Always Advent

CHILDREN OF BRIDGET JONES

I went to my mom’s house unannounced, as I am wont to do, and found that she was out, as she is wont to be.

No matter. Being English, like my mom, I put the kettle on for a cup of tea and went in search of a book to read while I waited.

I picked up Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel, Bridget Jones’s Diary. Not the sort of thing I’d normally be interested in, but at the time I figured it was better than nothing.

I enjoyed Bridget’s New Year’s Resolutions and Chapter One enough to bring the book home and add it to my stack o’ books, teetering alongside the other book I was reading at the time, P.D. James’s Children of Men (1992).

As I read on, it occurred to me that these two books, even though they differ widely in genre, style, and intended audience, actually have quite a lot in common.

Each book chronicles about one year of elapsed time: Bridget’s fictional diary begins on January 1 and ends the day after Christmas, and P.D. James also begins her book with a January 1st journal entry by the main character, Theo Faron. Both contain first person point-of-view elements (Bridget Jones more than Children of Men) Both are intensely personal, providing the reader with access to the innermost and secret thoughts of the main character.

Some major differences, of course: Fielding’s main character, Bridget, is feckless, stupid and hilariously funny. James’s main character, Theo, is thoughtful, intelligent and serious.

Bridget Jones’s Diary ends with Bridget in bed with a good man instead of the insufferable twit she’d been after for the past 11 months, which our freely fornicating world considers a “happy” ending. James’s book is about the end of humanity…and its new beginning…amid murder, mayhem, mass euthanasia, betrayal, and hopelessness.

Bridget Jones’s Diary was a much more enjoyable read than Children of Men, yet, the book that made me sad was Bridget Jones’s. Even though I laughed out loud at Bridget’s antics and at Fielding’s inimitable turn of phrase, I couldn’t help thinking that there are actual, real life people in the world who live the kind of pathetic, meaningless life Bridget describes in her “diary”. She drinks too much, smokes too much, and eats too much, and constantly obsesses about how much she drinks, smokes, and eats, continually makes resolutions to improve herself, but never, ever does. She berates herself for sleeping with her boss, vows not to do it again, but does it again many times over. She vows to stop being late for work, but that very morning doesn’t get out of the house until 10:30. She is so lacking in self-knowledge that she turns a sensible meal of shepherd’s pie for a few friends into a gourmet meal for 16 that was to have concluded with grand marnier soufflés, but ten minutes before her guests were due to arrive she had stepped in the dinner and she still hadn’t dried her hair.

Details may vary, but is this not a description of just about everyone’s life? The struggle with vice, bad habits, laziness, inconstancy, habitual sin. The waffling back and forth from an exalted view of ourselves that bites off more than anyone could possibly chew to wallowing in self pity as we watch stupid YouTube videos.

Those who profess, by God’s grace, faith in Christ, have something to live for, at least. Bridget has nothing to live for, except those few dropped pounds on the scale, that evening at the pub with her friends, the momentary excitement and comfort of sex with someone new.

Bridget is fictional, but how could the Gospel of Jesus Christ reach someone like her in the real world? She knows that her life is meaningless and pathetic, yet I have a feeling that if she ever met a real Christian who tried to share the Gospel with her – rare in England these days – she would smile politely while trying to extricate herself from the encounter as quickly as possible.

In Children of Men, the entire human race has become sterile. No babies have been born for 25 years. The people of this world know that they are the last of their kind and they believe that without the future promised by the presence of children in the world, life is meaningless. P.D. James constructs a terrifying dystopia around this idea and answers the question of how a society without God would contemplate its own demise. Life in such a society is nasty, brutish, and short. The aged demonstrate their hopelessness by mass suicide. The young demonstrate theirs by acting out in anger, in reckless and indiscriminate violence.

If the fertility crisis James creates in her fictional future were ever to come true in the real world, I have no doubt that secular human society would deteriorate in much the way it does in her book, because in some ways her dystopia is already here. Euthanasia of the aged is practiced regularly in the Netherlands and they are contemplating it in rapidly aging Japan. In some countries the number of abortions exceeds the number of live births. The terminally-ill and severely brain-damaged are put to death every day in this country, although mostly without the furor surrounding the cruel death-by-starvation of Terry Schiavo. In many parts of the world, violent lawlessness is commonplace.

I think—I hope–people of faith would handle news of the end of the world differently, just as I hope people of faith are able to find meaning in everyday life the way Bridget Jones is not.

One of the reasons I’m profoundly un-interested in “endtimes” predictions, doomsdays, reported appearances of the anti-Christ, and so on, is because in the end it doesn’t matter: each one of us is hurtling toward our own personal apocalypse. We can take nothing with us, yet “what we do in life echoes in eternity.” (Gladiator) We each make the choice, every moment, to live meaningfully, for the good of others and for the good of our eternal souls, or to live a meaningless life that is only for the moment and is heedless of other people or our own eternal destiny. As my pastor is fond of saying, “Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days you’re going to be right.”

May this year be a year full of meaning within a lifetime full of meaning for you, for the people dear to you, and for every person you meet. (copyright 2008 by Clare Siobhan)

Links

http://www.georgiabulletin.org/local/1979/01/25/a/
Georgians Hear U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde Speak On Abortion
Archbishop Donnellan noted that in many U.S. cities the number of abortions far exceeds the number of live births.

http://www.ijgo.org/issues/contents?issue_key=S0020-7292(00) X0046-X
Trends and causes of maternal mortality in Kazakhstan
N. Kaupovaa, S. Nukushevaa, H. Biktashevaa, N. Goyauxb and P. Thonneaub
International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics
Volume 63, Issue 2, 1 November 1998, Pages 175-181
the number of abortions far exceeds the number of live births in the independent states of the former Soviet Union.

http://books.google.com/books?id=aaklGZAID08C&pg=PA17&lpg=PA 17&dq=number+of+abortions+exceeds+the+number+of+live+births& source=web&ots=ML93IMS_Wr&sig=7NyC45KTwEcaluv_knvp0dLlDEo#PP P1,M1
Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics: A Compilation of Jewish … - Google Books Result
by Avraham Steinberg - 2003 - Religion - 1191 pages
In countries where abortion on demand is totally legal, the number of abortions often exceeds the number of live births.