The human condition

Dr John Chalmers

LAST summer in Rome we visited the Pantheon; it is one of Rome’s most extraordinary buildings.

The experience was breathtaking. We wondered how ancient architects, engineers and builders managed to create such an awe-inspiring space and we wondered how many lives of how many slaves might have been lost during construction? Still almost speechless we spilled out into the daylight alongside others from around the world who were also enjoying the amazing sites of the city. That was when we overheard a young man say to his travelling companion: “Where do you want to go now?” The response, as quick as a flash, was simple: “Let’s nip down to the Vatican, I don’t want to hang around there, but I need to get a quick selfie in front of St Peter’s; then we’re done.”

If taking in the scale and precision of the Pantheon had been a staggering experience, so also was this short snippet of overheard conversation.

Here was the prospect of visiting a Unesco World Heritage Site with its unique collection of artistic and architectural masterpieces and what seemed to be more important than anything else was capturing a selfie that reduces the surrounding scene to no more than a backdrop. We thought about those showground photo-booths and wondered what it was about human nature that draws our eye away from the wider horizon and tempts us into being at the centre of every picture. What, in fact, does today’s obsession with taking selfies tell us about the human condition?

It’s not that I want people to visit ancient monuments or stand in front of lavish palaces or places of worship with an uncritical eye. By all means take in the sights and ask why – why has so much money been spent on follies for the amusement of the rich at the expense of the poor? Why is our church history blighted by projects that have been more about the glory of church leaders than the glory of God? Ask the moral questions; plumb the depths of history, but, for any favour, don’t just use these places as a canvas for the latest picture of me as the sun around which everything else orbits.

What worries me is the thought that the selfie culture is a kind of narcissism gone wild. There may be nothing much wrong with the occasional photograph that shows us standing beside some famous person or site, but is it altogether healthy to be running around with your ‘phone on the end of a selfie-stick to make sure that you are at the centre of every picture? Narcissism is a word derived from Greek mythology, where the young hunter Narcissus falls in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. My late mother, was no psychoanalyst, but she could spot an over inflated ego at a hundred yards and she would say of those who had that overblown sense of their own importance: “I wonder how their last trumpeter died?”

“Don’t just use these places as a canvas for the latest picture of me as the sun around which everything else orbits.

I don’t think Carly Simon ever named the lover of whom she sang: “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you”, but we all know the kind of personality that was getting under her skin. Life isn’t about me, me, me! Modesty beats pride hands down, humility is healthier than arrogance and self-effacement beats self-importance every time.

In John’s gospel, when John the Baptist recognises the person of Jesus in the midst he realises that that was the time for Jesus to move into the centre, while he slipped offto the sidelines. As we work away at the process of trying to revitalise the Church of Scotland it would be good to remember that centre stage belongs to the Carpenter who said (Luke 9:23) that following Him was about self-denial and it was about taking up a cross rather than a selfie stick.