CHRISTIAN WINS BIG BROTHER SHOCK!
Wed 30 Jul 2003
as the British press get their knives into Cameron, the Christian who won Big Brother UK, Stocki responds to Euan Ferguson's article in the Observer...
Euan Ferguson’s Observer article (From The Bible to Number 10, via Big Brother – 27.07.03) about Cameron Stout’s victory on Big Brother was quite something. Now, to be fair to Euan and to give him the benefit of the doubt, his job is to be outrageous and controversial to provoke a response. To be a comment writing journalist you need to raise that part of all of us that wants to lash out, be vindictive and jump on people’s heads until you bury them alive. Without the ability to allow that part of his psyche to flourish Euan would not be writing in the Observer. As an amateur writer on a do-it-yourself little web page I have to constantly check myself from malicious over exaggerations and treat people with dignity rather than disdain. It would be so easy to dehumanise people. I understand fully that Euan job is the exact opposite. It is to exaggerate the disdain. So we begin by sympathising with his circumstances. It was the expectations of his role under his editor that created the outburst we are about to respond to. Please take no offence Euan, we will try to be as objective as possible. Not good journalism which is why I am not succeeding in that particular department but a little more civil if you don’t mind us saying so! Am I yielding to the temptation for disdain there already! Sorry!
Euan’s gripe is that a Christian won Big Brother and how that has made him realise “that we have come much less as a country than we really think.” Cameron’s surprise Big Brother victory is a reason for a great wailing and gnashing of teeth as it shows we are more Christian than Euan hoped! You see Cameron was an antithesis of all that the producers of Big Brother had hoped for.
“Here was a programme which set out quite openly and cynically, to pull in viewers by promising live sex between strangers on television; which looked at what it thought was real Britain, modern Britain, cheap and fast and immoral and unfaithful and quickly and tawdrily gratified, and tried to plumb all the depths. And then the winner, the Cameron chap from Orkney, turns out to be the opposite of it all. A virgin. A Christian. He reads the Bible, and lives on a funny island, and is quietly Christianly homophobic.”
Not sure what the issue is as yet; apart from the surprise (!) of a supposedly liberal and open minded newspaper sounding more like a Telegraph intolerance and bigotry towards virgins and people who read the Bible. Obviously there is a media distortion at present about Christians being homophobic as a result of the gay Bishop controversy. That people who have problems over gay sexual relationships should be all labelled homophobic is like labelling everyone who owns a gun as a murderer. The quantum leap is absurd but is casually thrown out ironically as an example of Christian intolerance.
Ferguson goes on to lambaste Cameron in particular but Christianity across the board by saying that what he is less happy with is that someone can rise to the top “by being pleasant, apparently trustworthy, sweet of smile and possessed of an entirely ludicrous belief in the existence of some spurious entity whose supposed pronouncements can be twisted, cajoled and spun down the centuries to produce some moral straitjacket to serve the world’s hypocrites.” Again to give fairness to Mr. Ferguson this is where he lost a little control and lashed out at something other than Cameron Stout. Maybe by this time he had moved on to Tony Blair who gets his last hurl of wrath. It seems that because Tony reads the Bible too he is to be seen as a carbon copy of Cameron or vica versa. Come on Euan, you must have read the article over again. Your editor must have had a chance to tell you that you were insulting your own intelligence with another quantum leap of judgement, maybe even “moral straitjacketing.” To compare Cameron Stout with the Prime Minister or even his American accomplice in the most clear cut of any century’s war crimes is like saying that because the last convicted child murderer was an atheist, as you seem to be suggesting you are, that you too are a child murderer. Don’t rant! Think, big lad!
I imagine that for most people they voted for Cameron Stout with some kind of surprise. Most of them were not virgins or very faithful partners, many of them do not even believe in marriage. Most of them have never seen a Bible and very rarely been to Church, if ever! Most of them would have told you a week before Big Brother that such a caricature as the British press paints of a Christian would be the first housemate evicted. Yet, when they watched they saw something beyond the bigoted and prejudice misinterpretation. They saw a human being who was real and honest and fun. They saw the human being under the caricature. There is no doubt that Cameron Stout is a very special breed of human being who has taken all that is good about The Bible’s wisdom and advice and jettisoned much of the stuff that Euan Ferguson believes Christianity to be but it shows that when given the choice between foul mouthed drinkers who see any kind of authority as a threat to their individuality as opposed to be useful boundaries to check the darkness and shadows within all of us that the public makes surprise decisions.
So maybe when we look at that moral straitjacket it is not so bad. Euan how would you feel if you came home tonight and found your house ransacked and all your valuables stolen? How would you feel if you were happily married for twenty years and found your partner had been having an affair with your best mate? How would you feel if someone murdered your son? Surely you would not like people to live by God’s commandments and live by their moral straitjacket. Better a thief, an adulterer and a murderer than someone who is a virgin (aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh what a heinous crime!), a Bible reader (again life in prison is too good for them!) or someone who believes that the world came into being through a random bang out there somewhere (which is at least as spurious!) than someone who believes a God is behind our intricate Universe!
I am the first to preach a harsh message to the Church to open up, to be more tolerant, to not be so fundamentalist. I who try to follow Jesus am as appalled as anyone that someone attempting a similar pilgrimage is the biggest threat to world peace and stability. Yes I will hold my Bible in one hand and the Observer in the other and attempt to understand where the two caress but I will also be aware of where they collide. I believe that I can follow Jesus and be open minded, indeed I think his teaching overwhelmingly calls me to do so. I think Cameron Stout is on a similar journey but he refused to become so open minded that his brain leaks out or is soul either!
Footnote: Steve Stockman apologises for any moments when he belittled Euan Ferguson in this article. If he has he is not a hypocrite. He is the exact opposite. It is because I find it hard to live by what I believe that I need the mercy and grace of God as revealed by Christ’s death and resurrection.
