Traitors UK

Hearing that conversation has set my mind thinking.

The Traitors, with its treachery and deceit, isn’t the sort of place I would naturally expect to find a Christian – but perhaps that’s my own unconscious bias talking. So where is God in all this? Does God even have time to watch TV? Does God watch The Traitors?

Given how much the games is actually about power, influence and deceit – it is perhaps not the sort of thing I would intially expect God to want to watch. The Traitors is a game about winning money, and players are there because they want to win that prize. It is a programme that tests players, seeing what lengths they will go to to win. In that light, it is about materialism and greed.

But it also a programme about people’s positions power and influence among the group.

The only thing a faithful player knows, is that they are faithful. So as players try to work out who are the traitors, they have no idea who to trust – or how much. They may try to work with others. They may build alliances. They may plant seeds of doubt in one another minds.  But those relationships are always fragile – for players also, know that those with whom they consult and collaborate might actually be traitors themselves, and could end up using those conversations against them. Alliances don’t tent to last long.

The traitors, they known who is a traitor, and who is faithful. In that they have an upper hand – but that doesn’t mean it is easy for them.

They have to carefully calculate ways to influence the group, where to thrown subtly suspicion, where to keep ion the background, where to take a lead. And when it comes to their night-time murdering in traitor tower, they have to carefully analyse their best choices of who to kill off – mindful that each morning, remaining players will analyse who has been killed off as a potential clue to who the traitors are. If they are not careful, a traitors own treachery could be their downfall.

So ultimately, The Traitors is quite an unhealthily place. Where trust, if existent at all, is fragile. Where deceit is abounding. Where treachery is never far away. And all that is a long way from the sort of community God wants humanity to live in.

So for me, there is an element of watching the Traitors that teaches me what sort of community God calls me to live in, by presenting an opposite. It is nothing like the post-Pentecost community we find in Acts 2, where generosity, togetherness and shared life together are characteristics of the community of believers. The Traitors shows the damage that happens when a community is plagued with suspicion and treachery and selfish use of infleunce and power.

Surely God doesn’t want to watch that.

yet, as I watch The Traitors, I also see a game that demonstrates the importance of relationships. It shows that without trust, relationships are often superficial and fragile. It shows how hard it can be to live in community with others, and work with others, when trust is lacking or absent. It shows human diversity in the different personalities, approaches and responses players make.

The show as we watch it, is inevitably influenced by it’s producers and editors, alongside what I think is a brilliantly played protagonist role by Claudia Winkelman. But I find the way the programme tells stories of individuals tussling with choices fascinating, as players wrestle between selfishness or selflessness, truth and lies, friendship and suspicion, trust and distrust.

Players are not just playing a game, they are living this game, and as time goes on and relationships strengthen and deepen, those choices get harder. While not extensively unpacked, there are hints of how such intense environments impact on individuals anxieties and mental health – espeically when genuinely faithful people are suspected as traitors, or the traitors themselves choosing to deceive or cross people with whom they have build relationships.

While remembering this is a game show, a humanly constructed environment and to some extend a directed community – it is still a community – a community where people show real emotions and real struggles with trust and truth.

So, does God watch The Traitors? Who knows, but i don’t think that is actually the important question. Not for me anyway.

For me, the question is: Is God speaking to me as I watch the Traitors? And to that, my answer is a resounding yes.

Because as I watch, I find myself challenged to think afresh about what healthy community looks like. Reminded of the importance of trust for a flourishing community, of the negative impact the selfish use of influence and power can have. Of the  imapct of my personal choices on others.

I am not living in the midst of a murder mystery game – but I do live in community. Community where relationships matter. Community where I, and the people I meet, are also living with the real struggles of life, of truth, of trust.

The Traitors is challenging afresh to reflect on my life, my relationshiops, my interactions with others. That who I am, how I behave, how I utilise the power and infleunce I have, will be, not for my glory – but the glory of God.

Header Image: The Traitors UK logo, sourced from http://www.bbc.co.uk.

More about The Traitors: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2xRtJpWRbKcwPdXs7bZnxxH/the-traitors-how-the-show-works

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Protected under Jesus’ wings

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Reading: Luke 13:31-35

My Aunt & Uncle have a farm, and at one stage they had chickens in their orchard. During the day the chickens would roam free, but come dusk, they had to bring the chickens into the coup to keep them protected from foxes. But even then, on occasion a fox did occasionally manage to somehow get into the coup and cause devastation.

In today’s passage from Luke, Jesus has been approached by some Pharisees, warned that Herod wants Jesus dead. Jesus responds by saying king Herod is like a destructive fox, contrasted with his own desire to draw all those he cares for under his wings like a hen does with her young chicks.

There were no modern-day chicken coups in Jesus’ day, and while owners of chickens may have developed some protection from foxes and other predators, the hen’s role of protecting chicks would be an exposed and vulnerable one.

That is the role Jesus longs to play for us. Jesus went on to Jerusalem as succumbed to the most horrendous and tortuous walk to Calvary, the place of his public crucifixion. Jesus spread his arms of love on that cross and we believe that through his sacrifice and resurrection 3 days later, we find forgiveness, acceptance and love beyond measure.

Jesus longs to protect us from the evil that wants to destroy the hope in our lives. The evil that says we are not worthy. The foxes that distract us from his immeasurable love. The Pharisees were not willing to receive his protection – not willing to trust in Jesus. Are you?

Follow up: Spend some time in prayer this week.

Ask Jesus to help you to see the evils around you which threaten your relationship with him, and nestle into Jesus’ wings of love.

Today’s reflection is also available in Worshipping Together, a monthly worship at home resource.

Worshipping Together
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“Do not be afraid”

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A personal reflection on Advent, where I find myself in Minsitry and Gabriel’s words, Do not be afraid’ – with thanks to Tim Lea’s video ‘No to Fear’.

The angel said to Mary, ‘Do not be afraid, for you have found favour with God. 

Luke 1:30

I took up running earlier in the Autumn. In was loving getting out first thing in the morning and jogging along as dawn began to break. I managed to capture some of those moments in photo’s – but often they photo’s didn’t do justice to the moments – just as the cover photo above demonstrates! it is hard to capture the dawn on a phone camera because light is sparse, and the conditions of the day still uncertain.

Then I got a cold, and the weather turned colder, wetting, darker, and I gave up – but I keep telling myself I will try again in Spring when the conditions are better.

As I joruney through advent 2021, I am finding the conditions around me really challenging. The pandemic began 18 months after I began ministry here on the Sussex Coast and now 22 months later the pandemic is still with us. I think sometimes we forget how much of an upheaval the pandemic has been, turning every aspect of our lives upside down, and challenging every assumption of what normal means.

In ministry right now there are many pressures around us and among us. There are practical uncertainties. There are quesitons about what activity to resume, and how to do it. There are questions about whether the conditions around are right to do something new, or additional, or to resume something else.

And all that comes within a culture that recognises the decline of the church in the UK and a sense of urgency that we must seek growth, numerically and spiritually.  

I’m finding this period the hardest of all the periods of the pandemic so far. This seemingly endless period of of tentative, anxious, uncertain emergence from lockdown and transition to work out how to ‘live with covid’ when we don’t know how to do that well yet is exhausting, and draining let alone factoring in the advent of Omicron and all the anxieties about the future of the church.

I’ve been feeling this for a while, but only more recently begun to make sense of it enough that I can begin to articulate it – largely because last week I actually did have the quarter days I had put in my diary – rather than let other expectations and demands crowd out the space.

Then at the end of last week God has encouraged me through a Fuelcast Video that reflected on Gabriel’s words: ‘Do not be afraid’. I encourage you to watch it if you can by clicking this link

‘Do not be afraid’ – the opposite of this is to fear. I’ve realised that all the conditions of ministry I’ve mentioned above have been feeding a sense of fear within me. In the video Tim suggests fear can kill faith & stifle holy creativity because our eyes become focused on the circumstances we find ourselves in, rather than on Jesus. 

That has lead me to think again about Sabbath, divine and holy rest, offering space for contemplation, basking in God’s presence & opportunity for healing and wholeness. I’ve been pondering whether my focus should be more heavily on rest, on my being, on our wellness – rather than on activity and concerns about the future. 

That seems ironic given we’re in December and I have a whole host of Christmas activities to plan for! 

But as the video reminds us – God’ timing is perfect and will bring things forth at the right moment – if we are making space for God – and we do that through pausing, resting, Sabbath-ing.

Advent is a season of waiting that quite often the church pays some level of lip service to in it’s drive to make the most of the opportunties for mission and outreach. And as admirable as that may be, I wonder whether our desperate rush to get to Christmas means we skip Advent’s spiritual reminder that time is God’s. That just as God’s people both patiently and impatiently waited for Emmanuel, God’s moment came.

Perhaps we need to focus more heavily on rest, on recover, on being compassionate to ourselves, each other, to the church – to allow ourselves space to turn from fear to faithfulness, and trust that God’s moment will come.

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Faith in the fog

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Faith in the Fog
I drew away this morning, thinking I was going to a quiet place.
When I got there I could see only a few metres, the wind was howling, the rain soaking in.
Where was God in all this?

Then I realised. My life is a bit like that at the moment. I can’t see where I’m going.
This blowing at me from all directions.
Yet I hear the Lord say ‘have faith in the fog’.

So I will. I will have faith in you Lord. I believe.
I believe you will provide for me. I believe you have a plan for me.
I believe you hold my life in your hands.

So I stand in the cold.
The wet, the wind, the fog and say here I am. I am listening.
I will have faith in the fog.

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Reflections: Grazing the pastures

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The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;he restores my soul.
He leads me in right pathsfor his name’s sake.

Psalm 23:1-3, NRSV

At zoom family church last week, we thought about stories in the Bible about animals. Donkeys, foxes, sheep, goats, pigs, ox, frogs, locusts and more.

Then we thought about shepherds and sheep. Along with playing hide and seek the sheep in each of our homes, puzzles, games and songs, we watched a video clip which I found enlightening and challenged some of my assumptions about the meaning of Psalm 23.

The video clip is set in the wilderness, mid barr, also known as Green Pastures. Whenever I read Psalm 23, I would picture one particular field of lush green grass on my grandparents farm – the field we always knew as Meadow.

But, it seemed obvious once the video had pointed it out, that there was not such lush green grass at the time Psalm 23 was written. The Green pastures of the Psalms are the not lush green fields Cornish meadow of my grandparents.

Green pastures were brown, rocky, wilderness hillsides. Yet they were places where some moisture was present, enough to allow small tufts of grass to grow up from the edges of rocks with seeds and moisture are both caught. To graze in green pastures, shepherd and sheep are always on the move, a tuft here, a tuft there. Seeking food for the day, and finding just enough.

To graze in green pastures is not to sit down in one spot, forever, with every bite of sustenance we need at our fingertips. Life as a disciple is not a bed of roses where everything is sorted for us from the comfort of our homes without us having to do anything.

To graze in green pastures, is to keep moving, searching for the more that could be growing behind the next rock. To be a disciple is to learn that God will provide for todays needs, and to trust in God for enough for tomorrow.

‘give us today our daily bread’

The Lords Prayer

I find that all gives helpful meaning to ‘give us today our daily bread’. There were no supermarket shelves stacked with Hovis and Kingsmill! Bread making was a daily activity of providing enough for the now, and trusting for tomorrow.

I find this a helpful encouragement to me to keep journeying. That being a disciples is not about having everything sorted, a banqueting table before us or the answers to all of life’s questions.

It is to keep trusting, and through trusting to keep journeying and searching, because I never know what God has in store for me behind the next rock.

What about you?
What do you think?
How do you respond to the suggestion that green pastures may not be the image western society has often assumed?

Please watch the clip and reflect for yourself, and comment with your reflections below.

Downloadable Version of Dan’s Reflections

26-7-20-grazing-the-pastures-1Download