Words of Warning

For many Christians, the time of Advent is a season when the focus of Bible reading turns to the prophets in the Old Testament. After all ‘Prophets foretold him, infant of wonder’.

But the prophets also spoke words of judgement and warning.

In many ways John the Baptist was a successor to the Old Testament prophets. As well as his message of preparation (‘Prepare the way of the Lord’) and his call to repentance, he too issued words of warning (‘Bear fruit worthy of repentance…’, ‘every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down…’ and so on).

Of course, not everyone heeded the warnings of the prophets. Indeed, the tendency seems to have been to ignore their warnings. People listen to that to which they want to listen. People heed that to which they choose to pay heed. People believe what they want.

It is worth us pausing and asking ourselves to what extent we too can be guilty of dismissing those messages that do not suit us or sit well with us and to what extent we believe what we want to believe.

Now, in what I am about to say I am not drawing parallels between the biblical prophets and any of our national leaders or scientific advisors etc. Hardly!

But I do wonder if our apparent human default position of believing what suits us, dismissing that which is inconvenient and ignoring warnings that don’t fit with our preferred way of living is playing out in the present circumstances of pandemic restrictions.

Those who know me well will be aware that I am no apologist for either the Westminster or Holyrood governments or their respective leaders. What is more I tend to be a little bit of a libertarian and a critic of some ‘nanny state’ attitudes. I worry a lot about our increasingly surveillance oriented society and so on.

But I also  believe that I am called to love my fellow humans, to take all reasonable steps to protect others from harm, and to show community responsibility and solidarity. And given that I am not an expert in matters of virology, epidemiology or healthcare provision I therefore feel I have a duty to heed the words of warning and play by the rules, whether or not they make sense to me, whether or not they are convenient, whether or not I find it frustrating, whether or not it seems to me to be consistent or rational. Of course everyone in positions of responsibility must be held to account. But I am not in any expert position to opine.

But I am – as a Minister of the Church – in a position of a little influence and responsibility. And it worries me and bothers me when I read and hear comments by fellow Ministers (and others in positions of community leadership) casting doubts on or questioning the guidance we are being offered. After all, we know little about matters of epidemiology or so on. But we are supposed to know something about leadership and social responsibility and compassion towards and care for our fellow human beings.

And we know something too about how, through the generations, from the times of the prophets onwards, people have displayed a tendency not to heed the words of warning, and have ended up paying the price.

Just sayin’….