I have just returned from a short trip to Egypt and what is generally termed the Holy Land, though in our generation this seems to be quite a misnomer. The purpose of this journey, which took in Sinai and Galilee as well as the more usual destinations of Cairo and Jerusalem was to prepare the way for the "Opening the stargate" tour. This is something that I am organising in association with Quest magazine and which, as I shall explain in detail in coming weeks, promises to be very special. However, rather than go into what this is all about, for the moment I would like to dwell a little on that over-hyped subject the millennium.
Now it is a curious thing but you can tell a lot about a nation by simply observing how it is planning on celebrating the millennium. Here in Britain a huge marquee, the "Millennium Dome" has been raised at Greenwich to act as the focal point of our celebrations. Apparently this is to contain a number of exhibits and "zones" details of which still seem rather sketchy.
Now I have been to the dome, though not inside, and can well see that in other circumstances it would be considered a marvel of technology. Why then, other than its awkward location, is it so unloved? I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that it is a metaphor for our times, which are greedy, irreligious and steeped in vice. Most of the money being expended on its building is coming from the lottery fund, which means when put at its most basic, the proceeds of gambling. There is a story in the Bible of how, having repented of his betrayal of Jesus, Judas Iscariot took back the thirty pieces of silver he had received for his treachery and threw these at the feet of the Temple elders. He subsequently committed suicide but they refused to put the money back into the the treasury because it was tainted with guilt. Instead they used it to buy a potter's field where strangers who died in the city could be buried. In this little story we have an example of double standards. For the "dirty" money of Judas could not be used for really essential matters like improving the Temple but could only be put to use for good works that had no direct bearing on the life of the city. It seems to me that like the thirty pieces of silver of Judas Iscariot, lottery money is also tainted. Now this money is supposed to be used for worthwhile schemes of either national or local importance. However, like all money that is easily obtained (and one thinks here of the millions won every week by the winners of the lottery) there is a sense of easy-come-easy-go. Not having been raised by taxation there is a temptation to spend it on circuses, whether these be "high" culture such as the New Opera House at Covent Garden, or "low" like the Blackwall Tunnel Dome.
I sense that deep down there is disquiet amongst the British people about the whole lottery business and the way it is promoted each week on the BBC1 television which is, after all, still supposed to be a public service channel and is supported by licence payers. For whilst the government, very rightly in my opinion, seeks to discourage us from such vices as smoking, drinking and snorting cocaine, in this strange pact with the devil it is actually encouraging the gambling instinct. The money spent on "worthwhile causes" by the administrators of the lottery does not come out of thin air: it is a proportion of that taken each week out of the pockets of individual punters. This, as any social worker must know has already had disastrous consequences for the families of the many who are are now hooked on buying scratch-cards and lottery numbers at the expense of daily necessities. As if this were not bad enough, it would seem that the majority of players are not the affluent middle classes but rather those least able to afford it: the depressed and frustrated under-class. This includes unemployed school leavers with no qualifications, single-parent mothers with no prospect of a career outside the home, and unemployed men over fifty—too young to yet draw a pension but considered too old to work by our youth-obsessed society. For all these groups that infinitesimal chance that for the price of a pound they could overnight see their fortunes transformed from despair to affluence is enough to keep them hooked. Thus it is that for a large section of the populace the lottery, with its tinselly promise that it "could be you" has replaced religion as a beacon of hope.
It is this that is the most deeply disturbing aspect of the Dome and I think is the reason why few people I have met intend to visit it. Britain is still, in theory at least, a Christian country and our Queen is the head of the Church of England. Though it is true that most "Christian" Britons, do not go to church except for baptisms, weddings and funerals, this does not mean that in their hearts they no longer subscribe to Christian ideals. Given this undercurrent of faith, it would seem obvious that if the millennium is to be celebrated at all then it should be as some sort of Christian affirmation: that even after two thousand years the life, teachings and work of Jesus Christ are still of importance. The fact that the Millennium Dome is mostly given over to a shallow, politically correct and atheistic philosophy of life is really deeply insulting to Christians of all denominations. It is as though we were to celebrate the birthday of Buddha by building a shrine to industrial technology at Ahodyar or the birthday of Mohammed by building a football stadium at Mecca. Such things would be unthinkable in India or Saudi Arabia and so should it be that we celebrate the the advent of the third thousand years of Christianity by building a shrine at Greenwich to rampant materialism, the antithesis of what Jesus Christ taught.
Travelling in Israel, the birthplace of Jesus, it was clear that outside of Bethlehem the millennium is being down-played. In the Holy Land, that most tender and touchy spot on the earth, there is no room for simple-minded exhibitionism nor for the unnecessary insulting of religious beliefs. Similarly in Egypt the current furore over whether or not the millennium should be celebrated by the capping of the Great Pyramid with a golden pyramidion shows that in that country too extravagant gestures with religious overtones need greater justification than their appeal to tourism. I think there are lessons here to be learnt in England. It is too late now for the 760 million pounds spent on the Dome to be reinvested in hospitals, schools or other more needful projects. However I sense that there is a deep feeling of shame at this wasteful and unjustifiable use of our nations wealth. I suspect that there will be a sigh of relief when in a few years time the Dome, which is actually only a temporary structure anyway, is removed from the landscape of London and we are allowed to forget that it ever existed.
Copyright © 1999 Adrian G Gilbert