Column
Culture
Football
Humility
Sport
4 min read

We're pretty useless really

We all fail. Not just Southgate, Biden and Sunak.

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A dejected looking football manager ponders his feet while standing beside a pitch.
Southgate contemplates.

The Book of Heroic Failures, published by Stephen Pile in 1979, records a story of the Welsh Dean of St Asaph, Daniel Price, in the late 17th century. Contemporary biographer John Aubrey noted that Price was a “mighty Pontificall proud man.” 

So proud that he declined to parade on foot outside his cathedral, but rather rode a mare in full vestments, reading from the Book of Common Prayer. Aubrey with precise economy describes what happened next: “A stallion happened to break loose, and smelled the mare, and ran and leapt her, and held the reverend dean all the time so hard in his embraces, that he could not get off till the horse had done his business.” 

Unsurprisingly, Aubrey records that the good Dean “would never ride in procession afterwards.” He had clearly learned a lesson in humility. And one that would not have been taught had his ride passed with pompous dignity. 

A question arises, pertinent for events today, as to whether we learn more from the indignity of failure than from the fruits of success. I’d like to suggest that we do, especially about the nature of our human condition. 

Humans are pretty useless really and our default position is error and falling short.

No one doubts that had England won the European Football Championship it would have been the crowning adornment to manager Gareth Southgate’s career. England failed to do that, though we failed less than any other team (Spain doesn’t count because they didn’t fail at all). Now that Southgate has resigned and has time to reflect at leisure, perhaps he will learn at least as much and possibly very much more about himself than if he had raised the trophy. 

US president Joe Biden would have had an altogether greater reckoning to face if he lost the election to Donald Trump than if he won it. Now he’s quit the race, arguably he has much more to learn from reflecting on his life and achievements. The Conservative Party has many lessons to learn about its 14 years in power from its abject defeat at the polls. Indeed, many parliamentary Tories believe that defeat was a requisite event for its reformation to proceed. 

None of this is to suggest that failure of itself is a virtue. Nor is it just a morality tale that enjoins us to meet triumph and disaster and “treat those two impostors just the same”. A failed marriage, or failing health, or moral failures of a wider variety, cause destructive pain and trauma. 

But it is to acknowledge that failure is part of the natural human condition. We’re in the territory of a flawed, fallen humanity here, one that theologians call postlapsarian, that is fallen from an ideal of perfection as dramatically portrayed in the Garden of Eden. Humans are pretty useless really and our default position is error and falling short. 

Loss of innocence, injustice and failure meet in unholy alliance at Golgotha.

This isn’t, or should not be, depressing. At least not for people of faith, because it reflects the nature of humanity. Failure, if you will, is a gift of God in a fallen creation. We learn more from our failures than our successes, which is either a biological determinism in evolution or a means through which we strive for a new perfection. There’s a version of that they may be reciting to the England football team right now. 

Christian faith sometimes concentrates too often on triumph over death and the idea of a heavenly kingdom where all is well, at the expense of recognising the reality of our world in which most things are very far indeed from well.  

We might recognise it in a congregational tendency to skip over Good Friday to Easter morning. If we do so, we neglect to notice what an abject failure the insurgent Jesus movement was on its short journey of break-up from Jerusalem to Calvary. It, literally, dies. 

Yes, we know what happens next. Or do we? The first witnesses to it certainly struggle to explain it in a manner that we might comprehend. But, in any event, loss of innocence, injustice and failure meet in unholy alliance at Golgotha. 

The theologian John Macquarrie asks what happens if we feel compelled to draw the bottom line under the cross: “Would that destroy the whole fabric of faith in Christ? I do not think so, for the two great distinctive Christian affirmations would remain untouched – God is love, and God is revealed in Jesus Christ. These two affirmations would stand even if there were no mysteries beyond Calvary.” 

No, our story doesn’t end there. But we can acknowledge that this is where we live in this world, at the foot of that cross. As the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal put it, the Christ “will be in agony until the end of the world.” 

Let’s not be too miserable, because we do have the “mysteries beyond Calvary”. And let’s celebrate our earthly successes. But let’s also learn to embrace our failures and receive them as a gift, from football to politics. 

Review
Culture
Film & TV
Hospitality
Romance
4 min read

From wheatfield to vineyard, can an ancient love story survive a replanting?

Ruth & Boaz finds new soil in rural Tennessee but struggles to grow

Giles is a writer and creative who hosts the God in Film podcast.

A couple hold each others hands as they face each other.
Tyler Lepley and Serayah.

Ruth & Boaz is a contemporary version of the most memorable love story in the Bible. The film tells the story of Ruth, a young woman who escapes the Atlanta music scene to care for an elderly widowed woman. Not only does Ruth gain the mother she never had, she also finds the love of her life in the process. 

The story of Ruth and Boaz is a straight up love story, and it serves as a much-needed respite from the biblical levels of violence in the books that precede and follow it in the Bible. So a modern update of the Ruth and Boaz story serves as good material for a heartfelt, sincere romance.

As part of Atlanta pop duo 404, Ruth Moabley (Serayah) is a talented singer who, after the death of her boyfriend and his father, is desperate to escape her menacing manager.  Ruth makes the impulsive decision to join her late boyfriend's mother Naomi, (Phylicia Rashad) as they both leave Atlanta for a small town in Tennessee to start over from scratch. The only job she can find involves labouring at a local vineyard, leading her to owner Bo "Boaz" Azra, (Tyler Lepley) who falls for Ruth the moment he lays eyes on her. Ruth holds tight to her faith and slowly begins to accept love, but her past is soon to catch up with her.

One of the joys of adapting a Bible story is often the characterisation. Phylicia Rashad’s Naomi is a complex, contradictory figure whose manifestations of grief are not always that sympathetic, pushing away all but the most insistent of helpers like Ruth. As the titular character, we spend a lot of time with Serayah’s Ruth. Making her a singer helps to flesh out the character to an extent, but the scenes where her individuality gets to shine are notable by their infrequency.  

Tyler Lepley’s turn as Bo Azra is perfectly serviceable. He’s essentially an idealised, handsome and muscled 40-year-old. Bo has a wealth of backstory; we’re told he served two tours in Afghanistan, then worked on Wall Street, and finally returned to his family business of the Azra Vineyard & Winery. Despite this, none of it really shows up in his characterisation. He spends his time being a generous boss, and an all-round basic good guy. All of which is great in real-life but can be a little staid in fiction. There’s very little about him to intrigue us, although questions have to be asked about how, if he’s so dedicated to making his business succeed, he managed to find the time to work on a truly magnificent set of abs. 

In a departure from the original Bible story, Ruth begins as a casual worker on Boaz’s vineyard. This is a reasonable change, as the practice of leaving grain after the harvest for widows and orphans to collect just doesn’t fit in a modern context. But in a post #MeToo world, this does create a power imbalance. They attempt to address this power imbalance of employer and employee when Ruth refuses to let Boaz buy her a drink. However, Ruth’s resistance quickly recedes when Boaz introduces her to Rn’B legend, Babyface. In this world, if you want to date one of your employees, all you have to do is introduce her to a Grammy-winning super producer to break down her inhibitions.

All of these shortcomings suggest that the script needed a few more passes, and the saccharine voiceover feels like it’s trying to make up for that. Credibility at times takes a back seat to the gloss of the high production value as almost every other shot looks like it’s promoting a tourist destination. There are moments where it feels like the story is contorting itself in order to be a vehicle for Serayah’s singing talents; which, to be fair, are considerable. Nonetheless, a lot of the tension in the plot hinges on characters not telling each other incredibly important details because of convoluted reasons. It’s a trope that feels a little bit tired. On top of that, the pacing drags until it remembers it has to have a dramatic resolution, which it awkwardly rushes, making the ending feel somewhat unfulfilling.

Ultimately, Ruth & Boaz feels like a romance film made by committee, a Hallmark film with added Bible references and RnB cameos. One could argue that it shines a spotlight on African-American communities in rural America, but the brisk run-time prevents it from revealing anything new, and the light touch characterisation means we don’t really get anything original.

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