Can we show respect across the generations?

A footballer’s taunt still hurts.

Jean Kabasomi

Jean is a consultant working with financial and Christian organisations. She also writes and broadcasts.

A TV screengrab shows a football manager walking while a passing rival player says (captioned) 'stay humble'.

Haaland harangues.

Sky Sports

If you are a football fan, you might be flabbergasted, curious and maybe a bit gleeful about the recent “dip” in form of Manchester City. It runs deeper for me; I’m an Arsenal fan.

So let me address the elephant in the room before I go any further. Yes, we haven’t won the league for 20 years and yes, we’re everyone’s banter club, I get it. But Haaland’s “Stay humble” comment, directed at my team, was a lot for us and here’s my take on why.

I grew up in an African household. I have been taught to respect my elders. We aren’t allowed to be overly familiar with anyone older than us. You don’t randomly pat your elders on the back. There is a level of reverence that is not only expected but covertly and overtly demanded. Almost every child of African heritage has been chastised by a parent or caregiver with some version of “Is that your classmate?”, after taking things a bit too far with an aunty or uncle, aka anyone more than 10 years older than you.

So, you can imagine my shock like so many Arsenal fans when Haaland decided that he was going to tap our manager on the shoulder and utter the words, ’Stay humble.’

Football is a game of banter. I agree. Tottenham, Manchester United…. say no more, as we say in South London. My brother thinks I dislike Manchester United more than I support Arsenal. That could be truetrue, but I digress.

I would have completely understood if Haaland had done what he had done and said what he said to Saka, Gabriel or any other Arsenal player. But the manager, no, that’s taking the mick. The manager is off-limits he is supposed to be respected by the players.

That’s why Arsenal fans, were celebrating the way we did when the boys humbly beat Man City 5-1.

I know, it’s been a few weeks, now. I’m a Christian I am supposed to be over it. But I’m not.

The older I get the more I understand the wisdom of respecting those with more experience than me. Not just because it was what I was taught, but because I want my parents' generation to be respected. I want to be respected when I am older and I want my children’s generation to be respected, too.

We live in a moment in time where the differences between generations are often magnified. Intergenerational collaboration doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue and it isn’t something you hear every day. But I am reminded by my faith that there is wisdom in age and long life brings understanding. Strength and passion are found in young people. Communities work best when the young and the old work together in mutual respect.

If I want to live in a society that respects all generations, my role as a millennial (someone who sits awkwardly in the middle), is to ask myself two questions:

When I meet someone older than me, would I be happy if someone were to treat my mum or dad the way I am treating this person?

If they are younger than me, would I want someone to treat my siblings like this?

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Culture

Film & TV

Politics

Royalty

11 November 2024

2 min read

Would you rather live in Wolf Hall?

Monarchy and deciding who's really in charge.

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

A TV production set shows Henry VIII at a masked ball.

Daniel Day-Lewis digs his claws into the role of Henry VIII.

BBC.

Viewers of Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light may well have breathed a sigh of relief: thank goodness we don’t live in such times. Henry VIII, depicted by Damian Lewis with lionesque intensity, flexes and pouts at his Privy Council, prepared to send even his own daughter to the axeman’s block. He is unimaginably powerful, capricious, and easily offended.

Meanwhile, almost four-thousand miles away, we have just witnessed a democratic election in a nation which wanted nothing to do with kings. Donald Trump has won a second term in the White House - whatever one thinks of him, a sitting President is contained by counterpoised checks and balances. Congress. The Supreme Court. Here, at least, are some features that would have usefully reigned in Henry VIII’s absolute power.

Kings are perhaps cutting a rather pathetic figure right now, even without a sulky, fur-clad Damian Lewis to damage their PR. A few weeks ago, King Charles was heckled by an Australian Senator during a trip to Parliament: “not my King!” yelled Lidia Thorpe. Lately, King Felipe VI of Spain had dirt hurled at him as he walked through Paiporta, to examine the damages of recent floods. So much for a royal welcome.

So, is this just the way things are going? Farewell to tyrants. Humiliated, shouted at, mud-splattered and powerless - will we finally decommission them like old submarines?

But the question of “who’s really in charge here?” is one that all human societies have to face squarely. For our ancestors, there had to be something real behind a legitimate government. It could not just be a useful or appropriate way of organising ourselves - there had to be something copper-bottomed to give authority its clout. Only the gods could prop up a leader. In the pagan world, a philosopher like Aristotle would add that it is just the case that some people rule, some are ruled.

The UK constitution - though few would speak of it in this way - is premised on the idea that the King represents the people of this country to God, who alone can vouchsafe his legitimacy. A monarch in this sense is not absolute. They are contained - contained by the most comprehensive and eternal power that can be conceived. No tyrant gets away with it, on the Christian view.

All societies seek this real basis to power, whether that is “self-evident truths”, or the “will of the people”. The question is: which of them provide for a flourishing community for the longest? King Felipe may have been abused, but he did not flee to the refuge of a car like the Prime Minister. Here was a man of immense privilege reaching out to his subjects. Despite their pain and anger, he wanted to show he really cared - indeed, that he was born to care. For as long as monarchies seem like a reasonable and compassionate answer to the issue of legitimate government, they may endure yet.