1The children of God, full of the Holy Spirit, came in from the towns and villages and were led through shopping centres, in the wilderness, 2where for forty days they were tempted by Primark and River Island and TopShop and QS. They bought nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, they were exhausted by the colours and the lights and the excessive choices. 3The market said to them, ‘If you are the children of God, enjoy the bounty of God’s world by buying this prom dress for only £8. And get these kids’ pyjamas for £3.50. You deserve to have more left over for DVDs.’ 4The children of God answered, ‘We do not live by new clothes alone, and we have the bounty of God’s world in our hearts and minds, and children shall not be dressed in clothes made by other children.’
5 Then they were led to the news media and shown in an instant the western window on all the kingdoms of the world. 6And bbc.co.uk and Sky News said to them, ‘To you we will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to us, and we give it to anyone with satellite or broadband access. 7If you will assimilate us, you will know all there is to know about every culture in the world (except North Korea, because we just can’t get in), and the power to feel you possess them all will be yours.’ 8The children of God answered, ‘We trust in God who gives us the skills to critique and question all this information, and we resist colonizing other cultures. We will learn with them and through them in their tragedies and their triumphs, and not just through western media or when two Britons were loosely involved.’
9 Then the children of God were taken to the apogee of human achievement, of the best healthcare and the farthest-reaching technologies the world had ever known, and placed on the pinnacle of civilization and human compassion and interaction, and they were told, ‘If you are the children of God, throw yourselves down from here; throw all this away for instant gratification, for dumbing down, for your opiates and screens that keep you isolated in your own heads, for patio heaters and ready meals and SUVs; 10for surely God won’t really let anything bad happen to you, or let you destroy yourselves and your ability to be creative and to exist in a culture of love?’
12The children of God answered, ‘God is in us and we have the power to stop these things from happening. We are not machines, we are not numbers, we are not slaves. We do not need plastic toys or plastic food or plastic entertainment for our happiness. We will teach our children to fall in love with the things they really enjoy.’ 13The fallen powers retreated from the children of God, but only until the children of God could be lured in newer and shinier and more covert ways into giving up their birthright for a mess of pottage: pixelated, shrink-wrapped, and only costing £2.50 (or five for a tenner).
Susannah Cornwall
