Business as usual

 

I’m aware that I may have occasionally made disparaging remarks about America: but here is a belated cheer for a news story I saw a few months ago about the new US ambassador to China. His name is Gary Locke, and he made a good impression as soon as he arrived. How? He and his family carried their own bags at the airport.

Chen Weihua wrote in the China Daily that to Chinese people "the scene was so unusual it almost defied belief. In China even a township chief … will have a chauffeur and a secretary to carry his bag." Another Chinese commentator said: "American officials are to serve the people, but Chinese officials are served by the people, that's the difference."

Now I don’t habitually cheer for America. And western regimes in general are far from perfect. (Yes, one could name infinitely worse regimes. But to say that we’re better than (say) Stalin’s Russia or Saddam’s Iraq is not to set our sights very high, and is no excuse for some of the stuff we’ve done in the name of that proud boast.)

Nor do I imagine that Gary Locke thought he was doing anything unusual. But perhaps that’s the point. Even in small everyday actions, he is (consciously or not) an ambassador – as we all are, as soon as we step out of the door. Ambassadors for our country, for our workplace, for our generation, for our sex, for our subculture, for our faith. People judge us on the little things they see us do when we think no-one’s watching: and they judge whatever group of people we seem to belong to.

I’m reminded a little of Trevor Huddleston. Not heard of him? He was an English clergyman in South Africa, who spoke out against apartheid long before such opposition became fashionable.

But perhaps more significantly, he raised his hat to a black woman – with far-reaching consequences. For that act, small and unremarkable for him, had a deep impact on the woman’s 9-year-old son: Desmond Tutu.

Speaking to the BBC in 2003, Tutu said this was: “the biggest defining moment in my life. … It blew your mind that a white man would doff his hat. And subsequently I discovered, of course, that this was quite consistent with his theology that every person is of significance, of infinite value, because they are created in the image of God.

And the passion with which he opposed apartheid and any other injustice is something that I sought then to emulate.”

Nelson Mandela said:  “No white person has done more for South Africa than Trevor Huddleston.” And one might argue that nothing Huddleston did or said had greater impact for South Africa than his greeting to Desmond Tutu’s mother. But one might equally argue that such an action, in the face of such a regime, was possible for Huddleston precisely because it had become natural and normal for him to treat people this way and not that way.

It grew out of who he was, by vocation and by training. It followed naturally from knowing what, and Whom, he served as an ambassador.